Jane Blonde: Spylet on Ice

by Jill Marshall

  ‘Ah, what . . . what do I do?’ she gasped, staring wildly above and below her. The creature was slipping, unable to hang on . . .

  A harsh, grating laugh echoed from the platform opposite her, metres away across the tunnel. ‘Do? Well, I would have thought even you could work that out, Blonde. Getting in my way again, are you? Not this time, dear girl. This time,’ he said, wheezing with arrogant laughter, ‘you die!’

  ‘No!’ screamed Janey, as one of the great prawn’s legs lost its grip on the wall and they both slipped further down the tunnel. ‘Help me!’

  But the misshapen sneer on Copernicus’s face was so evil that Janey knew he would have no sympathy. He might not look such a monster as the last time she had seen him, but he still acted like one. Suddenly he gave a short laugh, and just as the creature lost another foothold and Janey swung out helplessly, crashing back against the tunnel wall, Copernicus turned around and headed out through the tunnel behind the platform.

  He can get up his tunnel, thought Janey despairingly. Hers was blocked by the prawn-like creature that was currently the only thing between her and certain death. But the thought of Copernicus’s tunnel sparked off an idea. She’d seen no sign of SPILL-Drills or SPIFFInGs, yet all the rubble tunnels would be at too steep an incline to simply walk up. ‘He must have transport!’ she gasped, trying desperately to get a better grip on the creature’s leg with her left hand. She managed to take hold. Lifting the fabric of the SPIFFInG up out of the way, Janey pointed her free hand directly at the platform opposite, squeezed her middle finger with her thumb, and out came the heat-seeking missile with its tiny wire behind it.

  Unfortunately the first heat it found was one of the creatures. Janey turned her head as it exploded, then she tugged on the line. It had caught in the metal grid of the platform. ‘Now or never,’ she said, and she let go of the creature’s leg. Janey closed her eyes tight, not knowing if she was going to drop straight down into the lava, but the line held, and she felt herself swinging across the tunnel towards the exit Copernicus had just used.

  ‘Missed.’

  She was too low for the platform even though she was now on the right side of the tunnel, so Janey decided to use the only transport available to her, and she climbed on to the back of a passing mutant prawn. Unable to shake her off, it lumbered on and up to the platform, where she leaped off, already unwrapping her SuSPInder from her waist. She fed it out as quickly as she could then coiled it like a rope and flung it up the tunnel.

  ‘Please work, please work, please work . . .’ she prayed as the belt whistled ahead of her. And suddenly she knew it had. There was a clunk, the SuSPInder pulled taut, and Janey clung on for dear life as Copernicus’s transporter yanked her towards the surface.

  sons and saviours

  From the angle Janey was at, she could see she was hanging beneath a compact SPIral staircase. As it flew up the angled shaft, Janey managed to edge her way up the SuSPInder, getting closer and closer to the capsule itself. When she was within a few metres of it, she fumbled with her free hand and turned up her SPI-Pod to hear what was going on inside. And her blood ran cold.

  ‘Because it’s magnetic,’ Copernicus was saying, his voice almost gentle. ‘It’s what gives us gravity, and that’s what I need.’

  ‘What for?’ whispered a hoarse voice.

  ‘I’ve told you. It’s for you, for us.’ Now Copernicus sounded positively smug. ‘Of course, the Earth will tip on its axis and be completely destroyed, but that’s a small price to pay.’

  ‘Pay for what?’ mumbled the other voice so quietly that Janey could only just make out the words.

  Copernicus sighed. ‘I can see we’ll have to adjust your wipe. When the time is right, my dear. When the time is right.’

  The other voice spoke again, confused. ‘What time?’

  ‘Oh, go back to sleep,’ snapped Copernicus.

  ‘X-ray,’ whispered Janey to her Ultra-gogs.

  They complied immediately. From Janey’s position underneath the transporter she could see two pairs of feet and the bottom of two pairs of trousers. One set of feet was long and narrow, encased in rigid shiny leather. Janey had seen those before. ‘Copernicus,’ she muttered.

  But then she turned her attention to the other pair of shoes – chunky trainers with a small emblem on the bottom. ‘Zoom,’ she told her Ultra-gogs. The logo was clear . . . ‘FF,’ read Janey. Her breath caught in her throat. FF stood for Fleet-feet. She was looking at the shoes of a Spylet. It was Alfie.

