Arctic Adventure

by Axel Lewis

  “Are you all right, Cabbie?” asked Jimmy once his head had stopped spinning.

  “I think so,” croaked Cabbie. “But I’m not getting any warmer floating around like this. I think it’s time to stop swimming and get out!”

  “Good plan,” smiled Jimmy with relief. “But how? Can we pull ourselves out with the grappling hook?”

  Jimmy looked around. They were bobbing around at least twenty metres from what looked like a shelf of solid ice.

  “I’ll give it a go,” said Cabbie. “The steel cable’s thirty metres long. It’ll reach the ice, but I don’t know if it will hold on. It could crack the ice.” And with that the compartment on his bonnet slid open and the grappling hooks rose, ready to launch. “Identifying target,” said Cabbie, his computer scanning the ice shelf for a spot that would take their weight. With a beep, Cabbie zeroed in on the best option.

  “Fire!”

  The hooks flew through the air and sank into the ice with a dull thud.

  “It sounds pretty solid,” said Jimmy. “Reel it in, Cabbie.”

  “Slowly...” said Cabbie, activating the motorized winch and reeling in the steel cable. “Slowly...”

  The cable went taut, and for a second Jimmy thought it had done its job. But then the grappling hook tore away from the ice sheet and came hurtling back towards them with a rattle and a clank as it skipped over the hard surface.

  “It’s not holding!” cried Jimmy.

  Then the hook suddenly caught again – and this time it bit deep and held firm. Cabbie tested his weight on it with a sharp tug.

  “It’s good!” he cried. “Let’s go.”

  The whirring motor on Cabbie’s winch began to reel in the steel cable, pulling them through the water towards the ice. Jimmy’s teeth were gritted and he was grinding them every centimetre of the way.

  In less than a minute the cable had pulled them through the freezing water to the edge of the ice shelf.

  “Go slowly, Cabbie,” said Jimmy. “We don’t want to go through the ice again and end up back where we started.”

  Cabbie’s winch motor slowed to a low rumble. Centimetre by centimetre, the taut steel cable pulled Cabbie’s front bumper onto the ice, then his front wheels, then his back wheels. Beneath the robot’s tyres there came a creaking and a groaning noise. But the ice stayed in one piece.

  Finally they were perched on the ice, sea water pouring out of Cabbie’s every crack.

  Jimmy sat for a moment, listening to the worrying sounds of the ice beneath them. Cabbie, meanwhile, retracted the EFD and tucked it back into its storage compartment under his chassis.

  “Let’s get going!” said Cabbie enthusiastically. “Don’t forget, we’ve got a race to win!”

  “You’re definitely feeling better,” laughed Jimmy.

  “I’m like a rubber ball,” said Cabbie. “I bounce back from anything!” He revved his engines, coughing and spluttering the sea water out of his pipes. “Ready?” he said.

  “Ready,” said Jimmy. He flicked Cabbie into first gear and crushed the accelerator pedal with his foot. They were off, roaring back to the ice track and getting back in the race.

  “Run a check on all your functions, Cabbie,” said Jimmy as they sailed over the ice, rising to top speed.

  “I’m already on it,” said Cabbie. “I’m fully rebooted and starting self-repair now. But we’d better not end up in the water again,” he added. “The air canister for the EFD’s empty so we can’t use it any more.”

  “Horace could have done us some real damage back there,” said Jimmy angrily.

  “I told you, Jimmy, I’m fine,” said Cabbie cheerily.

  “But after all the hard work Grandpa and Pete put into you, Horace has to go and pull a stunt like that.” Jimmy sighed, shaking his head, “He doesn’t care what happens to anyone else as long as he’s OK. What an idiot!”

  “Speaking of your grandpa, let’s tell him we’re okay.” Cabbie suggested.

  “Good idea!” Jimmy agreed. “Fire up Cabcom.”

  “Oh,” said Cabbie anxiously.

  “What’s up?” asked Jimmy.

  “No problem,” said Cabbie. “Cabcom’s frozen solid so we’re out of contact with the team.”

  “Can you defrost it?” asked Jimmy.

  “I’m trying my best, but it might take a while,” said Cabbie.

  “OK,” said Jimmy. “Time to get even with Horace.”

  “Get even?” repeated Cabbie in surprise.

