Escape to the Moon Islands: Quest of the Sunfish 1

by Mardi McConnochie

  ‘Do you think we lost them?’ Essie gasped.

  ‘Wouldn’t count on it,’ Annalie said. Looking up, she saw a bus coming down the street. ‘Let’s catch that!’

  They ran for the bus stop and flagged the bus down, flopping down into two seats near the rear doors.

  ‘Do you know where this is going?’ Essie asked.

  ‘Nope,’ Annalie said. Two stops later she jumped up, grabbed Essie, and they plunged into a busy market.

  ‘Now where are we going?’ Essie panted as they wove through slow-moving shopping crowds.

  Annalie stopped by a stall that sold accessories. ‘Hat or scarf?’ she asked.

  ‘What?’ Essie said, bewildered.

  Annalie grabbed two hats with deep brims from the display and paid the first price the stallholder asked for. She pulled one of the hats on, tugging the brim down. ‘Disguise,’ she explained. Essie pulled on the other.

  When they emerged on the other side of the market, there were a range of different vehicles lined up waiting for fares. ‘We have to get back to the Sunfish,’ she said.

  ‘Wait,’ Essie said. ‘There’s two things we need to do first.’

  The first thing she did was find a cashpoint, where she took out an enormous amount of cash. ‘Now,’ she said, when she’d done that. ‘Give me your shell.’

  Annalie handed it over, and Essie opened up both the backs. Inside each was a little chip. Annalie’s was blue; Essie’s gold.

  ‘Ah,’ Essie said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve already got a chip-to-go.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘There are two ways you can pay to use the links. Set up an account and pay it every month, which is what I’ve got. Or buy a chip-to-go that lasts for as long as it lasts, then you get a new one. This chip,’ she continued, holding up her own gold chip, ‘has all my details and information on it. If my shell ever got lost or stolen or I left it on a bus, I could find it again, because it’s identifiably mine and searchable. But your chip has no information on it at all.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So as soon as I switch my shell on, if I’m within range of the links, they can find it—and me. But they can’t use yours to find you.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘So I need one of those chips.’

  She ducked into a store, bought a new chip and installed it in her phone. ‘There,’ she said, with a grin. ‘Now I’m invisible.’

  She dropped the gold chip and ground it under her heel until it was irreparably smashed, then scooped the bits up and binned them. ‘Now we can get back to the Sunfish.’

  ‘Wait a minute. We?’

  ‘I’ve made up my mind. I’m coming with you,’ Essie said. ‘My mum’s run off with some rich guy I’ve never even met. My dad’s in jail. He’s probably going to lose the house. And he’s going to have to pull me out of Triumph at the end of this term anyway because he can’t afford the fees. I don’t even know where they’re planning to send me these holidays.’ She took a shaky breath. ‘I’d rather take my chances with you.’

  Annalie bit her lip, looking soberly at Essie. But all she said was, ‘Okay then.’

  The Code

  Now, at last, they set a course for the west, and the Moon Islands. Will and Annalie spent a lot of time looking over the charts on Spinner’s old sat nav, discussing the best way to go. There were, of course, a million different ways to travel through the thousands of islands that made up the Moon Islands, and neither of them really knew how to decide which way might be best. Their charts were old and inaccurate, and although Spinner had made his own annotations about places he’d been to, there were many places in the archipelago he’d never been.

  Annalie and Will studied the routes, arguing this way and that about what looked better. Annalie didn’t want to go anywhere that looked too dangerous; Will was all about speed. He wished he could remember more of the route the magnificent new sat nav had conjured up for him, but there were too many unfamiliar place names, and after the first couple of stops he couldn’t remember any of it. Eventually, they came to a route that they were both happy with, and programmed it into the sat nav. It couldn’t chart their position like a more modern sat nav could—they would have to determine their position the old-fashioned way, using instruments and measurements. Spinner’s navigation instruments were so old they’d been antiques even before the Flood, and Will had never really had the patience to learn to use them properly, so navigation would be Annalie’s job.

  Their first day out of Southaven was a beautiful autumn day, perfect weather for sailing, and it felt more than ever like they were going on holiday.

