‘You’re completely wasting your time,’ said the Retro-spectre, not even bothering to look at Janey. ‘But then you’re good at that, aren’t you, Blonde? Wasting time. Especially . . . mine!’
Janey didn’t care. He could sound as threatening as he liked. He was just a hologram: a ghost really, and ghosts couldn’t hurt her. She had nineteen and a half minutes and she had to make every second count. Running straight through the image of Copernicus, Janey called out to Leaf, ‘Flick switches. Press alarm buttons. Do something – anything – that stops that rocket taking off.’
But Leaf seemed incapable of doing anything at all when Copernicus was around, even in Retro-spectre form, so Janey had to do everything herself. She sped along the banks of computers, tipping water into keyboards and doing whatever she could to make the launch falter.
‘It’s all pre-programmed,’ said the Retro-spectre. ‘And, of course, I’m not really here. Do you honestly think I would be stupid enough to leave something like this to chance?’
‘Something like what?’ said Janey helplessly.
The Retro-spectre turned to her with a vile sneer. ‘My planet. My chance to rule the universe. At long last.’
So it was that again. ‘You’re mad. You can’t rule the universe on your own. And you’re not taking Alfie this time,’ she said.
‘No, I won’t be taking Alfie. He will be . . . disposed of.’ Copernicus eyed her with something approaching sadness. ‘But I will not be alone.’
Janey’s heart sank. ‘Where’s Alfie? How can you kill your own son?’
‘It is regretful,’ said Copernicus with a sigh. ‘But he has shown where his loyalties lie. I have new offspring now who will stand by me.’
Janey followed his eyes to the rocket. Cages were being loaded on to it. Cages she had seen before. Filled with . . . monkeys.
‘They’re apes,’ she said. ‘Not people.’
Copernicus simply smiled, and then laughed, the horrible keening sound whistling through the Control Center. ‘They are not people. But I think you met my new son.’
And he turned around and pointed to a little boy, all fitted out in a spacesuit, climbing aboard the rocket.
‘Twelve,’ said Janey softly.
‘Oh, at least. And many more.’ Copernicus laughed again. ‘I’ll have everyone I need with me. And you, Blonde, will be long gone.’
Janey had no idea what he meant, but at that moment two doors opened opposite each other, and a pair of gorillas pounded along the pathways between the computers towards her.
‘Back to the Spylab,’ snapped Copernicus as two huge hairy hands grasped her arms, ‘and then suit up and get on the launch pad before the lab explosion. I’ll be taking the tube. You’ve only got . . .’
‘. . . ten minutes,’ whispered Janey, slithering helplessly along the tiled floor as the gorillas thrust her through a door and into a narrow, barely lit corridor.
Ten minutes until the rocket took off. Ten minutes until Coprnicus left the Earth behind. Ten minutes until he blew up the Spylab and everything in it.
When Janey was flung into the Spylab beneath Space Shuttle Plaza, her heart sank. Alfie and his mother were sitting on the same chair Jean Brown had been strapped to, but were tied up to a sink. Both were still snoring and dribbling.
There was an outraged snarl from the other side of the room, and Janey spun round, expecting to see the gorillas again but finding instead a furious G-Mamma, cocooned as if by a spider in a length of cable so that only her nostrils, eyes and hair poked out. Beside her lay Tish, mummified in exactly the same way.
Janey ran across and sliced through their bonds with her titanium blade. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Me? What are you doing here, Blonde Bombshell?’ G-Mamma shimmied her way out of the cable. ‘This place is about to blow. I thought you’d escape at least.’
‘We tried to get in touch with everyone, but nobody was answering,’ explained Tish, rubbing her arms vigorously. ‘So Abe sent us back. We ran straight into some . . . well, apes . . . and they brought us in here.’
‘This is bad.’ Janey knew just how bad. ‘We’ve got about seven minutes to get out of here.’
The three of them skidded around the room, trying to locate an escape route. Janey tried SPInamiting the sealed entry tube but could only blow a hole the size of a fist. Copernicus must have had it specially reinforced. Janey even sent a flurry of desperate emails, realizing, grimly, that the screensaver showed the soon-to-be-stolen rocket, the countdown (now at 3.20) and the numbers 28.6178N and 80.6125W.
