Desert Disaster

by Axel Lewis

  “What!” exclaimed the Pellys again.

  “What sort of race do you call that?” added Horace.

  Jimmy grinned with delight and exchanged a look with Grandpa, who was looking a little smug. “I know what I call it,” said Jimmy to Grandpa. “A treasure hunt!”

  Chapter 5 - The Starting Grid

  Jimmy woke up to the sound of engines. But it wasn’t the low hum of the airship’s hyperdrive engines which he was used to, but the roar of petrol motors coming from the centre of the ship. With a burst of excitement, Jimmy remembered about the race. As he swung down from his bunk, he noticed Grandpa had already left the cabin they shared. Jimmy threw his clothes on and went down to the workshop to see what was happening.

  As he walked through the doors, he was hit by a wall of noise. Teams of mechanics, engineers and technicians were shouting and stamping their feet as groups of Robot Races’ officials swarmed all over the machines with spanners and screwdrivers.

  “Morning, Jimmy,” said Grandpa.

  Jimmy went over to Cabbie’s side to join him.

  “Morning. What’s going on?”

  “They’re taking out the navigation systems,” Grandpa explained, handing Jimmy a cup of tea and a jam sandwich.

  Jimmy looked over to the other side of the workshop where Horace was beside his robot, Zoom. He was in full tantrum mode.

  “You won’t get away with this! If you so much as scratch that robot I’ll report you!” Horace complained.

  A team of five technicians were around, inside, underneath and behind Zoom, fiddling with hardware. Every so often, they would extract a gadget from the robot and toss it in a heap outside the car.

  Zoom didn’t take kindly to this interference, and revved his engine menacingly. “Error!” he bleeped at them. “Unauthorized hardware removal!”

  “Looks like we might be a while here,” said Joshua Johnson, peering more closely at the masses of electronic equipment on Zoom’s dashboard. He left the technicians to it and walked across to Jimmy.

  “Our turn,” said Grandpa cheerfully.

  “Good morning, Mr Roberts,” said Joshua. “I’ll need to remove any navigation systems from Cabbie.”

  “Be my guest!” said Cabbie.

  A white-coated man came across and sat in the driver’s seat. Jimmy recognized him as Cyril, the same technician who had installed Cabbie’s Cabcom. He looked around Cabbie for a second, frowned, then aimed his electric screwdriver at the one piece of gadgetry on the dashboard. He turned it on and it buzzed for a moment.

  “Woo-hoo!” giggled Cabbie as his Cabcom was rewired and his radar screen went blank. “That tickles!”

  Cyril stepped out and dropped a small microchip into Joshua’s hand. With a curt nod he moved on to the next robot. The whole process had taken less than ten seconds.

  Joshua peered into his hand at the tiny circuit Cyril had removed and frowned, unimpressed. “Hmm. I thought that would take longer,” he said. He shrugged and smiled at them. “Oh well. Good luck for the race!”

  Grandpa took his automatic tea-maker out of his toolkit and dispensed some thick brown liquid into his mug. “It should be an interesting one,” he mused.

  “I’ll say!” chipped in Cabbie. “With Zoom and the others stripped of their navigation gadgets, we’ve got a level playing field!”

  “Are you feeling lucky, Cabbie?” said Jimmy. “This could be our best race so far!” He patted Cabbie on the bonnet excitedly.

  “Just you be careful, you two!” said Grandpa, sitting down and stirring his tea with a spanner. “I don’t trust Leadpipe as far as I can throw him.”

  “Don’t worry, Wilfred! I’ll take care of Jimmy!” said Cabbie.

  “And I’ll take care of Cabbie,” Jimmy grinned.

  Grandpa smiled, but he still looked concerned. “OK,” he said finally. “Now let me show you something new I added.” He leaped over to Cabbie’s dashboard.

  “I want to show him! I want to show him!” said Cabbie like a little child.

  “All right! Keep your roof on! Take it away.”

  Cabbie revved his engine excitedly. “Wilf’s been hard at work. He was up all last night making me ready for the sandy terrain. Just look at this!”

