WHEN THEY GOT BACK to Skuldark, Robot Rabbit Boy was snoring away in his bed. It was dark, and all the things in the garden were cold and still dripping wet from the hailstorm. Kolt made some tea and they sat before the warm, glowing fireplace, not speaking.
After a long night of deep sleep and dreams that were lost just moments after waking, Gertie cut herself a slice of breakfast cake and sat down. Kolt and Robot Rabbit Boy were outside checking that the hailstorm hadn’t damaged the Spitfire. Gertie looked at the wall where the secret passage to the tower was. What could she do to make the B.D.B.U. take her Keeper quest seriously this time? She was about to take a bite of peach cake when she heard knocking on the window. Kolt’s face appeared through a parted moonberry bush.
“There’s no damage! She’s ready to fly when you are.”
Gertie grunted. Another distraction. And one she was not enthusiastic about. A month ago, the aircraft had been just a hunk of rusting metal in the garden, with flat tires and weeds growing in the cockpit. She had only flown an aircraft once before—and that was in the excitement of a mission.
Outside Robot Rabbit Boy was popping moonberries again under the wing. When he heard the cottage door open, he jumped up and scuttled over.
“Lavender mush?” he said, pointing to the cockpit with a juice-stained paw. Although he had learned one or two new words since becoming part of the Keeper family, he still relied on the ones he had known when they found him in the abandoned city.
“I suppose,” Gertie said, realizing that she had to focus on the things she could do, rather than the things she couldn’t. And if there was a way to save these lost Keepers and her brother, it wasn’t by wallowing in self-pity. She took a deep breath and turned to Kolt and Robot Rabbit Boy, who seemed concerned at her lack of interest in the aircraft.
“I’m grateful for all the work you’ve both done so that I can practice flying—I am just a teeny bit afraid, that’s all.”
Kolt couldn’t believe it. “I’m the one who should be concerned! You’ve got absolutely nothing to worry about, apart from dying in a horrible, blazing fireball as you slam into the sea trapped in the cockpit, burning alive.”
Gertie made a pained face.
“You’ll be fine! Don’t forget you have a rescue cushion!” Kolt went on. “Officially certified by the bounce commission of Skuldark, which is myself, Robot Rabbit Boy, and a few energetic Slug Lamps that got on the seat and jumped with us.”
“Slug Lamps can jump?”
“Well, it’s more a sort of uncontrolled flop.”
Kolt was normally cautious about any dangerous feat, and so Gertie couldn’t figure out why he had gone to great lengths to enable such a mad experiment. Maybe his lack of safety measures with the radium salt now extended to daring feats of aviation?
Kolt glanced up at some drifting clouds. “C’mon, Gertie, the weather is perfect—apart from that morning wind blowing off the sea.”
“What if the B.D.B.U. wants us to return something while I’m in the air?”
“Hmm, I suppose that could be a problem,” said Kolt, thinking aloud, “especially if there’s lightning—but you’re such a good pilot, Gertie, you’ll figure it out once you’re up there.”
“Well, okay,” she said. “But where’s the runway?”
“Don’t you see?” said Kolt, waving his arms around, “Robot Rabbit Boy and I have cleared a path to the edge of the cliff!”
“The edge of the cliff! No way!”
Gertie felt there was something else he was planning, which he hadn’t told her about. Then it dawned on her why Kolt was so eager to get the old aircraft flying again. In addition to reading the Spitfire manuals, she noticed he’d been poring over old plans from when he’d turned the Jaguar racing car into the Time Cat.
“You want to convert this old aircraft into another Time Cat! That’s why you’re so eager to get it going!”
“Well, the thought had crossed my mind,” Kolt admitted. “You are a pilot, Gertie, after all—and with the Losers more determined than ever to destroy us, it might be nice to have a flying machine in addition to a motorcar. And you’d get to drive all the time!”
“You mean fly . . .”
“It might be the edge we need to pull off a daring rescue.”
“You mean my brother?”
