The tunnel was gradually narrowing, and Janey quickly worked out why there was so much traffic. The drill-fronted mini-subs were widening the neck of the tunnel and the Navy Seals moved the rubble away. Which just left the divers. As another lone frogman passed her on his way along the tunnel, Janey realized instantly what she had to do.
‘Nice knowing you, Navy Seal,’ she told her mini-sub. She’d actually become quite used to manoeuvring through the water in what felt like a big metal sleeping bag, but she knew now that the machine was too big for the next stage of her journey. Blonde wriggled her feet against the stopper at the tail end of the Seal, popped her SPIder into her mouth and pushed her hands backwards off the steering wheel so that she drifted gently backwards into the water. Let’s hope it’s not too far, she thought, a little anxiously – her SPIsuit was fine for normal water conditions, but was no match for the dense protection of a wetsuit in the chilly water.
Using her Ultra-gogs for guidance, Janey swam forward to where she had seen the diver disappear. It was just as she’d thought. A drill-fronted mini-sub had forged a hole through the cliff-side, but it was only wide enough at this point to take a man, or, in this case, a Spylet. Janey hesitated for a moment, treading water. If she was confronted in here, she would be completely stuck. Of course, she could be among friends, but . . .
If she was among enemy spies, she could be in grave danger. On the other hand, if she survived, she’d show all the team in Antarctica that she was worthy of her Spylet status – that she was, in fact, truly sensational. Gripping the edge of the narrow tunnel with her hands, Janey launched herself forward and kicked her feet furiously.
The water around her became more turbulent. Someone was coming up behind her. Janey waggled her feet harder but when she glanced back through the water she spotted a black dot, increasing in size – it was a diver’s helmet, getting ever closer.
The tunnel now seemed to be heading upwards. Moments later Janey realized her body was almost vertical, and suddenly beside her there were metal rungs. It was a little underwater ladder. The head and shoulders of her pursuer were now quite visible. Time for a bit of help. Grabbing hold of one of the rails above her head, Janey slammed her feet against the bottom rung. Her Fleet-feet exploded, sending her hurtling through the water so fast that her hat slid off her head, until she was launched several metres into the air like water from a whale’s spout.
From her vantage point as she flew through the air, Janey’s brain quickly computed several things. One, if she angled her body slightly, she could land on the poolside instead of back in the water. Two, there would be a very surprised diver following her out very soon, and she needed to get out of his way, as well as out of the reach of the three burly men with clipboards who were staring at her slack-jawed as she sailed over their heads. And three, she had been here before, on her first mission as Jane Blonde.
‘So no trace of the metal . . .’ The startled voice of one of the men trailed off as Janey tumbled over in mid-air and angled herself towards the floor.
It was all very familiar – she was in a swimming-pool room. Sol’s swimming-pool room. The tunnel led straight into it, right into the heart of Sol’s Lols. She had been trapped in here before by the Sinerlesse, and as she connected with the tiled floor surrounding the pool Janey sensed that she was probably in every bit as much danger as she had been that night.
‘Oi!’ gargled an outraged voice. It was the diver, thrashing furiously in the middle of the pool. ‘What sort of stupid trick was that? You could have given me the bends!’
‘Sorry,’ said Janey, backing towards the wall as a large man with a beard and a clipboard stalked towards her. ‘Had a bit of a . . . malfunction.’
‘What department are you?’ barked one of the men with clipboards.
‘Um, surveillance,’ said Janey, nodding sternly as if to show they were all in this together. She even pointed at a strange black mark on the edge of the pool, to show how seriously she took her job. In fact, now she’d spotted it, she would have liked to get a closer look. Something about it was oddly familiar.
Her ploy didn’t work. ‘Very funny,’ said the man. ‘We’re all surveillance, aren’t we? Kind of what spies do. And I’m not sure we’ve seen you before. Which division? Geology, aeronautical engineering, assassination . . .’
‘Assassination?’ squeaked Janey. Wasn’t that killing people? She realized it had come out as a question. ‘Erm, yes, assassination.’
A second man came up behind the bearded one, brandishing his clipboard. ‘That’s my department. I thought I’d had all my assassins through already, and I’ve redirected everyone to Antarctica since there was nobody here to assassinate when we arrived.’ Janey breathed a sigh of relief – her father had emptied the place before heading off South – as the man flipped through a couple of pages attached to his board. ‘No, nobody left on here. What name is it?’