  “Level, I mean,” said Jimmy quickly. And then get even! he thought to himself. I’m going to teach Horace Pelly a lesson he won’t forget!

  Chapter 9 - Icebreaker

  “How are you doing, Cabbie?” asked Jimmy a little while later. “Have you warmed up?”

  “Heading for optimum temperature and speed,” said Cabbie. “Getting warmer ... even warmer ... we’re red-hot and racing!”

  Cabbie’s tyres ate up the ground, his engines roaring loud and clear once more. The ice stretched in every direction, flat and smooth and white and empty.

  “We must be miles behind Horace,” sighed Jimmy. “And without Cabcom we’ve got no idea how far ahead he’s got.”

  “Oh!” said Cabbie. “I’ve got a surprise.”

  A panel slid back on Cabbie’s dashboard. A circle of green glass appeared. It lit up and a line of green light swept round the circle like the minute hand on a watch. Every time the line swept over a little green blob, the machine went ‘ping!’

  “What is it?” asked Jimmy.

  “Pete installed it last night,” explained Cabbie. “It’s called a radar. They used to use it in the olden days. Grandpa knows all about them, anyway.”

  “Why have we got it? What does it do?” asked Jimmy.

  “See that little green blob?” said Cabbie. “That’s Horace.”

  “Ping!” announced the radar.

  “Really?” exclaimed Jimmy. “It’s pretty good for an antique, isn’t it?”

  “Pete said Crusher’s coms system is always going down. Big Al uses radar all the time. He says it’s basic but more reliable. Big Al loves his radar, Pete says. With this we’ll be able to locate any robot within a ten-kilometre radius.”

  “So how far ahead is Horace?”

  “Three kilometres,” said Cabbie. “But we’re gaining on him.”

  Jimmy peered at the radar. The little green blob was getting nearer – but peering through Cabbie’s windscreen Jimmy could still see no sign of Horace and Zoom.

  A thin flutter of snow landed on the windscreen.

  “Weather warning,” announced Cabbie. “There’s a snowstorm coming in from the north.”

  Already the flakes of snow had thickened, flying at Cabbie’s windscreen as he raced into the storm, splatting on it in big white blotches.

  “Activate screen clearance,” said Jimmy.

  Cabbie set his windscreen wipers flicking and hot air blasting inside, but the snow was flying thicker and faster than he could clear it. It began to creep up the windscreen. Jimmy hunched over the steering wheel and pushed his face to the glass. All he could see was a solid white curtain of flakes flying at him.

  “We’re going to have to slow down, Cabbie,” said Jimmy. “This is dangerous.” He eased his foot off the accelerator, and little by little the green blob on the radar moved further and further away from them.

  “Horace and Zoom are getting away!” said Cabbie anxiously. “We’ll never catch them if we crawl along like this.”

  “We’ll never catch them if we drop off the ice or fall down a hole because we can’t see where we’re going!” said Jimmy.

  “There must be something we can do,” grumbled Cabbie.

  “Hold on,” said Jimmy. “I’ve got it!”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “You know your engine-cooling system?” asked Jimmy.

  “Yes,” said Cabbie.

  “It sucks in cold air, doesn’t it?” Jimmy asked excitedly

  “That’s
right,” said Cabbie.

  “Cabbie, can you reverse it and spray out hot air instead?”

  “Consider it done,” said Cabbie.

  Just like when he was using the grappling hook, the compartment in Cabbie’s bonnet slid open. But it wasn’t the grappling-hook launcher that rose. It was a huge pipe, like a vacuum cleaner, pointing out into the wall of flying snow.

  “Activating snow clearance,” announced Cabbie with ice-cool calm.

  All of a sudden a large round hole appeared in the snowstorm: a tunnel through the blizzard of snowflakes. The snowstorm raged around them but for at least five metres in front of the car it was crystal-clear.

  “It works!” cried Cabbie in amazement.

  “Great,” said Jimmy.

  “Genius!” said Cabbie. “Now, let’s get moving. We’ve got a race to win!”

  Jimmy slammed his foot on the accelerator again and pinned his eyes to the tunnel through the snowstorm.

  “I can just about see where we’re going,” he said, “but I can’t see if we’re going the right way. You might have to navigate for me so I don’t steer us back into the sea.”

