‘Fantastic! You did it!’ Geoff punched him happily on the shoulder. ‘No problems or anything?’
‘Not really,’ said Tom. ‘Nothing worth mentioning.’
Geoff took the controls for the journey back. With Tom map-reading, they flew south down the railway line to Penton Castle, and turned right. They followed the road back through Sherwood Forest and Mansfield to the motorway, turned south again, and finally due west, to bring themselves back to the Park. When Geoff dropped Tom off by the barn, they found the whole journey had taken a little under twelve minutes.
Ten minutes after that, Tom was back with Doctor Warner and when Air Urquart returned, he found the two of them in the canteen tent discussing how the Romans might have gone about extracting lead ore from limestone.
‘Smart boy that,’ the archaeologist commented, as she walked with Air Urquart to his car. ‘Must be fun having someone like that in your class.’
‘Yes, it’s very… stimulating.’ Mr Urquart hesitated. ‘Can I ask… You didn’t have any trouble getting him to talk?’
‘Trouble!’ Doctor Warner laughed. ‘I don’t think he’s stopped since he got back from his walk. Except to eat of course.’
She looked across to the canteen tent, where Tom was finishing what had to be his fourth pizza. ‘You forget how much they can tuck away at that age, don’t you?’
‘What did he talk about?’
‘All sorts of things really. He was asking lots of questions about Roman technology to start with. You know, whether they knew about electricity, that sort of thing. Then we got on to flying for some reason. But mostly, of course, we’ve been discussing rocks.’ She shook her head in admiration. ‘Not many boys his age know that much geology. Surprised me.’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Urquart thoughtfully. ‘It can surprise a lot of people. I’m very grateful to you.’
‘Grateful?’
‘Well, coming out here’s obviously done him a lot of good.’ Mr Urquart looked at Tom as he walked over to the car. There was a smile on his face, no trace of a twitch, and even his stammer seemed to have disappeared.
‘Are you sure all you did was talk to him?’
‘Talk and eat,’ said Doctor Warner. ‘I promise you, that’s all he’s done since he got here.’
Mr Urquart thanked her again, climbed into his car, and wondered what on earth he was going to tell Miss Taylor.
When Tom got home, Mrs Baxter told him that Geoff was out in the garage, and wanted to see him.
‘He’s been out there for hours waiting for you to come back,’ she said. ‘Apparently, he’s got something to show you.’
In the garage, Tom found Geoff sitting in Aquila. He had washed off all the bits of mud that had stuck to the hull in the cave, and carefully swept out the bits of loose straw that had got into the cockpit while it was in the barn.
He had also stuck a couple of go-fast stickers down each side and another one on the back that said ‘My other car’s a Ferrari.’
He climbed out when Tom appeared, and for some minutes the two boys simply stood there together and stared at it.
‘You got back all right, then?’ asked Tom eventually. ‘No one saw you?’
‘I don’t think so.’ Geoff reached out and stroked a hand along the upward curve of Aquila’s bow, then ran it along to the bottom of one of the gold letters.
‘I wonder why it’s called Aquila?’
‘It means an eagle,’ said Tom.
‘An eagle?’
Tom nodded. ‘A man can fly anywhere, if he rides on the back of an eagle.’
‘Too right,’ said Geoff, softly. ‘Too right.’
CHAPTER FIVE
The front page of the Sunday Mirror next morning came as something of a shock to both boys.
Geoff was helping his father put out the papers in the shop, when he saw the set of ‘exclusive’ pictures of a UFO spotted seven miles south of Stavely, all over the front page. Aquila’s shape, with Tom inside, was clearly recognizable.
He showed the paper to his father, who read the article aloud in between serving customers. Mr Reynolds had long believed that the earth was being visited by aliens from space, and the story confirmed his theory that they were up to no good in the process.
