by Steve Cole
“That’s right,” Wimvis replied. “I’m sorry I had to come here, but I wrote thirty emails and got no reply. I must have called you fifty times too, but only ever got your stupid robot answering machine.”
“Impossible,” snapped Rennia. “I’ve never heard of you until today – but I’ve certainly seen the results of your sabotage!”
“I haven’t done anything,” growled Wimvis. “I only came here at all because of the Metal-Master.”
Iggy frowned. “The who?” “I’ve never met him, but he’s shown himself to be a good friend.” Wimvis pulled a thick envelope from his pocket and passed it to Teggs. “Two weeks ago I was sent this in the space post.”
Teggs pulled out a letter:
“Dear Iguanodon Builders’ Group,” he read aloud. “Be warned, your days are numbered. When Mekta City is finished, its robotic builders will come to Iguanos, ‘accidentally on purpose’ blow up all the builders’ yards and take your jobs for themselves. Get over to Mekta double-quick and sort them out! Love, Metal-Master. PS Hope you’re keeping well.”
“What rubbish!” Rennia cried. “My robots are extremely clever, but they cannot think for themselves. This so-called Metal-Master doesn’t know what he is talking about.”
“He knows that robots aren’t to be trusted,” Wimvis shot back. “Last week he sent me secret files from your office that prove all the things he told me. They’re in that envelope too – look!”
Teggs emptied the envelope onto the glass tabletop. Sure enough proposals for demolishing builders’ yards all over the planet, printed on strange, silvery paper, fluttered out.
Arx studied the paper keenly. “This is unusual. I wonder where it’s from?”
Rennia snatched it from his hand. “It’s my new, top-secret robotic paper – you simply speak the words and it prints them for you.” She scowled at Wimvis. “And since I own the only supply in existence, you must have stolen it – just as you’ve stolen so many of my robots – and made up this whole silly Metal-Master story in case you got caught!”
“I haven’t stolen anything!” Wimvis retorted. “My mates and I came here to stop your robots from ruining us.”
“Poppycock!” Rennia rose angrily. “What have you done with the robots you pinched? How did you get past my security defences?”
“We didn’t even notice any stupid defences!” Wimvis protested. “Our spaceships got us straight here, no sweat.”
“Spaceships?” Iggy raised an eyebrow. “We only saw one ship at the spaceport.”
“Um . . .” Wimvis looked a bit shifty. “My friends travelled in that old crate. I came here ahead of them in a small shuttle that I parked in the wastelands – so if we ran into robot trouble, one of us could escape and get help.” He shrugged. “It was Metal-Master’s idea. He even told me where I could hire a cheap spaceship.”
“If he was that keen to help,” said Iggy, “how come he didn’t come here to help you sort out the robots?”
“Because there’s no such person,” Rennia insisted, “and I’ll prove it.” She crossed to the far wall. “Mekta’s ultra-clever computers know just about everything. I’ll ask if they’ve ever heard of this Metal-Master . . . and get them to work out how these builders beat our security.”
Arx stood beside Rennia as she pressed a button. With a bleep a large computer screen glowed into life.
At the same time the lift doors opened and a chunky drinks machine trundled into the office. “How may I serve you?” the machine asked.
“I didn’t order drinks,” said Rennia. “Go away.”
But the machine ignored her. It rolled closer. “I have brought you some swamp tea,” it said in a strange, wobbly voice – and, with the power of a firefighter’s hose, it blasted a massive jet of steaming hot liquid straight at Rennia and Arx!
Chapter Four
DRINKS OF DESTRUCTION
“Get down, Rennia!” cried Arx, pulling her to the floor. The scalding swamp tea missed them and splashed all over the bank of computers instead. There was a bang and a shower of sparks as the systems blew a fuse.
“Noooooooooo!” wailed Rennia. “My precious computers!”
The drinks machine turned and started rattling towards Teggs. “I have brought you some fizzy potato juice,” it warbled – and started shooting out cans like mini-missiles!
“Take cover, everyone!” yelled Teggs, ducking and swiping cans away with his tail, as Gipsy, Iggy and Wimvis dived under the table.
