by David Alric
He spent the next day in a state of continuous anxiety and foreboding. From time to time during the prison routine Chopper caught his eye and looked enquiringly at him and he shook his head despondently in reply.
That evening, exhausted by his previous sleepless night, he fell into a fitful sleep and was woken in the early hours by the mystery voice.
‘I have a plan,’ said the professor. ‘I am going to steal all the keys necessary for you to make your escape and get them copied. I’ll bring you the copies as soon as I can and you can escape whenever a suitable opportunity arises.’
Biggles then told the professor about Chopper’s deal. For Luke it was like an answer to a prayer; he knew that his own plan could easily fail if any of the guards saw the pilot escaping. He didn’t care how many people were supposedly in on the deal; all he was interested in was getting the pilot out. When the time came to exterminate the pilot he would dispose of them all.
‘OK,’ the voice whispered, ‘it’s a deal. We are all going to be rich beyond our wildest dreams.’
They arranged to meet in the city on Tuesday night, and the voice said goodbye.
On this occasion the professor had been more careful. He had shut the cell door behind him before waking the pilot and now he waited until he was sure the man was asleep before quietly slipping out and making his way past the many guard points situated between the pilot’s cell and the outer gates. He rejoiced in his power as, completely invisible, he strolled nonchalantly between several guards, pausing only to remove their wallets as he passed. At the main gate he went into the porter’s lodge and pressed the emergency red button that would wake the prison governor in his home adjacent to the prison, and activate a riot squad from the city police station. A few moments later, as a bewildered guard opened the door to a furious governor in pyjamas, the professor slipped quietly between them and disappeared into the night.
7
Chopper Takes a Break
Situated next to the prison was a large municipal refuse dump. As the outspoken mayor of the city had said, when approving planning permission for the site to be so close to the prison, putting all the city’s rubbish in the same place made good sense.
Shortly before 6 p.m. on Tuesday Sam drove up to the dump in a large, old American car. He had connections with all elements of the criminal underworld and car mechanics were no exception. Outwardly decrepit, this car had a souped-up engine that could outpace any regulation police car and inside the darkened windows there was more than enough space for the extra people Sam anticipated would be occupying it on its return journey from the prison. At the flick of a switch underneath the dashboard, furthermore, the number plates, back and front, rotated to show any one of three different sets of numbers; these had been chosen by Sam, with an unusual turn of wit, to correspond with the private car numbers of the Chief of Police, the Mayor and the Bishop of Rio.
Sam had been observing the dump for several days and knew precisely the routine of the dump operators. Shortly before six in the evening they parked their massive JCBs near the gate, locked the gate and left in a council van which presumably dropped them off near their homes or at a central railway or bus station. He backed his getaway car into some bushes near the gate and waited until the operators had driven off. He then cut the gate lock with a hacksaw and went to the largest of the JCBs. It was a truly massive machine, capable of shifting tons of rubbish with its shovel and scoop. Sam climbed into the cabin. Since the age of seven he had been stealing vehicles and there was nothing from a moped to a steamroller that he couldn’t start with a length of electric cable, a screwdriver and a pair of pliers. He did a test start on the bulldozer, and spent a few moments practising with various knobs and levers to make sure he could manipulate the hydraulic shovel and scoop, then switched off and waited.
To the casual onlooker the prison looked impregnable. The entire complex was surrounded by an electric fence, ten feet high. At each corner of this fence was a forty-foot tower built of steel girders, at the top of which was a guard manning a machine-gun. Five yards inside this outer fence was a thirty-foot wall surmounted by barbed wire. Inside the section of this wall that faced the municipal rubbish dump was the prisoners’ recreation area, with pool tables, table-tennis tables and pinball machines. Chopper, Barker, Shortshanks and Biggles were now in this area, playing snooker at the table furthest from the outside wall.
Shortly after seven Sam saw the day guards emerging from the prison gates and exchanging jokes and greetings with the incoming night shift. When all was quiet again he pulled a balaclava over his head and started up the massive machine. It rumbled through the rubbish site gates as though they were matchwood and headed first for the governor’s house which was adjacent to the prison, just outside the electrified fence. The governor’s Mercedes-Benz R-class Grand Sports Tourer, his pride and joy and the fruit of many bribes from both criminals and police officers, stood in the drive, sparkling from the daily wash and polish it received from prisoners on parole. Sam picked it up effortlessly in the JCB’s giant shovel and, raising it high in the air, tipped it onto the electric fence. Amidst a thunderous crackling and flashing of sparks the fence short-circuited and, as an unexpected bonus for Sam, there was a minor explosion in the prison electricity substation which reduced the entire prison to darkness.
The previous night Sam had fixed a massive steel hawser to one of the legs of the nearest lookout tower. He had done this unobserved by the guards whose attention was always focused on prisoners trying to get out rather than on intruders trying to get in. The hawser lay coiled and hidden in the long grass and Sam now attached it to the rear of the JCB and set off at speed. Either the back of the JCB would come off or the guard tower would collapse, and having seen the rusting plates and screws holding the tower together, Sam was entirely confident of the outcome.
