by Adam Frost
“No time,” said Uncle Charlie. “Next stop, the stratosphere.”
Mia, Danny and Eric hesitated and looked at each other.
“Do you want to get paused? Maybe forever?” asked Uncle Charlie.
Mia, Danny and Eric clung on to Uncle Charlie: Mia on one arm, Danny on the other, Eric on Uncle Charlie’s back.
Uncle Charlie shot one of his sky ropes into the white fumes that were pouring out of the back of the plane. At first nothing happened. The end of the sky rope vanished, lost in the haze. Charlie looked frustrated, as if the rain had foiled his plans again.
Then all four were snapped off the ground and flung sideways through the air in a vast arc.
They watched the grass and the lake and the visitor centre whip past beneath them. Suddenly the sky rope was pulled taut and they were yanked in directly behind the plane’s engine. They were pulled upwards incredibly fast, riding the plane like they were water-skiers behind a flying, rocket-powered speedboat.
“Whaaaaaaa!” said Danny.
“Flipping-blooming-ruddy-blimey-stinking-ruddy-crikey,” said Eric.
They couldn’t really move or speak or see, the skin was pulled back so far on their faces as the plane went faster and faster.
Uncle Charlie held on as tightly as he could. The sky rope was shaking and jerking, trying to stabilise itself.
The aeroplane roared as it banked to the left.
“This is – complete-ly in-sane!” Mia screamed.
A split second later, they were above the clouds.
Uncle Charlie breathed a deep sigh of relief.
Danny and Mia gasped as the soft, fluffy carpets of clouds unfolded for miles on all sides.
“We just need to get a bit higher,” said Uncle Charlie. “Hang on.”
Another plane was flying in the opposite direction, pointing diagonally upwards. Uncle Charlie shot his other sky rope into its vapour trail. The four of them were sucked across the sky at vast speed, before the rope went taut and they were dragged along directly behind the second plane.
“And again,” said Uncle Charlie, as he fired a sky rope at a third plane that was climbing higher still.
This time, after they’d been pulled across the sky, Mia cried out, “Eric, were you just sick on me?”
“No,” said Eric, slobbering slightly.
“This top is hand wash only, you know!”
“Probably someone flushed the loo on the plane,” said Danny with a giggle.
Eric giggled too and quietly dabbed at the sick on his chin with his sleeve.
Uncle Charlie was looking up and frowning and looking down and scowling.
“OK, judging by the position of the Great Bear, we’ll be above Mount Everest in two minutes,” he shouted. “I’m going to retract my sky rope shortly before this. We’ll drop gently into a snowdrift on the summit. It’ll be a bit chilly, but we’ll only stay a minute at the most.”
“What?” exclaimed Mia.
“This cannot be happening,” said Eric quietly, looking at the clouds below him and the stars above. “Five hours ago, I was at home, in my jimjams, eating porridge and watching Pingu.”
“You know I said we had to stop off for the amulet?” continued Charlie. “Well, that’s what we’re doing. We’ll grab it then head to the skylab.”
“The amulet’s on top of Mount Everest?” said Danny.
“Sort of,” said Uncle Charlie. “Look, what I’m about to tell you is absolutely top secret. Only EUREKA! agents with Level One clearance are allowed to know this. That’s me and Professor Larkspur, and she’s been missing for nine months. So – basically – it’s just me. Which means: you cannot breathe a word of what I’m about to tell you.”
Danny, Eric and Mia nodded.
“Five hundred years ago,” said Charlie, “when Thelonius Grebe first created the amulet, he wasn’t sure if it would actually work. Could it really make anyone who wore it young forever? So he decided to test it on one of his pets. He hung it round the neck of a golden eagle that he’d brought home from an Oriental excursion. Grebe died shortly afterwards and all of his pets were released into the wild. Nobody realised that the amulet actually worked. And nobody realised that the eagle was still wearing the amulet. Which means that the eagle is still wearing the amulet…”
The aeroplane slowed down, preparing to descend.
