Will's Galactic Adventure (4 page)

Drych looked wide-awake now, staring intently at the screen. Giant asteroids were whirling past on both sides. Above and below, too. Will was sure that at any second they would smash into one, but they didn't. Each time, just at the last moment,
Brenda
dodged out of the way.

“That's Drych, that is. ‘E does it all by thought, sort of. That's why they're dragon ships, see. Takes a dragon to react quick enough to fly through places like this. Can do it without proper controls an' that. Just by thinking.”

The roller coaster ride continued. Large asteroids and small, all pock-marked and cratered where they had crashed into each other in their never ending orbits around the distant red star. Mostly they were a reddish-brown colour, like sandstone. (Will was surprised that he remembered what colour sandstone was. He must have been paying more attention than he thought in one of the geography lessons.) They weren't all like that though. There were all shades of grey too, and even a few greens and blues. Some had veins of other colours running through them and some of these veins were shiny. Will guessed that the shiny parts might be metal. Other asteroids had sparkly bits here and there. Will thought that these sparkly bits were some sort of crystals. The trouble was that they were all going by too fast for him to get a proper look.

Eventually Will noticed that the asteroids were getting further apart.
Brenda
was not making so many twists and turns to avoid them. Fewer of them were whirling past on all sides. Suddenly they were clear and Drych turned
Brenda
around to look back the way they had come. They were now sitting in clear space above the disk of the asteroid belt as it curved away to left and right to form a giant ring around that distant red sun.

“Whew!” said Will. “What now?”

“Now we have to find, er, Cream Tea and Teacake, I think that's what Mavis called them.”

“Too late for that!” This was Spiv. “Look! There! Bottom left on the screen! They've found us!”

Hurtling up towards them out of the asteroid belt was another spaceship. It was already quite close because, being black, they hadn't spotted it against the surrounding blackness of space. They could only see it now when it was silhouetted against the swirling asteroids below. And since the asteroids were all moving around, at any given moment Will could only see part of the ship, whatever part happened to have an asteroid behind it at just that moment. The longer he looked the more of a picture of the ship he could build up in his mind – and the less he liked the look of it. The picture emerging was one of sleek, fast and lots of pointy bits that didn't look at all friendly.

Will's suspicions were all too painfully confirmed when some of the pointy bits flashed brightly, sending a bolt of white light straight towards
Brenda
. There was a huge jolt and they seemed to roll right over. At least this time the lights stayed on and Will didn't hear Spiv complaining about the toaster.

“They're shooting at us! Can we shoot back?”

As if in reply to his question an answering bolt of white light flashed back towards the black ship. It shuddered but kept on coming.

“Their screens are still working then,” offered Spiv.

“You mean like a force field or something?” asked Will.

“That's it lad. You catch on quick!”

“Have we got one too?”

“Did ‘ave when their last shot ‘it us. ‘Ope we still ‘ave.”

“We have,” said Drych, calm as ever.

Looking at the screen Will saw the black ship flash straight past them and keep going. As he watched it streak away he saw an electric blue glow start to form around its rear end.

“That glow! They're going to jump to hyperspace!” exclaimed Mavis.

“Ol' One Chance reckoned they couldn't do that! Said he thought he'd damaged them too much!”

“Evidently not,” came the calm voice of Drych. “Will, if they are going to hyperspace we will need your skills again. Take your phone again please.”

Will jumped back into his chair and picked up his phone from where it was dangling from its wire out of the wall.

“Right Will. You will find it is the same game as before – the Monaco Grand Prix. This time you will need to be going a little faster than last time. Seventy-three miles per hour when you enter the tunnel please. And remember, the task is not to race, the task is to enter the tunnel at seventy-three miles per hour.”

“An' don't crash!”

Will hit the button to start the game as before. Again, the main screen now showed the starting grid at Monaco. The red lights above the track came on one by one, shone briefly for a couple of seconds then went out. He was racing again!

Will's reflexes took over as he fired away from the line. He was still driving his favourite red car. But he was second on the grid. That black car was in front again.

