Will's Galactic Adventure (2 page)

Will's head hurt. Other than that he was warm and comfortable and thought for a moment that he must be at home in his own bed. Then the memory of the geography field trip came flooding back and the idea that he was at home in bed didn't seem very likely at all. Perhaps if he opened his eyes…

He did, just a crack, then closed them again quickly and shrank back into the pillow behind him. He couldn't help himself uttering a small “Ooh!” as he did so.

“There, there. Nothing to worry about. I think he's awake.” The voice was a woman's, perhaps with a slight Irish accent though Will couldn't be sure. He tried opening his eyes again but when he did it was still there so he closed them again. What he had seen was a pair of eyes and where the rest of the face should have been were folds and folds of what looked like black silk.

“Cor. Thank goodness.” The second voice came from behind him. This one sounded vaguely cockney. Or perhaps someone trying to sound cockney.

For a third time Will opened his eyes. Things hadn't got any better but by now his head felt a bit less woozy and he could try and make a bit more sense of what was going on. The eyes and the black silk, he could now see, were attached to the rest of a body. As the figure stood back slightly, Will could see that she – he supposed it was a she from the voice – was dressed entirely in some sort of loose fitting, black silk suit with a black silk belt tied around the waist.

“Who are you?” Will asked.

“That I cannot say,” replied the vaguely Irish woman's voice, mysteriously, from somewhere inside all the silk. “It is enough for you to know that you are safe here.”

“Oh come on luv, you might as well tell ‘im, given the circumstances an' that,” came the voice from behind Will's head. The cockney accent still sounded a bit strange, as if whoever owned it was putting it on rather than really spoke like that. However, Will didn't have time to think any more about that right then because the woman spoke again.

“But I am sworn by the sacred oath never to reveal…”

“In our present situation,” said a much deeper, third voice, “the obligations of the oath may not strictly apply.”

“Oh all right then,” said the woman's voice, sounding much less mysterious and somewhat crestfallen. “It's Mavis.”

“An' I'm Spiv.”

Just as things were starting to make some sort of sense, another face appeared over Mavis' shoulder, presumably belonging to the owner of the third, deep voice. Normally, Will would not have been too bothered by this. However, in this case the head was a kind of bluish grey, covered in scales and looked somewhere between a crocodile and the picture on his wall at home of a Tyrannosaurus rex.

“I am Drych, custodian of this… place.”

Oh dear
, thought Will,
I must still be asleep after all
. “My name's Will,” he said, much more relaxed now he knew that none of this could be real.

“We know,” said Drych, “your name was in your anorak.”

“It's not an anorak,” Will started to protest but he could see more of Drych now so instead he continued. “You're a dragon, aren't you?”

“Very good, yes. What you would call a Welsh dragon, I believe.”

“I can see your wings – but shouldn't you be red?”

“That was all something of a misunderstanding which I would rather not discuss,” said Drych stiffly. “I'll leave you now to rest.”

With that, Drych backed out of the room.

“Cor, well done young Will!” chuckled the voice of Spiv. “Never fails to upset him when someone mentions dragons should be red.” The cockney accent was coming and going again but Will had more important questions.

“Who are you all? And where am I?” asked Will. To be honest, he was a bit disappointed in himself for taking so long to ask that last question. In all the films he had seen and adventure stories he'd read, that was always the first thing that anyone asked when they had been knocked out. He felt as if he hadn't quite done things properly. The others didn't seem to have noticed though, so he carried on. “Last thing I remember was being knocked off a mountain ledge by a sheep.”

“Ahh,” said Spiv, “that explains it. Drych was all fed up on account of our predicament so he had gone out for a walk to calm down. Lucky we were in Wales, really, or else he could have been miserable for weeks. Anyway, it was him who found you. Normally he would have just taken you down the mountain and left you where someone would find you. In fact, he started to do that but then he realised that you were the solution.”

“Hang on. This doesn't make any sense at all. Dragons don't just go wandering around carrying people down mountains without anyone noticing. And what do you mean,
I'm the solution
?”

“Give me a minute an' I'll tell you! For your information it's a well known fact that dragons can wander around in the mountains. Well known. That bluish grey colour makes ‘em look just like a pile of stones if they sit still. You've probably seen loads and not noticed.”

“Not loads,” corrected Mavis, “there aren't so many around these days.”

“Well, maybe not. But you get the idea.”