  The weather stayed fair for several days. It was easy sailing; they were in open water so there was nothing to watch out for. They had decided to travel outside the international shipping lanes, hoping they’d be less obvious to any Admiralty ships that might be looking for them, so they saw few other boats.

  Essie quickly started to get a little stir-crazy. Normally when she was bored she checked her feeds, but that was impossible. Less than a day’s sailing out from Southaven they had lost their connection to the links. You needed a powerful booster to connect to the links from the open ocean, and Spinner had never seen the need for such a thing. So there were no more newsfeeds, no more fashion reports. ‘What do you do all day?’ she wailed.

  Annalie tried to teach her about the boat—words for things, procedures, things she thought it might come in handy to know—but none of it really seemed to stick. Will tried to show her how to fish, but Essie didn’t have the patience for it, and she didn’t much like fish anyway. Eventually she offered to become the cook, but even that was not enough to fill the long afternoons.

  ‘Here,’ Annalie said finally, ‘have some old-school fun,’ and she handed Essie a worn old pre-Flood paperback. The book, an adventure story about children at sea, had been one of Annalie’s favourites when she was younger and she’d kept it, along with a small cache of others, to re-read on the boat whenever things got quiet. Essie looked sceptical, but opened it anyway, and as she did, a piece of paper fluttered out. She picked it up and looked at it curiously. ‘What’s this?’ she said.

  There was writing on the piece of paper, but it didn’t make any sense to her. Annalie recognised Spinner’s handwriting.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, taking it from Essie.

  ‘Is it a code?’

  It certainly looked like a code. The letters were all normal letters, but they didn’t form any words that made sense. They had been arranged down the page in small groups.

  ‘It’s some kind of list,’ Annalie said.

  ‘Names?’ Essie suggested, looking at the way the letters were grouped.

  ‘There are some numbers too,’ Annalie said. ‘Perhaps they’re names and addresses.’

  Annalie studied them a little longer, hoping to spot a pattern that might help her guess what some of the letters were. But she couldn’t see anything.

  She took the piece of paper up on deck and showed it to Will. ‘Have you ever seen this before?’ she asked.

  Will peered at it. ‘No,’ he said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s a code. Spinner did it and hid it in one of my books.’

  ‘Probably just one of those games you used to play,’ Will said.

  When Annalie was younger she’d had a passion for codes and puzzles, and Spinner had sometimes made up coded messages to amuse her, especially during winter when it was too wet or cold to go outside.

  ‘But this is new,’ Annalie said. ‘I’ve never seen it before.’

  ‘Maybe he made it for you but you never got around to solving it,’ Will said.

  Annalie shook her head. ‘I re-read this book six months ago, and it wasn’t there then.’ She looked at the piece of paper, willing it to give up its secrets. ‘I think this might be something important.’

  Will yawned his disagreement. ‘Better go and work out what it says then.’ And indeed Annalie tried, for
the rest of the morning, without getting anywhere.

  Later that afternoon, clouds began to mass on the horizon. Will and Annalie watched them as they grew, darkened, and moved towards them.

  ‘Storm,’ Will said.

  Annalie nodded. ‘Can we get out of its path?’

  ‘We can try.’ And he did try, but the wind ahead of the storm front had dropped away, and the bad weather was gaining on them.

  ‘We could use the engine and try to outrun it,’ Annalie suggested.

  ‘Let’s save that until we need it,’ Will said. He studied the storm sagely. ‘It doesn’t look so bad. We can ride it out.’

  ‘Better get ready, then.’

  Annalie took Essie and went below, making sure that everything was safely stowed away, all the hatches battened and all the lockers locked. ‘It’s going to get rough,’ Annalie warned.

  The sky darkened. The wind came, and the gentle camber of the ocean became a violent surging. Waves flung them about, the rain poured down, the wind roared and the air was saturated with salt spray. The watery world threatened to engulf them. The storm raged for hours, and there was nothing they could do but hang on. The boat pitched violently. Graham clung to his perch, shrieking nerve-shreddingly whenever the movements of the boat became too rough. Essie looked terrified. Annalie, wide-eyed herself, tried to reassure her. ‘We’ve been through worse storms than this,’ she said. ‘We’re going to be fine.’

