Jane Blonde: Spylet on Ice

by Jill Marshall

  Janey tried to clear her head but the world, or rather the inside of it, was rushing by at such speed that she couldn’t tell which way was up. She had to slow down, slow down her father and the awful metal tube that was going to grind him into the lava and then stamp a great cylinder through the iron core of the earth. She passed close to the wall and tried to reach out for a shrimp anchored to a platform, but she was dropping at such speed that the whole lot just came away in her hand and plunged down the tunnel ahead of her. Her father was close by too; Janey could see the terror in his face, and understood instantly that it was not terror for himself, or even for her, but for the disaster that was about to befall the whole planet. She had to slow down!

  Something new was shooting down towards her, just in her field of vision. It was an enormous snowball. An avalanche? It was hurtling directly towards her, as if she wasn’t already going fast enough! When this thing hit her she would be snookered straight down the tube to a hot and sticky end. Then she heard her father shout out, and looked up to see if she could avoid the snowball. It was big, as big as a volcanic shrimp, or possibly a . . . an Arctic tern? It was big enough and white enough – that had to be what it was. But then Janey saw four little black cloven hooves whizzing towards her. Hooves? It had to be a sheep! A flying sheep – Maddy, the wonderful sheep who had been used and abused by Copernicus for his cloning experiments, but who turned into a pellet-firing flying machine when she Wowed. And strapped underneath her was a gold-and-green-eyed Spycat, reaching out for her.

  ‘Trouble! Maddy!’ Janey wanted to cry, she was so pleased to see them before she died. They raced down towards her so that Trouble was dangling within arms’ reach. She held out her hand to stroke his ridiculous quiff – and suddenly it came to her, her very last bit of spy training before she left SPIcamp. There was something she’d been about to do before the tube of terror had made her pass out. This time she was surviving the terror. She could cope.

  ‘Now, Blonde!’ she screamed, forcing herself into action. ‘Dad, hold tight! Really tight! I’m coming.’ She had no idea if her father could hear her as she reached for Trouble’s collar and took hold of the tiny glass ball that was hanging there. Almost sobbing with relief, Janey felt the wind whistle against her palm, then force itself out between her fingers before blasting out against the walls of the tunnel, upwards against the descending tube with her father on it, and down into the depths of the earth, splattering volcanic shrimps against the sides and sending any that weren’t hanging on flying off into the lava. The vortex was fully operational. Above her head was a noise like a rocket, and she looked up, expecting to see Copernicus escaping, but instead watching the metal tube – and her dad – catapult back up the tunnel at hundreds of miles an hour. It was about to shoot out of the top like a cork from a champagne bottle, shattering the four cranes and leaving Copernicus’s mission in tatters.

  Of course, it might just leave her father in tatters too. Janey hugged Maddy and Trouble to her tightly, cushioned inside the vortex and wedged tightly inside the tunnel.

  ‘We’d better get out of here.’

  Janey looked around. They were hovering on compressed air. The centre of the Earth was just a speck many thousands of metres below them, but they were very close to the tube she had created with her SPILL-Drills. ‘This way,’ she called, and she walked backwards on air, tugging Maddy with one hand while keeping a tight hold of Trouble’s glass ball with the other. They struggled through the clamouring, rushing wind at the edges of the Spyroscope’s fixed vortex, Janey pushing Maddy ahead of her up the tube she’d made. The pressure of the wind inside the tiny tunnel turned them into champagne corks too, and the three of them raced up the tube, hanging on to each other grimly as they slid ever upwards and then burst out of the top to spill, panting, out on to the ice.

  ‘You saved us!’ Janey hugged Maddy and buried her face in Trouble’s extra-luxuriant fur. ‘Oh, you clever animals, you saved us!’

  ‘Hey, you Abe’s babes! Good job they thought of it all on their own, isn’t it?’ said a voice over her head.

  Janey threw her arms around her SPI:KE’s ankles. ‘G-Mamma! You’re here too. I’m so glad to see you.’

  ‘And us, I hope,’ drawled another familiar voice.

  She looked up to find a host of familiar faces looking down at her – Alfie, Mrs Halliday, Leaf, Rook and, of course, Bert (now known as the Australian spy Dubbo Seven, according to the label on his khaki SPIsuit). ‘You’re all here.’ It was slightly embarrassing as she was sprawled on the floor, wrapped around G-Mamma and a couple of spy-pets.