Before the dust had settled around the crumpled tower Sam manoeuvred the JCB through the remains of the electric fence and, still dragging a rusty tower leg behind him, drove straight through the prison wall into the prisoners’ recreation area. There was already a considerable level of excitement in the prison as a result of the power cut but this reached a new peak as the massive JCB appeared, framed by an archway of broken bricks and with a table-tennis table now sitting on its shovel.
Chopper and his companions sprang into action and, struggling against the prisoners rushing for safety in the opposite direction, removed the table-tennis table from the JCB’s shovel and clambered in. Sam was already backing out as Chopper threw a snooker ball at the recreation room guard, his least favourite warder, hitting him in the eye.
‘What colour was the ball?’ Barker shouted over the din of the JCB’s motor.
‘Black,’ replied Chopper. ‘Why?’
‘I just wondered what colour his eye was going to be tomorrow!’ They all laughed, slightly hysterical with excitement at their dramatic escape.
Within minutes the escaped villains were in Sam’s getaway car and roaring off to the city to meet the professor. The great game was on at last.
8
Plots and Plans
‘You mean an invisibility cloak, like in Harry Potter?’ exclaimed Chopper, wiping the remains of a triple monstaburger and chips from his mouth with the back of his arm. He had never read a Harry Potter book – or anything else much – but he had seen a Harry Potter film in prison. Barker and Shortshanks, who had neither read the books nor seen the films, but had played the video games, both nodded sagely. The villains were sitting with the professor in a sleazy nightclub – the rendezvous arranged by the pilot – and he had just told them about ‘his’ discovery. He had decided, wisely, that the best way of getting total cooperation from these rogues was to tell them the truth and appeal to their greed. When the time came, he would eliminate them all, just like Lucinda.
‘Yes,’ replied the professor modestly, ‘I have made what is probably the greatest discovery in history. I can now make myself completely invisible.’
‘So that’s how you got into the prison!’ Biggles muttered, as the events of the last few days began to make sense at last.
‘But …’ the professor continued, hurriedly. He knew that if these thugs thought an invisibility cloak in full working order already existed his life expectancy would be very short indeed. He had to blind them with science and appear indispensable to the continuation of the project. ‘But I only have a primitive prototype at the moment. It doesn’t work for more than a few moments unless I continually recalculate the appropriate field strengths for the ambient conditions of luminescence.’
The villains looked suitably impressed, but also somewhat crestfallen. Barker asked the question that was in all their minds.
‘So, like … it don’t work proper yet, is that it?’
‘Oh it works all right,’ replied Luke. ‘It’s just that, until I’ve perfected the technology, I’m the only person who can use it. That’s just a detail though; fundamentally, one of man’s most ancient dreams has now become a reality. And,’ he added to encourage them, ‘… I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that it will make us all extremely rich.’He certainly didn’t. Chopper’s fertile imagination was already racing through all the countless scams and criminal possibilities that the invention offered. He knew instantly that this was the greatest opportunity that had ever come his way. He leant forward, his piggy eyes gleaming avidly, ignoring the excited babble of his companions, as the professor spoke again.
‘I must say that things couldn’t be turning out better for all of us. Meeting you interesting fellows has been pure serendipity.’ His ironic delivery was completely lost on Chopper.
‘Yeah, that’s it, sendippity,’ agreed Chopper eagerly. ‘Just what I was going to say myself. Now, tell us what you need, prof, and we’ll arrange it. Whatever it is, it’s as good as done.’
The professor pretended to ponder for a moment, quite unnecessarily for he had already worked out his strategy in great detail.
‘Basically I need the raw materials to create more invisibility cloaks – enough for all of us – and the time and facilities to refine the design so that you can all use them. In practice this means Biggles has to find the crater where photogyraspar comes from, and we have to find a safe place where I can work and experiment in secret for at least three months.’
‘What’s photowhatnot?’ asked Chopper.
‘It’s the name I’ve given to a unique crystalline ore which was first discovered by Biggles in a remote crater,’ explained the professor. ‘So far as anyone knows, that’s the only place on earth where it exists and it’s essential for the creation of invisibility robes.’
‘It would presumably be useful if your laboratory were near the mineral source,’ said the pilot thoughtfully. ‘How elaborate are the facilities you need for your experiments?’
‘Very basic,’ said the professor. ‘The problems are mostly mathematical, but I do need a small rock crusher and various extraction and impregnation chemicals.’
‘What about a loom for weaving the robe material?’
‘Not necessary,’ said the professor. ‘I’m pretty certain I can impregnate linen cloth with a layer of metamaterial – it only needs to be a few molecules thick.’
‘In that case I think I have the solution to your requirements,’ said the pilot. He turned to Chopper. ‘I presume you guys can build a cabin and power it from a portable electric generator?’
‘No problem,’ said Chopper, ‘we must’ve built half a dozen lumber camps from scratch during the past few years.’