According to the newspaper, a birdwatcher called Brian Bovis had seen a strange machine fly down and hover in the air at a road junction outside Halterworth. From his hiding place in the woods, he had hurriedly lined up his camera for a picture, only to see the alien craft shoot up into the air where, using what Mr Bovis described as ‘some sort of power beam’, it had rooted out a row of telegraph poles and sent them hurtling back to earth in an obvious attempt to kill him before he could tell anyone what he had seen.
On the inside pages of the paper, there were more pictures. One was of the telegraph pole which had landed in the earth centimetres from where Mr Bovis had been standing and another, fifty metres away, had speared his motorcycle to the ground like a cocktail sausage.
The photos of Aquila were rather blurred as Mr Bovis’ camera had unfortunately been focused to take close-ups of a feeding hedge-warbler, but you could just make out the small head and big dark eyes of the alien creature that sat inside.
‘Wouldn’t like to meet him on a dark night.’ Mr Reynolds studied the photo closely. ‘Nasty piece of work that.’ He passed the paper back to Geoff and went off to serve another customer. After breakfast, Geoff took it round to show Tom.
‘You never said anything about telegraph poles and a power beam,’ he said. ‘How did you do it?’
Tom did not reply. As it happened, he had some rather alarming news of his own. The police had come to his house early that morning to ask Mrs Baxter if she had seen any flying saucers in her garden recently.
‘Flying saucers?’ The look of worry on Mrs Baxter’s face deepened. ‘What do you mean?’
‘We had some reports yesterday about something in the sky,’ the sergeant explained. ‘And then a phone call from someone who says they saw it land on your lawn.’
‘You’re saying somebody saw me land?’ said Geoff, when Tom told him about it.
‘Yes, but it might be all right. It was only Mrs Murphy.’
Mrs Murphy was the old lady who lived on her own in the house next door to Tom’s.
‘They got the doctor round, and he said it was probably a side effect of this new medicine she’s been taking for her depression.’
‘So nobody believed her?’
Tom shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. But it might be safest if we kept Aquila indoors for a few days. At least in the daytime.’
It was disappointing, but Geoff had to agree it was the only sensible thing to do.
Sitting in the garage, he gently floated Aquila a few metres up and down and side to side, while Tom read the article in the Sunday Mirror.
According to the paper, the damage to the telephone lines was estimated at hundreds of pounds, and when Tom looked at the pictures, he couldn’t help thinking that if the telegraph poles had fallen even a fraction further to the left…
‘I tell you what.’ Geoff took out his chewing gum and stuck it on the dash. ‘If we can’t go outside or anything, we could find out what some of these do.’ He gestured to the lights in front of him.
‘How?’ asked Tom.
‘Well, we push a few and see what happens.’
‘But we don’t know what they’ll do!’
‘That’s why I’m suggesting we push them,’ Geoff explained patiently. ‘So we’d know.’
‘But that could be… dangerous.’ Tom was still thinking about his near miss on the birdwatcher, and the skin under his right eye flickered faintly.
Geoff shrugged. ‘I think it’d probably be all right. I mean, you wouldn’t design something like this to kill whoever was inside it, would you?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Tom. ‘But I…’ He stopped. ‘Are we going forwards?’
Geoff leaned over the side to peer at the floor and found Aqui
la was, very slowly, floating towards the door. He looked at the dashboard and saw his chewing gum had dribbled down over the forward control. He peeled it off, and flicked the button back out with his fingernail.
‘I tell you what. We’ll just try one of them. I mean, one wouldn’t do any harm, would it?’
Tom was not entirely convinced by this.
‘It’s just to see what happens.’ Geoff put the chewing gum back in his mouth. ‘We’ll probably find it turns on the heater or something.’ He pointed to a small blue light in the far corner. ‘This one looks pretty harmless. Let’s try that.’ And before Tom could say anything, Geoff reached out a thumb and pressed firmly at the light.
Nothing happened.
The boys looked round, and Geoff pressed again. There was a faint smell in the air that Tom couldn’t quite place, but otherwise nothing had changed. His relief mingled with a slight sense of disappointment.
‘OK, I’ll try this one.’ Geoff reached out a finger to a larger disc in the centre of the dashboard that glowed a luminescent yellow.