  ‘We have all been in training,’ said Leaf. ‘Heard you might be in a bit of a mess down here.’

  Janey’s relief and joy evaporated instantly. ‘And Dad still is. He got shot out of the tunnel attached to that tube thing. He could have been fired anywhere.’

  ‘Incoming,’ barked G-Mamma.

  They all whipped around as one. A strange and bedraggled group of spies and spy-creatures was lumbering towards them – an ice-worm, doing its best to avoid being touched by anything else, was leading the way, bringing with it a wedge-shaped army of Copernicus spies, enormous volcanic shrimps and a couple of dozen Navy Seals pointing straight at them, alarmingly like a row of cannons.

  Janey shouted out everything she could remember. ‘The worm just melts if you touch it with your bare skin – gross, but it works. The shrimps have sharp pincers but they can’t see, and I don’t think they like the cold. The spies are just, well, evil, and I’m most worried about the Navy Seals. They’ve got a “launch missile” button in them.’

  As if to prove her point, at that very second the bearded spy yelled an instruction at his group and they all dropped to their knees, covering their heads.

  ‘They are thinking they will blow us up,’ yelled Leaf. ‘Maddy, take me over there!’

  Maddy rose into the air obediently, and Leaf jumped for her legs. He was so skinny that his weight had little effect on her ability to fly, and he steered her straight towards the missile that was about to open up. ‘Cover me!’ he shouted, and immediately G-Mamma jumped up and down, shouting, ‘Come and get me!’ as Alfie, Bert and Rook let loose with their heat-seaking missiles. Before the enemy group could work out what was happening, Leaf had scissored his legs around the missile from above, turned it around and sent it rocketing across the ice, taking half the other missiles with it. They plunged over the edge of the tunnel and could be heard a few seconds later, detonating harmlessly in the great abyss.

  G-Mamma, meanwhile, headed straight for the worm, her pink SPIsuit matching the florid skin of the ice-creature almost perfectly. ‘Think you can copy my look and get away with it? I don’t think so.’ She reached out her ring-bedecked hands to reduce it to soup, but the worm was already slithering away in the opposite direction. It might not be able to see, but a mad G-Mamma was still easy to sense.

  ‘Shrimps for us, then,’ yelled Janey, signalling to Mrs Halliday. She flung the end of her SuSPInder to the SPI:KE, who attached it to her own as she unravelled it across the ice. Between them they held a chain the length of a football pitch.

  ‘Now!’ yelled Janey, and in formation they Fleet-footed across the ice. As soon as they neared the mass of volcanic shrimps, Halo held firm as Janey raced on her ISPIC in a gigantic arc, right around them. ‘Pull!’ she shouted as she drew near to the SPI:KE, and as Mrs Halliday and Janey crossed each other, the SuSPInders formed a tightening circle around the creatures. They’d been lassoed together, and no amount of wiggling and scrabbling would get them out.

  ‘Hey, bonza, ladies!’ called Bert, stunning an attacking spy with his boomerang. ‘I’ll put you to work at Dubbo Seven.’

  But just at that moment Janey’s SPIV beeped, and a clear video image sprang up – her father’s face, battered and bloody, but twitching as he dragged himself back across the ice cap, past the smouldering mess of gooey, contorted metal. His strained features stood out clearly; he had to be leaning on SPUD Nik
who was busy taking panaromic views of his surroundings. Cranes, robotic seals, ice-worms, the metal cylinder – all lay mangled about the iceberg, inoperative or just plain dead. ‘All the seals are dealt with,’ said G-Mamma, looking around her at the thwarted, exhausted enemies. ‘Come on then, spies and Spylets. Let’s go help our noble master.’

  The relief team of spies had come well prepared, with G-Mamma and Bert sharing a shimmering white skidoo, Maddy and Trouble co-piloting a low flight overhead, and all the Spylets on advanced ISPICs. Janey ripped her own from her thigh and shot across the iceberg, swerving and ducking to avoid the twisted ironwork around the mouth of the tunnel. The gaping hole in the planet looked like an open artery, with lava, steaming water and occasional volcanic shrimps spewing from it from time to time. ‘We really need to fill in that hole,’ thought Janey.