‘I thought as much,’ continued the pilot. ‘In that case I think we all go to the secret crater. I’ve already checked my flying journal and think I can locate it without too much difficulty. I’ll have to make several trips to get all the stuff there that we need. You and your men, Chopper, can build a lab for the professor and some cabins for us to live in and then we all disappear for a crater holiday for three months, out of sight, out of mind, while the prof works out how to make us the richest men on earth.’
Chopper looked at his brother and the rest of his little group enquiringly. He wasn’t used to somebody else organizing his life but everything the pilot said made perfect sense. The others all nodded encouragingly.
‘OK,’ said Chopper, ‘let’s get started. What do we do first?’
Biggles couldn’t believe his good fortune as he looked in turn at Chopper and the professor. The rare conjunction of two ruthless criminal minds, one avowedly streetwise, the other unswervingly academic, promised to be a uniquely potent combination. With every minute that passed he felt more confident that they would all make their fortunes.
9
Aerial Combat
Just three months after Biggles and his co-conspirators had flown over the seemingly boundless immensity of the rainforest, another small plane heading for the same destination was floating high above the jungle, following an ever-shrinking tributary of the Rio Negro towards its origins in the remote jungle. Richard was reminded poignantly of the last time he had made this journey – a journey that had ended in the death of his pilot and the destruction of his plane in the depths of the jungle.
As he gazed out across the green forest canopy he saw some hills coming into view on the far horizon and pointed to them.
‘That’s where the crater is, I’m sure,’ he said to Julian, who nodded in agreement as he consulted a document on his knee.
‘I think you’re right. It agrees with my GPS coordinates. We approached it from a slightly different angle on our first visit, but there can’t be two plateaux like that sticking out from the forest in this region.’
Soon they swept over the rim of the crater and were above what Lucy called the Valley of the Mighty Ones. She explained to Clare and Clive that this was the name given to the valley by the animals in the surrounding jungle to whom the giant ground sloths – the Mighty Ones – were clearly visible because of their immense size.
Julian cursed as he struggled to control the plane through the unusual air currents at the edge of the cliff, but then they were floating serenely above the floor of the valley.
‘Look!’ shouted Clare suddenly, pointing down to the ground. ‘Aren’t those bits of a plane?’
Richard looked to where she was pointing.
‘Yes, they’re the remnants of Helen and Julian’s plane and next to it is the cleared strip where we’re going to land.’ Clare then remembered Lucy telling her how she had asked the giant ground sloths to clear an airstrip for the plane that came to rescue Helen and Julian and couldn’t really believe that, at last, she was now going to land on that very spot.
Julian flew almost to the end of the valley and then, with the sun behind him, he turned into the wind and brought the plane down in a perfect landing on the little landing strip. The hours of practice he had put in at his flying club had been richly rewarded.
There was a babble of congratulations for Julian from his relieved passengers, all of whom felt that the most dangerous part of the expedition was now behind them. How wrong they were!
They all got out and stretched their legs. Helen, Julian and Richard looked about them with a curious nostalgia as the memories of their months trapped in the valley came flooding back to them. They had spent some of the most fearful and depressing moments of their lives in this place and yet now, in the bright sunshine with Lucy by their side to protect them, and the prospect of an exciting scientific expedition ahead of them, the valley seemed much less forbidding than it had during the time they were marooned within its walls.
They unpacked the plane and were starting to erect their tents when Clive stopped. ‘I’ve got an idea,’ he said. ‘Visibility is perfect today and we might have to wait for days before the conditions for flying to the other valley are as good as this again. If you’re not too tired, Dad,’ he looked enquiringly at Julian, ‘I suggest we reload the ropes – we can leave the rest of the climbing gear here – and while the others set up camp, some of us should fly to
the central escarpment and try to chuck a rope over. Then, whatever the weather’s like tomorrow, we can at least make a start on the climbing.’
They all looked at Julian.
‘Well, I’m game,’ he said. ‘I think it’s a great idea if it’s OK with everyone else. I’ll take Clive and Richard and the rest of you can start setting up camp – and getting a nice supper ready,’ he added with a grin.
‘No!’ said Lucy.
They all looked at her in surprise. Clare and Clive had never seen her in this authoritative mood, but the others had seen it before and knew that whatever she was about to say was probably worth listening to.
‘I don’t think all the men should go. At least one should stay here just in case something goes wrong. A mixed group will have a much better chance of survival. Also, I think that, after I’ve told the animals here to look after you, I should go in the plane; in that way if we have to come down somewhere else, I can protect the plane party. Oh – and I think we should split the monkeys – in that way we can keep in communication whatever happens.’
The others looked at each other, but nobody argued. Everything she said was obviously true.
‘OK,’ said Julian. ‘I’ll take Lucy, Richard and a monkey and the rest of you can set up camp. Though I do think …’ he smiled at Lucy, ‘you’re being a little pessimistic. We’ve got a radio in the plane and flying conditions are perfect.’
And so it was agreed. Lucy called into the bush and within a few seconds Clare and Clive were horrified to see a sabre-toothed tiger1 sauntering towards them, its giant fangs glistening in the sunshine. Richard put a comforting hand on Clare’s arm and Julian did the same to Clive.
