Tim brought his electrobike to a skidding halt as Alkemy appeared from one of the little beach huts. He’d barely got the bike on its stand before she threw her arms around his neck. ‘You are safe! I have been so worry!’
He hugged her back, grinning.
‘And your hair is wet.’
‘Yeah, I stopped off for a swim on the way.’ He laughed at her expression. ‘I’ll tell you later. Hi, Toxteth,’ he called to the syntho making adjustments to a new anti-gravity platform nearby. Toxteth glanced up briefly, waved an acknowledgement then went back to work. ‘It is still #263, is it?’ Tim whispered to Alkemy.
‘Not much longer, I think,’ she whispered back. ‘He say he must hurry to finish so he can show the platform off to visitors.’
‘Well, I hope they like fireworks.’ Tim grinned as she led him into one of the empty huts where Albert’s notebook lay open on a workbench. ‘Find anything interesting?’
‘Much. He say what Ludokrus suspect; that Valax is broken. It can be made to hide things, forget things and cover up.’
‘But I thought your Mind of the Planet was free and open. Surely someone would have spotted that.’
‘Not regular peoples. Albert say the way it is done is much complicate.’ She flicked through several pages of close-packed handwriting. ‘Even with enhanced brain, it take him much data and many days to work out.’
‘So who could possibly have done it?’
She pointed to a single word written sideways in one of the margins: Thanatos!
‘Oh. Wow!’ Seeing the word was like switching a light bulb on in a dimly lit room. Suddenly everything seemed clear. ‘Is that why Andop’s research was blocked all those years ago, why he had to carry on in secret? They knew if his neural lace idea worked out, people would begin to spot flaws in Valax.’
Alkemy nodded.
‘But the Thanatos didn’t stop his research, your people did that ...’ She waited while he made the connection. ‘Which means they must have agents here. People working for them!’
She nodded again and turned the page. ‘Here he talk of old legend, of group called the Ruling Council; secret peoples who really run Eltheria. No one believe this any more. Silly old conspiracy theory. But maybe it is not.’
‘And this Ruling Council ... they’re the ones after us ...’
‘We return from secret mission deep inside Thanatos territory. Imagine if they hear of this. Would not be happy.’
‘And Krilen organised it. So they got their agents here to make out he's sick and secretly arrest him.’
‘Then wait for the mission to return. But we are two weeks late.’
‘And when we get here, we look like the opposite of a secret mission. A bunch of kids and an absent-minded syntho. Suddenly it all makes sense!’
Alkemy closed the notebook and looked down at the worn leather cover. ‘Now they have the others, we are the last ones free, and the only ones who know. You see how the war-bots come for us at Kestel, at the pyramid. They will not stop till we are found and capture also.’
Tim put an arm around her shoulders. ‘It’s OK. We’ll be fine. We’ll think of a way out of this.’ But his words sounded hollow even as he spoke them.
‘Hello there!’ Toxteth said, coming into the hut and greeting Tim with an outstretched palm. ‘Sorry about earlier. I was placing the last of the neutronium oscillators. It can get a bit tricky. All done now though and ready for our visitors.’ Toxteth rubbed his hands together. ‘I can't wait for the new moon to arrive.’
‘New moon?’
He looked at them askance. ‘You mean you haven't heard? The whole planet’s talking about it. A Thanatos war globe has just arrived in our solar system. It looks like they’re going to pay us a visit!’
Tim thought of the people they’d seen studying monitors and portable vid screens. He whispered to Alkemy, ‘That can’t be a coincidence.’
‘Here, see for yourselves.’ Toxteth took a dusty vid screen out from beneath the bench and switched it on. The first channel showed a robot soap opera, but the sound didn’t match what was going on. He flicked through a couple of other channels and found the news. The picture changed, but the broadcast message stayed the same. After a short pause, it began again:
‘Attention, people of Eltheria. This is Local Darkness #719, official Thanatos overlord and supervisor of this region of the spiral arm. It has come to my attention that members of your species have broken our joint treaty regarding a volume of space designated KSX-119; that they have invaded a protected region, interfered with important research and kidnapped a number of alien specimens.