  As she knew the way better than anyone, she was well ahead of the group as they drew level with her father. Screeching to a halt, she clamped him tight around the middle. ‘Dad! You’re OK. You’re OK!’

  ‘Janey.’ It was all her father could say as he sagged against her, kitten weak and bleeding from all manner of scratches and wounds.

  But in the background Janey had spotted something – a dark, twisted shape, gnarled as an old tree, slithering in the opposite direction across the iceberg. ‘He’s heading for the black labyrinth!’

  ‘Who?’ Rook asked.

  ‘Copernicus. He’s going to get away again! Let’s go after him. Oh’, she said, turning back to her father, ‘do you mind if I borrow SPUD Nik?’

  ‘Be my guest,’ said her dad, sinking to his knees as he let go of the penguin.

  G-Mamma was already shimmying to a stop beside him, so Janey programmed the SPUD quickly and set off after him across the ice, with Alfie, Leaf and Rook in hot pursuit.

  In no time they were at Copernicus’s labyrinth. Janey didn’t even pause to get off her ISPIC – just pressed her rocket-launcher finger ahead of her and blasted her way through the door, yelling ‘Floodlight!’ to her obedient Ultra-gogs. She X-rayed every wall, looking for the disgusting slithering mass of colossal squid. The ice-worm stables were empty, as were the recreation hall and bedrooms, but as Janey swished into the Spylab through the Zinc-creamed hole she’d made in the door earlier, she was confronted by something very unexpected.

  It was Copernicus, the man. And standing uncertainly to his side was Alfie.

  Janey jumped off her board. ‘Alfie, what . . . ?’

  Copernicus sneered at her. ‘You are not, I repeat, not going to stop me, Blonde. Your imbecilic theatricals have cost me this leg of the mission only, but you’ve given me enough information, and I’ve got enough metallic ore, to do what I planned. And if you want your friend to survive, you’ll turn around right now and leave.’

  Alfie lifted his hands to Janey, his eyes confused. He barely appeared to recognize her. He looked young, vulnerable and less sarcastic than Janey had ever seen him, even when brain-wiped. She couldn’t possibly let him be hurt.

  ‘All right,’ she said slowly. ‘I’ll go . . .’

  He’ll shoot me in the back, she thought as she turned around slowly. Why wouldn’t he shoot me in the back? Maybe Alfie wouldn’t let him. Or . . . or maybe he can’t! She paused for just a fraction of a second, then jumped back on her ISPIC and swished it around with her heel. ‘Sorry, Alfie, if this really is you.’

  And she pushed off, heading straight for them. Alfie’s eyes widened slightly but Copernicus looked furious, right at the moment when she passed through the pair of them and out the other side. They were Retro-spectres, both of them – that was why Alfie had suddenly looked so young. His image had been taken from an old photo. The real Alfie was clattering around in the corridors outside, and all the time she was there, chatting with the ghostly Alfie, the real Copernicus was getting away.

  Fortunately SPUD Nik had been well programmed and was bashing himself against the ice wall at the far side of the lab, just as Alfie, Rook and Leaf spun into the room. ‘It’s nothing,’ she yelled over her shoulder.

  ‘It’s freaky,’ said Alfie, looking at himself yet again. ‘And what the heck’s that noise?’

  ‘No, it’s really nothing – a couple of Retro-spectres. Come here, would you? We need your Boy-battlers.’

  All three boy Spylets jumped instantly back on their ISPICs, joining Janey at the far wall. On her instruction they lined up their Boy-battlers and acid-sprayed the half-metre-thick ice separating the lab from what lay beyond. Even before she could see it, Janey had a good idea what it was going to be.

  She was right. It looked different from when she had first seen it: all the scientists and the circular platforms they’d been standing on had disappeared, and the rocket, quivering, was emitting spouts of gas and a huge amount of noise. Way above their heads, in what must have been the peak of the iceberg, the stars twinkled intermittently through the swirling snow – the whistling, tormenting snow that would never again get the better of Jane Blonde.

  ‘Wow, will you look at that?’ said Rook.

  ‘It is not good, I think.’ Leaf was looking the rocket up and down with expert eyes. ‘We had better get out of the way. It will take off in about thirty seconds.’

