Danny Danger and the Space Twister

by Adam Frost

  “Wait!” Danny exclaimed.

  But Roxie had already leapt through the mirror, shouting, “Let’s rock ’n’ roll!”

  Danny spun round. “We’ve got to help her,” he said.

  “She said wait,” replied Mia.

  “But what about Uncle Charlie?”

  “She said WAIT,” repeated Mia.

  “She said lock the mirror, too,” said Eric. “Remember they can still get through.”

  “Leave it open,” said Danny. “I’m going in. You two can do what you want.”

  “No, Danny, no,” said Mia. “You’re ten years old! They’ll snap you like a twig.”

  “I don’t care,” said Danny, running forward. Mia held him more tightly and Eric grabbed his other arm.

  They struggled for a few seconds.

  “OK, Danny, listen,” said Mia. “We’ll quickly put our heads through. See what’s going on.”

  “Bad idea,” said Eric. “They’ll pull us through by our hair.”

  “It’ll be, like, two seconds,” said Mia. “A quick look, then back in again, OK?”

  Danny grunted.

  “Eric?” said Mia.

  Eric sighed.

  They lined up next to each other and put their heads through the mirror.

  The cave was empty, just crystals twinkling and the pool of water glinting.

  “Oh no,” murmured Danny and he leapt into the cave.

  “Danny!” whispered Mia, following him in.

  “Stop!” exclaimed Eric, staying where he was, his head poking out of the mirror.

  Danny and Mia were standing by the edge of the pool, their eyes fixed on an object floating in the middle of the water. It was Roxie’s catapult.

  “They’ve got her,” said Danny.

  “Maybe – maybe she escaped,” said Mia. “We don’t know what happened.”

  “I told you we should have helped her,” said Danny.

  “What are you two talking about?” shouted Eric, his head still sticking out of the mirror.

  “You can come out now, Eric,” said Mia. “There’s no one here.”

  Eric glanced around the cave. “I’ll think about it,” he said.

  “Th-they’ve got Roxie and Jasper and Uncle Charlie,” stammered Danny. “Where have they taken them? And how do we get there?”

  Danny looked down at the sheet of glass in his hand and the large shiny key in Mia’s.

  He switched on the Time Tablet and tapped it frantically.

  “I’ll look up Uncle Charlie,” said Danny. “Roxie and Jasper will probably be with him. And then we can use your key to go and get them.”

  Mia was about to raise an objection, but realised she didn’t have any. “Good idea,” she said.

  Danny found Charles Theobald Baker and clicked on his folder. As Danny was scrolling to the end of the document, Eric appeared quietly between them. They all read the words together.

  Roxie led the three children into the mirror, leaving Charlie and Jasper alone in the cave.

  “While they’re in there,” said Charlie, “let’s keep looking for amber crystals.”

  “Seriously?” said Jasper.

  Charlie nodded.

  Jasper sighed and put on his headphones. He began to search through mounds of crystals using direct matter transfer — picking them up and setting them down using nothing but brainpower.

  “I forgot he could do that,” said Eric. “You know, move stuff around with his mind.”

  “Shh,” said Mia. “I’m trying to read.”

  Jasper was listening to very loud music. This meant that he didn’t notice the two thugs till they were holding him down and searching his pockets.

  Jasper picked them both up using direct matter transfer and held them upside-down over the lake.

  “Jasper!” said Charlie. “We have to leave. Now.”

  “Why?” asked Jasper. “I’m in complete control of the situation.”

  “Don’t you get it?” said Charlie. “The Space Twister sent them. All they have to do is tell him where we are and he’ll pause time and come and get us.”

  “Let me throw them in the lake then,” said Jasper.

  “They’re bound to have a system in place,” said Charlie, “like when we send agents out. If the Space Twister doesn’t hear from them every ten or twenty minutes, he’ll assume something’s wrong. Again, he’ll pause time. Jasper, we have to run. We can’t fight him yet. We have to hide.”

  “What about the kids?” asked Jasper.

  “Roxie’s with them,” said Charlie, “and Danny will read this on his Time Tablet.”

