Jane Blonde: Spies Trouble

by Jill Marshall

  the cat on the hat

  ‘Oops,’ said Alfie-in-Janey’s-voice.

  They turned around slowly, back to back. They were surrounded. Closing in on them was a pack of ferocious, snarling vermin.

  ‘What are they?’ hissed Alfie.

  ‘They’re rats,’ said Janey. ‘Enormous ones – could be water rats. Maybe this is what the message on the classroom window was about.’

  The biggest water rat was hunkering down on to its haunches, and the others followed suit, all looking ready to use their teeth. As the smallest water rat leaped towards them, Janey lifted her right hand to stun-gas it, but felt only the clumsy weight of Alfie’s Boy-battler. ‘No stun-gas?’

  Alfie was staring with similar confusion at the Girl-gauntlet. ‘No, just hit it!’

  The vicious water rat was sailing through the air towards Janey’s throat. She formed a fist and the Boy-battler filled instantly with compressed air, doubling in size and weight so that Janey felt as though she had a brick resting on her knuckles. She drew back her arm and walloped the airborne creature on the nose as it opened its predator jaws; to Janey’s delight the water rat yowled and sailed back into the churning wave pool.

  But there was no time to celebrate. In seconds the animal was back up again, while another was rushing at Alfie’s ankles. Alfie was trying ineffectually to kick out at the creature while fiddling furiously with the Girl-gauntlet.

  ‘Little finger, stun-gas!’ hissed Janey, lashing out at another water rat making a dive for her arm. Alfie squeezed the Girl-gauntlet clumsily with his left hand, to be rewarded only with a tiny click and flash.

  ‘No, that’s the camera! Little finger!’ Janey batted away another snarling creature, with a super-sized thumb in its eyeball.

  ‘I know. It’s your stupid hands – they don’t work.’ Alfie tried again and managed to find the right digit; a tiny blast of gas squirted out into the face of his attacker. It dropped to the ground, right in the path of a fourth rat, which was slavering after Alfie like a rabid bulldog. The rat tripped, yelped as it fell over its companion and crashed into a low wall. It had hardly hit the floor before it was up again.

  ‘Watch out, Blonde. These rats just keep on coming!’ shouted Alfie.

  The fifth and final water rat was treading towards them more cautiously. It might have been easy to handle on its own, but the other creatures had recovered remarkably quickly and were shaking themselves down, quivering and snarling with rage as they raced towards Janey and Alfie.

  Janey looked around desperately. They were trapped. Behind them were the lockers, row after row of open-doored metal cupboards. The gate with the hole in it was too far away. There was nowhere to run.

  ‘We’ll have to tackle them, then make a run for it!’ shrilled Alfie, dropping down into a fighting position.

  ‘No!’ said Janey, sounding very stern in Alfie’s voice. ‘This way.’ She stepped backwards towards the lockers.

  Alfie squeaked in frustration. ‘But we’ll be trapped!’

  ‘Trust me,’ said Janey.

  As soon as their retreating feet touched the metal edges of the lockers, Janey turned her back to Alfie and linked her arms through his. The water rats were ten metres away. It seemed as if the Spylets would feel their flesh part from their bones at any second.

  ‘Jump!’ yelled Janie.

  In the same split second, Janey and Alfie jumped. Janey hauled her legs up as close to her chest as she could, then rammed her feet into the ground. She had to work for both of them. With a dull thud and a flare, her Fleet-feet exploded into action. Janey hung on to Alfie with all her strength as they both rose several metres into the air.

  The water rats shot under their feet, looking up and howling with rage as they realized that their momentum was carrying them straight through the open metal doors. They couldn’t stop. As the Spylets began their descent towards the ground, the water rats piled into the back of the lockers like cars on a foggy motorway. Quick as a flash, Janey and Alfie hit the ground, grabbed a door each, slammed them closed and turned the key.

  They held up their gloved hands and, over the howls from the lockers, did a clumsy high-five. ‘Cool!’ squeaked Alfie.

  Janey giggled. ‘We have to find G-Mamma and get these voices sorted out! But first we’d better try to find out where our ratty friends came from.’

  ‘I saw one pop out of the spraying tree thingy in the middle of the toddler pool.’ Alfie marched through the water and pulled at the fake palm tree that rose from the tropical island. Nothing happened. ‘Use the acid sac again.’

