Adam and the Arkonauts

by Dominic Barker

  ‘I don’t –’

  ‘Just be ready, kiddo,’ yowled Malibu. ‘When I bite the hand that feeds me, it’s your signal to go.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  But Malibu wasn’t talking any more. Instead, he limped gingerly out from the cover of the trees and dragged himself painfully across the clearing towards the entrance to Scabellax’s base. Watching him struggle so convincingly while knowing for a fact there was nothing at all wrong with him, Adam had to admit the cat was good.

  But how was being good at limping going to help them get into Scabellax’s base?

  ‘What’s it doing?’ demanded Calico Jack, who had witnessed the exchange between Adam and Malibu but had, of course, understood none of it.

  ‘Er . . . acting,’ said Adam.

  ‘Cats can act?’

  ‘Tch!’ chattered Simia from her vantage point in the trees just above them. ‘That’s all they can do.’

  Meanwhile, Malibu had reached the entrance to the base. And as he reached it his strength seemed to fail. He collapsed heavily on the thick glass portal. Then he stood up. But his injured leg wouldn’t hold him and he sat down with a bump once more.

  He paused for a second, trying to recover. And as he did, he looked around him nervously. Anyone watching would have seen an injured cat terrified of being so exposed and vulnerable to predators. And so it seemed with fear spurring him on, Malibu lifted his exhausted frame and, one final time, tried to limp on. But it was to no avail. With a pitiful miaow, he fell heavily back on the portal again.

  It was a performance so moving that, despite his previous anger with the cat, Adam half wanted to rush over and help Malibu. But it was a good thing he didn’t, because the portal door began to rise. Malibu, seemingly on the verge of death, slipped uncomfortably off it and into the grass. A black-clad guard clambered out of the hatch. In one hand he held a gun. In the other he held a saucer of milk.

  ‘Here, kitty, kitty, kitty,’ he said.

  Malibu looked frightened. Using all his remaining strength, he stood up and limped pitifully away from the guard.

  ‘He’s limping on a different foot,’ whispered Calico Jack.

  The guard didn’t notice.

  ‘Here, kitty, kitty,’ he said. ‘You don’t need to be afraid of me.’

  Malibu stopped for a moment and turned back. The cat’s eyes were as big as saucers and they seemed on the very verge of trusting the guard. But at the last moment, doubt seemed to enter his mind and he turned away again and continued his pathetic limp towards the edge of the clearing.

  ‘No, no, kitty, don’t go,’ said the guard, following Malibu slowly, trying desperately not to spook him. He had left the portal door open. ‘I’ve got milk. Nice tasty milk. Make you better. Make you strong.’

  Malibu was almost at the edge of the clearing now. Suddenly it appeared that he was swayed by the soothing tone of the guard. He turned round.

  ‘Miaow!’

  ‘Here, kitty, kitty.’

  ‘Miaow!’

  This second miaow was so piteous that Adam was tempted to run out and give Malibu some milk himself. The guard shook his head.

  ‘So you won’t come to me, will you? You are a difficult cat. Well, then I suppose I must come to you. Now don’t be scared.’

  The guard tiptoed up to Malibu. He was right on the edge of the clearing now and so close that Adam decided to stop breathing as a precaution. He hoped Malibu acted soon, because this was not a plan that was feasible in the longterm.

  Meanwhile, the guard bent over and set down the saucer of milk. Malibu looked at it for a second and then looked up at the guard.

  ‘Drink the milk, kitty,’ he said, pointing at it with his finger.

  Finally Malibu seemed to understand. He limped the couple of steps to the saucer.

  ‘Good, kitty, good . . .’

  And sank his teeth into the guard’s finger.

  ‘Aiiiieeeeee!’

  Blood poured out of the wound. The guard reached for his pistol with one hand, while trying to shake himself free of Malibu with the other. But Malibu refused to let go.

  ‘Stupid ungrateful moggy!’ shouted the guard. ‘Let’s see how you like being shot.’

  Adam realised he’d been so entranced by Malibu’s performance that he’d forgotten to react to the cat’s signal. He jumped to his feet, seconds too late. Despite his pain, the guard had still managed to train his gun on Malibu. All that remained was for him to pull the trigger.