Will made a mental note to show a bit more interest in piles of stones in the future. There might be more to this geography and history than he thought.

“Anyway,” continued Spiv. He hesitated. “This gets a bit, sort of, technical. Stop me if it's too much for you.”

Will liked the idea of technical. Technical he was good at.

“You see dragons are not entirely… here, sort of. Part of them is, well, somewhere else.”

“In another dimension,” added Mavis, helpfully.

“All right, don't baffle the boy with science,” snapped Spiv. “Anyway, part of them is in another dimension. So they can sometimes, er, do things that the rest of us can't. Or know things that aren't obvious to the rest of us. He, sort of, knew that you were the solution. Or at least that you were half of it. You were carrying the other half.”

Will did not want to admit to being baffled by science but this still wasn't making much sense.

“Just a minute then,” he said, “if I'm a solution, or half a solution, then there must be a problem. So what's the problem? And you still haven't told me where I am.”

“Well,” said the voice of Spiv, which, incidentally, was still coming from behind Will, “that's the part that you might find difficult. You see, the place that Drych is custodian of, the place that he brought you, is – and I don't want to make this too technical – is…”

“Oh honestly,” said Mavis, “it's a spaceship. There, that wasn't too technical was it? A spaceship.”

“A spaceship? In Wales?” gasped Will.

“Oh yes. Well known fact, that is, that Wales is good for spaceships. Well known fact amongst space-faring folk, at least. On account of the dragons, you see. An' the mist o'course – to keep ‘em hidden. The mountains help with that too. So, ideal really.”

“So what was the problem?” Will had quickly recovered from the shock of finding that he was in a spaceship. Scientists like him aren't bothered by that sort of thing for long.

“We were damaged,” answered Mavis. “We had… that is to say… well that really is technical but part of our control system was damaged. We would have been stranded if you hadn't turned up.”

“I don't understand how I can help. I don't know how to mend your spaceship.”

“You don't need to understand it. In your backpack, the thing that Drych was able to sense, was your phone. It turns out that our control system can be fixed by replacing the damaged part with your phone.”

Will wasn't sure that he liked the sound of that. He had saved hard to get that phone and although he didn't want the spaceship to be stranded (how silly would that have sounded an hour ago – these scientists certainly adapt quickly!) he didn't want to lose the phone and all his games. Mavis could see the concern on his face.

“There is more to it than that,” she continued. “You will have to play one of your games to make the ship fly properly.”

“What! Why?”

“Because,” answered Spiv, “because Drych's claws are too big, Mavis is hopeless at that sort of thing and I, well, er, I…”

Will realised that he had not yet actually seen Spiv. He pushed himself up onto his elbows in bed and turned his head. There was a slight blur in the corner of his eye and Spiv's voice continued, still behind him.

“You know, duck and dive, wheel and deal…”

“What Spiv is trying to say,” said Mavis, “is that Spiv cannot be seen.”

“You mean he is invisible?” exclaimed Will.

“Oh no. Not invisible. It's just that he can't be seen by anyone. Has to be… anonymous. If he sat at the controls people would know where to find him, and that would never do.”

That was just weird but Will let it pass for now. In fact all of this was weird. For instance, why was the woman covered from head to toe in black silk? Why had she sworn an oath not to tell anyone that her name was Mavis? Why did a dragon think that it was OK for her to break the oath after all? Come to that, why were they all in a spaceship with a dragon anyway? And how could it be that his playing an electronic game would make a spaceship fly? Still, one thing at a time.

“So you need me to work the controls. But you must have wired the game into the ship. That must have been a pretty fiddly thing to do. If you could do that, why can't you play the game?”

“None of us could wire it in, for the same reasons that we can't play it. To some extent the ship can look after itself. It can't fly itself but it can make minor repairs. Major ones, sometimes, come to that. There are a couple of… I suppose you might call them robots. Small machines, the size of a small dog, who can do the repairs. They're about as intelligent as a small dog, too, but good at fixing things. We call the robots Mechs.”

“Mech 1 and Mech 2. For Mechanics. Get it?” As ever the voice of Spiv came from somewhere behind Will's head.

Will got it but he was still not sure that he wanted to become a spaceship driver just yet.

“Isn't this all a bit, well, dangerous? I mean, how did your spaceship get damaged in the first place? And come to that, where do you all come from? I don't think that there are spaceships on Earth. At least, they are never on the six o'clock news.”