There was no reply.
Janey ran to the Hallidays. ‘Please wake up! We need to get out of here.’
‘They’ve been sedated,’ said Tish, not very helpfully. ‘Sound asleep.’
‘Well, I think it’s time for a final rap.’ G-Mamma flexed her hands in front of her. ‘Ahem . . .
‘We’re on our way to that Spyland above
But luckily with the people we love
And when we get there we’ll find with glee
Who finally gets rid of the evil C.’
‘Let’s hear it for the Sol Spies! Whoooooo!’
Janey thought of something . . . and almost smiled. ‘G-Mamma, say that again.’
With a beam and the glimmer of a tear in her eye, G-Mamma sang out: ‘Finally my gift is appreciated! When it’s too late. Ah well . . .’
‘We’re on our way to that Spyland above.
But—’
‘That’s it,’ said Janey. ‘Roll the Halos under the entry tube and join them.’
‘No good, Blonde,’ said Tish. ‘If you’re trying to Satispy, the remote’s missing.’
‘Oh no, it’s not,’ said Janey, and she pulled it out from the sleeve of her golden SPIsuit, where she had stowed it earlier.
She only hoped that the coordinates she was keying in would take her where she thought they would.
‘. . . 78N and 80.6125W.’
‘Hang on, everyone!’
And as the blinking numbers turned to , and the Spylab juddered with a teeth-chattering explosion, Janey watched the others disintegrate into streams of cells and knew that the same thing was happening to herself as they Satispied out through the atmosphere, through a hole the size of a fist, and chased the rocket that was now hurtling through the skies almost as fast as they were.
Poor Leaf, Janey thought as she disintegrated. She just hoped he was safe, wherever he was.
space race
As Janey had desperately hoped, they materialized together again inside the rocket that Copernicus had stolen and now launched.
When Janey’s eyeballs had popped themselves back into their sockets she found that she was the last to arrive. They were in some sort of baggage hold, except that the baggage wasn’t being held. And it was rather unusual baggage.
Her feet, newly reattached, left the floor, and Janey found herself floating upside down towards the ceiling. Or was it the floor? It was all very hard to tell. G-Mamma, giving her a gleeful thumbs-up, was whipping around in somersaults and bouncing off the cylindrical walls, looking positively graceful and ballerina-like. Tish reached out to try to grab her every now and again but found it impossible to time her movements correctly, and so she too was spinning around the hold in a flurry of red. Alfie, meanwhile, having received a rather rude awakening, was holding on to his mother’s shirt.
There were other bodies floating around the hold too. Wearing an array of bewildered, excited and downright cross expressions, a dozen or more members of the ape family pirouetted around them, looking completely mystified.
‘The poor things!’ Janey dropped her voice to a whisper; she didn’t want Copernicus to hear them. ‘What is he doing with them?’
Alfie spun round to face her, and kept spinning. He slowed himself by grabbing hold of G-Mamma’s foot and glared, upside down, at Janey. ‘Never mind what he’s doing to them! What are you doing to us? Where are we?’
‘Um. On the rocket.’ Janey c
ould understand Alfie’s confusion. ‘You were all tied up in the Spylab, and I got thrown in too, and it was just about to explode, so I used the Space Center coordinates to follow Copernicus when he launched.’
Alfie looked thunderous for a moment and then suddenly his shoulders dropped. ‘Fair enough,’ he said gruffly.
Janey took this to mean, ‘Well done – good choice – all you could do in the circumstances,’ and turned her attention to the apes that were floating around the hold. ‘Let’s try and get them under control. Make them hold hands or something,’ she said.
G-Mamma led the way, grabbing hold of a passing chimpanzee. ‘Titian, get its other hand. Paw. Thing with fingers.’
As soon as Tish got hold of the other hand, the chimp seemed to relax. It let out a wild chattering that the other chimps, at least, seemed to understand, and another one latched itself on to Tish’s free hand and reached for a nearby gorilla. Janey glided around the rocket, orchestrating the hand-holding, and even persuaded Alfie to take his mother’s hand in his right one and hold a tiny spider monkey in his left. Before too long the SPIs, Spylets and apes lined the cylindrical hold like a chain of paper dolls, and the chattering subsided to the occasional whimper.
