The Enemy's Lair (4 page)

‘He must have some sneaky plan,’ Peri said. ‘He always does.’

‘Should we go after him?’

Peri shook his head. ‘We don’t want to start playing hide-and-seek. Now we’ve got a bit of time to ourselves, let’s work out a plan to rescue Selene.’

Diesel’s strip of hair faded from red to pink to purple ‘Can’t you use the
Phoenix
to send Selene a message? I mean, it must have lots of data about Selene stored.’

‘Good idea,’ Peri paused. ‘But how?’

‘You’re the one who’s supposed to understand this ship.’

Peri nodded. Normally he understood the ship completely. But right now his mind was blank.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I can’t think.’

Diesel’s strip of hair flared bright pink again. ‘Selene’s wearing her Expedition Wear, right?’

‘Right.’

‘Can’t the ship use that to locate her?’

‘That’s not a bad idea,’ Peri said. Why hadn’t he thought of it? If Diesel could out-think him, his circuits must have been badly scrambled by that shock from the electric mace. Otto had repaired some of the damage when he’d shoved him against the console, but he still wasn’t right. He was beginning to wonder if his bionic half would ever work properly again.

‘The suits are coded, right?’ Diesel continued. ‘Each one has a number.’ Diesel pulled at a label stitched to his forearm. ‘Mine’s #4737.3.’

‘#4737.6,’ Peri said, looking at his own label.

‘So Selene’s must be either #4737.0, or #4737.9.’

‘Right.’ Peri tried to think how the ship’s computer could use that information. But it was like trying to peer through fog. He knew the answer was there, but he just couldn’t see it.

Diesel rolled his eyes. ‘What’s the matter with you? We use the Quikmap function, dumboid!’

‘Oh, yeah,’ Peri said. ‘I was just going to say that.’

They stood together at the control panel – a huge bank of buttons and dials and touchpads and keypads and winking lights and screens and displays.

‘So where’s the Quikmap function?’ Diesel asked.

‘Er –’ Peri fingered a switch and then a dial. He couldn’t remember which button to use. He couldn’t imagine what hitting the wrong button might do. He knew they hadn’t discovered one millionth of what the
Phoenix
could do. One button might tuck them into their sleeping pods while another might be the self-destruct sequence. He didn’t know. He hadn’t realised how much being half-bionic had helped him know instinctively how the
Phoenix
worked. It had felt so natural, and now he felt empty somehow.

‘This must be it!’ Diesel pointed at a screen that had an icon of a solar system above it. ‘Set it for planetary level, right?’

‘Yeah,’ Peri said, but he wasn’t sure, not really.

‘And home in on Meigwor?’

‘That’s where she is, so . . .’

Diesel flicked through the images on the touchpad until Meigwor, a greenish ball with muddy brown oceans floating in the blackness of space, appeared on the screen.

‘Closer Search Function,’ Diesel read from a message that had appeared at the top of the screen. ‘Do you think that’s it?’

‘Must be.’

Diesel touched the message. A keypad appeared in its place. ‘I’ll try the suit numbers.’

‘I can do that.’ Peri nudged Diesel aside and typed in the suit number. He missed the hum he used to feel when he touched the control panel.

The image of Meigwor rapidly filled the screen. The image came into focus as the Quikmap orb reached the surface of the planet. It whizzed round and round Meigwor at a million miles an hour, transmitting pictures to the Quikmap screen. They flickered past so fast Peri could barely make them out. He just caught the odd detail here and there – a bubbling brown ocean, then, a nanosecond later, a city with strange, squat buildings. Then pictures of steamy jungle flickered past. The trees had round purple-and-green leaves. There were fluttering insects as big as birds. Peri caught a glimpse of a weird, red creature without a head.

Then, in a clearing, a figure clothed in Expedition Wear.

‘There she is!’ Peri shouted.

No doubt about it. Peri saw her face clearly. Her cheeks were flushed, her hair clung damply to the side of her face. She was looking around nervously, biting her lip.

From out of the surrounding jungle, Meigwor soldiers advanced.

Ten of them. Some held laserpulses. Some held curved, scythe-like swords. Their long, red necks craned towards Selene.

They closed in on her. Selene looked wildly around. But there was nowhere for her to run.

The monitor fogged up and then flickered off.

‘She’s in trouble,’ Peri said. ‘We have to get there now!’

Chapter 5

‘I’ll plot a course for Selene’s location,’ Peri said, trying to sound more confident than he felt.

‘I’ll go look for Otto and the prince,’ Diesel said, hurrying towards the nearest portal. It opened with a hiss. Diesel clumped down the corridor.