  There was a beep from inside the cab, and Cabbie’s bodywork started to whir and creak. Two sets of caterpillar tracks quickly wrapped themselves round Cabbie’s tyres, making him look like a tank. They were perfect for the desert environment.

  “Check me out!” said Cabbie in a fake American accent. “I look a whole lot like Dug!”

  They all laughed.

  “The tracks should keep you stable on the sand, and spread the weight of the car more evenly when you need to get up those slippery sand dunes,” explained Grandpa.

  “But what about fuel?” Jimmy asked after a moment. “Will Cabbie make it all the way?”

  “I was just coming to that,” replied Grandpa. “I was a bit stumped about how to get more petrol in without making Cabbie too heavy. But then I remembered what you and Cabbie did in the Grand Canyon. So that’s when I fitted this.” He pointed to a fat metal tube fixed to Cabbie’s engine block.

  “It’s the sonic-booster Lord Leadpipe gave us back in the Arctic!” Jimmy exclaimed.

  “That’s right. But I’ve programmed it for a slow release. Instead of giving you a burst of speed over a short distance, it’ll help Cabbie go for an extra thousand miles. Clever, eh?”

  “It’s brilliant!” Jimmy said.

  HOOOONNNNKKKK! In the workshop, a giant horn sounded.

  “That’s the five-minute signal.” Grandpa looked at his watch. “Better get in, Jimmy lad, it’s nearly race time.”

  “Here we go!” Jimmy said. He gave his grandpa a hug, took the battered old helmet from his outstretched hand and hopped inside Cabbie.

  As they trundled slowly down the ramp to the starting line, Jimmy marvelled once more at the beautiful golden desert. He tore his eyes away from the curving dunes and shimmering heat to take in the grandstand, which had been erected overnight. Thousands of fans had come out in the hot sun to see the race. He saw waving flags and banners being bounced up and down, while the crowd chanted the names of their favourite racer.

  “WE LOVE CHIP! WE LOVE CHIP!”

  “KA-KO! KA-KO! KA-KO!”

  “COME ON, JIMMY!”

  Jimmy took his position at the starting line as safetybots buzzed around the track. Next to him, Horace sat in Zoom, with a large box now welded to his dashboard. Jimmy was about to complain that he had somehow re-installed his laser guidance system when he realized it was an air-conditioning unit to keep him cool. It must have been a gift from Horace’s sponsor, Gleam Toothpaste, because the unit had the picture of a pearly white tooth on it.

  As he looked about, Jimmy saw that most racers had been given something cool and useful from their sponsor. Chip had electronically tinted windows to keep out the desert sun from Luke’s Lasers. Missy was quickly checking over her robot with the help of a flashy new tool kit provided by Robotron Rocket Boots, while Sammy was sporting a new extra-lightweight breathable racing suit – just like the one Jimmy had wanted.

  Jimmy looked to his side at the gift from his sponsors – a giant carrier bag of fruit with the slogan, ‘your easy way to your five a day!’ on the side. Oh well, he thought. At least I won’t starve in the desert.

  The technicians cleared the track, which meant that the race was about to begin. Jimmy looked back to the edge of the airship’s ramp where Grandpa stood with other family members and crew. While the crowds were going wild around him, and the other parents hastily tried to shout extra instructions to their racers, Grandpa simply looked straight at Jimmy and gave a quiet thumbs-up.

  Then Grandpa and the other crews were herded up the ramp and back into the airship, which would take them to the halfway point.
r />   “Ready, Jimmy?” said Cabbie as the starting lights lit up.

  “Of course!” said Jimmy. His nerves had now turned into excitement. When he heard the voice of the announcer lead the crowd into a countdown, he felt his fingertips start to tingle. His body rushed with adrenaline once more as the engines revved and roared.

  Three! The crowd chanted.

  His foot hovered over the accelerator.

  Two!

  Sand started to fly as the robots spun their wheels on the ground.

  One!

  “Here we go!” Jimmy shouted as the crowd around him went wild.

  Chapter 6 - The First Clue

  The noise reached a crescendo as the lights turned green and the robots around Jimmy lurched forward onto the sand. Some made it further than others. Monster’s massive tyres made it easy going for her and Missy as they sped off across the sand. Jimmy felt a blast of air nearby as Maximus’s air cushions inflated and the hovercraft slid forward.