  “Our GPS stopped working properly in the storm,” Cabbie replied. “We could end up racing back to the start line if we’re not careful.”

  “What about the radar?” asked Jimmy.

  “It can help us track Horace,” Cabbie said. “But it can’t show us the route.”

  “Well, let’s follow Horace!” Jimmy grinned. “He can actually help us for once!”

  “Got it,” Cabbie replied, revving his engine.

  It took a while, but soon they were out of the storm. And up ahead of them, Jimmy could just make out a distant black blur.

  “It’s Horace and Zoom,” he said. “And they’re swerving all over the place!”

  “Looks like that snow has caused them a few technical problems,” laughed Cabbie.

  “We’re going to catch them up,” said Jimmy as they raced towards Horace, who was still veering from one side of the track to the other.

  Jimmy roared up behind them. As he and Cabbie got closer they could see Horace thumping Zoom’s steering wheel and shouting and flicking switches furiously.

  But just as they were about to pull level and overtake, a huge cloud of snow exploded like an enormous sneeze from somewhere underneath Zoom and he seemed to pull himself together.

  Vrmmm! Vrmmm! Zoom’s engine let out a deep, powerful growl and then off he went again.

  “He’s got the snow out of his system,” said Cabbie, “and he’s back on track.”

  “And we’re back in the race,” said Jimmy. “But I wish we could get him back for melting the ice and putting us in danger,” he added angrily.

  Jimmy was sick of seeing Horace Pelly playing dirty tricks in the Robot Races championship. For once he wanted to give him a taste of his own medicine.

  “That’s it!” he cried. “The robo-pummeller. If we can just get ahead by thirty, maybe fifty metres, we can use it to crack a huge hole in the ice. Horace will be falling down it before he even knows it’s there. The only place Horace will be racing is to the bottom of the sea!”

  “Jimmy?” said Cabbie desperately. “Jimmy, are you there?”

  “Of course I am,” said Jimmy.

  “I thought you must have got out and some idiot taken your place,” said Cabbie.

  “What do you mean?” asked Jimmy in surprise.

  “We can’t send Horace down a hole in the ice!” cried Cabbie. “That’s exactly what he did to us! It’d make us just as bad as him.”

  “No we won’t,” said Jimmy fiercely. “We’d just be paying him back. He started it.”

  “And besides,” said Cabbie, “the robo-pummeller’s for getting us through snowy roads, not for smashing through the ice and sending people to the bottom of the sea – even if it is smelly Horace Pelly.”

  “Listen, Cabbie,” said Jimmy. “If we can take Horace out of the race, we’ll win for sure. And that robo-upgrade will be ours! Big Al wouldn’t think twice about it. He’d be knocking a hole in the ice faster than Pete Webber can change a tyre!”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Activating rocket-boosters,” said Jimmy, stabbing a finger at a button.

  A flash of flame sent them rocketing past Horace and skidding over the ice.

  “Activating robo-pummeller,” said Jimmy, pulling the orange lever forward.

  “JIMMY—” Cabbie yelled as he hopped across the ice, jumping up and down like a kangaroo, the robo-pummeller thumping and banging holes in the ice as they went.

  In his rear-view mirror, Jimmy grinned as he saw thick black cracks ripping through the ice, rocketing towards Zoom like lightning bolts.

  “Jimmy!” Cabbie yelled frantically. “What have you done?”

  Chapter 10 - Backfire

  “Look!” cried Jimmy, glancing in Cabbie’s rear-view mirror. Zoom was bumping and bouncing over the jigsaw of breaking ice like a bucking bronco trying to shake off its rider.

  The sound of cracking ice rang around the ice cliffs like ricocheting gunfire. The cracks widened into chasms filled with sea water. Steam poured from Zoom’s boot as he went into a total spin, hurtling away from Cabbie in widening circles and careering towards a vast hole in the ice.

  Jimmy swallowed hard as he watched Zoom reach the very edge of the ice, about to plunge into the freezing water – but with an almighty roar of Zoom’s engine, Horace regained control and managed to pull back from the brink, steering his robot towards safer ground.

