Jane Blonde: Spy in the Sky

by Jill Marshall

  She had almost nodded off, upright, when she heard the first sounds she had been listening out for – the dull thunk of the Wower door shutting, and her father’s voice, barely audible, saying ‘Wow me.’ Some minutes later her mother’s voice warned him to be careful – ‘You know how weak it makes you. SPIV me when you want to come back’ – and then there was the tiniest splintering noise accompanied by a low zummmm as the Satispy sprang into action.

  Janey leaped into bed as she heard her mother coming through the tunnel to her bedroom. For a tiny moment she felt Jean staring at her, and she tried hard not to let her eyelids flicker, but at last the bedroom door opened and closed, and Janey sat up.

  She gave it ten seconds, then lunged for the fireplace. The Wower cast its spell over her with its wonderful robotic arms and haze of spy-making droplets, and moments later Jane Blonde stepped out and hissed into the SPI Visualator hanging around her neck. ‘G-Mamma, I’m ready.’

  ‘Right with you, Blondette, any second now,’ came the reply, and then suddenly . . . DOOF! G-Mamma was sprawled across the windowsill, her face in the sink and her legs waving around in the night air outside. ‘Help me in,’ she spluttered.

  Janey dragged G-Mamma through and on to the floor. She handed her SPI:KE the remote control for the Satispy, after tapping in the now familiar coordinates of the Sol’s Lols headquarters. But G-Mamma fiddled with the control, panting, ‘I’ve had a brainwave – let’s head straight for the RAF base. Then we won’t bump into your weirdy beardy father at Sol’s Lols, and we can check out this pelican business for ourselves. If we find the jet planes, we can get straight to the enemy.’

  Janey had to admit it made sense.

  ‘You first. I’ll see you there in three minutes.’ G-Mamma pointed the remote at her and pressed the release button. Janey would be there in no time, her stream of cells shooting out through the skylight and zinging down right behind the building.

  Moments later Jane Blonde plopped on to the ground. She could see the ice-lolly-shaped Sol’s Lols building lit up in the distance. In the next instant there was a thump next to her. G-Mamma let out a low groan. ‘Splatterspy, not Satispy – that’s what they should call that. Always makes me feel so sick.’

  G-Mamma pulled on her diamanté-encrusted Ultra-gogs and searched around in the darkness. ‘Aircraft hangars are across there. Let’s ASPIC our way over and investigate.’

  Janey removed her sleek Aeronautical SPI Conveyor from her thigh. G-Mamma whipped hers out from up a voluminous trouser leg, and they pushed off together across the grass, checking the distances and outlines of the buildings through their Ultra-gogs as they passed. The miles raced beneath their ASPICs in as many seconds, and very soon they were sliding to a halt outside the hangars.

  ‘X-ray,’ said Janey to her Ultra-gogs, panning around so she could see inside each of the three enormous sheds.

  ‘No sign of the jet from the news – these planes are all new, undamaged. Hang on, though – they wouldn’t put a broken plane in with the others, would they?’

  G-Mamma grinned, her teeth pale in the moonlight. ‘And that is why . . . you’re a Blondette spy,’ she said with evident satisfaction. ‘Good thinking. Let’s look for a little plane graveyard.’

  ‘Or a workshop,’ said Janey. ‘Um, seek!’ she said. Luckily G-Mamma had preprogrammed the computer image of the battered fighter jet into the Gogs, and after a few minutes of whirring and clicking the spy glasses locked on to something and bleeped loudly.

  ‘There,’ said Janey, scooting off on her ASPIC as soon as the map pinged up on the glass of her Ultra-gogs display.

  G-Mamma pushed off behind her, and together they made their way to an old, slightly rusty hangar, far out across the fields. It didn’t even have any chicken wire around it to protect it, so they whizzed straight up to the tired old building. ‘Looks rather like my new Spylab,’ said G-Mamma stiffly.

  The plane looked awful, with a savaged nose and bits of wire and metal hanging out like severed veins. ‘Oh, poor thing,’ said G-Mamma. ‘It could do with a turn in a Wower.’

  Next to it was another plane, smaller and not obviously damaged, but with a huge amount of white sticky tape wound across the undercarriage. ‘This one needs work too, by the looks of it,’ said Janey.