  Just then, Janey felt the transporter slowing. She looked around; they were travelling through ice again as she had at the beginning of her SPILL-Drill journey (and how long ago that seemed), so they must be close to the surface. She held on as tightly as she could as the spiralling stopped and waited to hear Copernicus and Alfie step out of the transporter. She was dangling rather precariously underneath: one wrong move and she could slip back down the shaft as if it was an enormous slide at a water park, out into the vertical tunnel again and end up fried at the bottom along with the unfortunate prawns. Wrapping the SuSPInder around her wrist, Janey edged up the tube until her head bumped the bottom of the capsule. After some delicate sawing with the titanium blade from her Girl-gauntlet, she had created a hole in the floor just big enough to climb through. She swung her legs over her head and through the gap, and pushed herself to her feet inside the capsule.

  At long last Janey felt she was able to breathe freely again. She wriggled her way out of the SPIFFInG and posted it back through the hole in the floor. She heard it whoosh down the entry tube towards the tunnel. If Copernicus did ever find it, he would assume she had died as he’d intended. After carefully replacing the circle of metal in the floor to avoid suspicion, Janey listened at the capsule door before pressing the button to open it.

  She stepped out into a terrifying labyrinth. It was very much like her father’s, but as she’d seen in Copernicus’s Spylab on a previous mission, his preferred colour was black. Obsidian walls winked at her, the only illumination coming from a sprinkle of tiny star-like lights on the ceiling. The atmosphere was thick with fear. Dread. Horror. Janey adjusted her Ultra-gogs to the night-vision setting and shuffled forward. Through the doorways around her she could hear odd snufflings and screeches, and the plink-plop of dripping icicles. ‘That thing’s going to sink into the floor again,’ she heard someone complaining. ‘Can’t we stop it doing that?’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ replied a companion. ‘That’s exactly what he wants it for. Gives me the creeps.’

  ‘What, the worm or the big C?’ The first voice sniggered, and Janey recalled where she had heard that expression before – in Scotland, at the swimming pool.

  ‘Don’t you let him hear you saying that,’ warned the companion, ‘or you’ll be following old wormy here down that infernal tunnel.’

  ‘Right enough,’ said the first voice thoughtfully.

  Janey moved on until she heard other voices ahead, behind a closed door. She squatted down and pressed her ear against it, easily identifying Copernicus’s nasal tones as they reverberated around the room. ‘X-ray,’ she said under her breath, and at once she could see beyond the door.

  The Spylab room housed all the usual spy gadgetry, Wowers and so on, but to her surprise one whole wall was taken up with a glass panel behind which shifted millions of gallons of jet-black water. On another wall was a plasma screen showing family pictures of happier days – there was Alfie as a little boy, thick-haired and wise even as a toddler; Maisie Halliday before her teeth had been sharpened into points by the Crystal-Clarification Process; Copernicus himself, bending over to help Alfie along on his tiny tricycle, his face angled so that the camera only caught one side, the handsome side with its weight of grey hair and intense, intelligent eyes.

  ‘You’ll stay here until the planning’s completed,’ Copernicus was saying to Alfie, who was slumped against the counter. ‘They won’t miss you anyway, with the Halo-clone there. Keep you out of harm’s way wh
ile we sort out that SPI group – and don’t, whatever you do, stumble into the Supersizer. A giant Alfie would give the whole game away.’

  So that was why Alfie had been looking grey when she’d seen him back at her father’s Spylab. It wasn’t him at all – it was a clone!

  ‘Spy group?’ Alfie himself was completely innocent – clueless, even. Copernicus must have thoroughly brain-wiped him.

  Copernicus looked closely at his son. ‘Maybe you should have a lie-down.’

  He was walking towards the door. Janey lunged backwards, flat against the wall, just as the black-ice door slid open and Copernicus strode through it, guiding Alfie by the shoulder.

  Janey watched, trying to keep her breathing silent, as they approached an almost invisible ice-door further along the corridor. Copernicus held Alfie’s left hand up to a small panel to the side, and the door slid open. He gave his son a not-so-gentle shove. ‘Go on, sleep it off. We’ll talk when you’ve woken up. I’m going to see my . . . pets.’ And to Janey’s relief he strode away in the direction of the ice-worm stables she had passed earlier.