‘We demand the immediate surrender of these criminals, their accomplices and their victims. Failure to comply will be regarded as an act of war.’
‘Goodness me, I hadn't heard that,’ Toxteth said as the message began again. ‘That’s appalling! What sort of rotters would betray their planet and put us all at risk like that?’
Tim and Alkemy said nothing.
‘You shall have my full cooperation in bringing them to justice, Mr Darkness!’ Toxteth told the screen. ‘What about you two?’
‘Um ... yeah. Sure.’
‘That’s the spirit!’ He turned down the volume and set the screen up on a shelf. ‘We should keep an eye on that. No doubt there’ll be more information about who the rotters really are. Pictures and stuff. I bet they’re running for the hills right now, the cowards.’
Tim spotted a stack of flexi-discs on the shelf beside the monitor and remembered the one they’d found in Albert’s notebook. ‘Do you have a player for those things, Toxteth?’
‘Why, yes,’ Toxteth patted a dusty console on one end of the workbench, ‘but it’s a specialised model designed to record and restore my personal backups before each test flight.’
Behind his back, Alkemy shook her head mouthing, ‘I already check.’
‘So ... how’s the new platform working out?’ Tim asked.
‘Why, splendid, thank you. It’s all ready to go. I shall launch it when our visitors arrive and hover up to meet them. I’m sure they’ll be most impressed with Eltherian technology.’
‘You don’t think you should test it first?’ Tim nudged Alkemy.
She added, ‘Is not like it work right before.’
‘No, no, I’m confident I’ve got everything covered now. It was those oscillators before. Slightly out of sync, you see. But I’ve double-triple checked them this time and everything is perfect.’
‘That’s great,’ Tim said. ‘And you’re happy with your balance and everything?’
Toxteth blinked. ‘My balance?’
‘I remember when I learned to surf. I had a really good board, but staying on it for more than a couple of seconds took practice.’
Alkemy laughed. ‘Like me when I learn the bicycle.’
‘Oh yeah, I needed training wheels for ages!’
Toxteth frowned and looked back at the screen. The war globe was approaching Nol, the system’s furthest planet, and braking hard. Its time of arrival was uncertain, but a best guess suggested an ETA of early tomorrow evening. ‘You know, it might be an idea to get a few of practice runs in first ...’
‘You think?’
‘I wouldn’t want to look wobbly and unprofessional.’
‘Like someone learning to surf, you mean?’
‘Not in front of our visitors.’ Toxteth nodded thoughtfully. ‘I think you’re right. A little practice wouldn’t hurt.’
As he went out to direct the trolley-bots to position the launch catapult, Tim ambled over to the next hut in line and jammed a length of pipe in the ground to wedge its door shut.
Backup complete, silver flight suit on, Toxteth climbed onto his anti-gravity platform and called, ‘Ready? Stand back now! Five ... four ... three ... two ... one ...’
The catapult thudded, the platform soared ... briefly ... and the resulting explosion left another crater in the pockmarked ground. Alkemy wasn’t watching. Even before it hit, she’d ejected the backup disc and swapped it for the one from the top of the stack. Outside, Tim was on his bike, racing through smoke and dust towards the crash site.
The door of the next hut banged against the pipe as the new Toxteth, activated by the demise of his predecessor, tried to exit.
Alkemy tiptoed away, took her bike and followed Tim. He found the syntho’s head and tossed it into the basket on the front of his bike.
‘I feel bad,’ Alkemy said.
‘Don’t,’ Tim told her. ‘He would have dobbed us in when they broadcast our photographs. This way, where we went will remain a mystery. Besides, we saved him from making a fool of himself in front of the Thanatos.’
They crossed the waste ground, avoiding any sign of habitation, even giving a couple out walking their silka a wide berth. The electrobikes made smooth work of the uneven ground, and the only diversion they made was to visit a recycling hopper.
With the load lightened, they headed north. The rough ground gave way to a rutted track dotted with trees while high overhead storm clouds rolled in, masking the ghostly band of Halo’s ring. Beyond it, still out of sight, Eltheria’s newest moon began disgorging wave after wave of fighters and battleships, sending them racing on ahead to seize control of the entire solar system.