Janey thought quickly. The third man was approaching too, and the diver had scrambled out of the pool and was making his way over towards the group. ‘I’m a spy – I’m not giving you my name!’
The bearded man rolled his eyes. ‘Come on, Blondey.We don’t have time for this.’
‘Yeah, Blondey,’ sneered the second man. ‘We can always put you on rubble-moving.’
Janey hoped they would never realize how close they had come to the truth. She was trying to stammer something – anything – in reply, when the bearded man cocked his head to one side as though he’d just thought of something. He looked at his colleague. ‘Blonde girl. Short. Skinny legs. Silver spysuit. Where’ve I seen that before?’
And at that moment the diver roared in outrage, ‘That’s right, it’s her, innit? Blonde, Jane Blonde!’
‘Oh my life, that’s why she’s familiar. She’s one of the ones we’re meant to be assassinating,’ said the bearded man, flinging his clipboard to one side. ‘The big C will be very happy with me.’
Janey shook her head. ‘You won’t get me,’ she said with more conviction than she felt.
‘Yeah? You’ll be sorry you said that,’ said the diver.
Janey was sorry, very sorry indeed, as four strapping men reached out to seize her. She knew from past experience that it was very difficult to get out of here. The door became invisible when closed, there were no windows, and even the spout in the floor through which she’d entered would be filled with divers, or could even be closed off at the click of a switch for all she knew. She danced backwards, but pretty soon she’d be trapped up against a wall. This time she didn’t even have her Back-boat to blast through the ceiling.
She looked around desperately. All four immense figures were closing in on her. ‘G-Mamma,’ she hissed into her SPIV, even though she knew there was very little her SPI:KE could do. At least she could try to let her know what was going on. ‘Enemy spies all over Sol’s Lols. No gadgets left with me. And I’m on their list for assassination . . .’
But just as the bearded man’s hands moved towards her throat, Janey remembered something she did have with her. Her fingers reached into a pocket on her sleeve and closed around the tiny object in there, the object that Trouble had dropped into her lap when he understood he wasn’t coming on this particular mission, and to her relief she felt immediately the rush of wind that threatened to force her fingers apart. It managed instead to send the four men hurtling backwards, hair, beards and faces distorted by the hurricane that blasted them against the walls of the pool room and sent two of them straight into the water. Water crashed up the sides of the room, forced out of the pool by the cyclone battering it from above, and the ceiling, unable to withstand the pressure from within, shattered and sprayed tiny glittering discs of glass everywhere, like money tossed from a fairy’s purse. It was almost fun to watch, thought Janey, as she was elevated on her great invisible cushion of air as high as the hole where the ceiling had been. She battled forward to the wind zone at the edge of the Spyroscope’s coverage, stepped on to a nearby roof and closed her fist
tightly around the gadget. At once the wind dropped and she peeked back through the splintered roof. ‘Told you you wouldn’t get me,’ she called, and she laughed at the four outraged faces below. Then she turned and sprinted along the rooftops, right away from the swimming pool and the people who now knew for definite that she was Jane Blonde, Sensational Spylet.
She wasn’t finished though. She still didn’t know what they were up to, other than aiming to kill any SPIs they might ever have heard of . . . Once at ground level, Janey turned back on herself and ran below a hedge until she came up to the reception area. ‘Zoom,’ she said to her spy glasses, taking in as many details as she could, even as she heard shouts behind her. The men were on her trail.
‘G-Mamma,’ she hissed into her SPIV, ‘I’m pretty sure they’re Copernicus’s men. They’re tunnelling under the lake and popping up in the Sol’s Lols swimming pool, looking for . . . some metal.’ What had that man said? Geology, aeronautical engineering, assassination. It didn’t make any sense to Janey – yet. ‘And there are these weird marks everywhere,’ she continued, spotting another across the floor of reception. ‘They remind me of something, something I’ve seen recently. They’re all shiny and black.’
‘Shiny and black?’ repeated G-Mamma. ‘Like that man’s wetsuit behind you?’
Janey whipped around and, sure enough, an angry diver was launching himself towards her. ‘Satispy!’ she yelled.