  She ran into the Spylab. ‘Come on, come on, there must be one here,’ she said, scurrying from one table to the next. ‘G-Mamma!’ she said urgently into her SPIV. ‘G-Mamma, where are you?’

  ‘Oh, it’s you, didgeridoo,’ said the SPI:KE, looming upside down in the SPIV.

  ‘You’re in Australia again then?’ said Janey.

  ‘What if I am?’ G-Mamma’s inverted head looked like a potato with eyes.

  ‘Never mind now,’ said Janey quickly. ‘I need the coordinates for Dad’s South Pole Spylab.’

  ‘Easy. S1,’ said G-Mamma. ‘Why . . . ?’

  ‘Over and out.’ Janey dropped the SPIV. There was the sharp click of footsteps in the corridor outside; if she wasn’t quick she’d be caught in Copernicus’s Spylab by the big C himself. Then suddenly she found what she was looking for. With a split second to spare, Janey pressed the Satispy remote, now programmed for S1, and dropped the control as soon as her hands started to disintegrate. The last of her cells disappeared as the footsteps reached the door and she slipped unseen into the atmosphere.

  Moments later she reassembled in a pleasantly white Spylab. Trouble, seeming much more himself, ran across and leaped into her arms. Janey gave him a squeeze. ‘Hello, Twubs. It’s nice to see a normal animal, I can tell you.’

  ‘And is it nice to see me too?’ said a deep voice. ‘It’s certainly a relief to see you.’

  Her father was sitting at one of his benches, nursing a cup of coffee and zooming in to some images on the ice-plasma screen. ‘You went off without saying goodbye.’

  Janey winced. It sounded as though she was in trouble. Again. ‘Dad, I know I shouldn’t have gone, but you’ve always said I’m sort of instinctive, and I just had to do it. And Tish was with me – sort of.’

  At that moment Tish walked into the room. ‘I’m sorry, sir, I still haven’t . . . oh, there you are!’

  ‘Tish came and told me your plan when Trouble found his way out to her. He’d obviously come to fetch you,’ said her father. He was trying to sound stern, but Janey was sure she could see the hint of a smile in his brown eyes.

  ‘I did tell him to do that. Thanks, Tish.’

  The red-haired girl shrugged. ‘I told him it was all your idea, so if we’ve been naughty, you’re the one who gets sent home.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Janey quietly. She really hoped it wouldn’t come to that as she had some very important news to pass on. ‘Dad, could I have a word?’

  Her father nodded to Tish, who sighed and left the room. Then he turned to Janey. ‘What have you found out?’

  Trying hard not to gabble, Janey said, ‘Copernicus is building a tunnel from the Antarctic to the centre of the Earth. He’s nearly finished it, and when he does he’s planning to tip the world on its axis and that will destroy the whole planet. He’s got all these freaky creatures working for him, tunnelling – a massive maggoty ice-worm and these huge prawns.’

  ‘Volcanic shrimps,’ said her father, nodding. ‘Mutated, I expect. He must have some multiplying device to make small creatures gigantic.’

  ‘He mentioned it! A Supersizer or something. These prawns are huge, and really disgusting,’ said Janey. ‘But Dad, here’s the scariest thing: he’s got Alfie. The one here is a clone.’

  Her father turned white and he closed his eyes in horror. ‘Of course,’ he said under his breath. ‘No wonder the killer’s been able to get in here – the clone must have been letting them in. I’ll get the Alfie-clone rounded up somewhere safe. And I’d better check the others too.’

  ‘That’s not the worst of it, Dad.’ Janey paused, unsure how to tell her father what she’d overheard. ‘He’s brain-wiped him so Alfie doesn’t know what he’s doing, and he’s obviously planning somewhere for them both to escape to when he . . . destroys the world.’

  ‘The madness has seized him completely.’ Abe put his head in his hands. ‘We have to find him and destroy him before he kills us all. I’ll go immediately, if you give me the location.’

  ‘But if he sees you he’ll kill you, or his assassins will. And he’ll kill all the rest of us, if you’re not here to fight for us.’

  ‘What choice do I have?’

  Janey watched as her father stood up and started gathering equipment. A plan had just occurred to her – a slightly mad plan, and a risky one, but one that meant she could get to Copernicus, alone, without anyone being killed. If she could destroy him once and for all, they could accomplish everything they needed, all at once.