Eventually Janey dared to glance out of the porthole. The Earth blinked below them, a sequin of blue and white on the spangled counterpane of the sky. Just then the porthole filled up. They were shooting past something . . . something grey but luminous, with a pitted surface . . .
‘Crikey!’ squeaked Alfie. ‘You know what that is?’
G-Mamma leaned over to the porthole. ‘No. Way. Is that . . . ? Do you think it’s made of cheese?’
At that moment Mrs Halliday came to. ‘Trust you, Rosie. We appear to be hurtling past the moon and you’re thinking about food. I say the more important issue is: where on earth are we going?’
‘We’re not going anywhere on Earth,’ said Janey. ‘He must have finally done it.’
‘Done what?’ asked Tish.
It was hard to believe. Impossible even. But Copernicus had managed the impossible before, and Janey had long ago realized that he would stop at nothing to meet his bizarre and mind-shattering aims. ‘He’s always been obsessed with the idea that he should rule the world, the universe even. I overheard him talking in Antarctica. He was trying to steal some of the Earth’s core so that he could Supersize it with his weird machine – to create gravity.’
‘Why would he do that?’ said Alfie.
Janey heaved a great sigh. ‘So he could build his own planet.’
The others stared at her, bobbing up and down. Even the apes seemed to be gazing at her in disbelief. Janey couldn’t blame them. It did sound completely mad, but before she had time to explain herself further the porthole once again filled with light, and they all turned to look.
‘That’s the sun,’ gasped Tish. ‘It’s so golden.’
Alfie peered out of the glazed panel. ‘It can’t be the sun – we’d melt.’
‘And we wouldn’t be able to look directly at the sun, surely? You can’t even do that from the Earth,’ said Mrs Halliday.
‘Frying eyes, you’re right!’ whooped G-Mamma. ‘It’s too small to be the sun. So what is it? And . . . is that me or are we slowing down? Whoa!’
G-Mamma’s last shriek was muffled by her skirt falling over her face as the rocket slowly rotated, and the ring of people and primates found itself upside down and bouncing around, out of control. Suddenly the chain collapsed in a heap at the bottom of the hold.
‘Mum, get your foot out of my nose,’ grunted Alfie.
‘I can’t! I can’t move at all.’
G-Mamma’s faint voice buffeted through from the bottom of the pile. ‘You should worry. I’ve got a manky old monkey bottom on my head . . .’
‘Shh!’ urged Janey. ‘Hide! There’s someone coming.’
Footsteps were rattling directly overhead. They had clearly landed, somewhere in space, on the surface of the strange, golden planet. Janey listened hard as she wriggled herself down between an orang-utan and a couple of chimps, checking that the other spies were also ducking out of sight. The footsteps above were quick, light – not the step-swish-drag of an enormous squid-like creature. At least it wasn’t Copernicus.
As a hatch over their heads slid open, Janey hissed to her Ultra-gogs. ‘Periscope,’ she said, trying to avoid getting a mouthful of monkey fur.
Success! Instantly, the left lens slid across to cover the right, then a slender crooked tube, like the handle of an umbrella, rose up between the bodies in the hold. Janey had a clear view. She held her breath . . .
The figure that appeared above them, however, was not in the least bit frightening. Even though she knew that the person in the spacesuit peering down into the hold was the son and loyal supporter of her arch-enemy, Janey couldn’t help thinking that Twelve looked rather sad behind his helmet.
At once the chimpanzees started to chatter and surge. Janey panicked. What if they all moved? The spies would be seen!
But to her relief Twelve shook his head, once, twice, very firmly at a gibbering chimpanzee who was now jumping up and down ecstatically on what Janey was sure was Alfie’s head. He gave the chimp a little wave in one smooth circular movement, put his finger to roughly where his mouth would be beneath the helmet, then held up his hands.
‘Zoom!’ breathed Janey to her Ultra-gogs, and they focused in.