There in front of them, Danny, Mia, Eric and Uncle Charlie saw the top of a mountain, peeking through the clouds. And, on a small ledge, just below the peak, they saw a small brown shape, shuffling from side to side and staring directly at them.
As they got closer, the shape grew more distinct.
“No way,” murmured Mia.
“That’s Grebe’s eagle,” said Uncle Charlie. “Right where I suspected it would be.”
“How?” asked Eric. “How could anyone know that?”
“It’s had five hundred years to find the perfect roosting place,” said Uncle Charlie. “Five hundred years to work out the safest place, the highest place, the most beautiful place. That’s got to be at the top of the world’s highest mountain.”
“So hang on,” said Danny. “That’s what the riddle meant. What was it? ‘My face is gold, my case is gold. For gold keeps out the wind and cold.’ It was talking about a golden eagle, not something made of gold.”
Uncle Charlie nodded. “Professor Larkspur and I cracked the riddle a year ago. Actually, it was mostly Professor Larkspur.”
Danny was about to ask who Professor Larkspur was, when the mountain loomed up in front of them and the eagle came into focus. An amulet was visible on his chest, hanging from his neck on a silver chain. He was staring regally into the distance.
“Hang on,” said Mia. “If we take it off him, won’t he die? If he’s five hundred years old.”
“No, no,” said Uncle Charlie. “He’ll just start to age at the normal pace. Besides, we’ll only borrow it for a day or two, until the Space Twister is behind bars. Then he can have it back. So – all ready? I’m about the retract the sky rope.”
Danny, Eric and Mia said, “Ready.”
Uncle Charlie put his thumb on the sky rope. He was about to press it, when a thumping, thudding noise began to echo around the mountaintop. It got suddenly louder.
A helicopter swung out from behind the mountain. The Space Twister and one of his thugs were inside.
Uncle Charlie instinctively shot his sky rope sideways, hitting a heaped-up lump of dark cloud.
The helicopter lurched towards Uncle Charlie and the children, and its rotary blades chopped the sky rope in two.
Uncle Charlie and the children hurtled downwards. Uncle Charlie quickly shot his other sky rope into another cloud and swung them round the other side of the mountain.
Danny fumbled for his Time Tablet, but it was no good, they were moving too quickly, he couldn’t reach it.
Uncle Charlie retracted his broken sky rope, and then shot it out again. It was half the length, but still long enough to hit a bank of cumulus cloud a few hundred metres above their heads.
He swung them back round to where the eagle had been perching.
But the helicopter, and the eagle, and the amulet were gone.
The EUREKA! skylab floated slowly through the sky, about a hundred metres above the highest cirrus clouds. It was kept afloat by a giant balloon with alternating red, blue, yellow, brown, orange, green, violet, black and pink stripes. The skylab itself was a small airtight box with thick glass walls on all sides and a metal floor with a hatch in the middle of it. Against every wall, there were computers, machine parts, toolboxes, dog-eared manuals, chipboards and coiled-up cables.
Mia was pushed through the hatch in the floor, followed by Eric and Danny. Uncle Charlie climbed in after them. They all looked at each other for a few seconds.
“It’s over, isn’t it, Uncle?” cried Danny. “We’ll never get the remote back now. He can do whatever he wants.”
“If only we’d got there ten seconds before,” sai
d Mia. “Eric, you should have thought of your brilliant idea sooner. We could have caught an earlier plane.”
“Yeah, well, if you hadn’t slowed us down,” replied Eric. “You’re three years older and a lot heavier than me and Danny.”
“Stop it, all of you!” growled Uncle Charlie, with a rare flash of anger. “It’s my fault. No one else’s. I keep underestimating the Space Twister. And now I have to put things right. By building a remote as quickly as I possibly can.”
He pulled the amber crystal out of his pocket.
“I’m going to be working in this corner,” said Uncle Charlie, pointing at a workbench with a blowtorch on it. “Danny, get that TV working, tune it into a news channel, try and find out what the Space Twister is up to. Eric, you should be able to get the Internet on that laptop. I need any extra information you can give me about amber crystals and the energy they contain. Mia, see that periscope? I need you to tell me whenever you see anything or anyone approaching us by air.”