“How do we stop that thing?” cried Gipsy.
“I’ve got an idea.” Iggy started scooping up fallen cans as they rolled under the table. “If swamp tea zapped those computers, maybe fizzy drinks will deal with a deadly drinks dispenser!”
“Good thinking!” cried Teggs, catching one of the cans. He shook it up, opened the ring-pull and sprayed sticky juice over the menacing machine. Dodging the tin missiles, Gipsy and Iggy did the same, emptying can after can of foaming juice into its casing, until—
Ker-BLAMMMMM! The drinks machine blew apart!
Teggs covered his head as robotic bits rained down on him. Then he smiled at his friends. “Good work, guys!”
Arx helped up Rennia. “Thank you,” she said shakily. “I don’t understand what happened.”
“I do!” said Wimvis wriggling out from under the table. “Your robots are turning bad!”
“Impossible,” Rennia insisted. “I told you – my machines can’t think for themselves. They are controlled by the Main Computer, and they never go wrong.”
“Not by themselves, maybe.” Iggy was poking about in the steaming wreck of the drinks dispenser. “But I think this one was made to malfunction.” He pulled out a screwdriver from inside the casing. “Look! This was jammed inside its circuits.”
“There’s writing on the side . . .” Gipsy gasped. “It’s your name, Wimvis!”
“What?” Wimvis looked shocked. “But . . . that’s my best screwdriver. What’s it doing in that robot?”
Iggy looked sadly at his brother. “You tell us!”
“How could I have put it there?” Wimvis protested. “I’ve been here with you!”
“Today, maybe,” said Rennia. “But you’ve already proved that your shuttle can land on Mekta without being detected. I bet you’ve been here loads of times.”
Arx turned to the smoking control panels and sighed. “But now we can’t ask the Main Computer to check for any faults in the security systems and find out for sure.”
Rennia turned to Teggs. “Captain, I must ask you to arrest this Wimvis and his friends. They’ve tried to stop me finishing Mekta City because they know my machines are better builders than they are – end of story!”
Iggy looked at his brother sadly. “Is it true, Wim?”
Wimvis sighed. Then suddenly he shoved Iggy into the debris of the drinks machine and sprinted for the lift doors. “Sorry, Ig, but no one’s locking me up. I’m off!”
“No, you don’t,” Teggs warned the builder, stretching out his tail to block his path. Wimvis jumped over it but landed in a puddle of potato juice. With a yell of alarm, he slipped over, crashed into the wall then lay still.
Gipsy and Iggy rushed over to check on him. “He’s bumped his head,” Gipsy reported. “I think he’ll be OK, but we shouldn’t move him far until he wakes up.”
“I want these intruders off this moon at once!” Rennia insisted.
Teggs sighed. “I’ll tell the dimorphodon to fly Wimvis’s friends back to Iguanos and hand them over to the police. But I’d like Wimvis to remain here until he’s woken up.”
“Very well,” Rennia grumbled. “One of my robots will lock him up in the basement for now.”
“I’ll go with him,” said Iggy sadly. “I don’t want him to wake up in a strange place all alone.” He scowled. “But I’d like to know more about this trouble-stirring Metal-Master. A lot more!”
“We’ll find out, Ig,” Teggs promised him. “And since your brother will be sound asleep for a bit, I�
�d like to find his spaceship and check out its flight computer – to see if he really has travelled to Mekta before.”
“I’ll come with you, Captain,” offered Gipsy.
“And I’ll help Rennia repair the Main Computer,” said Arx.
“How sweet.” Rennia smiled. “I’m sure I can make good use of you.”
“Then it sounds like we have some plans . . .” Teggs pressed the lift’s call button. “Let’s put them into action!”
Teggs and Gipsy rode hover-mats to the east side of the city. It was starting to get dark. A low rumbling sound echoed through the empty city – the sound of the Sauropod’s engines as Sprite, the dimorphodon’s team leader, took off for Iguanos.
Gipsy watched the ship disappear into the sky. Hurry back, she thought.
Soon the metal mats delivered Teggs and Gipsy to the city’s edge. Behind them loomed towers and skyscrapers, while ahead of them stretched a brown, dusty wasteland.