  “You sure?” asked Jasper.

  “Positive,” said Uncle Charlie. “Danny, I know you’re reading this. Find Grace Bingley. She lives in York. Use the Mirror Key to get there. We think that the Space Twister visited her three months ago, but we’ve no idea why. Try to find out. This is our Plan B. There is no Plan C.”

  “You sure I can’t drop them in the lake?” asked Jasper.

  “No,” said Charlie. “Put them down. Drop their phones in the lake. And follow me.”

  Charlie ran over to the lift. He heard a groan and a splash and then Jasper appeared next to him.

  As the lift started to rise, he saw Roxie putting her head out of the second mirror.

  “Where are we going?” asked Jasper.

  “There are five other places with reported sightings of crystals,” said Uncle Charlie. “We’ve got to check out all of them.”

  The lift reached the surface and Charlie whipped his sky ropes out of his pocket. Jasper put his arms round Charlie’s shoulders.

  “You on?” asked Charlie.

  “I’m on,” said Jasper.

  Charlie fired a rope into the nearest cloud and the two of them shot into the sky.

  Danny, Eric and Mia stopped reading and looked at each other. Another sentence appeared at the end of Uncle Charlie’s story.

  Within five minutes, Charlie and Jasper were flying over Manchester.

  “He’s OK,” said Danny.

  “But what about Roxie?” asked Mia.

  “We could look her up,” said Danny. “What’s her surname? Her folder was on the screen with her name underneath.”

  But none of them could remember.

  “Well, Charlie’s told us what to do,” said Mia. “Find Grace Bingley. Come on, no time to lose.”

  Danny and Mia moved towards the mirror, but Eric stayed where he was.

  “Come on, Eric,” said Danny.

  “I thought your uncle might – you know – use the Time Tablet to—”

  “What?” asked Danny.

  “What?” asked Mia.

  “Tell me what my ruddy gadget does!” He held up the bottle he’d been given. “I mean,” he said, “you’ve got a Time Tablet. Mia’s got a Mirror Key. What is this?”

  “We’ll try it out later, Eric,” said Danny.

  “Yeah, come on bogbreath, we’ve got to go,” said Mia.

  Danny and Mia ran towards the mirror, with Eric trudging slowly and sadly behind them.

  Danny, Mia and Eric were back inside the small grey room.

  Mia had locked the mirror and summoned Umberto, the one-eyed man with green skin. “Where are we off to next, kids?” he asked.

  “Does Grace Bingley have any mirrors? She lives in York,” said Mia.

  The man in the mirror stroked his chin. It was clearly an animation that the simulation software ran when it was finding new data.

  “Nineteen,” he said, “but only five you could actually fit through. Unless you fancy crawling out of the wing mirror of a Ford Focus.”

  Danny had found Grace Bingley in the Time Tablet.

  “I can’t work out why the Space Twister would be visiting her,” he said, pulling the words down the screen. “I’ve gone back two weeks now. All she seems to do is eat biscuits and watch game shows.”

  “She sounds all right,” said Eric.

  “I’ve found the ideal mirror,” said the
green man. “It’s at the top of the stairs. A metre and a half tall. Soft carpet on the other side. Enjoy your trip.”

  “Great,” said Mia. The frame whirred and purred as it grew taller, and then clicked loudly into place. Mia placed the key in the mirror and unlocked it.

  Mia went through first, then Danny, then Eric. They found themselves on a fairly small landing, in a fairly small house. There was a flight of stairs in front of them and a bathroom behind them. A television was on downstairs.

  Mia pointed at the stairs. Danny and Eric nodded.

  As they went down, Danny glanced at the pictures and objects on the wall. There was a framed Olympic medal; there was a large photo of a young woman crossing a finishing line with a smile on her face; there was an even bigger photo of the same woman on an Olympic podium. She was standing on Number One, wearing gold.

  As they crossed the hall, they could hear the television more clearly. A newsreader was saying: “…the latest in a string of mysterious disasters: the MARMITE factory in Manchester has been burnt to the ground. While down in Slough, the factory that makes two thirds of the UK’s FISH PASTE was also in flames…”

  They heard someone tutting in the room where the television was.