  Jimmy suddenly felt a little uncomfortable. Thinking about teaching Horace a lesson was one thing, but doing it was quite another. He forced down the guilt which was building inside him and pressed the accelerator harder. In Cabbie’s rear-view mirror the image of Horace and Zoom got smaller and smaller until they were out of sight.

  Jimmy glanced at the radar screen. He could see the green blip that was Horace and Zoom. Around the edge of the screen, four other moving blips had appeared. Jimmy realized it was the other robots. They must be getting near the point where the tracks all met and the racers joined up again. The final stretch before the finish line!

  “We’re getting close to the end of the ice track, I think,” said Jimmy. “And we’ve left Horace way behind!”

  “Oh, good,” said Cabbie flatly. “And all we had to do,” he added, “was cheat. So that’s great, isn’t it?”

  “What do you mean?” said Jimmy, defensively. “I only did what any of the other racers would have done. And Big Al would definitely have done it,” he added.

  “Would he?” Cabbie asked. “Have you ever seen him pull a stunt like that? And even if he would do it, the Jimmy Roberts I know wouldn’t.”

  Jimmy said nothing. He stared grimly at the ice ahead and chewed angrily at his bottom lip. He glanced at Cabbie’s rear-view mirror, half hoping to see Horace racing up behind them. I might even let Horace overtake, Jimmy thought to himself, it would make him feel better about what he’d done. There was still no sign of Horace in the mirror – but there was something shooting towards them.

  In horror, Jimmy suddenly realized what it was. The cracks in the ice which Jimmy had started with the robo-pummeller were still spreading, and fast, chasing Cabbie across the white surface like giant snakes.

  “Cabbie, the ice—” he screamed.

  But it was too late. All around him, the ice began to crack.

  “Hold on!” Jimmy shouted, veering left then right, then left again, trying to make his way across the collapsing ice. Each way he turned, the ice ahead of them simply disappeared and the freezing sea welled up in its place. In front, another fracture appeared in the slippery white surface and Jimmy had to hammer the brakes, screeching to a halt.

  In stunned silence, Jimmy looked around him at the chaos he had created. For hundreds of metres in almost every direction, chunks of broken ice bobbed in the churning Arctic Ocean. He and Cabbie were perched on a narrow stretch of ice, like a finger pointing out fr
om the solid ice shelf.

  “Phew!” said Jimmy, getting his breath back. “That was a close one. Now we’re back on solid ground—”

  “Solid ice,” corrected Cabbie.

  “—we can get going again,” finished Jimmy.

  Cabbie’s engines roared into life once more – but they sounded very strange. It was his normal engine noise but with a terrific creaking and groaning added.

  “What is it?” asked Jimmy. “What’s wrong?”

  In dismay, Jimmy realized what was happening. The noise wasn’t from Cabbie’s engines. It was the ice underneath them!

  The creaking and groaning became an ear-splitting screech as the finger of ice they were on broke away from the main ice shelf.

  “Quick, Cabbie!” he cried. “We have to jump it!”

  But it was too late – all they could do was sit and watch as they began to bob gently out into the Arctic Ocean.

  Chapter 11 - All at Sea

  For almost a minute Jimmy sat perfectly still and silent. The only sound was of water lapping against the ice slab on which Cabbie was floating. He looked back at the ice sheet they had left behind, and then stared out to sea. It stretched for miles and miles, all the way to the horizon and the grey sky – and they were drifting towards the horizon.

  Jimmy heard the whine of an engine in the distance. It grew louder – a humming like the noise made by a hive full of bees. Round a corner of the rapidly disappearing coastline came Princess Kako on Lightning, bouncing across the waves on her robobike-turned-jet-ski. She weaved between the icebergs, throwing her bodyweight from side to side expertly as she raced on by.

  With a jolt, Jimmy realised they must have floated into the sea track of the race! He hopped out of Cabbie and ran to the edge of the iceberg.

  “Hey, Kako! Kako! Hey!” he shouted. “Help!”

  She didn’t hear him. She didn’t see him. Jimmy watched in dismay as the foaming trail she had left behind her was washed away by the waves and she disappeared beyond the ice cliffs.

  A couple of seconds later, the vast hoverbot Maximus, piloted by Sammy, came roaring round the same corner in hot pursuit. His dual air cushions glided effortlessly across the sea. His enormous propellers sent up waves, rocking the floating ice island.