by Axel Lewis
“Do sit down,” said the teacher. “My name is Sir Rupert Huxley, and Lord Leadpipe has brought me on board to teach you survival skills.”
“Blimey!” whispered Horace. “He doesn’t look as though he’ll survive the lesson!”
“Thank you, Mr Pelly,” said Sir Rupert. “I may look ancient, but my hearing is tip-top, thank you very much.”
Horace shut his mouth and sat back in his seat sulkily. I think I’m going to like Sir Rupert! Jimmy thought with a grin.
“I’m going to teach you how to cope when you find yourself in the most extreme environments on earth. You never know when you might find yourself in a tight spot without a safetybot in sight,” Sir Rupert said with a knowing wink towards the racers.
Jimmy and the others nodded. There had been a close call in the last race when a glacier had almost crushed them all. There hadn’t been anybody within 50 miles to help them, and the robots Lord Leadpipe had created to protect them from danger had malfunctioned in the cold weather.
“We already know all about that.” Horace interrupted. “We’ve all just completed a race in the Arctic, after all.”
Sir Rupert nodded. “True, true. I expect you utilized a lot of techniques that I will remind you of. I myself have trekked to the South Pole three times. I only meant to go twice, but I left my toothbrush behind once and had to go back for it,” he said, a twinkle in his eye. The class laughed. “Negotiating a cold environment is a tricky thing. Snow and ice can be killers, but may also save your life by providing water and shelter. Antarctica is a particularly interesting place to visit, I think – did you know that it is the largest desert on earth?”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Horace interrupted rudely. “Everyone knows that deserts are hot and sandy.”
“Pay attention, Master Pelly, and you might learn something helpful,” Sir Rupert perched on his desk and pointed with his cane. “Actually, a desert is anywhere where there isn’t much water. In fact, deserts get less than twenty-five centimetres of rain each year.”
“Oh yeah!” Missy said. “Antarctica is full of ice and snow, but there’s no water because it’s all frozen.”
“Very good. Miss McGovern” said Sir Rupert. “You seem to know a bit about this subject.”
Missy shrugged modestly. “I grew up in the Outback. Out there you have to know the land, or it could kill you.”
Sir Rupert smiled and he seemed to come alive, a light coming on behind his eyes. “So true! If you learn one thing out of this lesson, it is to respect the land and your environment. Never underestimate it!”
“Are we supposed to go around hugging trees? Or kissing the ground we walk on?” Horace sniggered. But no one else seemed to see the funny side.
“Um, I think Sir Rupert means we should be careful,” said Jimmy.
Horace shot him a scowl. “I know what he means, Roberts! My father says that land is there to be tamed. There’s no problem that can’t be solved by a chainsaw and a bucket of quick-drying concrete.”
Sir Rupert looked at Horace with a slight smile on his face. He had every reason to be angry – Horace was being quite rude now, his loud voice blocking out anyone else’s questions. But Sir Rupert just leaned back and smiled.
“Enough discussion, I think. Time for a little practical demonstration.”
He picked up his rucksack from under the desk. It looked heavy and worn, and Jimmy could imagine that it had been on every expedition the old man had ever taken part in. Sir Rupert placed it on the desk and opened the top.
“I’ve something in here which I think will interest you greatly,” he said.
“Boring!” said Horace, leaning back in his chair, swinging precariously. “What is it, some old rocks? A branch to chew on when you get lost in your back garden?”
“Master Pelly, perhaps you would care to come up and help me out. The rest of you gather around,” Sir Rupert continued.
Horace leaped up from his seat, keen to take any opportunity to show off. The rest of the racers approached carefully. They stood slightly back from the desk as the teacher rummaged in his bag.
“When I say I want you to respect the land around you, I—”
“Oh, let’s get on with it!” said Horace. He barged forward and picked up the rucksack, turning it out onto the desk. The contents fell out, books and clothes scattering everywhere.
Sir Rupert tried to grab the rucksack, but Horace had it out of reach. Jimmy saw the alarm on the old man’s face as a glass box tumbled out of the bag and onto the floor. It smashed into tiny pieces and Jimmy saw something crawl out of the shards of glass. It had eight black legs and two sharp claws. At the back of its hard body was a tail that curved above it, with a sharp sting at the end. Jimmy quickly realized what Horace had just released into their classroom.