  “She’s in the living room,” whispered Mia.

  They all tiptoed gently towards the living-room door and pushed it open. They saw an old lady sitting in a large red armchair, opposite an old-fashioned television.

  Without turning round, the old lady said, “I knew you’d come.”

  Danny and Mia looked at each other.

  “I’ve been expecting you for some time,” the old lady added.

  Danny took a step towards her.

  The old lady turned round and a look of surprise crossed her face. “Oh, my word! Who are you? I thought you were meals on wheels.”

  “Oh, ah, no,” stammered Danny.

  “Well, what’s going on, then? I’ve been looking forward to my devilled kidneys all morning.”

  “Er, I don’t know,” said Danny. “I think everything’s a bit upside down.”

  The old lady gestured at the television. “Load of nonsense,” she said. “They should try having both kneecaps replaced. Then they’d actually have something to complain about.”

  It was then that Danny realised how old the woman actually was. She had a mug on the table next to her with 100 YEARS YOUNG painted on it. Next to the mug, there were a pair of glasses with incredibly thick lenses and a tube of false teeth adhesive.

  “Erm, I’m sorry, ah, Mrs Bingley,” said Mia, “but we’re in a bit of a rush. We think that someone called the Space Twister visited you. Do you remember him?”

  “Does he do meals on wheels?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Mia.

  “Then he can jump off a bridge for all I care,” said Mrs Bingley.

  Mia tried again. “He would have had black hair. And a scar down the middle of his face.”

  “Oh, him!” exclaimed Mrs Bingley. “He was a very, very rude man. And yes, a face to wake the dead. I soon sent him about his business.”

  “So he didn’t ask you anything?” pressed Danny. “You didn’t tell him anything?”

  “No I didn’t,” said Mrs Bingley. “Years ago, I’d have the press camping outside my house, so I’m quite good at telling people to clear off. And now I’m telling you!”

  “You had people camping outside?” asked Eric.

  Danny suddenly remembered the photos on the stairs. He looked into Mrs Bingley’s eyes.

  “Is that you in all those photos, Mrs Bingley? The ones in the hall?”

  Mrs Bingley sighed. “Yep. Didn’t need people to bring me food in them days. Could fetch my own tea. Wouldn’t take me two minutes to jog to the caff.”

  “You mean, you ran in races and stuff?” asked Eric.

  “One or two,” said Mrs Bingley. “A couple of those Olympics thingies. A Commonwealth whatsit. Half a dozen of those marathon doodahs. Ooh yes. I did like to feel the wind in my hair, the air on my cheeks.”

  “Must have been brilliant,” said Eric.

  “It wasn’t half bad,” said Mrs Bingley. “And guess what they used to call me?”

  “Er, er,” pondered Eric. “Racy Gracey?”

  “The Bullet,” said Mrs Bingley. “Can you imagine? Me! A Bullet! Tell you what, I’ve got a bit of video of me back in the day. Young lady, can you see that tape on the side there. Well, what you’ve got to do is pop it in that machine. It’s called a video recorder. It’s very clever.”

  They had an old-fashioned video recorder at Mia’s school so she knew how it worked. A picture soon flickered up on the screen. Everyone had wonky teeth and incredibly neat hair. Six women were crouching down on the starting line of a race track. Cheerful music was playing and a posh voice was talking over it: “Now hyah we are at the start of the women’s hundred metres. And in lane number three, Britain’s very own Grace Bingley. Let’s see if she can smesh another record.”

  The pistol was fired and something extraordinary happened. Grace Bingley – the woman in lane number three – became a blur. She literally shot through the air. She became visible again just before she crossed the finishing line. The other five women in the race weren’t even halfway along the track.

  “H-how did you do that?” stammered Eric.

  “I don’t know,” said Mrs Bingley. “I just went as fast as I could. Concentrated really hard. It was strange, it was almost like time slowed down when I was running.”

  “OK,” said Danny quietly. “Now I get it.”

  “I’m beginning to get it, too,” said Mia.