‘I thought you said one button.’
‘One button that works!’ protested Geoff. ‘There’s not much point doing it unless we find one that works, is there? Where are you going?’
Tom was climbing out of Aquila. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said firmly. ‘If you want to risk getting killed, you can do it on your own. I’m going over here. Out of the way.’
He went to stand by the wall at the back of the garage, his arms folded.
‘Honestly, I don’t know what you’re worrying about.’ Geoff shook his head. ‘Nothing’s going to happen.’ He gave Tom a brief smile, pressed down with his finger…
… and both he and Aquila disappeared.
Standing at the sink in the kitchen, peeling potatoes, Mrs Baxter was worrying about her neighbour, Mrs Murphy. The old lady had not been in good health for some time. She was lonely, she had trouble with her legs, and now she was seeing spaceships land in the garden.
Some years before, when Mrs Baxter had first moved to Stavely, Mrs Murphy’s kindness had helped her through a difficult time. Now, it seemed, she was in need of help herself, and Mrs Baxter would have liked very much to give it. She would have liked to call round, to ask if she could help with the shopping, to sit down and talk over a coffee… but she couldn’t.
Mrs Baxter’s agoraphobia had started as nothing more than a vague reluctance to go out of the house. She had found she disliked being in crowds, that travelling on public transport made her nervous, and that she only felt really comfortable and secure in the privacy of her own home. Over the months, the reluctance to leave had become stronger until now the truth was that she had not set so much as a foot outside her house for nearly three years. Anything she needed, she ordered over the phone or from catalogues and Tom collected any items that could not be delivered. It was an arrangement that had seemed largely satisfactory. Until now.
She could at least phone, Mrs Baxter thought, as she put the saucepan of potatoes on the cooker. She could ring and ask her neighbour how she was feeling and find out exactly what the doctor had said – and she was reaching for the phone when she noticed the garden fence was on fire.
Eager flames were licking hungrily up one of the wooden panels at the bottom of the garden and as she watched, Mrs Baxter heard a dull, booming sound as Mrs Murphy’s shed, just the other side of the fence, went up in a ball of fire.
With trembling fingers, she dialled 999 and asked for the fire brigade.
In the garage, it was very quiet. Tom stared at the emptiness around him with a sick feeling in his stomach.
‘Geoff?’ he called, weakly. ‘What’s happened?’
‘I don’t understand.’ Geoff’s disembodied voice came from somewhere in the middle of the room. ‘It’s got a light on. It must be there to do something.’
Tom looked round. Geoff’s voice sounded perfectly normal, but there was no Geoff. There was nobody in the garage but himself.
‘Geoff? Are you there?’
‘I’ll try it again…’
For a moment, Geoff and Aquila were back. Geoff, with a finger poised over the yellow button, looked disappointedly around.
‘What a let-down!’ He pressed the button again, and disappeared. ‘I think I’ll try another one.’
‘Geoff!’ Tom shouted from his place at the back of the garage. ‘Please! Don’t touch anything!’
Tom reached behind him and grabbed a spade that had been leaning against the back wall. He picked it up and stepped cautiously forwards.
‘What… what are you doing?’
There was a note of concern in Geoff’s voice, but Tom ignored him. Edging round to the side of where Aquila had been, he lifted the spade and let it fall. It stopped in mid-air with a clanging sound, a metre or so above the ground.
‘Have you gone mad? You’ll damage the paint.’ Geoff stood up in Aquila and stared down at Tom. At least, Tom presumed he was standing up. All he could actually see was Geoff’s body down to his waist. Below that, his legs and Aquila were still invisible.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’
By way of reply, Tom simply pointed, and Geoff looked down. For a moment he froze in astonishment, but then he reached down, dipping a hand into the emptiness. It disappeared. When he lifted the hand out, it was back again.
‘Hang on a minute.’ Geoff disappeared completely as he sat down, and a moment later both he and Aquila had reappeared. His finger was poised over the yellow light.