  A figure leapt out of the branches above Adam.

  Simia whizzed through the air, crashed down on the guard’s shoulders and immediately clamped her hands over his eyes.

  ‘I’m blind,’ shouted the guard, stumbling backwards.

  Adam, Anna and Calico Jack charged towards him. Close behind them was Sniffage. A little behind Sniffage was Sausage. They tackled the guard together. He tumbled to the ground and, with an expert blow, Calico Jack left him unconscious.

  Simia relaxed her grip on the guard’s head.

  ‘Tch!’ she chattered. ‘Try to be a bit faster next time, humans. All that evolution has really slowed you down.’

  At the same time, Malibu let go of the guard’s finger.

  ‘That was amazing, Malibu,’ said Adam.

  But the cat seemed far from happy.

  ‘My greatest ever performance,’ he yowled despairingly, ‘and not a camera in sight.’

  ‘We’ve no time for this,’ said Calico Jack. ‘We’ve got to get inside the base before another guard finds out that the hatch is open.’

  Adam felt a rallying cry was appropriate

  ‘Arkonauts, dogs and ex-convicts,’ he cried, ‘let us defeat Professor Scabellax!’

  From every side of the clearing emerged prisoners and dogs. Behind Adam were Anna, Calico Jack, Sniffage, Malibu, Simia and Sausage. Above them swooped Gogo, Pozzo and Vlad.

  They converged upon the hatch, not knowing what lay inside waiting for them.

  .

  CHAPTER 32

  Adam reached the bottom of the steps and took in the awesome sight. He was on a walkway high above a vast cavern of shining black metal which had been carved out of the mountain. It hummed with activity. Computers and other highly complex machines flashed and flickered as they performed all kinds of diabolical calculations. At the far end, underneath a huge screen, diligently monitoring the readings and printouts, were technicians wearing pristine white lab coats and carrying smaller notepad computers. Patrolling menacingly around them were black-clad guards with guns slung loosely from their waists. But none of these sights held Adam’s attention for long. Instead, his eye was drawn to one figure standing rigidly straight and unmoving in this hive of activity.

  The Doctor.

  His face was stretched into a rictus of agony.

  Adam couldn’t understand it. There appeared to be nothing surrounding him and none of the guards was paying him any attention, but still he did not move. And yet it seemed as though the effort of staying perfectly still was the cause of his awful discomfort.

  Behind him, Anna, Calico Jack, the Arkonauts, the dogs and prisoners were dropping down as silently as possible on to the high walkway.

  ‘Scabellaxians!’

  A terrible voice echoed round the chamber. Immediately every guard and every technician stopped what they were doing to listen. Adam tensed. Had they been seen?

  ‘Scabellaxians, I, your leader, Professor Silus Scabellax, address you.’

  Desperately, Adam scanned the cavern. Where was Scabellax? Where was . . . There!

  A man wearing a neat brown suit, sporting a monocle and holding a gold walking cane stood speaking on a small raised podium. Adam could not see a microphone, but there had to be one somewhere because his voice boomed
out across the cavern.

  ‘Scabellaxians, know that the moment we have waited for is upon us. Today we complete the process that will lead us, ultimately, to rule over the entire world. My research into sound enabled me to create the perfect noise which, when played for the right time at the right frequency, eventually destroys the free will of humans. Today, in Buenos Sueños, we will see the culmination of this process for the first time. Soon every city in every country will fall to us. And then, thanks to the information which Doctor Forest is on the verge of providing us with, we will be able to control the animals too. I will be the first leader to have dominion over man and beast! But, fellow Scabellaxians, I will not stop there. After that I go after the plants. Soon every living thing will bow before me. I . . .’

  Adam was listening, open-mouthed, to this terrible plan. Scabellax wanted to control the entire world. Every human, every animal, even every plant. He had to be stopped. He had to –

  ‘INTRUDERS!’

  Too late did Adam look up. Too late did he notice the little metal ball hovering above him, and inside that little ball, a camera lens. They had been spotted.

  WOOWOOWOOWOO

  All around him a siren sounded. The cavern flashed red, and then black, red, and then black. Adam cowered back. It was as though the cave itself had suddenly come to life. But there was no point in trying to hide now, for on the screen at the other end of the cavern, blown up to fifty times his normal size, he saw himself.