  “Oh, er, yeah,” added Eric. “I get it, too. Definitely. I mean, I really get it. I seriously get it.”

  “Mrs Bingley,” said Danny, “this is really important. When you say you slowed down time, what were you actually doing?”

  “Well, er, it was a long time ago, young man,” said Mrs Bingley, “but I suppose I just focused on the finishing line. And how much I wanted to reach it first. And then when the pistol went, I latched on to that noise – the echo of the pistol – and imagined myself stretching it so everything would take longer, everything would get slower. And in my head, everything was slower. When I glanced at the other racers, they were sort of in slow motion.”

  She bit her bottom lip and closed her eyes. She opened them again and said, “It’s like, say I want to close the back door. I can see that filthy cat from next door trying to creep in and do his business on the lino. So I sort of – concentrate on the door and the noise from the TV and try and – look it’s difficult – you see I’d – ee, I’m not as young as I was – what I’d do is –”

  Mrs Bingley became a blur, leaving a trail of white and blue hanging in the air. The back door clicked shut and another ribbon of bright colour rippled across the room. Grace Bingley was back in the armchair, taking deep breaths.

  “I didn’t go too fast that time,” said Mrs Bingley. “Walking pace really. I’m a hundred and four years old, my dears.”

  “That is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen a really old person do,” said Eric. “By some distance.”

  “OK, so we know why the Space Twister came here three months ago,” said Mia. “He wanted Mrs Bingley to show him how to do that.”

  Danny nodded. “You can control time, Mrs Bingley.”

  “Control who?” said Mrs Bingley. “I don’t think so, dear. Not me, dear. Sorry, dear. Got me mixed up with someone else, dear.”

  “You can,” said Danny. “You’re a sort of Space Twister.”

  “No, dear,” said Mrs Bingley. “I’m just really blooming fast. Or at least I was. You young people have a funny name for everything these days. Space Twister indeed.”

  Danny was staring at the floor, lost in his own thoughts. Finally he said, “I’ve done it.”

  “What’s that, mate?” said Eric.

  “I’ve done it,” said Danny again. “I’ve done what Mrs Bingley just did.”

  “
What do you mean, Danny?” asked Mia.

  “When I was duelling with the Night Scientist,” said Danny. “You remember, when we both had cosmic remotes. I remember being able to feel time. See, he’d press Rewind and I’d have to press Fast Forward at that second to cancel it. And I could feel time starting to go backwards – I could feel it grab hold of me – and I had to break free of it so I could press Fast Forward. I only did it for a second but I did it.”

  “Blimey,” said Eric.

  Danny looked up at Mia and Eric. “That’s how we beat him. I have to learn how to twist space.”

  “Hold on, Danny,” said Mia.

  “It’s the only way,” said Danny. “Otherwise I’ll never get my remote back. Mrs Bingley, will you teach me?”

  “No way, Danny, absolutely no way,” said Mia. “We’re not talking about learning how to play the saxophone here. This is dangerous. The Space Twister was nearly torn in half.”

  “But I did it,” insisted Danny. “And I’m fine.”

  “Put a sock in it, the lot of you,” said Mrs Bingley, making them jump. “Now, allow me to clear up a couple of things. First of all, no, I won’t teach you how to do it. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. You either know it or you don’t.”

  The video of the Olympics had stopped and the news had come back on again. A news reporter was standing in front of Bond Street tube station in London. The headline read:

  LONDON ANTIQUES DEALER VANISHES ALONG WITH EVERYTHING IN HIS SHOP

  “Secondly,” said Mrs Bingley, “I’m about to throw you out. You’ve all got lovely faces, especially you, dear.” She pointed at Eric, who blushed. “But I don’t know who you are and, as I said to that rude man with the ugly mug … oooh! There he is on me telly!”

  Danny, Mia and Eric turned round and saw the Space Twister standing outside a London store, being interviewed by a smiley young woman with a severe bob.

  “I had just bought this adorable Victorian sugar bowl,” said the Space Twister. “It breaks my heart to think I’ll never get the matching tongs.”