A scorpion!
Chapter 3 - Scorpion Surprise!
Kako gave off a high-pitched scream as the scorpion scuttled under the classroom tables.
Chip jumped on his chair and started tucking his trousers into his socks.“Where’d it go? Where’d it go?” he asked anxiously.
“It’s in the corner!” said Jimmy, who could see it heading for the door. “Actually, I think that it’s more afraid of us than we are of it.”
“I don’t think so!” Horace shouted.
Sir Rupert sighed, and tried to continue with his lesson. “Come on, now, settle down,” he said. No one paid him any attention. “Let’s get back to the matter in hand, shall we?”
The scorpion scurried a different way, and the students all shrieked.
“Stand still!” said Sir Rupert with such force that everyone stopped panicking and stood to attention. “That’s better,” he continued in a quieter voice. “Now, if you’ll all kindly take your seats, we shall continue.”
They did exactly as they were told. They climbed down slowly from their chairs and sat down, except for Horace, who refused to budge from on top of his chair, his face red with fear. “Sting is a deathstalker scorpion,” said Sir Rupert, ignoring Horace. “They usually live in the Sahara desert, where they feed on insects. The tail ends in a sharp spike, which contains a poison.”
“You brought a deadly scorpion into our classroom? Are you mad?” squealed Horace.
“Now then, he’s hardly deadly. A sting from this little fellow would not be enough to kill a full-grown adult,” said Sir Rupert with his thin smile. He thought for a moment and the smile dropped. “Hmm. A child might be another matter, however...”
Horace moaned to himself and scrambled up on top of his desk.
Sir Rupert carried on as if nothing had happened. “A fascinating area, the Sahara. Did you know that it gets less than twenty-five centimetres of rain each year?” he repeated himself. “You’d think that it is so dry that nothing can live there, but many animals do, such as scorpions, camels and goats. There is even a type of antelope that can go for a whole year without water.”
“Get it out, get it out, get it out!” whimpered Horace as the scorpion crawled under his desk.
“All in good time,” Sir Rupert replied with a withering look. “The desert itself is almost entirely composed of sand which forms in dunes. These are large hills or even mountains of sand made by the strong winds, known as the sirocco, that whip across the desert. The dunes can be very dangerous, especially when driving over them.”
Horace was practically jumping up and down on the table now. “Please! Take it away!”
Missy rolled her eyes and stood up. “Keep your pants on. I’ll get it.”
She calmly grabbed her metal pencil case and emptied it on the desk. Then she walked over to the scorpion and trapped it under the tin, as easily as if she was dealing with a fly. Carefully she took it over to Sir Rupert, who took the case with a warm smile. “Thank you, Missy. You weren’t scared?”
“Nah,” she said, sitting back down. “
Not really. I’ve seen bigger. Once I woke up to find a forest scorpion on my pillow. Big as a dingo, that critter was!”
“Excellent! Everyone should take a leaf out of Miss McGovern’s book. Keep calm, keep cool, and if possible keep away.”
Horace jumped down from the desk. “You’re insane! You’ll never work again! Releasing a scorpion into a classroom? My father will hear of this!” he said, hurrying to the door.
“I don’t know what Horace is complaining about – he smashed the glass,” said Chip.
“Well, what’s done is done,” said Sir Rupert, packing Sting away in his rucksack. “We’ll call it a day, I think. Good luck to everyone for the next race!”
“Wherever that might be,” said Kako.
Sir Rupert smiled, and Jimmy saw the glint of mischievousness again. “Well, if you’ve been paying attention in this lesson, you should know everything you need to about the location of the race.” Then he tapped the side of his nose as if to say, “you didn’t hear it from me.”
Jimmy smiled and felt his heart pumping faster. He looked into the faces of each of the four remaining racers in the room and in a breathless whisper said, “I think I know where we’re going.”
At that moment they heard a bing! through the airship’s speakers, followed by the robot co-ordinator Joshua Johnson’s clear voice saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, we will be landing in approximately ten minutes. That’s ten minutes.”