“If he’s ready to join us . . . and if you can fly this, Gertie—we can actually chase the Losers’ ship, Doll Head.”
“That’s true, I suppose. But a cliff-edge runway?”
“Just imagine what could be possible with a time-traveling aircraft.”
“Well, don’t we need gas? How much of that do we have under the cottage?”
Kolt looked suddenly pleased with himself. “I’ve converted the engine to drink Skuldarkian seawater.”
“What about history?” asked Gertie sensibly.
“What about it?”
“Won’t history be affected if the Aztecs are worshipping their sun god, and then we pop out of a cloud waving?”
“Well,” Kolt said, thinking on his feet, “you could say the same for the Time Cat. I’m not sure the ancient people of Mexico had British sports cars—we’ll just have to be discreet, try and go unnoticed.”
“But this is a fighter plane that fires fruit!”
“Come on, Gertie, stop putting it off—climb up into the cockpit and let’s see if this heap will fly.”
Nervously, Gertie clambered into the cockpit and strapped herself into the kitchen chair with the bounciest cushion on Skuldark.
Despite the faded black paint and a few cracked instrument panels, Kolt assured Gertie that the modified Rolls-Royce Merlin engines were even more powerful with Skuldarkian seawater pouring through them.
Kolt and Robot Rabbit Boy walked around the aircraft one final time, checking the elevators, the rudder and hinge blade, the tires, and finally the propeller.
When they gave Gertie the thumbs-up, she pulled on her flying gloves, which were thin enough to operate the controls but thick enough to give some protection in the event of a cockpit fire. She set the throttle half an inch open, then pushed the fuel-gauge button. Thirty-seven gallons of Skuldarkian seawater in the lower tank. Then she shut and latched the pilot’s door, set the elevator trim with half-fuel, one division—nose down. After pressurizing the fuel lines, Gertie double-checked the hood was locked for takeoff, then set the speed control fully forward.
So far so good.
But when it came time to flick the magneto ignition switches in preparation for the engine starting, Kolt seemed to get nervous.
“Think we should measure the runway?” he shouted through the cockpit glass.
Gertie opened a little window in the hatch.
“What?”
“The manual said the runway should be four hundred yards, and I thought two hundred would be enough with the faster propeller and fuel modification, but now I’m not sure. . . .”
Gertie stared straight ahead through her flying goggles at the dots of birds drifting at the cliff edge. She could feel her hands sweating inside the gloves.
“It’ll be fine,” she said, not because she believed it, but because she didn’t feel like getting out and going through the whole thing again. And Kolt was right. If she could fly it, having a fighter plane would give them a massive advantage over Doll Head—which Gertie imagined she could blind by firing a barrage of frozen moonberries into its giant eye sockets.
She was strapped in now, and ready to go. A part of her wanted to rip off the harness, jump down from the cockpit, and run back into the cottage. But she had to try. She knew that. The increased chance to rescue her brother was worth the risk, especially if Kolt could convert the aircraft to travel through time.
And there were some safety measures in place. Kolt had insisted that Gertie strap Russian Fire Whistles to her legs, which he had dug out (with the help of a gravely concerned Cave Sprite, Sunday) from one of the 945 bedrooms under the cottage. These thick copper tubes (which Gertie thought looked like the inside of toilet rolls painted gold) allowed a person to hover in midair for about five minutes, while having the ability to move around.
When it came to landing her “kite” (pilot slang for a fighter aircraft), Kolt had said if she didn’t feel comfortable coming back down over the mashed gooseberries and chopped spinach of the vegetable patch, she could set down on the open, grassy part of Turweston Passage, just beyond the western gate to the Garden of Lost Things. This would allow her to get used to the landing gear and the wind currents that might make landing British war-birds slightly tricky.
With Kolt and Robot Rabbit Boy staring at her through the cockpit window, Gertie started the engine, then immediately grabbed her earmuffs. The plane made the loudest, most deafening sound she had ever heard—like five hundred angry lawn mowers coughing. Even with ear protection, Gertie decided she would be stone deaf if she survived the flight.