  And so did every black-clad guard in the cavern.

  And so did Professor Scabellax. The element of surprise was lost.

  ‘Kill the intruders!’ he bellowed. ‘Show no mercy!’

  WOOWOOWOOWOO

  The siren pulsated around them. The walls flashed black and red. Adam looked at the centre of the cavern. Despite everything that was happening, still the Doctor didn’t move.

  BANG!

  The first guard took aim and fired at Adam, the bullet twanging off the metal walkway.

  ‘Attack!’ shouted Adam.

  There were two sets of stairs that ran down into the main body of the cave. Half the prisoners headed towards one and half to the other, bullets peppering them as they ran.

  ‘Ahhhhhh!’

  The first ex-convict was hit. He staggered once, then tumbled off the walkway and plummeted to the ground. His body lay in a heap on the floor. It didn’t move again.

  The gunfire from the guards was relentless. Two more ex-prisoners were blown from the walkway. Adam and his companions were nothing but moving targets. With no weapons of their own, they had no way of defending themselves. Somehow they had to get down into the main body of the hall and come to grips with Scabellax’s forces, hand to hand. But the closer they came to the guards, the greater the chance of being shot. It would take a brave person to be first down the stairs that led from the walkway.

  It was Anna.

  The dark-haired girl knew no fear. Ignoring the bullets that exploded all around her, ignoring another prisoner who was blown off the walkway behind her, she ran for the black metal stairway. Below, the tramp of the guards echoed as they rushed to take up their positions.

  Adam ran after her.

  Bullets flew in front of him, behind him, above him. He kept running. His luck couldn’t hold. Any moment now one would find its mark. Ahead of him, another ex-prisoner ran out of luck, falling silently from the walkway, flopping dead on the ground below. Adam saw Anna reach the stairs. She took them two at time, but Adam also saw two guards at the bottom with their weapons trained upon her. However fast she moved, the closer she came the easier she was to hit. Adam wondered if his friend was about to die. The guards prepared to pull their triggers. Any . . . moment . . .

  Two green blurs flew directly into their faces. Gogo and Pozzo swooped to the rescue.

  ‘Woah!’ shouted one guard.

  ‘Arrggh!’ shouted the other, as he received a vicious peck in the cheek from Pozzo.

  Their guns were a hindrance rather than a help when they tried to deal with the attacking parrots. A bird flapping and fluttering and pecking at your face is best fended off with a hand. The butt of a gun is clumsy and useless. It was almost as though the animals were using the weapons against the men. The guards didn’t know whether to drop their guns or not, and this hesitation proved their undoing.

  Anna sprang off the stairs alive and well, as did Sniffage and the other dogs (save for Sausage, whose little legs were yet again slowing him down). The guards had been trained to pick off humans, but dogs moved faster and stood lower, and they had proved much more difficult to hit. Every one of them reached the floor of the great cavern alive and ready to bite.

  ‘Kill them,’ shouted Scabellax. ‘Show no mercy!’

  But now his guards were attacked from below by the dogs and from above by Gogo and Pozzo. The parrots were joined by Vlad, who came to life in the dark cavern. While Gogo and Pozzo distracted guards by flapping and pecking at their faces, the vampire bat swooped in behind, silent and unseen, and sank his fangs deep into their necks.

  And hanging from the walkway, her arms stronger than any human’s, was Simia. The monkey spotted a guard train his gun at Adam. She swung towards him and dropped down. The guard never knew what hit him. His weapon clattered to the floor. Unaware of his narrow escape, Adam dashed towards Anna, who was showing her normal crazy zeal for the fight by grappling with a guard three times her size. Nobody could doubt the strength of the dark girl’s heart, but nevertheless she would soon be overpowered.

  Adam rushed to her aid but, again, the Arkonauts were there before him. Pozzo flashed into the guard’s face. Vlad sank his fangs into his neck. Sniffage bit his calf. And, finally, even Malibu discovered enough energy to spring from the walkway and sink his claws into the guard’s back.