  Jimmy put his foot down on the accelerator. Sand sprayed out behind them, but Cabbie wasn’t moving!

  Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that Princess Kako was also having a disastrous start. After travelling about ten metres, Lightning hit a bump in the sand and Kako was thrown clean off her robot. She landed with a thud on the ground, but quickly shook herself off and climbed back onto Lightning, shouting angrily in Japanese. She hit a button on the bike and a small robotic arm extended from the bodywork. It reached over the front wheel and whizzed over the tyre faster than the eye could follow. It was spraying a thick coating of rubber onto the tyres, converting it from a thin racing tyre to a fat off-road one. It finished the front and moved onto the back, and Lightning soon had two chunky pieces of rubber underneath him. Kako was soon driving clumsily across the dunes.

  “This is awful!” Jimmy exclaimed. “Cabbie, our normal tyres are useless, we’re going to have to break out the caterpillar tracks early.”

  “Don’t worry, Jimmy! I’ll take care of it!” said Cabbie. There were two loud noises from underneath the robot – CLUNK! CLUNK! – followed by a clackety-clack, clackety-clack sound as the tracks appeared over the wheels and began to grip the soft sand.

  The crowd ooohed and aaahed in appreciation.

  “That’s better!” said Cabbie, sounding a little smug. “Now let’s move it!”

  Jimmy felt better as they started to whip across the sand in pursuit of Missy and Sammy. They passed Horace and Zoom, who had sped off in a shower of sand, but now looked like they were struggling. As Jimmy passed them, Horace was yelling and banging the steering wheel, and Zoom’s engine was making a horrible grinding noise.

  The one person who didn’t seem to be worrying about the terrain at all was Chip. His huge digger, Dug, had been built with this sort of surface in mind, and once he’d got moving he was soon eating up the ground on the leaders. The yellow giant overtook Sammy, and Jimmy did the same just moments later when Sammy and his hoverbot chose a longer route round one of the mountainous dunes.

  Five minutes into the race and the race order had settled down.

  “How are we doing?” asked Cabbie.

  “OK, I think,” said Jimmy with a shrug. “We’re not first, but we’re not last either. Sammy, Horace and Kako seem to be behind us.”

  “That leaves Missy with Monster and Chip with Dug in front of us. We’ll soon catch them up,” said Cabbie positively.

  “I’m glad Grandpa fitted those caterpillar tracks, otherwise we’d still be stuck on the start line,” said Jimmy. “Now that would be embarrassing.”

  As they travelled forward, the first checkpoint came into view, a large pole with the spinning ‘L’ of the Leadpipe Industries logo. Jimmy could already see two robot racers – Dug and Monster – pulled up beside it. From the checkpoint hung six compasses and six maps made of delicate papyrus.

  As he approached, Jimmy saw Dug’s robotic arm reach out and gently pluck a map and compass off the pole. Dug dropped them into the cab, where Chip quickly studied them. Jimmy watched as Chip looked over the map, played with the compass for a second, and then sped off to the east.

  Missy, meanwhile, had to jump down from her driver’s seat and collect the items herself. By the time Missy had made it back up to her driver’s seat in the tall monster truck, Jimmy was nearly alongside. Missy must have been worried about slipping into third place because she set off in hot pursuit of Chip without even glancing at the map.

  Jimmy slid to a halt and pulled down the window. He grabbed a map and compass and stared at them for a few seconds. He had learned to read maps with Grandpa on one of their camping holidays and, although it had been a long time since he’d tried it, he soon noticed something.

  At the top of the map were some co-ordinates, marked Checkpoint 2. Jimmy looked at them once more and turned the compass round in his hand.

  “Come on, Jimmy!” said Cabbie. “Let’s get a move on! Monster and Dug will be miles ahead of us at this rate!”

  But Jimmy stayed silent. There was definitely something wrong. He double-checked the co-ordinates. Then he triple-checked them, just to be sure.

  “Chip made a mistake,” he said.

  “Pardon?” Cabbie replied.

  “I’m sure of it. He must have been in such a hurry to stay in first place that he got the bearings wrong on the compass,” said Jimmy, checking the map for a fourth time. “He went east, but the co-ordinates point to the west.”