  ‘There is another way,’ she said quietly.

  Her father looked at her, chewing his lip, then said, ‘I’m listening.’

  Janey could hardly believe what she was about to say. Only three people, to her knowledge, had ever done what she was about to suggest, and they were all superSPIs. But it was the only way.

  She lifted her chin. ‘Dad,’ she said, ‘I want you to Crystal-Clarify me.’

  clarification

  To begin with, her father refused outright. ‘You know what a risk it is. I’d have to inject your cells to make them traceable, freeze you solid and then reform you in another body. A million different things could go wrong.’

  ‘You’ve done it,’ said Janey. ‘You’ve been a swimming pool, a frozen swan and now this whole new person, and you’re still OK.’

  Abe rubbed his chin. ‘That’s a good point. I could do it again this time.’

  ‘No!’ Janey knew her father had been weakened by too many Clarifications and super-long Satispy trips. ‘You’re too . . . big,’ she said, ‘and too important to the rest of the team – to the whole of SPI! It makes more sense for me to do it.’

  ‘If something went wrong, I could never forgive myself, Janey. And how would we explain it to your mother?’

  Janey gulped a little as G-Mamma’s voice suddenly boomed out into the room. ‘Righty almighty: your mum thinks you’re asleep in your jim-jams, Blonde, and yet you’ve already been right about those birdy SPIsuits and goodness knows what else.’

  ‘Was I?

  ‘Tested positive,’ confirmed G-Mamma. ‘The writing on the placards was done by one of the birds, and it’s more than likely to be the same stuff you saw at Sol’s Lols.’

  ‘So I have to go!’ pleaded Janey.

  ‘And what will we tell your mother?’ said G-Mamma. ‘“Hi, Clean Jean. Your daughter’s been shot in the Arctic”?’

  ‘Well, I—’ started Abe, but Janey interrupted him.

  ‘Antarctic,’ she corrected.

  ‘Whatever. Shot somewhere cold.’

  ‘G-Mamma,’ said Abe to the video image of G-Mamma on the ice-plasma, pink-cheeked and fanning herself with a hand laden with opal rings and bracelets, ‘you’re Janey’s SPI:KE – if you say no, then . . .’

  Suddenly Janey felt cross. Her father was doubting her ability to cope all over again, her SPI:KE was so busy in Australia these days that she did
n’t really have a right to an opinion but was definitely about to give one, and even Tish was hovering outside the door ready to stick her oar in.

  ‘Look, all of you,’ she said loudly, ‘I’m the only one qualified to do this. I know Alfie best, so I won’t give anything away by doing something . . . un-Alfie-ish. He might even think I’m the clone. I know my way around Copernicus’s labyrinth and Dad’s here to make sure it’s the best Crystal Clarification ever. It makes sense that I should do this, and I don’t care what any of you say.’ Janey glared around the room. ‘Sorry, but that’s what I think,’ she mumbled.

  G-Mamma’s face broke into a broad grin. ‘Well, girly-girl, all I can say is that old Copper Knickers had better watch out. Oh, and this,’ she added, shouting, ‘Didgeridoo, Berty-Bert-Bert!’

  An aggrieved voice in the background muttered, ‘You crazy Sheila,’ then a deep sonorous rumbling started up from somewhere behind G-Mamma. She bopped her head in time, waving her arms above her head.

  ‘She’s a spylet on ice, and a spylet twice –

  Old Copper’s gonna find his Knickers knot-ted.

  She’s a spylet true, Crystal-Clarified too,

  And she’s gonna end whatever Knickers plot-ted.

  Oh yeah . . . oh yeah . . .

  Give it up . . . give it up . . .’

  ‘Um, that’s great, G-Mamma,’ said Abe as the SPI:KE shimmied off the screen. ‘You carry on, and we’ll start the process.’

  ‘Okey-doke, Bossman! Take care, Blonde,’ she yelled, and the screen went blank.

  For a long moment her father stared at Janey, holding her hands. ‘Are you absolutely sure?’

  ‘My instincts tell me it’s right.’

  ‘Then we have to get on with it.’ Abe hugged her fiercely for a moment, then led her through to a small surgical-looking laboratory behind one of the ice-walls. He looked carefully left and right before closing the door. ‘Nobody must know about this,’ he said. ‘For your safety, and to make sure the process remains a secret.’