The Time Pirate (4 page)

“Captain McIver! Captain McIver! This is Pennywhistle Control. Do you read me? Over.”

It sounded like Captain Orion, who sounded a lot like his grandfather.

“What's going on?” Nick cried, “Is everything all right? Is the ride broken? I think it's going too fast!”

“Roger, Captain, I read you loud and clear. Everything under control. You are cleared for takeoff, skipper.”

“Takeoff?”

“See that flashing red button on top of the joystick?”

“Yes, sir, I do,” he said, and suddenly there really
was
a flashing red button.

“Just push that button, skipper, and you'll be on your merry way. Happy flying, sir!”

Push the button? On your way? Happy flying?
Being a naturally curious boy, Nick McIver had no choice but to push the red button. What happened next took his breath away.

· Greybeard Island, 1940 ·

T
he Whirl-O-Drome spun ever faster, round and round in a dizzying blur. So fast that Nick, fighting the dizziness, was sure the whole ride would just fly apart any second now, disintegrate, and fling the little planes into the air, crashing into the sea or smashing against the rocks or the rooftops of pubs across the road.

But that's not what happened.

There was suddenly a loud beeping noise inside his cockpit, and then little No. 7 began shaking hard enough to rattle his bones. He noticed his propeller was turning much faster, too, and he heard loud popping noises from the nose and then the explosive sound of a powerful gasoline engine roaring to life. Flames suddenly shot out of the exhaust manifolds, and the whole aircraft was vibrating heavily now as the great engine rumbled.

There was a screeching sound of metal on his left side, just where the airplane was bolted to a steel plate at the end of the pole. It felt as if his plane was trying to shake itself loose, separate itself from the pole!

And that is just what happened.

There was a slight popping noise and his aircraft soared, suddenly free of the pole, flung into the air, skimming out over the dark waves and gaining speed! The little seaside town spun away to a tiny point of light behind him.

“Captain, you're too low! You might catch a wave with your wingtips! Climb! Climb!” he heard Orion shouting in his headphones. Nick craned his head around to look down at Pennywhistle Park and saw Orion behind his window, staring up at him through a pair of binoculars.

Nick automatically pulled back on the joystick, and sure enough his nose came up and the little Spitfire began climbing. He saw his altimeter spinning, the needle now at one hundred feet and climbing rapidly.

“Too steep, Captain, too steep! You're going to stall out! Get your nose down until you're aimed nice and level at the horizon . . . easy, lad, steady and gentle, now . . .”

Nick eased the stick forward and the plane leveled off.

“Attaboy, now you're flying right. Where do you want to go?”

“Go?” It hadn't occurred to Nick that he could actually
go
anywhere.

“Sure. Just use your rudder pedals to turn left or right and your stick to climb or descend. All there is to it, really.”

“I—I'd like to see our lighthouse on—on Greybeard Island. The place where I live. Is the island too far away?”

“Not in that plane. See the compass right in the middle of your control panel? Come left twenty degrees. Steer due north. You should see the Greybeard Light in about, oh, six minutes or so.”

And so Nick flew on, the fear of flying gradually replaced by confidence in his new skill and tremendous excitement at this wondrous adventure.

Nick experimented with the rudder pedals, and it didn't
take long to determine how to bring the plane around to a heading of due north. Using the joystick, he tried to keep the nose just above the horizon line.

“How's my altitude?” Nick asked, glancing down at the sea far below.

“You're flying level at one thousand feet. That's fine. I'm about to lose visual contact with you, but you can still contact me on the radio. How is it up there, Nick?”

“It's amazing. I think I'm getting the hang of it, Captain. What do I do, if I want to, say, fly upside down? Or do a barrel roll? Or an outside loop?”

“Nick, listen, I think you just want to fly straight and level for right now, all right? Until you get the hang of it. Stay on your current heading of 060 degrees. You should see Greybeard Island and the lighthouse coming up any minute now.”

“I see it flashing! It's dead ahead.”

“Don't see any bogies or bandits up there, do you, Cap'n?”

“Bogies or bandits?”

“The enemy. Luftwaffe fighters or bombers. German Messerschmitt 109s or Junkers Ju-290s, most likely.”

“Nope, no one up here but me, Cap'n, I'm just over the lighthouse now. I'm going to circle it a few times, see if I can wake my father and get him to come to the window to see me!”

Using his ailerons and rudder, Nick rolled his little Spitfire on its side and did three or four high-speed loops around the upper portion of the Greybeard Light, the big supermarine engine roaring and spitting fire. But everyone must have been sound asleep inside because no one ever came to the windows to see what the great noise was.

“That was fun!” Nick said, pulling out of his loop and climbing at a steep angle. “There seems to be a heavy layer of
cloud about a thousand feet above me. All right if I climb up through it?”

“Sure! Just keep your eyes open for bogies once you break through the cloud tops. More German squadrons up there every night lately.”

Nick hauled back on the stick, gently now, for he knew that's the way it was done. A few moments later he was inside the cloud bank, a thick fog surrounding him, and he couldn't see a thing. Then he broke through the top and entered another world.