He had a sudden realisation. “That black car. It's the same one that was there before. It's them, isn't it? Cream Tea and Teacake.”

“Yes,” answered Drych, “but just concentrate on the game for now. Seventy-three miles per hour remember.”

“An' really don't crash!”

The engine screamed, he reached maximum revs and made his first gear change.

Both cars roared around the first turn, the Virage St. Devote. This time Will kept in control and didn't skid. The black car was still in front and although Will was gaining slightly, this time he remembered what he was supposed to be doing and concentrated on his speed, not on getting past.

Around the hairpin the two cars were neck and neck, Will on the outside and the black car on the inside. Then just at the entrance to the sharp right-hand turn of the Virage du Portier, the last turn before the tunnel, the black car faltered and dropped slightly behind. To enter the tunnel at exactly the right speed, Will had to slow down a bit. At exactly the same moment as Will eased off the throttle, the black car accelerated again and crashed straight into the back of him! Will's car spun and entered the tunnel sideways! Will had no idea how fast it was going but, because of the impact from behind and because he hadn't finished slowing down properly, it was faster than seventy-three miles per hour!

Will corrected the skid and ended up more or less facing the right way but by this time he had stopped inside the tunnel. There was no sign of the black car having got past and when Will looked in his mirrors he could see that it had also stopped. It was missing its nose cone and a front wheel was bent backwards where it had struck the crash barrier and scraped along to a halt. It had stopped just before entering the tunnel.

Will's hands were shaking but when he looked down at them he got an even worse shock, he could see right through them! He could see through the case of his phone too. All the works inside were visible, and through them, the floor. That didn't look too solid, either.

He stared round in panic and saw that everything had the same ghostly, transparent look. Everything except Drych, that is, who looked as solid as ever. Mavis was a ghostly black shape in a seat over to his right. He couldn't see Spiv but then he couldn't see him at the best of times – and this certainly wasn't the best of times. He heard him, though.

“That's torn it. Not your fault, though, young Will. I reckon the devious so-and-so's did that on purpose. I reckon ol' One Chance was right – they couldn't get into hyperspace. Weren't even trying! They did it to trick us!”

“You may well be correct,” said Drych, “but for the present we must consider how to extract ourselves from this predicament.”

“Wh… wh… what predicament is that?” asked Will, in a small voice. He wasn't at all keen on the idea of everything suddenly becoming see-through.

“Ah, well, you see, what we ‘ave ‘ere, if I'm not very much mistaken, is your classical case of spatial bifurcation. Splittin' in two, that means. ‘Appens sometimes when you don't jump into hyperspace properly.”

“What?”

“He means,” answered Mavis, “that half of us made the jump into hyperspace but the other half got left behind in normal space. At least, I mean, we all made the jump but we all only half got here. I don't mean that some of us made the jump and some didn't. Oh dear, it's all so difficult to explain.”

“'Specially when you've only got half your brain to explain it wiv,” muttered Spiv.

“That's why we all look like ghosts,” continued Mavis, “We're, sort of, not all here.”

“Wot I just said,” muttered Spiv again. Then, louder, “'Cept for Drych, o' course. Don't affect him so much, being a dragon. ‘Cos of the fact that he's in all sorts of different dimensions at the same time anyway.”

“So how do we get back? To find our other halves, I mean?” asked Will.

Drych answered that. “In principle it should be quite straightforward. All we need to do is retrace our route, following exactly the same path, to the place where we tried to make the jump.”

“You mean I have to reverse us out of here?”

“Yes. Following exactly the same path. Reversing the car shouldn't present you with too much of a problem.”

“OK. Let's do it then!” Will didn't like being only half there and quickly picked up the phone again.

“No so fast. Not yet, Will. It's not quite that simple, you see,” continued Drych. “You will also have to reverse the part where you skidded. Skid backwards, so to speak. It should be possible. Formula One cars are very light, very powerful and so very easy to slide around. Also very difficult to control while you're doing it, of course. Nevertheless, in theory you should be able to keep us close enough to our original path to get us back. Tricky, but not impossible. It will just need a very light touch of brake, throttle and steering. Probably all at once, though you will be best judge of that.”