  The storm beat at them until late into the night, then it passed over and left them alone, and they fell into an exhausted sleep.

  The next day was bright and burnished again. The boat had proved itself pleasingly sound—even in that world of water, very little of it had found its way inside. But when Will and Annalie checked their position they were much further south than they had meant to be—the storm had driven them off course, and they were now far from the international shipping channels.

  ‘If that’s the worst we encounter on this trip I reckon we’ll be all right,’ Will said, feeling some personal pride in the excellence of his vessel and the quality of his captaining.

  ‘Don’t say that,’ Essie said. ‘You’ll jinx us.’

  Graham was in a foul temper. ‘Bad Will. No biscuit. Hate boats. Hate wet.’

  No biscuit was the worst punishment Graham could think of for someone who’d displeased him.

  ‘I got us through it, didn’t I?’ Will said, annoyed.

  Graham nipped him on the ear before flying up to the top of the mast where no one could reach him.

  Less than an hour later, a ship appeared on the horizon. Essie was the first to notice it. ‘Hey, is that an Admiralty ship?’ she asked.

  Will pulled out the binoculars, took a look, and swore, then handed them to Annalie. Annalie swore too.

  ‘What is it?’ Essie asked again.

  ‘That’s not an Admiralty ship,’ Will said. ‘They’re pirates.’

  Pirates

  Pirate ships did look, from a distance, like Admiralty ships because they had all the same sorts of equipment: gun turrets and grappling hooks and high-tech gear that let them locate and board other ships. They were assault vessels, fast and ugly and built for plunder.

  ‘They won’t care about a tiny little boat like this one, will they?’ Essie said. ‘We’ve got nothing worth stealing.’

  ‘A boat’s always worth stealing,’ Annalie said.

  ‘And you’d be worth a fortune for ransom,’ Will said. ‘Us, not so much.’

  ‘Not any more,’ Essie said. ‘My dad’s broke.’

  ‘Let’s get some sail up,’ Will said. ‘We’d better try to outrun them.’

  Will and Annalie put up every sail and began to run before the wind, hoping that if they could make their way back towards the international shipping channels before the pirates could reach them, they might break off their pursuit and return to quieter waters.

  ‘They may not have noticed us,’ Will said hopefully. But they soon realised the pirates must have seen them. They had changed course and were moving to intercept them.

  ‘Can’t we go any faster?’ Essie asked. ‘Why don’t you put the engine on?’

  ‘It doesn’t go any faster than we’re going now,’ Will said.

  ‘I don’t think they’re running on wind power,’ Annalie said, looking back through the binoculars. The pirate ship bristled with ill-assorted turbines and solar panels, an ugly patchwork of some very advanced energy-generating tech, all feeding into a powerful engine that churned the ocean in its wake.

  ‘Where are the Admiralty when you need them?’ Will muttered, scanning the horizon ahead. He could see nothing.

  In desperation they sailed on. The pirate ship kept coming, inexorably closing the gap between them. At last they grew close enough that Annalie could see individual people on the deck. All of them were armed.

  ‘What are we going to do if they catch us?’ she said, turning to Will. ‘We need a plan.’

  ‘If they catch us,’ Will said, ‘the best plan in the world won’t do us any good.’

  Graham was perched beside Annalie. ‘Pirates!’ he squawked. ‘Make Graham parrot pie!’

  ‘No one’s going to make you into a pie,’ Annalie said.

  ‘Yeah, pirates love parrots. Don’t you know anything?’ Will said.

  Essie said nothing. She held the railing so tightly her knuckles were white.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Annalie said. ‘I should have made you go home.’

  ‘I wanted to come,’ Essie said bravely. But she didn’t feel brave.

  Then, quite suddenly, Annalie saw movement on the deck of the pirate ship. The men were looking about. They heard the distant tang of a loudspeaker, travelling across the water.

  ‘Something’s happening,’ Annalie reported. ‘I think they’re giving orders.’

