by Adam Frost
“I promise,” whispered Danny. “I really, really do.”
“Good,” said Uncle Charlie. “Because we all need you here.”
Danny nodded and said, “How did you get down from the clouds so quickly?”
“You’ve been out for twenty minutes,” said Mia.
“We started to fly down just after we switched on the giant robot,” said Uncle Charlie.
“Yeah, sorry, ran out of pellets towards the end,” said Roxie. “That’s why we stopped firing at the Space Twister.”
“It’s OK,” said Danny, looking up dreamily. “It all worked out OK.”
He put his left hand to his face and felt the line of dry blood that ran along his nose, down his chin and on to his neck.
“I thought you’d been shot,” said Mia, looking at Danny with a smile.
“I thought you’d been shot,” Danny replied.
He opened his right hand and held it up. A single bullet was sitting in the middle of his palm.
“Nice catch, Danny,” he said to himself.
***
They talked for the next fifteen minutes, everyone explaining what they had seen and done.
Mia said she had tipped the blood out of the amulet to wake up all the Erics. Eric said he had found Grebe’s golden eagle in a cage by the staff entrance.
Behind them, Jasper was using direct matter transfer to empty the glass dome, returning some objects to their original owners, moving other objects to nearby museums, disassembling others and placing them in boxes and crates. A vertical drop ride hovered in mid-air for a few minutes and was then placed neatly alongside a row of virtual reality simulators.
“Can we go home now?” asked Eric. “Being in a coma is exhausting.”
“Sure,” said Uncle Charlie. “We can ask Jasper to move us with his mind, if you like. Or I can take you by sky rope. Or we can use Mia’s Mirror Key.”
“Or Danny can cut and paste us,” Eric added. “Don’t forget that.”
“Of course!” exclaimed Uncle Charlie. “I haven’t tried it yet. Fun, is it?”
“It’s like having your brain sucked out of your ear and then injected back in through your nose,” said Eric. “It’s brilliant!”
Danny listened to them talk and gave a half-smile. Mia noticed and said, “Ready to help me celebrate my birthday?” she asked.
“Yeah,” said Danny. “Can’t wait to get back to Mum and Dad. Non-stop fun.”
Jasper appeared next to Mia and said, “Finished!”
“Is everything back in its rightful place?” Uncle Charlie asked him.
“More or less,” said Jasper. “I moved the golden eagle to Ben Nevis rather than Everest. So we can keep an eye on him. And I kept one or two gadgets for research purposes obviously. They’re in the EUREKA! HQ.”
“But we don’t have an HQ at the moment,” said Uncle Charlie.
“I know,” said Jasper. “I set up a new temporary HQ.”
“Where?” asked Uncle Charlie.
“Well, I tried to pick somewhere unlikely,” said Jasper, “somewhere that looked nothing like our previous HQs. So I went for … er … Danny’s bedroom.”
Danny’s mouth dropped open.
“You did what?” exclaimed Uncle Charlie.
“But hang on,” said Danny, “my room’s full of rubbish. Mum and Dad filled it with bin liners.”
“Oh yes, those,” said Jasper. “Obviously I had to move them first.”
“Where to?” asked Danny.
“Well, ahem, I put them in your parents’ room,” said Jasper.
Danny and Mia both looked shocked. Then they grinned at each other.
“Is that a problem?” asked Jasper.
“Nope,” answered Danny and Mia together.
They all headed out of the glass dome.
“What happened to the Space Twister?” asked Danny.
“You can read the full story in your Time Tablet,” said Uncle Charlie. “You’ll find his file in the Happy Valley Twilight Home for the Criminally Insane.”
They walked through the doors of the Science Palace and out into the evening sunshine.
Danny turned to Mia and said, “You know what? Maybe we shouldn’t go home yet. It is your birthday, after all.”
“What do you mean?” asked Mia.
“I mean, shouldn’t we have a party?” said Danny.
Eric was just behind Danny and Mia. “Did someone just say party?” he asked.
“I suppose a party would be nice,” said Mia, “but where shall we have it?”
“Anywhere you like,” said Danny. “Hawksby Caves? Grapeshot Hall? Mount Everest?”
Mia thought for a moment. “How about the skylab? That’d be out of this world.”
Danny, Mia and Eric all looked up at the clouds.
“Last one there’s a dork,” said Danny.
Copyright
To Isabel, Kyle and Aliana
First published in the UK in 2012 by Nosy Crow Ltd
The Crow’s Nest, 10a Lant Street
London, SE1 1QR, UK
This ebook edition first published 2012
Nosy Crow and associated logos are trademarks and / or registered trademarks of Nosy Crow Ltd
Text copyright © Adam Frost, 2012
Illustrations copyright © Andy Parker, 2012
The right of Adam Frost and Andy Parker to be identified as the author and illustrator respectively of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
All rights reserved
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictiously. Any resemblence to actual people, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978 0 85763 039 1
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