  G-Mamma was just moving forward to take a look when something erupted behind her with a muffled crump. Janey staggered into the SPI:KE as the ground beneath their feet juddered. Nearby, the damaged fighter plane creaked, groaned and collapsed on its side.

  ‘What in the name of pet jets was that?’ squeaked G-Mamma.

  Janey had already run outside and zoomed in with her Ultra-gogs, her throat closing up with terror. It was every bit as bad as she’d feared. ‘Look, G-Mamma. It’s Sol’s Lols!’

  G-Mamma raced to her side. ‘What’s up with the lolly?’

  They focused together on the distant structure. It was still there. Just. But it appeared to have melted. The whole ‘stick’ of the lolly, in which the reception area had been housed, had completely disappeared, and now the rest of the building was resting a little drunkenly on the ground. Flames licked through the lower windows, as though the building itself was breathing fire.

  ‘They might not have succeeded earlier,’ said Janey sombrely, ‘but they’ve definitely blown it up now.’

  ‘But – the Boz man might be in there!’

  Janey jumped on to her hoverboard. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Not on these plastic ASPICs. It’ll take too long. We only have seconds. Come on!’ G-Mamma pelted for the little fighter jet – the one that was still standing.

  ‘No! G-Mamma, you can’t . . .’

  But of course she could. And Janey ran after the SPI:KE, not knowing which was more scary – that they were about to take off in a plane that was held together by white tape like a hospital patient . . .

  . . . or that the pilot was G-Mamma.

  Janey had little choice but to strap herself in behind G-Mamma, who jabbed at buttons until the perspex lid above them lowered itself into position and clunked shut. Then she pressed something else, seemingly at random, and crowed with delight as the engine burst into life.

  Janey tapped her on the shoulder. ‘Where’s the runway?’

  G-Mamma peered round at her blankly and then turned away. Of course. She couldn’t hear anything above the roar of the jet. Reaching into one of her hidden pockets, Janey extracted the SPI-Pod, tucked an earphone into G-Mamma’s ear and turned it up to maximum volume. ‘I said, where’s the runway?’

  She popped the other earphone into her own ear just in time to hear G-Mamma saying ‘. . . This baby . . . directs the turbine outflow through positional nozzles in the fuselage and wings. Takes off vertically like a helicopter. It’s up and out, Blonderini. Yeehah!’

  Amazingly, it did appear that G-Mamma knew what she was doing. They taxied out to the space in front of the hangar, circled a few times while the SPI:KE got the hang of the controls and then she screamed, ‘G-force from the G-Mamma!’ and thrust down on the gear stick. Janey squeaked, expecting them to shoot into the air, but instead they lifted gently off the ground, the wings tipping slightly this way and that as they rose above the airfield. G-Mamma took her hand off the throttle long enough to give Janey an exhilarated thumbs-up, then she pressed in a button on the handle, and BOOM! They were off.

  ‘G-Maaaaaaaa . . .’

  Janey tried to focus as her face was sucked into the back of her head. In the blur that streaked below them she could see various RAF personnel skidding out of the buildings, looking up at them, then running for the hangars, but milliseconds later they were gone. Green paddocks, cows, lakes, buildings, all melded into a multicoloured stripe as the earth fell away beneath them.

  ‘I’m taking it to the max!’ screamed G-Mamma, corkscrewing through the low clouds. ‘Nearly seven hundred miles an hour . . . TO THE MAX!’

  And as her head bent backwards over the seat and her voice became rather strangulated, Janey manag
ed to yell, ‘G-Mamma, we’ve overshot!’

  ‘What?’

  Janey pointed backwards and G-Mamma adjusted her Ultra-gogs. ‘Oops. Forgot. Sorry.’

  The smouldering Sol’s Lols building was a mere glimmer about fifty miles behind them. ‘Quickest way back!’ she hollered, then looped the loop twice and set off in the opposite direction, upside down. Janey laughed aloud as G-Mamma whooped and yelled, ‘It’s a blast, Blonde-girl!’

  ‘We’re nearly there! Slow down.’

  The engines groaned as G-Mamma geared down for landing. She aimed for the Sol’s Lols car park, jabbing at a button, and then turned pale. ‘Um, Blonde,’ she said indistinctly as she rattled the keys, buttons and levers before her, ‘I might have discovered why the jet was in the workshop.’