A huge yellow moon hung off to his right, bathing the cottony top of the cloud layer in shades of soft buttery gold. And a dusting of twinkling silver stars was sprinkled across the blue-black bowl of the heavens.

“What's that?” he suddenly exclaimed.

He'd glimpsed another plane, far ahead, waggling its wings, the signal for sighting an enemy aircraft. A German fighter? A
bogie
?

He swung round to a southerly course and got right on the bandit's tail, increasing his speed and closing fast. It wasn't a Messerschmitt, Nick saw, as he closed within a hundred yards of the plane. No, no, it was an old plane, a very, very old plane. A biplane, made of paper and wood.

A Sopwith Camel, in fact, just like the one his father had flown in the Great War, with twin Vickers .303 machine guns mounted on the cowl and firing forward through the propeller disk. The Camel was lord of the skies during the Great War way back in 1916.

What on earth?

“Welcome to the boundless skies, Nick,” he heard a new voice say in his headphones. This voice, too, was very familiar.

Could it be?

He banked hard left, increased his airspeed, and easily pulled abreast of the ancient warplane.

The pilot looked over at him and smiled. He was a young man, very handsome and dashing with his long white silk scarf streaming behind him in the breeze, and he reminded Nick of someone, too. A younger version of the man Nick worshipped and loved more than anyone on this earth.

“Follow me, if you can!” the voice said.

“But, where are we going?”

“To the moon and back, of course!”

Nick nosed over into a steep dive, headed right for the big golden moon hanging just above the far horizon of the world.

“I'm right behind you, Father!” Nick cried.

That fat yellow moon was so big it looked as if it might just swallow the two little airplanes right up.

And that's just what it did.

And then someone was shaking him violently, saying “Wake up! Wake up!”

· Greybeard Island, May 1940 ·

W
ake up, Nicky! Wake up!” his sister, Kate, was saying, jumping up and down on his bed, excitement shining in her cornflower-blue eyes, her bright red curls bouncing about her face as if they were a bunch of springs attached to her head. She had her raggedy doll in one hand, swinging her by the hair, what little the doll had left after all these years.

Jip, Nick's big black dog, had leaped onto his bed and was lathering his master's face with sloppy kisses.

Nick, knowing sleep was now well nigh impossible, cracked one eye and used it to inspect his little sister. His room, at the very top of the lighthouse, was filled with strong sunlight. Perhaps he had overslept a bit.

“Have the Germans invaded us?” he asked sleepily.

“Not yet. But Father says it's only a matter of weeks. Or even days.”

Nick McIver groaned, rolled over onto his tummy, and buried his face in his pillow. He wanted more than anything to fall back down into deep slumber, to return to his magical
dream of racing his father's old Sopwith Camel to the moon. But Kate was having none of it.

“Go away, Katie. And stop bouncing, for all love,” he said, his sleepy words muffled by goose down. “And you, Jipper, stop barking!”

“No! Never! Not until you get up. We have to go. And I won't stop bouncing on your bed until we do!”

“Go? Go where?”

“Out to Storm Island, silly. It's Saturday! We're sailing out there on
Petrel
, remember. For a picnic. And I get to steer the whole way. You promised, double-secret-swear promise, crosses don't count.”

Nick flopped over onto his back and stared at his seven-year-old sister. She had him dead to rights. He'd promised, all right.

“Kate. You know all about promises, right?”

“Sure. You keep 'em.”

“Well—right. Of course you keep them. But sometimes things happen and you have to, well, delay your promises. It's called postponing. You know what
postponing
means, don't you?”

“Sure. Lying.”

“Kate. It's not really lying. It's just something you'll learn more about as you get older like me.”

“Thirteen is hardly old, Nicky. I'll be twelve myself in less than five years. Unless my birthday gets
postponed
, of course.”

“Well, still.”

“Nicky, no. You promised and we're going. I've already packed a picnic basket and that's it. Final, final, final.”

She collapsed at the foot of Nick's bed and stared at him with blazing blue eyes, daring him to break the solemn promise he'd made two days ago. But at least she'd stopped jumping up and down.

“What if I were to tell you I'd had a dream last night. And that what I dreamed was so amazing, so
real
, that I decided to try and find a way to make it come true. And you, of course, will have to help, because nobody wants dreams to come true more than Miss Katherine McIver, right?”

“Correct. But this is your dream, remember? It's my dreams I'm excited about. I don't care a fig for your silly dreams.”

“Well, when you hear about mine, you will. In fact, it will become your dream, too. And you'll be excited about it, I promise.”

“I'm listening. What is it?”

“It's a secret.”

“Is this a trick? You know I love secrets more than anything in the whole wide world.”

“I know you do. And you're going to love this one best of all. Aside from that golden orb hidden in the gun vault at Gunner's inn, it's possibly the world's best secret of all time.”

“Okay. But to get out of our picnic today, you have to promise to do two things. One: Promise I don't have to carry anything heavy to the picnic, like when I helped you clean out your boat shed. Two: You have to tell me something about the secret that doesn't give it away but makes me feel better about not sailing out to Storm Island. Today. Like you promised.”

“You don't have to carry anything heavier than a picnic basket.”