“What do the other ones do?” asked Charlie. “Do they make cappuccino?”
I turned to him and scowled. “Just try and be a bit nicer, OK? He might actually be telling the truth.”
“Look,” said Vantresillion. He spun round and a screen appeared on the wall. In the centre of the screen was a planet. Sort of like Saturn, with rings around it and three moons. “Zip Seven,” said Vantresillion. “We’ve got a Weff-Beam there too.” He pressed the yellow button. There was a loud bang and the planet erupted in a vast ball of fire.
“Holy cow!” said Charlie.
The planet was gone. Just a load of smoking rocks and three little moons drifting sadly off into space.
“My God,” I said. “Were there, like, people on that planet?”
“Yes,” said Vantresillion. “But they looked like squirrels and they were stupid and I didn’t like them very much.” He took two brass wristbands from his desk and threw them to us. “Put these on.”
We put them on. He pressed a third button and they snapped tight.
“Ouch!” said Charlie.
I tried to get mine off but it had shrunk and there was no way I could slip it over my hand.
“You go down on the Weff-Beam,” said Vantresillion. “You talk to whichever moron is in charge down there and you tell them we want the Watchers back.”
“But…” said Charlie. I could hear the wheels spinning in his brain. “They’re not going to believe us. “The Earth is going to be blown up.” It doesn’t sound very convincing, does it?”
“Then you must be persuasive,” said Vantresillion. “Snogroid!”
A door opened and a spider scuttled in. Vantresillion chucked the spider another wristband. “Put this on.”
The spider put it on and we heard it snap tight. “Delightful bangle,” it said. “And most snug.”
Vantresillion turned back to us. “You will have five minutes. Then you call me using the wristbands. If you have not solved the problem, then this happens to Charles.” He pressed the green button. There was another bang and a hideous scream. The spider erupted in flames and the room was filled with brown smoke and the smell of burning hair. When the smoke cleared there was a ring of black ash on the floor and a buckled wristband, still glowing slightly from the heat.
“That should help change their minds,” said Vantresillion. “Five more minutes and I will do the same to James. After that I will just lose patience and press the red button. Then I will press the last button and get a nice cappuccino.” He thought this was very funny and laughed for a long time. “Now. Follow me.”
16
The big knobbly stick
Vantresillion strode down the corridor with us jogging behind him. He was carrying the button box and we were wearing the wristbands so there was no point in running away.
“Hey,” said Charlie. “Look on the bright side. We’re going home.”
“Except we’ll only be there for five minutes, then we’ll be dead.”
“No,” said Charlie. “Then I’ll be dead. You get another five minutes.”
“Brilliant. That makes me feel a lot better.”
“You never know,” said Charlie. “Brigadier-General Doo-Dah might actually believe us.”
“No one ever believes us,” I said. “About anything.”
“In here,” said Vantresillion. “Snekkit.”
A door opened in the wall and we found ourselves in the large white hangar where I’d first arrived. The white ceiling twenty metres over our heads. The high windows with the starscape outside. Just as before, Pearce, Kidd and Hepplewhite were sitting at the long table in their violet robes.
“Tidnol,” said Vantresillion. “Basky dark.”
“Crispen hooter mont,” said Mrs Pearce, standing up. She walked over to us. “Well, well, well. You turn out to be useful after all. Now that is a surprise.”
“Always willing to help,” said Charlie.
“Get into the Weff-Beam unit,” said Vantresillion. “And remember. Five minutes. Charles is dead. Ten minutes. James is dead. Then I get bored very, very quickly.”
He shoved us towards the tubular cubby hole. “Inside. Both of you.”
“It’s going to be a bit of a squash,” said Charlie.
“Getting squashed is the least of your problems,” said Vantresillion.
I stepped inside. Charlie stepped in beside me. Vantresillion pushed. Then he pushed a bit harder. Then he said, “Snekkit,” and the curved door slid shut behind us.
“Fasten seatbelts,” said Charlie, his face pressed against my ear. “Cabin doors to automatic.”
“So what’s the plan?” I asked.
“Absolutely no idea,” said Charlie. “If we’re really lucky, a paratrooper might kill us with a bazooka as soon as we come out of the ground.”
Then we heard the boom! and it was like being hit in the head with a cricket bat. I covered my ears with my hands and every atom in my body started vibrating. My clothes were soaked in sweat and I felt horribly seasick. Charlie must have felt seasick too, because he was actually sick down my back and it smelled really bad.
The atoms in my body stopped vibrating and the nausea started to fade. Charlie said, “Sorry about that,” and the word ZARVOIT flashed across the little screen beside my head. There was a short bing-bong like a doorbell, the roof of the tube slid back and we began to rise upwards.
Sunlight. I could see actual sunlight. We rose a little further and I could see the tops of the mountains. And grass. Real grass.
And then I saw a crazed figure standing above us, with matted hair and mad, staring eyes and a huge knobbly stick in its hands. It yelled like Tarzan of the Apes and swung the stick and whacked Charlie. He screamed and rolled sideways into the grass, holding his shoulder.
Then the crazed figure with the matted hair and the mad, staring eyes and the huge knobbly stick said, “Jimbo!” and I realized that it was Becky.
“Don’t hit me!” I shouted.
“You’re back!” shouted Becky. She grabbed me and hugged me, just like I’d done when I found Charlie in the dining hall. And I grabbed her and hugged her back. I don’t think I’d ever been more pleased to see her.
“Baby brother!” she said.
“You waited for us,” I said.
“Of course I waited,” said Becky. “What was I going to do? Go home and get killed by Mum and Dad for losing you? But where in God’s name have you been? And why is your back covered in sick?”
Then I remembered. “I’ll explain everything later. We’ve got to stop the planet being blown up.”
“What!?” said Becky.
I looked around. “Why aren’t the army or the police here?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” said Becky. “Now just calm down and tell me what happened to you.”
Vantresillion’s voice appeared in my head. “How are we doing, James? Three minutes to go. I’m tapping my fingers. Are you speaking with the person in charge?”
I touched my wristband. “Er. Yeah. I’m speaking with the person in charge right now. We’re going to sort something out. Very soon.” I took my fingers off the wristband.
“Who are you talking to?” asked Becky.
Charlie got to his feet. “That really hurt.”
“Sorry,” said Becky. “I thought you were one of them.”
“Becky. Wow. It’s you,” said Charlie. “I didn’t recognize you with the cave-woman disguise.”
I turned to Becky. “What do you mean, one of them?”
“That big blue light goes on,” said Becky. “There’s a boom! I wander over and whack them over the head. Then I tie them up behind that big rock over there. Where are they all coming from?”