‘Already done,’ reported G-Mamma, as Janey started to disintegrate.
But not before Janey wondered again what those dark, viscous marks reminded her of. G-Mamma was right. It was something like a wetsuit. But what?
Jane Blonde intended to find out.
out in the cold
‘Couldn’t you have got a sample?’ moaned G-Mamma back at the Spylab. ‘I mean, “black and shiny”? Great groovy gadgets! It’s not much to go on, is it?’
‘I couldn’t get close enough,’ said Janey, emerging from the Wower in a long nightdress and a rather fetching pair of fluffy lamb-shaped slippers that Bert had sent from Australia. ‘I’d only just spotted it when you Satispied me out of there.’
She’d decoded and debriefed before de-Wowing, so G-Mamma was up to speed with the takeover of Sol’s Lols and the apparent search for some kind of metal at the HQ.
‘I’ll go back tomorrow night,’ said Janey, smacking the fireplace on the ten-past-two location that opened the tunnel between the two rooms. ‘Right now I need to go to bed in case Mum looks in on me.’
At that G-Mamma slapped a hand to her forehead. ‘Yikes, clumsy mumsies! Mean Jean will sack me. Let’s get over to your place before she gets home.’
Janey yelped as G-Mamma prodded her in the behind, urging her more quickly through the fireplace tunnel. She’d been in more than enough tight spaces with someone right behind her for one night. ‘What are you doing?’ She sprang to her feet in her bedroom and helped G-Mamma out of the grate.
‘I completely forgot!’ G-Mamma wrenched open the door and ploughed down the stairs two at a time. ‘I’m supposed to be babysitting.’
‘For me?’ said Janey, following her SPI:KE into the lounge, where G-Mamma now sat with her feet on the coffee table, attempting to look interested in a complex tapestry of Windsor Castle.
‘Who else would I be babysitting for in your house? Of course it’s you.’ She pricked her finger with the needle and howled furiously. ‘That’s it! I’ll put it through the Wower later – it’ll be even better than the Bayeux Tapestry of old Harold with his eye out. Mine will have real blood!’
Bewildered, Janey sat down slowly on the edge of the TV chair, the one her mum liked to sit in when she watched the news or one of her forensic-investigation programmes. ‘I don’t understand. Mum hates you! She’d never leave me with you. And she was here when I pretended to go to bed a few hours ago.’
‘Ah gneeuow,’ said G-Mamma indistinctly as she sucked her pricked finger, just as surprised as Janey. ‘But she popped round while you were doing your icy SPIcy stuff in bagpipe-land. Said she’d decided to go somewhere at the last minute, and would I mind just sitting in for a few hours as you were already asleep anyway. I came right over.’
Janey shook her head. ‘This isn’t right. One, Mum never goes out. Two, she can’t stand you. And three, she didn’t say who she was going out with. It could have been a horrible trick or . . .’ She stopped, suddenly noticing the newspaper on the table. The red-circled advert stood out like a pimple. ‘Oh no. She’s gone speed-dating with Joy.’
G-Mamma’s eyes bulged so much they looked like they might fall out of her head. ‘Speed-dating? Your mother?’ And then she rolled on the sofa, laughing so hard that her tight orange dress started to strain at the seams. ‘Wait till your father hears about that one!’
‘There’s the door!’ Janey leaped out of her seat. ‘Go!’
‘No, you go,’ said G-Mamma sharply. ‘For once I’m the one who’s meant to be here, not you.’
Janey raced up the stairs and into her room just in time to hear her mother say, ‘Night, Joy. Yes, three numbers! I wonder when I’ll hear from them,’ and then slam the door behind her as she came in.
‘I’m back,’ Jean called softly to G-Mamma. ‘Thanks, Miss . . . errr . . . Mamma.’
‘Call me Rosie,’ Janey heard G-Mamma say kindly. ‘And it was no trouble. Any time. Your little angel is sleeping like the dead. I-I mean, she’s fast asleep.’
There was a bit of mumbled conversation and then two front doors banged in quick succession. Janey stayed in bed just long enough to hear the bedroom door creak as her mother popped her head round to check on her. Then she whisked through to the Spylab again. G-Mamma was busy piling things on to the workbench, singing softly:
‘Here we go gathering gadgetry,
Gadgetry, gadgetry,
Here we go gathering gadgetry,
On a cold and frosty morning.’