  There was an odd tugging sensation beneath Janey’s seat, and the terrible grating sounds of a snared-up mechanism. ‘The wheels don’t come down, do they?’ said Janey as they lurched and pitched above the car park.

  ‘They’re just a teensy bit stuck,’ confessed G-Mamma.

  ‘So if we land we’re just a teensy bit dead?’

  ‘Sort of. We could eject. But then the plane would be out of control. And we’re a bit low on fuel.’

  ‘Low?’

  ‘Well . . . empty.’

  ‘Great. And now we’ve got company.’ Janey looked up as a V-shaped formation of fighter jets shot overhead. ‘Open the roof thingy,’ she said firmly, ‘hold her steady and give me your ASPIC.’

  The wind nearly ripped her head off as the perspex slid back. They were still bobbing around like a puppet on a string somewhere above the car park. Still in formation, the jets were turning around in the distance, heading back towards them. Tucking G-Mamma’s ASPIC under her arm, Janey unclipped her seat belt and hoisted herself over the rim of the cockpit. Now there was just air, turbulent and dense with diesel fumes, between her and the ground a hundred feet below. ‘Aaagh!’ She grabbed on firmly with her Girl-gauntlet as the plane lunged to one side.

  ‘Sorreee,’ she heard faintly from above.

  The stench from the engines was revolting. Janey grabbed the end of her silky ponytail and wrapped it across her face to cut out the fumes, then slowly . . . slowly . . . she lowered herself down by extending her arm. Now she was hanging from the cockpit down the side of the plane, arm fully stretched. ‘Don’t fail me now, Fleet-feet,’ she whispered. Then, forcing one leg against the tumultuous wind that threatened to rip her away from the plane at any second, she moved her foot towards the fuselage.

  Clunk.

  It held fast, magnetized to the metal carcass of the jet. Swallowing hard, Janey counted to three and then swung herself out through the drag, fixing her other foot next to the first in the same movement. This had to be about the maddest thing she’d ever done – now she was hanging upside down, by the feet, from the bottom of a hovering fighter jet. Only her spygear was preventing her from being plucked off like a petal from a flower and whisked away through the clouds to an ugly death.

  But it was working. ‘OK, move,’ Janey told herself and, step by agonizing step, she forced herself towards the tape-covered hatch from which the wheels should have descended.

  A tinny voice rang out from somewhere above her: ‘Blonde, hurry up!’

  ‘Head for the Sol’s Lols moat,’ she screamed, hoping desperately that G-Mamma would hear her as she doubled herself upwards and, with the titanium blade in her Girl-gauntlet, prised away the taped hatch, utilizing every scrap of the spy-glove’s amazing strength. She stared, horrifed. It was as she’d secretly feared – the wheels weren’t just jammed. They were missing.

  Luckily Jane Blonde had foreseen this eventuality.

  ‘OK, ASPICs, do your job,’ she said. Then she eased the plane’s metal legs out of their housing, straining with the effort until her eyes felt as though they were about to burst from her skull. It seemed like hours but was really only seconds later that she felt a satisfying click. The legs had snapped into position.

  ‘They’re coming!’ screeched G-Mamma in the SPIV.

  Janey grasped her ASPIC and anchored it to the bottom of one of the wheel gantreys. It held fast, magnetized by its powerful SPI technology.

  ‘There’s one right over us! It’s going to . . . Hang on!’

  Trying to keep calm, to hang on as the plane bobbed across to the moat, Janey fixed G-Mamma’s ASPIC into place.

  ‘That one’s not a plane. It’s that pelican thing!’ screeched G-Mamma.

  Janey scrambled up the side of the plane as fast as the lurching, wobbling aircraft and her magnetic Fleet-feet would allow. ‘Never mind, G-Mamma. You’ve got skis like a seaplane. Land on the moat. Now!’

  She glanced upwards as the plane swooped alarmingly. G-Mamma was right. There was a large bird’s wing – not just large, enormous – sliding out of view into the clouds. But hadn’t the news said that the pelican was presumed dead?

  Suddenly Janey’s insides flew up into her throat as if she was on a roller-coaster.

  ‘We’re . . . down!’ screamed G-Mamma. Then, with a final lurch and a spray of water, G-Mamma sat the jet on the moat, killed the engine and unbuckled herself, all in the same frantic movement. ‘JUMP!’