“I think,” boomed the resonant voice of Drych, “that it's time for me to inject some clarity.” Drych had quietly entered the room whilst Will had been turning round to try and look at Spiv. (He still didn't see him, though.)

“Listen carefully and I will try and fill in some of the gaps in the story that you have heard so far. You are correct that this spaceship did not originally come from Earth. Spaceships like this were made by a distant race far across the galaxy. All have someone such as me, a dragon, to link them across the dimensions with their makers. Without this they would not work. For centuries, the dragon ships, as they are known, plied a peaceful trade between the stars. Usually none, or very few, of the inhabitants of the planets that were visited knew of their existence. It was better to keep them secret from all who did not need to know. A dragon ship in the wrong hands could be a powerful weapon.”

“See, like I said, Wales is good for hiding ‘em. All that mist and mountains.”

Drych continued as if there had been no interruption. “More recently a criminal element has arisen, criminals who are intent on disrupting the peaceful passage of the dragon ships. It was during an encounter with one of these criminals that the control system of this ship was damaged, forcing us to land on that hillside.”

“You mean that they were chasing you!”

“In a manner of speaking. They certainly had an interest in speaking with Spiv.”

“Why was that?”

“Hand on my heart, I don't know why,” said Spiv.

“It may have something to do with the fact that they paid you 50,000 crells for seventeen proton disrupter cannons,” suggested Mavis.

“Is that a lot?” enquired Will.

“Yes.”

“Fair price,” said Spiv.

“For seventeen proton disrupter cannons, perhaps,” continued Mavis. “But what was in the crates when they opened them?”

“I hear,” said Drych, “that it was six water pistols wrapped in a very large quantity of old newspaper. Worth, perhaps, twenty-three oorols on a good day.”

“Is that a lot?” inquired Will, again.

“Hardly anything.”

“Er, apparently, so they claim, it was actually
seven
water squirters. Not pistols – the pump-up ones with lots of nozzles. Worth a lot more than twenty-three oorols.”

“Let me get this straight. Spiv, you were selling weapons to your enemies?”

“Course not. I wouldn't do anyfink like that. What a fing to suggest! It was them that was buying them.”

“So you were cheating them. Selling them something different to what they thought they were buying.”

“What are you suggesting? Calling me dishonest, that is. I've got a reputation to keep, you know. Trusted across the galaxy I am. Honest Spiv they call me. You ask anyone!”

“This is getting ridiculous,” decided Will. “Thank you for looking after me. You can keep the game but I think that it's time for me to go. Mr Frobisher will be getting worried by now.”

“I don't think that leaving right now would be a very good idea,” said Drych.

“Why not?”

“Because at this moment we are just passing the orbit of Saturn.”

“Just passing the orbit of Saturn! I thought you needed me to fly your spaceship! That can't be right if we're passing Saturn already.”

“Oh we can get to Saturn easily enough. Just a hop across the solar system, that is,” came the voice from behind Will's ear. “If you don't believe us, come and have a look out of the window.”

Mavis led Will from the cot where he had been lying and took him towards a small round window. For the first time, Will took a good look at the room, rather than just paying attention to the strange characters around him. There wasn't very much to see. The walls were smooth, there were no lights on the ceiling and as it was quite bright it seemed to Will that the walls, floor and ceiling themselves must be glowing. Other than the small window, the cot and the doorway, through which Drych had gone off in a huff and later returned, that was just about it. When they reached the window, however, Will gasped. Floating outside, looking about the size of a tennis ball, was Saturn. Half was in sunlight and the other half in shadow. In the shadow it would be night-time on the surface, Will realised. He liked astronomy and knew all about that sort of thing. The view out of the window was clearer than any picture he had ever seen taken through a telescope but it was Saturn all right, unmistakable with its coloured rings glinting in the sunlight. He could even see a couple of Saturn's moons.

“In this ship,” Drych continued, “getting around a solar system is not a major problem. We can easily do that. The problem comes when we have to jump between solar systems, when we need to cross the galaxy. Then we need a different way of travelling.”

“Do you mean hyperspace?” gasped Will. He liked science fiction, as well as astronomy.

“You're very quick,” replied Drych. He seemed pleased. “‘Hyperspace' is as good a description as any. That is where we need your special skills.”

“Come on,” said Mavis. “If you are feeling better we should take you for a look round.”

“Just let us know if it gets too technical for you.” That was Spiv again.