“I read that this moon was once a dumping ground,” said Gipsy. “Lots of local planets shipped their unwanted dung here.” She sniffed the air. “We’d better clean our feet when we get back!”
“Speaking of feet . . .” Teggs pointed to marks in the ground. “Those look like iguanodon tracks. Wimvis must have made them. Let’s follow the trail!”
Before he could bound away, Gipsy put a hoof on his arm. “Do you really think Iggy’s brother made that drinks machine go wrong, Captain?”
“It looks that way,” said Teggs sadly. “But it’s odd. Wimvis is a builder, not a mechanic like Iggy. How would he know how to re-program a drinks machine?”
Gipsy considered. “Perhaps this mysterious Metal-Master told him how to do it?”
“I suppose he must have done,” Teggs agreed. “Because if Wimvis didn’t leave his screwdriver in that robot . . . who did?”
Warily, hand in hoof, the two astrosaurs followed the footprints into the gloom of the dusty, smelly wilderness . . .
Chapter Five
SHIP OF SHOCKS
In the Central Skyscraper, Arx watched admiringly as Rennia made repairs to the Main Computer with a laser probe and a pair of pliers.
“So, how close are you to finishing Mekta City?” he asked.
“Very close,” said Rennia. “I would have opened to the public by now if so many of my robots hadn’t disappeared.” She sighed. “Actually, that’s not quite true. There’s one small problem that I haven’t been able to solve.”
“Oh?” said Arx.
“It’s a question of power.” Rennia put down her tools. “At the moment, the Main Computer can control three-quarters of the city’s automatic systems all at once.”
Arx raised his eyebrows. “You mean all the self-cleaning houses and intelligent toilets and things?”
“Right – not to mention the push-button beds, the automatic chairs and the helpful robots.” Rennia sighed. “But before I can charge people money to live here, the Main Computer must be able to control everything at once. If there are times when some things don’t work, my customers will get angry and ask for their money back. And then my reputation will be ruined.” Rennia looked miserably at Arx. “I just can’t find a way to feed extra power to the computer’s circuits.”
“There, there,” said Arx kindly. “You’ve been very distracted by this nasty business with the robot raiders. Perhaps I could help?”
“That’s sweet of you,” said Rennia. “But I really don’t think anyone can solve this particular problem.”
“Well . . .” Arx cleared his throat. “Have you thought of bypassing the nexus clusters and the automatic gain-flux interface by re-routing the main autovents?”
Rennia blinked. “Has anyone?”
“They have now!” Arx grinned. “I’ll give it a go.”
The smart triceratops got to work. And Rennia watched him with a great deal of interest . . .
“At last,” puffed Teggs, as he and Gipsy reached the top of an extra-smelly hill. “There it is – Wimvis’s shuttle!”
Night had fallen as they’d followed the builder’s tracks. But the world of Iguanos, hanging distantly in the sky like a large green jewel, had lit their way. The small, battered spaceship gleamed faintly at the bottom of a valley, and the two astrosaurs slithered down the mucky slope to reach it.
Gipsy tried the doors and pulled a face. “Locked.”
Teggs walloped the doors with his tail, smashing them down. He grinned at Gipsy. “Unlocked!”
Cautiously they went inside the shuttle. A short passageway led to a shadowy control room.
“The light switch should be around here somewhere,” Gipsy muttered, feeling about the wall. “Aha!”
Bright lights snapped on – and the astrosaurs gasped.
Piled up in the back of the control room were a dozen massive robots! From the looks of the hammers, drills and saws built into their blocky bodies these were Rennia’s heavy-duty construction workers.
Gipsy frowned. “Then Wimvis really has been raiding Mekta for its robots!”
“It certainly looks that way.” Teggs inspected the pile. “They’re all stamped ‘Property of Mekta City’. And the dirt on their tools is still wet – they haven’t been here long.”
Gipsy shook her head. “Iggy will be so upset . . .”
“Hang on!” cried Teggs. “We’ve only been following one set of iguanodon tracks all the way here, right?”
“Of course,” said Gipsy.