Danny, Eric and Mia all headed off to different parts of the skylab.
Danny switched on an ancient TV that was sitting on the floor under a trestle table. A black-and-white picture briefly appeared on the screen, then turned into grey snow and jagged lines. Danny spotted a white dial next to the screen, and turned it clockwise. Another picture came into focus, a character from an American soap opera.
Danny wondered if his Time Tablet would be more useful. But as soon as he switched it on, he remembered. Above the clouds, it would not work. He typed in his own name just to check. File not found.
He kept turning the dial on the TV until finally a news presenter stared back at him. He turned up the volume and listened.
“And now, back to our main story. A mystery benefactor is about to open a brand-new museum in London, full of the greatest inventions in history. Exhibits will include the world’s first computer, the world’s largest robot and the world’s fastest rocket. It will also have a games zone, where visitors can play every computer game ever made on one of two hundred special consoles. Another section will be full of classic theme-park rides like the MANGLER, the WHITE TIGER and BLAST OFF. Most amazingly of all, everything I just mentioned will be located in a giant glass dome, a hundred metres tall and three hundred metres in diameter.”
There was video footage of people on ladders hanging banners on to a curved pane of glass.
The reporter went on: “The man who has set up this miraculous museum – seemingly overnight – is known only as Mister Twister. He has released this statement: ‘For years, I have been collecting fascinating objects. But I have allowed nobody else to see them. It is time I gave something back. It is time I did something … for the children. This is why I have created the Science Palace.’”
Danny was staring at the screen in distress and disbelief. The Space Twister had built this amazing place? It made no sense at all.
The reporter concluded: “Admission to the Science Palace is one hundred pounds per person, but remember that one special group of people get in for nothing. That’s right. If your first name is ERIC, then it won’t cost you a penny.”
There was footage of a small boy with a microphone in front of his face.
“What’s your name, son?” a man off-screen was asking.
“Eric,” said the boy.
“And how do you feel about getting into this new museum for free?”
“Makes sense,” said the boy. “Eric’s a great name, innit? They should let us in to Legoland free as well.”
Danny turned the volume down and sat for a couple of minutes. He thought about what he had just seen, letting it sink in. He glanced across the skylab at Eric, typing away at the laptop. Perhaps it was just a coincidence that the Space Twister’s latest venture involved people called Eric. Perhaps, but Danny still felt bewildered and frightened for his friend.
Danny flicked through a few different news channels to see if the Space Twister was hatching any more dastardly schemes. But no – the other news stories were normal enough. There were no strange pranks, no thefts from art galleries – just the giant glass museum with free entry for Erics.
Danny heard voices behind him and saw that Eric had crossed the skylab and was standing next to Uncle Charlie.
“So I’ve been reading about amber crystals,” said Eric.
“Blast!” exclaimed Uncle Charlie as a screw pinged out of a chipboard.
“There’s good news and there’s bad news,” said Eric.
“Drat!” shouted Uncle Charlie, as a rubber Play button plopped on to the work bench.
“The bad news is that, according to the equation of crystal density divided by planet size, well, then, er, the crystal is too small,” said Eric.
“What did you say?” said Uncle Charlie, looking up.
Eric repeated what he had said and explained his logic.
Uncle Charlie put his head in his hands. “You’re right, you’re right. Oh, this is disastrous. When we broke the Night Scientist’s remote, we must have shattered the crystal. And the Night Scientist had already split the original crystal in half to make his own remote. The Space Twister only ever had a small fragment. So that’s it. We’re finished. We can’t build a remote after all. Heaven help Planet Earth.”
“Hang on, there is good news,” said Eric.
Uncle Charlie shook his head. “No, no, there isn’t.”
“There is, there is. You see, there’s nothing to stop us doing what the Space Twister did,” said Eric. “The crystal’s easily big enough to protect you, or me, or Danny or Mia. You just wear it in your teeth.”