Through the door Will found himself standing in a corridor. For no particular reason he turned left.

“What you've got in front of you there,” said Spiv, “is the back. Engines and stuff down there. Behind you is the front. Up there we do all the driving an' navigating an' that. There's wires and computers and stuff that take the commands from the front, behind you, to make the engines at the back, in front of you, take us where we want to go. Except not at the moment until you give us a hand. Still with me?”

“I'm not,” said Mavis, “and I was here already. It's engines at the back, Will, control deck at the front and along this corridor the rooms…”

“Cabins, them's called.”

“… the rooms where we eat and sleep, that sort of thing.”

“So has this ship got a name?” Will knew all about names for spaceships. They were called things like
Liberator
or
Enterprise
. Names that sounded like they should be having adventures all the time.

“Oh yes,” answered Drych. “The ship is called
Brenda
.”

“
Brenda!
” repeated Will, in a voice that sounded like he meant ‘What kind of a stupid name is
Brenda
for a spaceship?'

“
Brenda
,” said Drych firmly. “Spaceships are usually named after their navigation computers. Navigation computers are very intelligent. Not alive but intelligent enough to be worth listening to.”

Will couldn't help thinking that Drych would be looking at Spiv at this point, if only he were somewhere to be looked at.

“So the ship is called
Brenda the Navigator
?” That name sounded vaguely familiar. Something to do with one of those boring history lessons last term. Perhaps he was confusing
Brenda
with someone else. Will wished he had listened a bit harder.

Will turned around and they led him to the control deck. He was a bit disappointed. He expected banks of switches and buttons, flashing lights, big video screens showing views of the stars, proton disrupter cannons (whatever they were), complicated chairs with straps for holding people secure, space suits on racks, that sort of thing. What he saw was more blank walls with a few seats that didn't look much more substantial than deckchairs. Poking out of one wall, dangling on a piece of wire, was his phone.

“I don't want to hurry you,” said Drych, “this must be a lot to take in all at once, but we really ought to be making the jump to, er, hyperspace, if we are going to catch them.”

“Catch who?” asked Will.

“The criminals, of course,” answered Spiv.

“But I thought they were chasing you. Because of Spiv.”

“Oh no. Spiv running away! No, never. Reputation to keep up, I have.”

“What Spiv means,” said Mavis, “is that we are chasing them too. For one reason they have a picture of Spiv and he wants to get it back.”

Spluttering noises came from behind Will but Mavis continued.

“You see, when Spiv was selling them the proton disrupter cannons…”

“That's libel that is, or slander, one of the two. Or both. I'd never sell those criminals proton disrupter cannons!”

“All right Spiv, whatever you were or weren't selling them and whatever they were or weren't buying, during the, er, negotiations, they managed to take your picture. Embarrassing for someone in your position, I should imagine. Anyway, Will, Spiv wants to get it back.”

“So you are chasing them and they are chasing you. I suppose that makes as much sense as anything else round here, though I don't quite see that it's worth getting into a fight over. You said that was one reason. Is there another?”

“Should ‘ave thought that was obvious,” came the sulky voice.

“Not obvious to me.”

“Suppose not if you're not streetwise in the ways of the universe. Suppose you don't recognise what Mavis is.”

“You shouldn't tell him if he doesn't know,” protested Mavis. “The oath is quite clear…”

“Mavis,” intoned Drych slowly, “surely under the circumstances the boy has the right to know.”

“Oh all right,” mumbled Mavis, crestfallen again.

“I'll tell ‘im,” piped up Spiv. He sounded perky again now that the attention was off him and someone else was being put on the spot.

“Mavis, you see Will, Mavis is a Ninja Tea Shop Lady!”

Silence. Spiv obviously wanted Will to be impressed. Mavis was frantically trying to decide what her oath would allow her to say in response to any more questions from Will. Drych was, well, Drych was just being Drych.

“Oh,” Will said, eventually. “Is that good?”

“Good? Good! I'll have you know…”

“Mavis, please calm down,” said Drych. “If I might remind you, we really should be getting along.”

He gently took Will and sat him down in front of his game. The flimsy looking chair felt surprisingly solid and although it didn't have any straps it seemed to hold him in quite firmly.

“I believe that you will find the operation of your phone much as it was before. The Mechs have chosen a particular game for you to play to get us on our way. I hope that it was one of your favourites. It is the racing car game, Formula One, I believe.”