“Oh, right,” said Will. “So, no pressure then?”

“That's the spirit lad. You can do it. I remember once on Bogeydribble…”

“Spiv! Shut up!” interrupted Mavis. “Let the boy concentrate!”

Will thought he knew how to do it. He'd done ‘doughnuts' in the cars before – spun them round and round with lots of throttle and the steering right over. Something like that should happen backwards if he did it right.

“No chance of a practice, I suppose?”

“No. To get us out you would then first have to reverse whatever you did in the practice. Then you would still have to reverse your slide into the tunnel.”

“Oh. OK then. Here goes.”

Will took a firm grip of the phone. Staring intently into the mirrors that he could see in his view of the game on the big screen, he looked at the skid marks behind the car and rehearsed in his mind exactly the moves he would need to make. Then, without another word, he selected the gear, hit the throttle, brakes and steering all at once. The engine screamed. The tyres squealed and sent up clouds of black smoke. Will even thought he could smell the smoke. Then they were moving. Going backwards. Sliding from side to side. Getting faster all the time.

The darkness of the smoke-filled tunnel was replaced by a flash of light as they shot out backwards into the sunshine, like a bullet out of a gun. Then there was a huge crash as they smashed backwards into the front of the black car.

The impact wasn't just on the screen:
Brenda
jolted violently and threw Mavis and Will out of their seats and into the opposite wall of the control room.

Must be back to normal
, Will thought, as he slid slowly down the wall at about the same rate as consciousness was slipping away.
That felt pretty solid!

Drych, as ever, was rooted in his usual place on the floor. He watched as a small section of the wall near the floor slid silently to one side. Mech 1 and Mech 2 scuttled out, grasped hold of Will and dragged him back through the gap, which then closed as if it had never been there.

Mavis remained unconscious on the floor. Spiv, as usual, was nowhere to be seen.

Will's head hurt. Again. He'd spent all his life not being knocked out but now it had happened twice in… well, in however long it was since that sheep knocked him off the path and started all this. This time he thought, he would do it properly.

“Where am I?” he mumbled.

Then he thought he would open his eyes and find out. It couldn't be worse than last time, what with the ninja and the dragon and everything. It wasn't. In fact it was a bit of a disappointment. This time when he opened his eyes all he could see was the metal floor at the end of his nose.

“So far so good.”

He turned his head gingerly to one side. He was moving carefully to make sure that everything was still attached and working properly before he did anything too sudden. Looking back at him was a pair of red glowing eyes.

“Mech 1. Or 2. I'm not sure how you tell the difference.”

It didn't matter anyway because another pair of red glowing eyes scuttled into view next to the first pair.

“Oh. Mechs 1 and 2. Well, the last I remember was being on the control deck but this doesn't look like the control deck. Not light enough for one thing,” he realised. In fact, it was quite gloomy. That's why the Mech's eyes seemed so bright.

Will tried to sit up but fell back before he was halfway there because he hit his head on the ceiling.

“Ouch!”

Actually, Will now realised, it was not a proper ceiling. More a sort of metal rack carrying cables and tubes, with the odd small flashing light here and there; mostly white but there were a few red, green and blue ones too. As he looked around, a bit more carefully this time, he realised that he was in some sort of maintenance tunnel. It was obviously designed for people the size of Mechs, not people the size of people.

“This must be how they get around the ship. Out of sight unless they need to come out to fix something.”

One of the Mechs, presumably realising in its mechanical way that he was now properly awake, tapped him on the shoulder with one of its arms (a fairly blunt one, Will was pleased to notice) and made a beckoning motion with one of the others (much more pointy). The Mechs then both scurried off along the tunnel for two or three metres, looked back, beckoned again, then hurried off around a corner.

“Oh well, no point staying here. Might as well follow.” So, wriggling as best he could along the narrow tunnel, Will followed the Mechs.