Jimmy and the other racers burst out of the classroom like they’d just heard the starting pistol at the start of a sprint. Jimmy felt the slight turn of the airship, the floor tilting underneath him.
“Last one to the observation deck is a rusty wheel nut!” Missy yelled, and sped off down the corridor with a whoop. Jimmy and Sammy caught each other’s eye and smiled, before charging off down the corridor after her.
The racers ran as fast as they could down the length of the ship, passing Horace on their way to the observation deck, a room at the very bottom of the airship that was entirely made out of glass – even the floor!
Jimmy gasped when he saw the vast landscape below him. Looking down past his dirty trainers and through the transparent floor, he could see the huge yellowy-orange carpet of desert. His stomach lurched a little as he realized that there was just a piece of glass between him and a huge drop to the earth below.
“Sugoi!” said Kako, which Jimmy had learned meant “Awesome!” in Japanese.
“Woah!” said Chip, stepping out onto the deck.
“I knew it,” Jimmy gasped. “We’re racing across the Sahara!”
Chapter 4 - Gadgets and Gizmos
Jimmy tore out of the observation deck and back into the corridor. I’ve got to tell Grandpa about the location of the next race, he thought. Cabbie would need to be adapted for the sandy terrain.
He ran to the workshop, where technicians and engineers were going crazy, running about and falling over each other in a mad panic to try and get their robots ready in time.
“Looks like someone’s already told them about the desert!” Jimmy muttered to himself. He walked over to Grandpa, who was hopping and dancing around Cabbie like someone had dropped a lit firecracker down his trousers.
“You’ve heard, then?” said Jimmy, ducking out of the way as Grandpa whizzed past him carrying a giant antenna. Grandpa turned to smile at him, his moustache bobbing up and down excitedly.
“Of course I have! The word got around in seconds!” he beamed. “The Sahara desert! Just think of it, Jimmy!”
“We’ve just been down to the observation deck to take a look, Grandpa. It’s so big!” Jimmy said. “It’s massive! Vast! Enormous!”
“Brilliant!” said Cabbie, cheery as ever. “I love a bit of sand surfing. Bring it on!”
Grandpa continued rushing around Cabbie, making last-minute checks. Jimmy kept getting in the way, so Grandpa chucked a parcel at him. “Here, open this. Came this morning on the post plane.”
Jimmy recognized the address label. “Great! It must be my new race suit. That’s Shallot! promised me one ages ago.” It was the first good thing that his rubbish sponsors had done for him. While all the others had cool sponsors like Luke’s Lasers and Robotron Rocket Boots, the only people that had wanted to sponsor Jimmy and Cabbie when they started racing were a fruit and vegetable shop, That’s Shallot!. Jimmy struggled to unwrap the large box, and wondered why it was so bulky. The jumpsuit he had wanted was made of flame-retardant, heat-reflective foil microfibres. It was super-shiny and extra lightweight, but the suit that eventually popped out of the box wasn’t what he had been expecting.
“What the...?” he muttered, mystified.
“Try it on, then!” said Grandpa.
Jimmy pulled on the suit, which was large and made of plastic. It was completely brown, with some black stripes and a small tag that said ‘pull here’. He tugged at the tag and a loud hissing sound came from somewhere inside the suit. It was expanding!
By now everyone in the workshop had heard the strange noise. They had stopped work and were looking at Jimmy in his strange new suit, which was inflating by the second. It stopped, leaving a perfectly round suit with his legs, arms and head poking out.
“It’s ... it’s ... an onion!” he said, baffled. The technicians around him gave a laugh and even Grandpa and Cabbie couldn’t stop their giggles. Grandpa reached into the box and pulled out a strange leafy green helmet, which he placed on Jimmy’s head. Jimmy wasn’t impressed.
“Aw, come on Jimmy! It’s nothing to cry about!” said one of Horace’s NASA technicians through the laughter.
“He’s not crying – that’s the onion making his eyes water!” joked another.