Will switched on the game. Something a bit more spaceship-like happened then: a section of the wall lit up like a giant television screen and showed the view that usually appeared on the phone's own small screen. Will instantly recognised it as the starting grid for the Monaco Grand Prix, arguably the most famous Formula One race of them all.

“The Mechs chose this particular race for a number of technical reasons that I won't bore you with.”

“Doesn't understand ‘imself, more like,” came the voice from behind Will's left ear.

“The main reason,” continued Drych, ignoring Spiv's interruption, “is that this track is unique in having a tunnel. You will find that at the precise moment when you enter the tunnel, if you do so at the correct speed and don't crash on the way, this ship will make the jump to hyperspace.”

“What if I do crash, or go at the wrong speed?”

“That would be… unfortunate.”

Will didn't press the point. “And what is the right speed?”

“The approach to the tunnel is round the hairpin bend at the Grand Hotel which is very slow, thirty miles per hour, followed by two more sharp right-hand bends. The second one is called the Virage du Portier and in a race you would be accelerating hard from there into the tunnel. However, today you do not need to be going so fast. For the jump into hyperspace to work you need to enter the tunnel at exactly sixty-one miles per hour.”

“What happens then?”

“The ship will know where it needs to go. I have already done that part. It will have calculated the best time to make the jump. Once you start the game, the ship's computers will start the race at exactly the right moment. Provided that you enter the tunnel at the right speed we will all end up where we want to go.”

Will wasn't sure at all where he wanted to go, if anywhere, but it looked as though events were overtaking him and he wasn't going to have much choice.

“So I enter the tunnel at sixty-one miles per hour. What next?”

“The next part is easy. Your job is more or less done when you enter the tunnel. All you have to do is drive safely back to the start. No need to race but it would be better if you got back without crashing.”

Will took a deep breath. “You want me to do it now?”

“Yes.”

“Can I have a practice?”

“No, no time and anyway you have done it a thousand times before.”

“The ship knows where it is supposed to go?”

“Yes.”

“You've told it already?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to tell me?”

“Would it make a difference?”

Will glanced round. Mavis was in another of the chairs and obviously looked as if she was expecting them to be on their way. Drych was lying on the floor, looking, Will thought, nothing at all like a pile of stones, whatever Spiv might have said earlier. He couldn't see Spiv.

Oh well.

Will hit the button to start the game. After a second the red lights above the track came on one by one, hesitated for just a moment and then all together blinked out. The race was on!

Will's fingers flew over the controls and he blasted away from the line. The sound quality matched the big screen and he could hear the scream of his engine as it climbed to maximum revs before he made the first gear change. Will noticed that he was in the red car, his favourite. That was a good sign. He wasn't first on the grid, though. There was someone in front. A black car. This wouldn't do! He was racing!

Pushing hard to catch up he skidded and almost crashed into the barrier at the first turn, the Virage St. Devote. The race at Monaco is run on a track that for the rest of the year is just ordinary city streets. The track isn't very wide and there is not much room for error. There are no big gravel traps where a car can slide safely off or wide sweeps of grass to drive over if you go into the corners too fast to stay on the road. There are a couple of run-off areas, one is at the first turn, but hit the barrier with your car and your car stays hit. It will probably be missing a wheel or two and there will be no more racing today. Recovering from his skid, Will pushed on but still couldn't catch the black car.

“Will, don't race! You'll crash! The important thing is to go into the tunnel at the right speed! Don't worry about beating anyone else.”

Just in time Will remembered what he was supposed to be doing. He slowed slightly. The black car streaked ahead. Will carefully followed it around the hairpin and the sharp right hand turn of the Virage du Portier, the black car getting further ahead all the time. Will kept the speed under control and entered the tunnel right on target at exactly sixty-one miles per hour. The black car was nowhere to be seen but from the cloud of dust in the tunnel Will knew that it was still somewhere ahead.

Will felt a slight bump and that was that.

“Well done Will! Just drive carefully back to the start then end the game. All we need to do then is wait for the ship to get us to our destination.”

Will did as he was told and switched off. Bit of a shame really. He thought he could have caught that black car given a couple more laps.

“How long until we get there?”

“I'm not quite sure, maybe an hour or so.”

“Long enough to tell me about Ninja Tea Shop Ladies?”

And he couldn't help wondering if there would be time to find out why dragons aren't really red too, but he decided to keep that thought to himself, for now.