In a few minutes he caught them up. They were waiting for him at a place where several tunnels joined. One of them tapped on a small glass screen, about fifteen centimetres square, which was dangling from some cables. A metal plate had been half unscrewed from the wall and the cables disappeared inside. The screen was glowing and as Will wriggled in front of it he could see that it was a small television. The picture was a bit grainy (
my old phone was better than that
, he thought) but he soon realised that what he could see was a picture of the control deck. Drych was in his usual position in the middle of the floor. Mavis was sitting by the wall, more or less where she would have landed after the crash, Will realised. Still, at least she was sitting up and not lying down, although because of all the folds of her baggy ninja suit he couldn't really get much of an idea about whether she was hurt or not.

More worrying was that there were two other people on the control deck: a tall, thin one on one side and a shorter, fatter one on the other. He couldn't make out much more detail on the small screen but one thing he did spot straight away: they each appeared to be pointing some sort of weapon in the general direction of Mavis. The other thing that was immediately obvious was some sort of sack or bag, tied with a rope, lying on the floor next to the tall, thin one who was holding the other end of the rope. Occasionally the bag would wriggle and when it did the tall, thin one yanked on the rope and seemed to be shouting at it.

There was no sound, Will realised. The Mechs seemed to read his mind because one of them tapped a small knob at the side of the screen. Will reached out and turned it a bit. The volume came up and Will could hear the conversation from the control deck. It seemed to be the short, fat one who was speaking.

“… so it was a bit of a surprise when you came back out of hyperspace. We thought we had trapped you there for good. Still, all's well that ends well. This way we actually get our hands on that annoying boil on the nose of creation, rather than just stranding him between dimensions.”

The tall, thin one yanked the rope again.

“Oi! Stop doin' that ‘an let me out ‘o this sack! I tole you it were all a misunderstandin'. If you'd just give me five minutes…”

“Shut up!” the tall, thin one screamed. “You don't think that once we've got a Spiv in a sack we'll let him out again in a hurry do you? It's not just us who've been wanting a word with you. It'll be worth your weight in gold for us to let a few people I can think of get hold of you.”

“Never mind him,” said the short, fat one. “Remember what I told you. Keep your gun pointed at that ninja. As long as we've both got our guns pointed at her and we're standing well apart we'll be OK. Mr Dragon can't shoot his fire in two directions at once. But if you get distracted and take your gun off her, then in a second the dragon will fry me first then you, won't you Mr Dragon?”

“I have no preference over the order,” replied Drych.

Back in the tunnel, one of the Mechs reached a claw around the back of the television and did something out of Will's sight. The image flickered and changed to a view of the outside, presumably taken from a camera pointing backwards along
Brenda
. Will could see the black ship, a lot the worse for wear, with
Brenda's
tail section wedged into its nose.

“That must have been the crash when we came back out of the tunnel… hyperspace… whatever.”

The Mechs both made little drumming sounds with some of their claws on the metal floor plates.

There was a tube coming out of the side of the black ship and curling towards
Brenda
. Will couldn't see where it ended because it curved under
Brenda's
hull, out of sight of the camera.

“Is that some sort of connection between the two ships?”

The Mechs both made the little drumming sounds on the metal floor plates again.

“Are you saying ‘yes'?”

They made the drumming sound.

“How would you say ‘no'?”

This time they scraped their claws from side to side.

“OK. You're trying to tell me something. Let's see if I have got this right. We came out of hyperspace backwards and crashed into the black ship.”

Drumdrumdrumdrum.

“While we were sorting ourselves out the people in the black ship – Cream Tea and Teacake?”

Drumdrumdrumdrum.

“While we were sorting ourselves out, Cream Tea and Teacake connected that tube thing to
Brenda
and came on board.”

Drumdrumdrumdrum.

“Somehow they got Spiv into that sack. Can't imagine how they did that but we'll come back to that one. Anyway, Spiv's in a sack, Drych and Mavis are being held at gunpoint and you and I have to sort it out.”

Drumdrumdrumdrum.

“I'm still not sure how I ended up here with you but unless you can speak – you can't speak can you?”

Scrapescrapescrape.

“OK. You can't speak so I'll have to work that one out later too. For now we need a plan. Any ideas?”