  As Jane Blonde leaped off one side and her SPI:KE threw herself off the other, their little jet, too heavy for the ASPICs to support, started to sink. Then they heard a screech of tyres. Shouting. Car doors opening.

  Fumbling in the water, Janey chewed her SPIder – the rubbery creepy-crawly device that would squirt oxygen into her lungs – and dived below the surface. Instantly her Ultra-gogs responded to the environment, sealing around her eyes so that she could see clearly. There, floating nearby like an enormous Ultra-gogged jellyfish, was G-Mamma, furiously chewing her own SPIder. Janey gave her the universal diving buddy sign, and G-Mamma followed her round to the pipe that Janey knew led to the swimming pool in the Sol’s Lols building . . .

  But she’d never seen it like this.

  There was no swimming pool. As they were halfway along the tunnel, which now lay at a steep angle, blown off course by the explosion, the water ran out.

  ‘They’ve blown up the Spylab,’ Janey whispered, hardly able to take it in. While the main building still looked more or less intact, the basement Spylab had been completely obliterated. Reception had disappeared into a deep bowl in the earth about the size of the school playing field. Among the debris, they could see the remains of computers and the benches they had been sitting on, a variety of SPI-buys (including a Back-boat, a set of broken ASPICs and some bricks of blackened SPInamite) and the top of what looked like a Wower cubicle.

  Footsteps rang out above them.

  ‘Someone’s coming. That could be Dad,’ Janey said quickly.

  G-Mamma looked at her for a moment, then nodded. ‘Right. We need to get to that reception desk.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Janey.

  She would have preferred to have her ASPIC to get across the gaping maw that used to be the Spylab, but that was now anchored at the bottom of the moat beneath several tons of fighter jet; instead she operated her Fleet-feet jump, flew as far as she could across the abyss, then swung across using the wires and bits of metal that hung from the caved-in ceiling.

  She quickly located and switched on the security footage leading up to the explosion. ‘I’ll project this through my SPIV so you can see it, G-Mamma,’ she whispered. ‘Scan and save,’ she told her Ultra-gogs.

  The footage showed the guard on reception shouting on the phone. ‘Four-minute warning!’ he was yelling, frantically pulling things out of the desk. ‘We’ve got to get out. Get everyone out!’ He grabbed the intercom and shouted, ‘Emergency! All employees to clear the building immediately. Immediately!’ and then he hurdled the desk and headed for the door.

  The next minute or so was confusing, with people in white coats – the SPI team – spilling out of offices and through the door and huddling together beyond the moat. And then the explosion, a vast W
HUMP, like the biggest firework ever experienced, a blinding light and thunderous crashing sound, and then the building settling slowly like a long skirt around the smoking, smouldering remains of the Spylab.

  That was all. Blackness. Apart from . . . ‘Blonde, play that bit again,’ said G-Mamma quickly. It looked like a tail, but not of any animal Janey knew. It was long, high and . . . scaly? The security camera followed it as far as the woodland surrounding the building, but then the screen went blank. Just as the image faded, Janey thought she saw another figure in the trees, or rather a pair of legs. Short legs. Legs she’d seen somewhere before.

  Before she had a chance to rewind and watch it again, a voice shouted, ‘Who’s there?’

  Her father. Relief and panic flooded through her.

  Janey heard G-Mamma gulp, then rattle off instructions into her SPIV. ‘Blonde, I’ll send you home with the remote. Go straight to bed, and don’t let anyone know you’ve been out. We’ll decode tomorrow.’

  As Janey disintegrated she wondered how they’d decode, when she really had no idea what it was she’d just seen.

  No sooner had she flung herself into bed, still in her SPIsuit, than there was the sound of a struggle on the SPIral staircase next door. Janey whisked through the fireplace tunnel, dropped down into a combat position and prepared for battle.

  Then she heard who it was. ‘But I’ve always been the Satipsy operator, while you were mopping floors!’ G-Mamma’s voice was shrill with indignation.

  ‘I was only mopping floors because I didn’t know who I was!’ Thud . . . bang . . . The two SPIs fought to beat each other to the top of the narrow staircase. ‘And who I am is . . . get off! . . . Gina Bellarina . . . OW! . . . and wife of Boz!’

  Janey stared as two flushed faces popped up at the top of the stairs. ‘Mum, G-Mamma . . . what are you doing?’