  ‘No, look,’ said Janey, peering at the trunk of the tree. ‘There’s a button.’ It was tiny, and tucked away under a leaf, but there it was – a little golden button, a miniature sun, glistening invitingly. ‘Too high up for the toddlers, but just right for me if I stretch a bit more.’

  She pressed the tiny sun and watched in amazement as the island shifted instantly to one side and a large Perspex cylinder appeared by her feet. ‘There you go. Looks like a Spylab entry cylinder to me.’

  Janey ignored the caterwauling of the trapped water rats and stepped into the cylinder, quickly followed by Alfie. They rode downwards, standing on a fat cushion of compressed air, and moments later they rolled out into a vast underground laboratory.

  ‘What is this place?’ said Janey. She dropped down as Alfie dived behind a counter. Anyone could be lurking there.

  ‘It’s a Spylab, isn’t it?’ whispered Alfie.

  ‘Must be. But it’s the biggest one I’ve ever seen. And it’s all . . . black.’

  They looked around. The Spylab was cavernous. Six long benches stretched out across the room, so dark they looked as though they had been cut from the night sky. Smoky glass cupboards lined the walls; a gleaming ebony door hid a freezer, judging by the temperature gauge on the wall beside it; and screening off one corner of the room was a huge bank of television screens. The blackness was oppressive. The only things that brightened it at all were the golden sun emblems embossed on to every surface.

  ‘Weird.’ Janey checked her Ultra-gogs for movement. Nothing. ‘G-Mamma, are you here? Where are you?’

  ‘Alfie?’ G-Mamma’s own voice sounded muffled and distant. ‘What are you doing here? We’re in the corner, behind the TV wall’

  The two Spylets ran to the screens, but paused when they noticed the images projected on to a dozen or so of them. They were all photographs of Trouble – Trouble in mid-air; Trouble with whiskers like icicles, shivering and glaring malevolently at the camera; Trouble going through an MRI scanner, with the images of his brain scans flashing up beside it. Someone had been doing experiments on poor little Trouble! And what was that glinting on every picture . . . ?

  ‘Hurry up, Spylet! Get me out!’ yelled G-Mamma.

  Janey and Alfie followed her voice and then stopped short, colliding into each other. Ahead of them, Trouble, sopping wet and with great clumps of tawny fur missing, was trapped like a fish in shoulder-high water, behind a large pane of toughened glass. Beside him bobbed G-Mamma, resplendent in knee-length flowery bloomers, a Day-Glo green swimming top and a magnificent bathing hat that resembled a rosebush. Two plastic roses formed the large pink goggles from behind which her round eyes blinked at them.

  ‘Oh, G-Mamma! Trouble!’ Janey sped over to the glass. The cat miaowed at her pathetically. ‘What happened? What’s been going on?’

  ‘Sweet Solomon! What has happened to your voice?’

  ‘We swapped,’ said Alfie.

  G-Mamma’s eyes bulged. ‘Satispy?’

  ‘Yep, but never mind that.’ Janey rattled the pane of glass, but it didn’t budge. ‘Who put you in here?’

  ‘Hoped you might know, girly-girl! There was a squabble in the garden, and I ran out just in time to see this bunch of giant rats herding Trouble into a Sunny Jim’s van. I took off after them like a flying spy. I only just had time to leave you a message.’

  ‘And it was a trap?’ asked Alfie.

&n
bsp; ‘Noooo, I just felt like a paddle, Halo. And being like a balloon, I always have to tie myself to the bottom of a fish tank in order to take a dip.’ G-Mamma, rolling her eyes, nodded at the chain anchoring her to the floor of the tank. ‘Of course it was a trap! And I waltzed straight into it. I hate rats! I was backed into this tank and pinned down before I could say Solomon’s Swanky Swimmers. Thank goodness I changed before I came. Couldn’t find my Fleet-feet though so I had to wear these.’ She waved her free foot around in the water for Alfie and Janey to see the little wheels popping out of the heel of her red biker boot. ‘Skates. That’s why I wasn’t quite balanced when they rounded up on me, nasty little . . . yeuch. Anyway, puss and I have been trying to get out for the last two hours, but can you find a diamond-tipped glass cutter when you need one?’

  Janey gasped. ‘Hold on just five minutes.’ She opened the freezer door and stepped inside, switching the thermostat down as she went. A couple of minutes later she heard piercing, verminous shrieks coming from above.