What was he doing? First he held up his left hand and linked his right pinky around his left one. Then he used his right index finger to point at his fourth finger on his left hand. And again. Next, holding out his left palm, he tapped two fingers of his right hand against it. Then he nodded carefully to the chimp and waggled his hand. ‘He’s saying goodbye,’ whispered Janey as he slid the hatch door shut.
‘Has it gone?’ whispered G-Mamma hysterically. ‘Because I’m about to suffocate!’
Janey sat up cautiously and G-Mamma wiggled out between two orang-utans, so hot, red and cross that she looked like one of their relatives.
Now Mrs Halliday and the Spylets poked up out of the pile of hairy bodies and the apes resumed their restless chattering.
‘It was that little boy from the beach,’ Janey explained quickly. ‘Copernicus says he’s his son. His new, loyal son.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Alfie in a flat voice. ‘He doesn’t need me any more. Tragedy. Boo hoo.’
He stopped abruptly as a fresh barrage of noise filtered down from above. There was a sound like lift doors opening, then a clattering against the side of the rocket, and the SPI team looked swiftly out of the porthole.
There were five figures making their way down a ladder, weighted down by their special space boots. The two larger figures were pushing a third, adult-sized person along in front of them. Janey recognized them instantly from the way they hunched over – it was the two gorillas from the Launch Control Center. The boy called Twelve was out in front, treading in laborious steps across to some location that Janey couldn’t see. Behind him came a taller figure, slender, more agile. But it was only when the gorillas pushed so hard that the adult figure stumbled and fell, and the slender figure spun round to see what was going on, that Janey was able to work out who they were.
One was someone that Janey had been wondering about. Leaf, his pale features flattened by the screen of his space helmet, was shouting something at the adult trying to get up off the ground.
Janey gasped. On a distant planet, way out in who-knew-where, far, far from home was the last person she expected – or wanted – to see.
‘Mum,’ she whispered, ‘what are you doing here?’
japes with apes
‘Wasn’t that—’ Alfie started.
‘Yes,’ said Janey quietly. ‘I’ve got to follow them.’
She looked around for some means of escape. Pointing her Girl-gauntleted hand at the inner wall of the rocket, she prepared to laser, cut, blast her way out of there – anything to get to her mum as quickly as possible.
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br /> ‘Blondette!’ shrieked G-Mamma. ‘What are you doing? You cut a hole in this thing and we could all die instantly.’
‘Oh.’ Janey sat back on her heels, disappointed. ‘That’s true. We don’t even know if it’s air out there.’
‘Judging by the way Copper Knickers’s new son was wearing a spacesuit, I’m thinking no,’ said Tish.
The spacesuit! That gave Janey an idea. ‘I need to get up to the hatch,’ she said, pointing above their heads to where Twelve had appeared.
‘Your Four-Fs won’t get you that far,’ Alfie pointed out. ‘And you don’t have your ASPIC with you.’
‘No,’ said Janey, ‘but we do have some super-strong people launchers.’ She looked at a pair of small gorillas and grinned back at Alfie.
‘It’s a monkey puzzle.’ G-Mamma gauged the distance to the hatch. ‘How many gorillas does it take to throw a Spylet ten metres?’
‘Answer: all of them,’ said Janey.
The SPIs and Spylets formed the first ring, the base of a tower. On their shoulders the orang-utans balanced obligingly. It appeared that nothing was too strange a request for them. Next came the chimpanzees, with the smaller monkeys looped around their arms, strengthening the joints, and finally, after a bit of coaxing and some very strange mimes, Janey persuaded the two young gorillas to scamper up the swaying human-and-ape scaffolding and position themselves at the top.
She’d seen it in Cirque du Soleil. And if ordinary people could do it, surely a Spylet with ace gadgetry could manage it. With a deep breath, Janey hauled herself up the tottering tower, slipping slightly when one of the chimpanzees suddenly moved a long arm, and trying to ignore G-Mamma huffing, ‘Slowly, slowly catchy monkey,’ every few seconds. Finally she reached the top. Hoping beyond all hope that the gorillas understood and wouldn’t decide to thump her, she gently placed their hands together and climbed on to the little launch pad they’d created.
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