‘So what did she say?’ demanded Janey.
‘She said speed-dating is great fun.’ Adding a pair of Roller-blades to the pile in front of her, G-Mamma snorted loudly. ‘Even suggested I should try it. Me! As if.’
It didn’t sound good. She’d found it fun. And three numbers – that’s what her mum had said. Did that mean she was going to be dating three different men? Suddenly Janey noticed properly what G-Mamma was doing. She pointed to the mound of SPI-buys. ‘Where are you sending me?’
‘Honey-child, can you see yourself in these?’ said G-Mamma, holding up an enormous pair of aqua wellingtons. ‘These are for me. “Gumboots” we call them in Oz. I’m off to Dubbo Seven to see Bert.’
Janey stared in disbelief. This was disgusting! Not only was her own mother sneaking out for late-night rendezvous with unknown speed-daters, but now G-Mamma appeared to be zipping off on little romantic expeditions too. ‘What about checking the shiny black samples?’
‘You haven’t got any yet,’ G-Mamma pointed out. ‘I’ll be back in a few days. It’s not like I’m going to the other side of the world. Oh, well, OK, it is, but it’s fine when you travel by SPIral staircase. SPIV me if you come up with anything. Now, back to bed with you.’
Irritated, Janey slumped against the bench as her SPI:KE stepped into the rotating elevator and shot off through the centre of the Earth. Now she was completely on her own – apart from her mum, who didn’t seem to notice whether Janey was around or not at the moment. And she seemed to have completely forgotten about Abe Rownigan, which was rather inconvenient, since he was, although she didn’t know it, her husband.
Even Alfie was away. There was nobody to talk to although . . . Janey decided it was time to use an everyday gadget that lots of people, not just spies, carried in their pocket. Tapping into G-Mamma’s keyboard, she found the phone-from-your-computer information and keyed in Alfie’s mobile number. Suddenly his face bounced up on to the computer screen.
‘Alfie, it’s me,’ Janey said, then kicked herself as she realized that he would be able to see her face on the screen
of his mobile.
‘So it is,’ he said, glancing over his shoulder.
‘How’s it going?’
‘Can’t really say.’
He was being a very proper Spylet, much to Janey’s annoyance. ‘Is everyone OK? How’s my dad?’
Alfie looked as though he was chewing the question over. Eventually he said, ‘Well, that would be telling, wouldn’t it?’
‘Is anyone around?’ He was being very odd and secretive, which was fine when they were being spies, but not when she’d just called him as a friend.
Alfie glanced left and right. ‘Nope.’
‘Good. I’ve got loads to catch up on. Wait till I tell you where I’ve been tonight . . .’
But Alfie shook his head. ‘I’m a bit busy, Janey. I’m sort of in the middle of a table-tennis tournament with Rook – he’s a bit down because Blackbird’s, um, not here. And your dad was talking about a lunchtime meeting . . .’
Turning back to the computer, Janey toggled through to the Google bar and found the world clock. It was midnight at home, but midday where Alfie was. ‘Got it,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you call me later?’
‘If I’ve got time,’ said Alfie with a great exaggerated shrug.
‘But I’ll be—’
Alfie sighed. ‘Janey, not now, OK?’
And all at once it looked as though he wasn’t giving an excuse to get himself out of trouble. He looked just . . . bored. Fed up with her demanding his attention. Or perhaps even more than that, thought Janey. It was as if he couldn’t care less.
Janey cut off the connection without even saying goodbye. What was the point? Nobody had any interest in her any more. Parents? Not interested. Her mother was too busy speed-dating eight strange men with her boring bossy friend, while her father was running around the Antarctic with his hand-picked group of spies, which didn’t include his own daughter. Meanwhile her SPI:KE was combing sheep in Australia and ‘getting flirty with Berty’, as G-Mamma herself might describe it. Janey looked down at the lamb slippers that Bert had sent. ‘Oh! He didn’t send them!’ Janey had imagined that they’d been posted to G-Mamma, but suddenly it was clear that her SPI:KE had brought them back in person. By the looks of things, there had been previous SPIral journeys to Dubbo Seven that Janey had known nothing about.
Jane Blonde: Spylet on Ice Page 8