  ‘Get your booty out of there, Blonde. Someone’s coming,’ cried G-Mamma.

  Janey peeked through the freezer door. G-Mamma was thrashing around madly, Trouble was frantically pawing the water and Alfie was crouching out of sight behind the wall of television screens.

  Then, as the water rats exploded into a cacophony of wails, a menacing robotic voice rattled down the entry-cylinder tube to the Spylab: ‘Ding dong bell, pussy’s in the well. Who put him down? Little Janey Brown.’ A blood-curdling metallic laugh rang out. ‘So, Blonde, you’ll have discovered there’s no glass cutter to be found – and that’s the only way to get them out. You have to let the cat out of the bag, if you want your kitty and that useless SPI:KE to live. Stay right where you are!’

  ‘Halo,’ hissed Janey through the thick freezer door. ‘I just need another thirty seconds. Keep them talking!’

  It took a moment for Alfie to realize what she meant, and then suddenly he called out in Janey’s voice, ‘All right! Don’t harm them, please. Erm, who are you, sir? Has someone . . . er, sent you?’

  ‘The Sun King answers to nobody!’ thundered the voice.

  ‘Sorry!’ said Alfie quickly. ‘Course not, Mr . . . er . . . Sun King! I’m waiting right here until you come down. I’ll tell you anything you need to know. Just don’t hurt my cat . . . Oh, or my SPI:KE either, obviously. Just tell me what you want!’

  Clever, thought Janey. The robotic voice seemed to scratch the sides of the cylinder on the way down. ‘It’s simple, Blonde. We want the cat’s secret.’

  Alfie looked over at Janey as she hovered just inside the freezer door. She shrugged. Trouble had quite a few secrets, but which one did this Sun King mean? The fact that he was a Spycat? That he used to belong to Solomon Brown? That he detested mice? ‘So, you mean, uh . . .’ said Alfie-as-Janey, playing for time, ‘. . . um, the secret of all cats?’

  The Sun King laughed, and Janey shivered at the sound. She closed the freezer door as much as she could, to keep the cold in without losing her view of the tank and Alfie. ‘Come along, fool! Stop stalling. You need to tell us the cat-creation secret – how Brown turned a frog into this pitiful little pussycat. I have seen for myself that is what happened.’

  Janey was too bewildered to answer. She knew her dad had turned a frog into a mouse. That had been the biggest discovery of his spy life – the key to turning one life form into another. But that had nothing to do with Trouble. Surely Trubs had always been 100 per cent pure kitty-cat.

  Suddenly there was a small beep near her eye. The gauge on her Ultra-gogs read minus fifteen degrees. Janey had waited long enough. She took a deep breath, wrenched open the door and Fleet-footed across the immense Spylab.

  ‘I want to see your miserable faces when you tell me the secret,’ said the Sun King in his grinding tones. ‘Or when you see your godmother and your little cat . . . drown. His nine lives can’t help him now I’ve got him trapped in the tank!’

  Janey rolled across the floor to Alfie. ‘Actually we do have a choice of glass cutters,’ she whispered. ‘You get ready to laser G-Mamma’s chain apart – ring finger on the Girl-gauntlet – and I’ll tackle the glass.’

  Janey grabbed her frozen ponytail and pointed it at the tank. She carefully scoured the tip of her hair down the glass; there was a hideous scratching sound, then Janey stood back and high-kicked the tank. The glass shattered cleanly and Janey pulled the bedraggled Trouble through gushing water for the second time in two days, out of his prison. As water cascaded around him Alfie directed a narrow red beam of light at G-Mamma’s ankle, sliced through the chain and stepped smartly to one side as the SPI:KE flopped to the floor beside him.

  Struggling to stand on her wheeled boots, G-Mamma seized Trouble and the Satispy remote control from Janey. ‘Trouble first,’ she said, positioning the cat under a skylight. She pressed the remote control with an orange-tipped talon. ‘Then you, Blonde.’

  ‘No, you next, G-Mamma. I’ll go last.’ Alfie took the control, pointed at G-Mamma, and pushed the button. At the same time he yelled out to the descending Sun King. ‘Yes. Right. I’m going to wait here until you come down. I can’t bear to see my little cat get hurt. I am just a poor defenceless girly spy. You can have the cat secret you need, just promise to let G-Mamma and Trouble go free . . .’