  “What about Missy?” said Cabbie.

  “She just followed Chip,” said Jimmy.

  “Then what are we waiting for?” said Cabbie with glee in his electronic voice. “Let’s burn rubber!”

  Jimmy put the map down and pulled the steering wheel round to the west, and Cabbie’s tyres spat sand into the air as he sped off in the right direction.

  “Woo-hoo!” cried Cabbie. “That means we’re in first place already! Not bad going, Jimmy, not bad at all.”

  “Thank Grandpa! He taught me to use a map years ago,” Jimmy said, thinking back to the holidays he had spent trekking across the countryside in an anorak and walking boots. They had gone on long walks, using the sun and the stars to navigate their way through bogs and muddy fields, before falling down exhausted in their holey little tent. Grandpa had taught Jimmy the importance of double-checking his map references and it had certainly paid off. He reached for the Cabcom to tell Grandpa about it, but as he tapped the screen he saw only fuzzy static and remembered that he wasn’t allowed to speak to him.

  “We’ll thank him tonight, when we get to the overnight stop in first place!” said Cabbie. “He’ll be watching us on TV anyway, and he’ll know you took the right direction.”

  Jimmy knew he was right. He focused on the sand in front of him. “Come on, Cabbie, we’ve got a race to win. The sooner we finish this, the sooner we can see Grandpa.” He put his foot down on the accelerator, and launched them up a dune. They reached the top and sailed into the air, Cabbie’s wheels leaving the ground altogether.

  “Yee-ha!” yelled Cabbie. “Winners’ podium, here we come!”

  Chapter 7 - Slippery Sand Dunes

  Sand battered the windscreen and Cabbie’s wipers were almost no use at all. But in his rear-view mirror Jimmy could now see two huge vehicles behind him. Missy and Chip must have realized their mistake and turned round, he thought.

  Behind them, Jimmy could make out more specks on the horizon. He used the rear-view zoom function to magnify the image, so that he could make out Princess Kako and Horace. Horace had the map spread out across Zoom’s windscreen, and a confused expression on his face.

  “Ha!” laughed Jimmy. “No wonder Horace is puzzled. He’s got the map upside down!”

  He reached out to the Cabcom and tapped the screen. Just because he couldn’t contact Grandpa didn’t mean he couldn’t talk to the other racers. The screen fizzed and crack
led, and soon Horace’s smarmy face was staring back at him.

  “Hi, Horace! Not so easy without NASA, is it?” he said. “Need any help?”

  Horace didn’t seem glad to see him. “Bog off, Roberts!” he shouted. “I’m surprised you made it this far. Cabbie’s bonnet is so full of rusty holes that the sand must be passing through him like a sieve.”

  Horace’s hand reached out and jabbed the screen hard, cutting off the connection between them.

  “Someone’s a bad loser!” sang Cabbie. Jimmy turned his attention back to the way ahead. They were right on target to find the next checkpoint, but Jimmy could see an obstacle ahead. A big one.

  “Uh-oh,” he said. Rising up above him was the biggest sand dune he had seen yet. As they hit the bottom of it, they slowed to a crawl. Cabbie’s engine made a small screeching noise and Jimmy pressed a button to shift him into a lower gear. They began to climb the side of the dune, and the sand slipped from under them. “Come on Cabbie!” Jimmy muttered as they crept up the terrifyingly steep dune. If they stopped for a second they’d slip all the way down to the bottom! In his rear-view mirror he saw Dug and Monster closing the gap between them, followed by Lightning.

  “Slow and steady, Jimmy!” said Cabbie. “Dunes like this can be dangerous. My sensors are telling me we don’t have much grip. The sand keeps moving under the tyres...”

  Jimmy nodded, but his attention was caught by Monster, who was charging up the slope. In a spray of fine sand she and Missy swished past Cabbie and regained the lead.

  All of a sudden, the sand slipped underneath Monster and Jimmy saw a great section of sand fall and tumble down the slope towards him. It was like a giant yellow landslide carrying the monster truck with it. Jimmy saw a wave of sand come towards him in slow motion. He gasped in horror.