Jimmy took off the suit, pulled out the stopper and chucked it into his locker in disgust. The onion deflated with a slow farting sound. “There’s no way I’m wearing that on TV,” he mumbled.
A few minutes later, they landed in the heart of the desert. Jimmy could feel the heat rising already as he made his way to the exit hatch with the rest of the racers and their teams. He was glad to be back in just his everyday clothes – an old grey T-shirt, shorts and tatty trainers – rather than that horrible, hot vegetable suit. At this temperature, I’d have been a roasted onion! he thought to himself as the gigantic hangar doors began to inch their way open.
“Everyone gather round!” Joshua Johnson, the robot co-ordinator yelled. “Lord Leadpipe has a special announcement to make.”
“What does Loonpipe want now? Is it not enough that he steals us away from our homes—” Grandpa muttered.
And makes us live in the lap of luxury, thought Jimmy.
Jimmy knew Grandpa hated Lord Leadpipe. They had worked together as inventors when they were young men. But when Grandpa had invented the first-ever robot, his designs had been stolen and Leadpipe had set up his own robotics company. Lord Ludwick Leadpipe had gone on to become a multi-billionaire, while Grandpa had spent years as taxi driver, before he dusted off his workshop to make Cabbie for Jimmy.
They stepped through the exit hatch onto the ramp that took them down to the desert floor. Jimmy was hit by the dry desert heat as he moved out of the air-conditioned atmosphere of the airship. It struck the back of his throat, making him instantly thirsty.
Lord Leadpipe stood at the end of the ramp on a small stage that had been hastily set up. Somehow he was still wearing his usual formal suit and tie, even though Jimmy was roasting in just a T-shirt. As the racers came down the ramp, Leadpipe welcomed them all in his usual jovial manner.
“Come, come! Gather around! I trust you have had a good trip?”
“I’ve had worse!” Missy answered back.
“Good, good!” Lord Leadpipe waited until everyone was silent and a couple of Robo TV camerabots were hovering in front of him. He liked an audience, especially an audience of hundreds of millions, eagerly awaiting his every word. “Welcome, o
ne and all, to the Sahara desert, among the harshest environments on Planet Earth! Tomorrow’s race promises to begin one of the toughest events of your lives.”
“Can’t wait,” whispered Missy.
“You will travel from this point across the sands to a finish line that we have set up on the other side of the desert. The eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed a difference in this leg of the competition.”
Horace surprised Jimmy by being the first to notice. “Where’s the track?” he asked.
“Precisely, Mr Pelly!” yelled Lord Leadpipe. “This time there will be no track! Your robots will have to trek across the sands to the finish line at a beautiful little oasis I know of. In fact, it’s where Lady Leadpipe and I had our honeymoon. The water is crystal clear and the palm trees are just lovely at this time of year—”
Joshua Jackson coughed and Lord Leadpipe seemed to remember they were all there.
“Anyway,” he continued. “The finish line is nearly twelve hundred miles away, but this race there will be no pit stops and no communication with your pit teams!”
The assembled racers and teams murmured in surprise and panic.
“Your robots will have to be fully adapted to carry all the fuel they need. Our own robot teams will check over the vehicles and rewire the Cabcoms so you can only communicate with each other. One of the checkpoints will act as your overnight stop, but you will not be allowed to change anything on your robots while you are there.”
Horace looked up at his dad, Hector Pelly. Hector looked exactly like his son, with perfectly aligned white teeth, a straight nose and glossy hair.
“This should be a piece of cake, Father. Zoom’s laser guidance system will work out the quickest route in no time!” he boasted.
“Ah! That reminds me,” Lord Leadpipe overheard. “To make things a bit more interesting, our technicians will be removing any automated navigation systems.”
“What?” said Horace and Mr Pelly in unison.
“All Global Positioning Systems, sat-nav, mapping software and laser-guidance systems will be removed before the race. Instead, competitors will follow a set of clues from checkpoint to checkpoint, which will then lead you to the finish. You’ll be able to find the checkpoints by looking for the usual Leadpipe Industries’ logo, and following the clues you’re given. Each clue will provide you with a set of co-ordinates to the next checkpoint, and eventually lead you across the finish line at the other end of the desert.”