Peri searched the console for the Pinpoint Navigational Keypad. There it was: a milky-white window with a keypad of letters, numbers and symbols. To plot a course for the right section of the Meigwor jungle he’d have to input the space coordinates for where they’d just seen Selene. How would he find those?

There had to be a quicker way of doing this. If he was his normal self, he’d know it intuitively.

The shipboard monitor on the far wall glowed into life. Peri saw Diesel standing by a glittering blue swimming pool. ‘Hey, Peri, check this out!’ Diesel said and flipped some sort of Remote Transfigurator Device. At once the pool closed over and a full-sized Neptunian quarkball court sprang into view.

‘Cool, isn’t it? You can go for a swim or play quarkball. This ship’s got all kinds of stuff!’

‘I’m so glad you’re having a nice time,’ Peri said. ‘But shouldn’t you be looking for Otto and Onix?’

‘Yeah, yeah, I’ll find them, don’t worry.’

Peri returned his attention to the console. There was a glowing purple button marked
Oracle
. He touched it.

A shimmering panel of rainbow light appeared in the air in front of him. ‘Please pose your question,’ it said in a soothing deep voice.

‘Space coordinates for most recent location of Expedition Wear 4737.0, please.’

‘Easy-peasy,’ the Oracle said. ‘1010101011100110001zxfxfzbluedogpqr and fifty-seven and a half
.
’

‘Er, thanks,’ Peri said. ‘Sorry, do you think you could repeat that?’

The shipboard monitor panel glowed into life again.

‘Hey, look at this!’ Diesel said. He was standing in a dark auditorium with antique-style anchored seats and a big screen at the front. On the screen were moving pictures of a cowboy and a quaint, old-fashioned cartoon spaceman figure. ‘We’ve got an old-time cinema on board, how about that? 3-D, computer-generated graphics. Can you believe how primitive entertainment on Earth used to be?’

‘Great,’ Peri said with a roll of his eyes. ‘Shall I come down and watch it with you?’

‘Aren’t you busy?’

‘Yes, I am!’ Peri shouted. Martians just didn’t get sarcasm. ‘And so are you! Find Otto!’

‘All right, all right,’ Diesel said. ‘Keep your wig on.’

Peri returned his attention to the Oracle. ‘Could I have those coordinates again? A bit slower?’

The Oracle repeated the coordinates. Peri only just managed to key them in.
Hope I haven’t got them wrong
, he thought, as he engaged the ship’s Thruster Control and saw the ship speed forward.

A portal opened and Diesel appeared with Otto and Prince Onix. They were both gagged and bound with lengths of adhesive silicon hemp. All three were shivering. Prince Onix’s teeth chattered, and Diesel’s strip of hair had turned a pale, arctic blue. Otto glared at his captor.

‘Nice one,’ Peri said. ‘How d’you catch them?’

‘Easy for someone with my super-advanced combat skills,’ Diesel said. ‘Plus a bit of good old Martian cunning. Not everyone could have carried it off, of course, but I have the qualities to –’

‘Brag about it later,’ Peri said. ‘Just tell me what happened.’

‘Oh,’ said Diesel. ‘I found them in the library.’

‘The
Phoenix
has a library? With real, actual, paper books?’

‘Thousands of them. It’s like some crazy old museum. Anyway, I did something really clever.’

‘I bet you did.’ Peri shook his head, growing sorry he’d asked.

‘I remembered what happened when we lowered the temperature to hide Otto from the Xion Toll-Takers. Meigwors can’t take the cold – they go all sluggish, remember? So I turned down the thermo in the library to sub-zero. I snuck in and climbed on top of a bookcase and let him have it with the heaviest book I could find –
The Complete History of Intergalactic Conflict
,
all two thousand four hundred and twenty-three pages of it. I thumped him right on the head. Just in case the prince started causing trouble, I hit him with
The Stupendous Compendium of Intelligent Life Forms, Volumes 1 to 13
.
’

‘And then you tied them up? Where did you get the rope?’

‘Used the library’s Auto-Silencer. Ties and gags anyone making a noise.’

Peri had no idea the library had an Auto-Silencer. He hadn’t even known the
Phoenix
had a library. He should have known – or at least not been surprised to find out.
There’s no doubt about it
, he thought.
My connection with the ship is gone.

‘Awesome of me, wasn’t it?’ Diesel said.

‘Yeah, whatever.’ Peri shrugged. ‘While you were off having an ice-tea party with Otto and Onix, I found the coordinates for where Selene is on Meigwor, and we’re headed there right now at . . .’ He checked the Velocity View. ‘. . . a hundred thousand miles a second . . . No, wait a minute, eighty thousand miles a second. No, I mean fifty thousand miles a second . . .’

The numbers on the dial were decreasing as he spoke.

‘What’s going on?’ Diesel asked.