  Janey grinned as Alfie turned the control to her and pressed it again. As her body separated she could just make out Alfie turning the control around to aim at his own chest. He launched himself into the stratosphere just as the long black soles of a pair of shoes appeared at the bottom of the entry cylinder. ‘Got to go, sorry!’ he squealed.

  Minutes later they all touched down in G-Mamma’s back garden, colliding under a rowan tree.

  ‘Good work, Halo,’ said Janey. ‘Yes! I’m me again.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Alfie, inspecting his chunky hands with delight.

  Trouble ran over to Janey, and she hugged his wet, scrawny little body. ‘Glad you’re back, Trubs.’

  But relieved as she was, Janey was frightened. Trouble didn’t really have nine lives, and he’d never been a frog. How could the Sun King have seen the transformation ‘with his own eyes’? Whoever the Sun King was, he knew where Trouble – and Janey – lived, and he was convinced they knew something of value. He was obviously ruthless – prepared to kill. She was going to have to be a lot more careful in future. And a whole lot more suspicious of everybody. Or at least anybody new.

  the scare-taker

  ‘Project work all day today!’ said Mr Saunders the next morning, stifling a yawn. ‘Yes, thought you’d be thrilled. I’d like you to get into work-groups of three and find out as much as possible about one of our natural resources. You’ll present to the rest of the class next week. Presentations are to be original and exciting, please. I’m just popping out. No rowdiness.’

  Janey got into a huddle with Alfie, trying not to be irritated that Paulette instantly assumed she could join them. After last night the Spylets had a lot to talk about.

  ‘That’s a bit un-boring for Saunders, isn’t it?’ said Alfie.

  ‘Well, we might as well make the most of it,’ said Janey. ‘What are we going to do our project on?’

  ‘’Ang on, I am squeezing my lemon.’ Paulette stared intently at the ceiling, her small tanned chin wrinkled in concentration.

  Alfie squinted. ‘Huh?’

  ‘I get it,’ said Janey. ‘We call it something else here – racking your brains. Or, you know, working something out, or . . .’

  ‘’Ow about water?’ said Paulette directly to Alfie. ‘It is our most important natural resource, is it not? Wizout it we die.’

  ‘True. And sometimes wiz . . . I mean, with it we die too,’ said Alfie, glancing at Janey.

  Janey had to admit it was a good idea. Water was cropping up a lot recently in her secret spy life. She had nearly drowned in the tunnel a couple of nights ago. Trouble and G-Mamma had been up to their ears in it the previous evening. And the Sun
King’s Spylab was under a water park. ‘Maybe we should look at where water around here comes from?’ she offered.

  Paulette jumped in with yet another idea. ‘Yes, and we can find out who uses ze water too. Alfie, what is it you sink?’

  ‘Good ideas, team,’ said Alfie in Class Superstar mode. ‘We’ll do a consumer survey – who uses the most water and when and stuff. We’ll look at where it comes from. And then we’ll look at how it gets from the supplier to the consumer. How about that?’

  ‘Ees brilliant!’ sighed Paulette. ‘We can ask Maman about using water when you come round for a swim tonight. And you and I can go to ze library now to research.’

  Janey raised her eyebrows. ‘Hello? What am I meant to do?’

  Suddenly Paulette gave her a smile that lit up her small face. ‘Janey! I am sorry. Bad Paulette. I take away your friend. You go wiz Alfie, and I will do a survey on water-using around ze school.’

  Janey felt a little sheepish. She didn’t want Alfie to think she was a wimp. ‘No, it’s OK,’ she said slowly. ‘I mean, oh all right. Whatever you think.’

  Alfie shrugged as if he didn’t care either way and strolled off towards the library as Paulette gave a little wave and trotted in the opposite direction. Janey watched for a moment, trying to decide which way to go, then, on an impulse, she hurried after Paulette. The French girl had stopped next to the water fountain and was asking a few pupils something. They laughed, delighted at her accent, and gave her some comments which she jotted down. Then Paulette moved along the corridor and into the dinner hall. Janey watched as she approached a dinner lady, pointing at the sinks. The woman threw her hands up in mock despair and chatted for a few minutes to Paulette, who nodded seriously and scribbled some notes on her pad.

  Janey was about to go over when she saw Paulette nip out of the dinner hall and stop outside the caretaker’s cupboard. The caretaker was a pretty big water user, it was true. But Janey watched, confused, as Paulette looked left and right, opened the cupboard door and stepped inside.