‘You can see me now?’
‘Yes.’
‘And now I’ve gone again?’
‘Right.’
‘Oh, wow!’ Aquila became visible again and Geoff’s face was wreathed in smiles. ‘Oh, wow! This… this is cool! You know what we have here?’
If Tom knew, he did not reply. He was staring thoughtfully at the spade he still held in his hand. In the centre, there was a small hole about two centimetres across and, judging by the dribbles of melted metal that had formed at its base, it had been made by something extremely hot.
He went to the back of the garage, to the place where the spade had been leaning against the wall, and knelt down. A few centimetres above the ground, he could see an identical circular hole drilled through the brickwork, its sides as smooth as glass. It went right through the wall, and he could see fronds of ivy on the other side, blowing in the wind.
‘I don’t believe this.’ Geoff was half standing in an invisible Aquila, slowly bobbing up and down to watch his body vanish and then reappear. ‘Just as well you stayed outside, isn’t it?’
Tom was not really listening.
‘I mean, if you hadn’t stayed outside,’ Geoff went on, ‘we’d have just thought it was like the first button and didn’t work at all…’
‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that.’ Tom stood up.
‘What?’
‘About the first button not working.’
He held up the spade for Geoff to see and, as he did so, both boys caught the sound of fire engines getting closer.
There were eleven fires in all: four garden fences, Mrs Murphy’s shed, a sunlounger, a tree, three bushes and a basket of washing. All of them were still vigorously burning when the fire brigade arrived.
The fire chief was understandably puzzled that eleven separate fires should have broken out in half a dozen gardens at exactly the same time, but he decided eventually that the fire in the garden shed must have started all the others. An exploding petrol can, he believed, had showered its contents over the fences to start the fires on either side.
It seemed plausible, and it was certainly a lot more plausible than Mrs Murphy’s claim that the fires had been started by a laser-cannon from the spaceship she had seen the previous day. It was not an idea that anyone else took seriously, though it was curious, as a police constable pointed out, that all eleven fires were in an exact straight line.
‘I think it might be best if we didn’t try any more buttons for a while
,’ said Tom.
And for the moment, Geoff agreed.
That afternoon they took Aquila out on its first invisible flight around Stavely, and Geoff stopped over the park to perform a brief experiment. Hovering a couple of hundred metres above the lake with Aquila’s nose pointing slightly downwards, Geoff stabbed briefly at the blue button again.
The beam of light that appeared from the back of Aquila was bright enough to dazzle, but what most impressed the boys was the way it seemed to go on and on and on. It was there for only a fraction of a second, but it seemed to stretch up into the sky for ever. Tom had the feeling that if it met a satellite 40,000 miles up, it would punch a neat two-centimetre hole through it as easily as it had through the garage wall.
They had, when he thought about it, been rather lucky. If Aquila had been pointing a different way, if the laser beam had shot through a row of houses instead of gardens, if it had gone through people instead of fences…
Geoff was less worried, and he was still curious about what the other lights on Aquila might do, but for now he was prepared to concede that it would be wiser, in the short term, not to conduct any more experiments.
What they already knew Aquila could do was exciting enough for the moment.
Mrs Baxter sat in her kitchen, and for once she was feeling not so much worried as angry. It was bad enough when you couldn’t leave your house to go and help an old friend and neighbour, she thought, but when you couldn’t even go outside with a bucket of water to try and stop your own property burning down, then…
… then it was time something was done.
CHAPTER SIX
On Monday morning, the boys took Aquila to school. It was a journey which normally took them about fifteen minutes on foot, but the flight, with Geoff at the controls, was a matter of seconds.
In Aquila, there was no waiting to cross the road. There were no late buses and no traffic hold-ups. You simply took off into the air, pointed the nose to where you wanted to go, and went.
What did take time that first morning was finding somewhere in the school grounds to leave Aquila once they had got there. As it was invisible, you might have thought they could leave it wherever they wanted, but both Geoff and Tom had already realized that it was not quite that simple.
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