Uncle Charlie blinked.
“We become immune from the remote,” said Eric. “Just like he was.”
Uncle Charlie was still blinking. Then he turned to face the workbench. Very slowly, he picked up a small hammer that was lying next to a tangle of wires. He picked it up, swung it high and brought it down on the crystal as hard as he could.
“No!” exclaimed Eric. “What are you doing, what are you doing?”
Danny twisted round and took a step towards his uncle. There was an ear-splitting clang. The crystal shivered, cracked and split into three.
“It would have worked,” said Eric, looking devastated. “The evidence was sound.”
“I know,” said Uncle Charlie slowly, “and it will still work.”
“What do you mean?”
“As you said, the crystal was easily big enough to protect you,” said Uncle Charlie. “In fact, it was three times too big.”
Eric thought for a moment, frowned, opened his mouth, closed it, smiled and nodded.
“What are you talking about?” asked Danny.
Uncle Charlie picked up the three pieces of crystal. “There’s one for Eric. One for Danny. And one for Mia. From now on, you wear these in your teeth all the time. Even if you’re up here. Even if you’re with me.”
Danny and Eric took their crystals. Mia was still standing by the periscope that stuck out of the middle of the floor. She continued to stare into it, on the look out for the enemy.
“What about you?” said Eric to Uncle Charlie. “Don’t you need one?”
“I’ll be fine,” said Uncle Charlie. “Jewellery doesn’t suit me.”
“But what about building a remote?” asked Danny, staring at the crystal in his palm. “What about taking on the Space Twister?”
“I’ll need to find another crystal for that,” said Uncle Charlie. “Or think of another plan altogether.”
“Well, you’d better hurry up,” said Danny, “because the Space Twister is already up to something pretty strange.”
“Strange?” repeated Uncle Charlie.
Uncle Charlie and Eric joined Danny by the TV.
Danny turned up the volume and stood back from the screen. There was more footage of the Science Palace. After a few minutes, Eric said, “I can’t ruddy cruddy believe I’m going to miss that!”
“Don’t be daft, Eric,” said Danny. “You can’t trust the Sp
ace Twister.”
“Look, Danny,” said Eric. “Just because it sounds like a trap, and looks like a trap, and feels like a trap, doesn’t mean it is a trap.”
“Is he trying to get the crystal back?” Uncle Charlie muttered, thinking out loud. “But why? He’s got the amulet. Or is he trying to manipulate time again? But how?”
“I’ve got a great idea!” exclaimed Eric. “You let me go down and check it out. I’ll have the crystal in my teeth so he can’t hurt me. Come on! Did you see? Metal Gretel, the world’s biggest robot, is going to be there!”
“No way, Eric!” said Danny. “This whole thing – the Science Palace – the people called Eric – it’s just—”
“If you’re worried, we can all go together,” said Eric. “All wearing our crystals. And if the Space Twister does leap out, you can have one of your showdowns – you know, a bit of chatting, a bit of fighting – and get your remote back this time. That way, everyone gets what they want.”
“OK,” said Uncle Charlie slowly, “maybe the best thing to do is to visit the Science Palace.”
“Yes!” exclaimed Eric.
“What?” said Danny.
“But not till Roxie’s here,” added Uncle Charlie. “We’re going to need her help.”
“Bums,” groaned Eric. “She could be on her way to Mars. She could be locked inside a maximum security prison.”
“Uncle Charlie,” Mia called out, looking up from the periscope.
“What is it?” said Uncle Charlie, spinning round.
“You know you told me I should stay on look out. Just in case anyone tries to get up here?” said Mia.
“Yes,” said Uncle Charlie.
“Well, it looks like we have a visitor.”
Uncle Charlie strode across the skylab and stood next to the periscope.
“And I think it’s Roxie,” said Mia.
Uncle Charlie, Danny and Eric all took turns looking through the periscope. There was a long thick rope stuck to the bottom of the skylab with a sucker. And climbing up the rope, with her catapult between her teeth, was Roxie.