“Well,” Teggs went on, “if Wimvis landed, left the ship, stole all these robots and came back again, then why aren’t there more tracks outside?”
“That’s a good question,” said Gipsy slowly. “The tracks we followed must have been left by Wimvis as he walked away from the ship into Mekta City. So, how did the robots get in here?”
“I don’t know,” Teggs admitted. “But it reminds me of another good question Rennia posed earlier – how did Wimvis get past Mekta’s security systems?”
“The answer to that one might be in the ship’s computer records,” said Gipsy, her hooves flicking expertly over the controls. “Hmm. According to the log, this is the first time Wimvis has travelled to Mekta – and he wasn’t asked for any pass codes at all. It’s as if the security systems simply didn’t notice his ship.” She frowned. “I guess they didn’t notice the iguanodon ship at the spaceport either. But how come? Rennia creates the cleverest computers in the cosmos. It’s impossible!”
“As impossible as stolen robots floating in here by themselves, and a builder re-programming a runaway drinks dispenser when he never left our sight,” Teggs declared. “Someone wants us to think Wimvis is the one responsible for the robot raids . . .”
Gipsy nodded, her head-crest turning blue with alarm. “And the real culprit is still at large!”
Back at the Central Skyscraper, Iggy was lying down in his brother’s basement cell – an unused storeroom, empty besides a few bits of furniture and a portable toilet. The two of them had been locked inside by a tough security-bot. Wimvis was sleeping soundly on the couch. He hadn’t stirred.
Iggy sighed. Wimvis had got into plenty of scrapes as a young iguanodon growing up, but nothing as big as this. What would their dad say when he found out . . .?
The troubled astrosaur was still lost in thought when he became aware of a distant clanking sound. BANG! . . . CLANG! . . . it seemed to be coming from somewhere deep below him. And yet they were already down in the basement – so what could be making such a noise?
Iggy jumped as the cell door suddenly slid open – to reveal a smiling robo-waiter with a drink on a tray. “I have brought you some avocado juice, sir,” it said.
“I didn’t ask for any.” Iggy shrugged and took the drink. “But thanks.”
“Have a nice day!” said the robot, and the door slid shut again.
Iggy sipped his juice and turned up his nose. It tasted a bit funny and made him feel very tired. He sat down beside his brother on the couch, then slipped slowly onto the floor.
As Iggy’s eyes flickered shut and he dozed off, a sinister hum of power started up.
It was coming from the portable toilet!
Slowly, menacingly, the high-tech loo began gliding towards him . . .
Chapter Six
TOILET OF TERROR
Whirrrrrrr . . . the toilet trundled closer and closer to the snoozing Iggy. Its lid swung wide open as it approached . . .
And then it rolled straight past him. It was heading towards Wimvis! As the auto-toilet neared the couch, it flushed itself with a hungry, gurgling, rushing sound – and started sucking Wimvis inside!
“What’s . . . happening?” Iggy stirred at the sound, trying to open his sleepy eyes. Why was he feeling so groggy? Then he remembered the robot with the funny-tasting avocado juice he hadn’t asked for. Perhaps someone had put something in it to make him sleep . . .
As the thirsty, bubbling, squelching noise grew louder, Iggy willed his eyes to open – and gasped in horror.
Wimvis was disappearing down the toilet! He was in it up to his waist already and his top half would surely follow, unless . . .
“Let go of him!” Iggy shouted, staggering to his feet. He tried to pull Wimvis out, straining his scaly muscles to their limit. But his brother was stuck tight.
In frustration, Iggy kicked the steel basin of the aggressive loo, but only managed to stub his toe. “Ouch!”
The sudden sharp pain woke him properly, and he remembered he had an astro-wrench in his belt. Before the hungry auto-toilet could finish its work, Iggy whipped out the wrench and used it to yank off the robot’s backplate, exposing its flush motors. Then he jammed the astro-wrench into the workings . . .
BANG! Ker-SPLUHH! As the toilet started to smoke and spark, it spat out Wimvis and turned on Iggy instead! It slammed down its lid on his wrist and squirted disinfectant in all directions. But its power was fading fast now that its motors were messed up. Soon, the toilet stood quiet and still, gently steaming.