  ‘What sort of orders?’

  The men on the boat were moving purposefully about now. They were no longer looking at the Sunfish. ‘I think—I think they’re giving up!’

  ‘What?’

  Will came over to her and grabbed the binoculars from her, yanking her neck uncomfortably. ‘Ow!’

  She was right. The pirate ship had broken off its pursuit and was changing course.

  ‘What on earth is going on?’ Annalie said.

  ‘Pirates go!’ Graham squawked, turning somersaults in the air with a chatter of parrot laughter.

  ‘Maybe they decided we’re not worth it after all,’ Essie suggested.

  ‘Maybe someone else is coming this way,’ Will said.

  ‘A bigger target?’ Annalie said.

  ‘Admiralty?’ Will countered. ‘Either way, we’d better get out of here.’

  Once more they corrected their course to get away from the pirate ship as fast as they could. Annalie kept a lookout as the ship receded, and just before she lost sight of it over the horizon, she saw the answer to the riddle.

  It was a cargo ship, propelled by high-atmosphere sails. Everything about these ships, from the cargo on board to the sails that propelled them, was valuable. A ship like that would make much richer pickings than a tiny sailing boat like the Sunfish.

  ‘Will they be all right, do you think?’ Essie asked.

  ‘They’ll be fine,’ said Will confidently. ‘Those big boats are armed to the teeth. They have to be.’

  ‘So were the pirates,’ Annalie said.

  ‘Better them than us,’ Will said. ‘At least they stand a chance.’

  Once the pirates had vanished over the horizon, Annalie went to check their position. ‘We need to keep an eye out,’ she said. ‘There’s an undersea mountain not far from here. Not much to see above the surface, but plenty below it.’

  ‘Might be good fishing,’ Will said.

  ‘You never know,’ Annalie said. ‘Let’s try not to bump into it.’

  ‘Okey dokey,’ Will said.

  ‘A mountain?’ Essie said. ‘In the middle of the ocean? Really?’

  ‘The ocean’s full of mountains,�
�� Annalie said, ‘much bigger than the ones on land. You do get these rocky uplifts just sticking out of the ocean in the middle of nowhere. There’s often a lot of things living around them too—they’re like an oasis in the desert.’

  ‘You mean like sharks?’ Essie asked nervously.

  ‘Sharks, whales, all sorts of things,’ Annalie said cheerfully. ‘Don’t worry, they’re too busy eating each other to be interested in you.’

  The wind that had propelled them died away again, and the boat sailed on, more slowly now. They kept a lookout for the pirate ship, but it did not return.

  It wasn’t until the next morning that Annalie determined they were close to the undersea mountain. ‘Let’s go see what’s around,’ she suggested to Essie.

  Standing in the bow, Annalie and Essie watched in delight as they crossed paths with a school of flying fish. The fish leapt and soared, their winglike fins lifting them energetically out of the water. Essie was still gazing down into the water, looking for fish, when Annalie lifted her eyes and saw a wholly unexpected sight.

  Not far away, white water foamed over what was clearly the rocky top of the mountain. And perched on that rocky top was a boy.

  The boy

  ‘Look!’ Annalie cried.

  Essie looked up and gave a yelp. Even Will stuck his head around. All three of them stared at the boy.

  The empty ocean stretched for thousands of miles around them in every direction. The nearest land was many days’ journey away, no matter which way you went. Where had he come from?

  For a long time the boy stared back at them, without making any movement. Then, slowly, he lifted his arms up above his head. Was he signalling? Or surrendering?

  ‘Oh my goodness,’ Essie whispered. ‘I wonder how long he’s been there.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Annalie called. ‘We’re coming to get you.’

  Will dropped anchor with a clatter, and Annalie helped him reef in the sails. Then Will lowered the dinghy and rowed over to the rock. The boy seemed reluctant to move from his perch on the rock, but eventually Will managed to get the dinghy close enough that he was able to clamber in. The boy sat slumped in the dinghy as Will rowed him back; when they got to the Sunfish, he was too weak to climb up the ladder and the girls had to help him.