  ‘There!’ screamed Janey, pointing at the small porthole near the base of the rocket. ‘He’s in there. He’s got his bit of ore and that Supersizer thing, and he’s going to get away and do something awful again. We have to stop him!’

  Alfie pulled at her arm. ‘There’s nothing we can do about it!’ His hair blew around in the rushing fumes from the rocket. ‘You have to get back.’

  ‘But he was going to destroy the planet! He’ll try again!’

  It was more than Janey could bear. The monster about to make his escape had almost killed them all. There had to be something they could do. But Rook was tugging at her other arm, while Leaf had started the countdown at twenty.

  ‘I can’t . . . I have to think of something!’

  ‘Give it up, Janey,’ roared Alfie.

  But she couldn’t. She pushed the others back through the door. ‘I’m going to have to make a sacrifice. Go on! It’s the only way.’

  As Alfie shook his head, with Rook dragging him backwards and Leaf screaming out, ‘Eight, seven, six . . .’ Janey grabbed the equipment she needed and began her very own countdown.

  spud nik in space

  ‘Nik, even though I know you’re just a robot,’ she said, winking into the back of his throat and twisting the top of his head backwards, ‘we will never, ever forget you. But I guess it’s time to see whether penguins can fly.’

  She programmed in the words ‘Copernicus, volcanic shrimps’, planted a large kiss on SPUD Nik’s beak and lay down on the floor. Even as Leaf’s disappearing voice yelled, ‘Three . . . Two . . . you had better be coming now, Blonde. One!’ she heard Nik poddle towards the rocket.

  The room, in fact the whole of the iceberg, shook like a daisy in a gale as the rocket ignited, lifted a few feet off the floor and then hovered for blast-off. Janey dared to glance upwards, protected from the searing heat by her SPIsuit and Ultra-gogs, and there was the noxious, squelching head of Copernicus, pressed against the porthole. Even from this distance she could see that he was laughing, triumphant, convinced that he had escaped to whatever distant planet he was heading for.

  Little did he know that SPUD Nik, barely even blistering in the heat, was intent on a search and photograph mission. As the control tower room exploded around Janey and the rocket launched up through the open panel towards the stars, a small black and white shape followed it, anchoring itself in the workings of the rocket as the SPUD tried to reach Copernicus to take photos. SPUD Nik entered the fuselage and inched his way upwards, ever upwards, trying to reach Copernicus to get a photograph. It blinked on to Janey’s SPIV, a clear picture of the vile, destructive demon squid. Nik rattled a few more photographs across, and then he did what Janey knew he would. He followed his next order.

  ‘You go
, SPUD Nik,’ she whispered.

  They were several miles up in the air, and Janey could swear that she could hear the distant crowing of a squid who thought he’d won the battle, when the rocket suddenly faltered and shook, and the engine burners closed down. One peck of a beak had been all that was needed for the penguin to fulfil his mission. The next minute, the whole rocket was dropping out of the sky, heading straight for the volcanic shrimps that SPUD Nik had been programmed to find and photograph. On her SPIV, Janey could see the Earth rushing towards her, and it took her a moment to realize that she was seeing exactly what the penguin was recording. In nano-seconds the warped engineering at the top of the tunnel came into view, and then the rocket was crashing down the tunnel, ravaging the walls, plunging through water and ice and lava as the great horrible tube collapsed in on itself, filling in, disappearing, plugged by a rocket the size of a skyscraper, completely entrapping Copernicus.

  Janey struggled to her feet as the images from the SPIV grew dimmer and finally disappeared. ‘Thank you, SPUD Nik,’ she said sadly. He might not have been a real animal, but he’d certainly been a very real friend.

  The ground around her was shaking, separating, plates of ice being ripped apart and floating off across the labyrinth. The Spylab walls were disintegrating, and Janey knew that she had only moments to get out of there. Jumping from one ice platelet to another, she navigated her way across to the Spylab door, and then ISPIC’d as she had never done before, dodging falling ice-plasma screens and Retro-spectre machinery, swerving around the wall of the ice-worm stables that bulged outwards before cracking apart under the pressure, and crouching close to the ground to race out through the exterior door before it collapsed completely.