Drumdrumdrumdrum.

“But you can't tell me?”

Scrapescrapescrape.

“So I have to work it out?”

Drumdrumdrumdrum.

Will thought for a moment. “All right. Let's try this for a start. We want to get Cream Tea and Teacake off the control deck. How about back onto their own ship?”

Drumdrumdrumdrum.

“Wait a minute though. Won't they fly away and start shooting at us again?”

This time one drummed and one scraped.

“What? I don't understand. Let's try again. Their ship is damaged. Do you mean you don't think it can jump to hyperspace but it can still fly?”

Drumdrumdrumdrum.

“And shoot?”

This time the Mechs looked at each other but didn't drum or scrape.

“You don't know if they can shoot?”

Drumdrumdrumdrum. Scrapescrapescrape.

“You mean yes, you don't know?”

Drumdrumdrumdrum.

“OK. Progress. Their ship is damaged but we don't know how much and, especially, we don't know if it can shoot back at us.”

Drumdrumdrumdrum.

“So we need to damage it some more to make sure?”

Drumdrumdrumdrum.

“Make sure it doesn't work. Get them back on board. Shut them in. A sort of prison!”

Drumdrumdrumdrumdrumdrumdrumdrum.

“Sounds like a plan but I've got no idea how to disable a spaceship.”

The Mechs jumped up and down pointing as many of their arms at themselves as would bend in the right direction.

“But
you
know how to disable the spaceship. You can do that. That means I have to get them back there and shut them in.”

Drumdrumdrumdrumdrumdrumdrumdrum.

“Once more to be sure I understand. You're going into the black ship to do some damage. To get there you'll go back through that tube between the ships. But won't they have Mechs too? Waiting for you at the other end?”

Scrapescrapescrape.

One of the Mechs folded a few legs up behind its back and flapped them up and down.

“What's that?”

Without warning the Mech shot a laser beam past his ear. It hissed into the metal wall behind him and molten metal splashed on to his shoulder.

“Hey, what are you playing at? Oh, wait a minute. I see. You're being a dragon. Only dragon ships have Mechs?”

Drumdrumdrumdrum.

Will couldn't help thinking that if they could shoot like that it wouldn't much matter whether the other ship had Mechs or not anyway.

“One small detail. How do I get Cream Tea and Teacake back onto their ship?”

The Mechs just looked at one another.

“That's down to me then, is it?”

Drumdrumdrumdrum.

“Enough talking then. I suppose there's no time like the present.”

With one last
Drumdrumdrumdrum
, the Mechs scurried off down one of the tunnels, Will crawling along behind as fast as he could. Eventually they stopped. Without warning the floor of the tunnel slid away from under him and Will fell through. He landed with a bump in the corridor not far from the cabin where he had first woken up inside
Brenda
. By the time he had sat up and worked out where he was the Mechs had followed him down and without looking back scurried off towards the back of the ship. Heading for the tube to the black ship, Will supposed. When he looked up, the hole in the ceiling had already closed.

Belatedly, Will realised that he hadn't found out from the Mechs how he had ended up with them in the maintenance tunnel. The thought began to dawn on him that Cream Tea and Teacake probably didn't know he was on board. They looked fairly relaxed on the control deck, not like people expecting someone else to be on the loose. Will wasn't there when
Brenda
crashed on the hillside in Wales and since then, until Cream Tea and Teacake boarded
Brenda
a little while ago, as far as Will knew there hadn't been any actual contact between the black ship and
Brenda
. If that was true there was no way that Cream Tea and Teacake could know about him. Somehow he must have been hidden away before they came on board. If that was true, Drych probably had a hand in it because he was the only one who could really control the Mechs – by sort of thinking about it, as Spiv would have said.

So where did that leave him? If he was right he had the element of surprise. It would also mean that Drych would be expecting him to do something and so would probably be ready to help him do it. Whatever it was. He hadn't quite worked that part out yet.

Oh well
, he thought,
here goes
. And without much of a plan Will started walking towards the front of
Brenda
, heading for the control deck.