‘I don’t get it,’ Tim said. ‘I thought Alice gave them the microwave.’
‘She did,’ Coral said. ‘It was a wedding present.’
‘But that label was addressed to Cakeface.’
‘Did you notice the edges? They were torn, like someone tried to peel it off. There was a squiggly line through it too.’
‘I still don’t see—’
‘Alice gave it to Uncle Frank and Aunt Em, but she bought it off someone in town. Someone who already had one. They won it in a competition, didn’t need a second one, so sold it off.’
‘OK, so Cakeface set the whole thing up. But how did the box get under the house?’
‘It’s only a guess, but you know how cats love cardboard boxes. I reckon when they unpacked it, Smudge dived in and just kept going back. But who wants an old cardboard box sitting round? So they shoved it under the house. Somewhere Smudge could still get at it if she really wanted to. Besides, once the Sentinels established that mind-control thing, they’d make her play merry hell if anyone tried to throw it out.’
Norman wiggled his shoulders and made a face.
‘What’s up with you?’
‘I don’t know. There were all sorts of creepy crawlies under there.’
‘If the Sentinels build the microwave,’ Ludokrus said, ‘how do they get it to the Cakeface?’
‘Maybe they delivered it then tweaked her memory to make her think she’d won it. They would have known she already had one and would probably sell it. Maybe they even gave her that idea too.’
‘But how do they know who will buy?’
‘They didn’t, that’s the point, and it didn’t matter. Whoever ended up with it would become the target for you guys. Every time they used it, it would send out a time signal. Like a beacon. Like the bait in a trap. All they had to do was take over a nearby mind to keep a watch on it.’
‘And they chose Smudge.’
‘Maybe cats are easier to take over than people. Maybe they’re easier to control too.’
‘Wah!’ Norman leapt back as a large black spider dropped from his hair and scuttled away across the grass. ‘There. I told you! Did you see that?’
‘Yeah, whatever,’ Coral said.
‘There is one problem though,’ Tim said. ‘The timing’s wrong. The Eltherian ship crashed twenty-five years ago, remember? Smudge isn’t that old. And Aunt Em and Uncle Frank haven’t been married that long either.’
‘Fourteen years,’ Coral said, recalling Frank’s comment after he crashed the mower.
‘So why set this up so long afterwards?’
Ludokrus looked thoughtful. ‘Because they do not know if we survive.’
He explained about the crash, how the ship’s chronocells — the special batteries that stored spare time — sent out an emergency signal when they were wrecked. Called a Time Scream, it was a signal of distress to all other Eltherian vessels in the area.
‘But no one come,’ Ludokrus said. ‘The Thanatos must block.’
The signal alerted the Thanatos to the crash, but it didn’t tell them what the damage was, or whether there were even any survivors. So they sent out the Sentinels to keep an eye on things, just in case.
‘Crash is bad. There is much damage. Many raw materials are lost. It take much time to find and refine these things, and always — away from the ship — Albert must go careful in case he is detect.’
The first priority was to fix the ship’s engines because, until they were functioning again, it was reliant on power from dwindling electric batteries and carefully deployed solar panels.
‘Once the engine is fix, she must be restart. This always give off a telltale signal. Very small. Almost invisible unless you are looking.’
‘Which is exactly what the Sentinels were doing,’ Tim said. ‘They spotted it, saw it meant someone was still alive out there, and realised that to get home they’d need to top up their chronocells. That’s when they set up the trap.’
‘How long did it take to fix the engines?’ Coral asked.
‘Albert tell us more than ten years.’
‘That’s it then: the last piece of the puzzle. There was no point doing anything earlier because you might all be dead.’
They stood in silence, eyes bright, delighted to have solved the puzzle.
‘Should we have put that box back?’ Coral said.
‘What do you mean “we”?’ Norman muttered.
‘Maybe we should haul it out again and destroy it. Deprive the Sentinels of one of their agents.’
‘Better, I think, to leave. We know for sure now, but the Sentinel do not know we know. Maybe we can use this.’
‘Yeah, you’re right.’
Norman looked relieved.
‘We must tell Albert right away,’ Alkemy said, getting to her feet. ‘Maybe he will make a new plan and we do not have to go .’
Frank’s voice sounded from the front of the house, a cupped-hand bellow. ‘Paging Coral, Tim and Norman Smith. Dinner will be served in five minutes. Repeat, five minutes. This is your one and only call.’
‘Oh man, dinner,’ Norman said. ‘I could eat a horse.’
‘You can’t go in like that,’ Coral told him. ‘Look at the state of you. You’re filthy. And what’s that crawling in your hair?’
‘What? Ah! Oh my god!’ He started a crazed dance, shaking and smacking himself around the head.
Coral grinned at the others. ‘Damn! Missed another priceless video moment.’