  All around the cavern, others were suffering the same fate. The animals may not have been trained as a team, but their different methods of attack complemented each other perfectly. If a guard managed to fight off a dog, a parrot or bat flew into his face, giving the dog or monkey or even a human the chance to attack him once more. The guards were bewildered by the numerous types of assault. Their guns felt useless.

  ‘Fight,’ ordered Scabellax. ‘Fight!’

  But all the fight was gone from the guards. They were confused and overwhelmed, and fled down the dark passages leading out of the cavern. The technicians, terrified at seeing the guards so efficiently defeated, did not even attempt to put up a fight. They fled too. Soon the passages echoed to the panicked cries of Scabellax’s henchmen.

  Only one man remained: Professor Scabellax himself.

  He stood by a bank of computer monitors, whose lights flashed red, blue and green as they continued to perform all manner of evil calculations. The Professor watched his own guards crumble under the assault without a flicker of emotion, save perhaps a slight sneer of contempt. He had the air of a man who had seen it all before.

  ‘Congratulations,’ his voice boomed around the chamber. ‘It appears that you have defeated my foolish guards and scared off my cowardly technicians. You must be very proud of yourselves. What a shame that all your hard work and the loss of so many of your comrades has, nevertheless, turned out to be in vain.’

  Sarcasm dripped from every word.

  Adam looked around and registered the full sacrifice that had been required to defeat the guards. Apart from himself, Anna, Calico Jack and Fidel, all the ex-prisoners had been shot. Their bodies littered the walkways, the stairwells and the main body of the cave. Their taste of freedom had been brief. They had been mercilessly mowed down. Adam was furious. And he wasn’t the only one.

  ‘So we finally come face to face Scabellax,’ Calico Jack said coldly. ‘I’m waiting to hear you surrender.’ He picked up a gun that had been dropped by one of the fleeing guards and walked towards the Professor.r />
  Scabellax smiled.

  ‘That, my dear sir, is the one outcome that I can assure you is not going to happen.’

  ‘You think so, do you, Scabellax?’ said Calico Jack. ‘Well, let’s see if me and a few of my animal friends can’t change your mind.’

  ‘No.’

  But it was not Professor Scabellax who protested, it was Adam. He was looking at the Doctor and he could tell something was very wrong. Even though all the guards had now fled, the Doctor still hadn’t moved a millimetre and continued to stand rigid in agony. Adam didn’t understand it at all.

  ‘What’s the matter, Doctor?’ he said. ‘We’ve rescued you. The guards are gone.’

  The Doctor didn’t move.

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Scabellax’s voice boomed through the cavern. ‘I think you might have some difficulty chatting with Doctor Forest. You see, he is imprisoned by a rather amusing little device. I’m rather proud of it – the Electronic Self-Generating Lethal-Strength Figure-Hugging Force Field!’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ demanded Adam. He wanted more than anything to see the Doctor move again. Looking at him was like looking at a living corpse.

  Entirely unruffled, Scabellax leant casually against the bank of computers.

  ‘Please don’t speak to me in that way,’ he said. ‘I do so despise rudeness, especially in the young.’

  Adam was at a loss. They had won and yet Professor Scabellax, whom they had defeated, appeared totally unconcerned, whereas the Doctor, who had been rescued, was still trapped. This wasn’t how it was supposed to work out at all. With a tremendous effort, Adam controlled himself.

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind explaining it to me,’ he said to Professor Scabellax, ‘I’d be very interested to know more about this force field.’

  ‘You see,’ said Professor Scabellax, tapping his cane approvingly, ‘politeness costs nothing and gains so much.’

  Adam fumed inwardly.

  ‘The Electronic Self-Generating Lethal-Strength Figure-Hugging Force Field is most ingenious,’ said Professor Scabellax pompously. ‘I invented it . . . Well, when I say invented it, I obviously mean I stole the idea from a superb Slovenian physicist who was sadly murdered soon afterwards – I suppose I’ll have to collect the Nobel Prize for him. What happens is that when the subject stands upon the platform, the force field immediately generates around his body shape. Any further movement by the subject will lead to him breaking the force field and receiving a lethal electric shock. The only option, therefore, for the subject who wishes to stay alive is to remain totally still. Any significant movement whatsoever will result in his immediate death. Really very, very clever, wouldn’t you agree?’