For the first few seconds, the engine wasn’t firing evenly, and sputtered green smoke from the burning Skuldarkian seawater. But when Gertie checked the oil pressure and adjusted the fuel pump, it soon cleared. Kolt stepped back and gave a second thumbs-up through the dissipating green mist. Then he scrambled beneath the wings to remove the wedges from under the tires. Gertie adjusted the flaps to account for the pull to one side with rapid ground acceleration.
But then, just as she was about to attempt takeoff, a frantic Robot Rabbit Boy hopped up on the wing, his cute little robot eyes glowing bright red and his fur mouth moving in the shape of the words mashed potato. Gertie shook her head sternly. But his face was one of grave determination. Gertie knew if she turned the engine off now, she might be too scared to start it again. She and Kolt had told Robot Rabbit Boy, over and over, that the first flight in the Spitfire had to be Gertie by herself. But no matter how many times they said it, he kept clamping himself to the fuselage with a Magnetic Bond Feature in his tool mode settings. While it was true that magnets were a Keepers’ worst enemy (other than the Losers of course), Robot Rabbit Boy was able to switch off the magnets in his paws most of the time.
But there was no telling him. Their robot rabbit refused to get off the wing. Gertie suspected he was still hurt from being left behind when they went to visit Marie Curie in Paris. And so she gave in, motioning with her gloved hands for him to clamp on to the fuselage behind the cockpit.
With the engine roaring, they tore over the grass runway toward the cliff.
One hundred yards passed in a flash, then another fifty—then suddenly they were at the cliff edge. Gertie’s eyes moved frantically between her instrument gauges and the blue horizon as a ferocious gust of headwind lowered their ground speed and the old aircraft simply dropped off the edge of the cliff, its engine screaming. Gertie’s stomach turned inside out. They were now plummeting toward the sea in a straight dive. She imagined Kolt screaming at her to bail out. Faster and faster they fell to the dark waves. But Gertie would not abandon her fluffy friend clamped behind, and so—trusting the instinct all pilots have—she stayed calm in her gloves and goggles, knowing that if she timed it right, the momentum of her dive could be used to gather the speed they needed. A second later she pulled back on the control ring with all her strength. They were only yards now from splashing into the sea, but somehow the Spitfire responded and Gertie felt them skimming the white-capped waves—giving Robot Rabbit Boy a saltwater bath.
Within moments they were roaring over the grassy meadows, dark forests, and monstrous cliffs of Skuldark. It was the most exciting thing Gertie had ever done. The sheer speed of the aircraft was terrifying, but Gertie felt fully in control as she flew over the cottage several times, just low enough to see Kolt jumping up and down in the garden.
Robot Rabbit Boy looked determined too. The rushing air parted his fur, but his neon eyes glowed lemon yellow.
The power of the aircraft was astounding to Gertie, but she had to keep her mind on what she was doing, and not get distracted by the sights. She also had to be careful not to run out of fuel.
Gertie soared over the beach where she’d washed up. Johnny the Guard Worm was sitting on a rock out at sea while the white dodo birds panicked and ran at the sound of the Spitfire’s engine. The rocky shore looked smaller than she remembered. But the cliffs were very high. She felt proud then, of how she had so bravely made it through the cliff when she first arrived.
In the distance, the Skuldarkian Mountains rose majestically as if to beckon her. The highest, Ravens’ Peak, was tall, dark, and snow-capped. Gertie didn’t want to get too close on her first flight in case the drop in temperature affected the seawater in her fuel lines.
As she turned back toward the cottage, something on the ground caught her eye. Gertie pushed forward on the control ring, and went down for a closer look. Not only were there ruins of old buildings, but there was also a bright light coming out of the earth, a dazzling orange glow a little bigger than a Cave Sprite. Some kind of signal perhaps? A warning of danger?
Whatever it was, Robot Rabbit Boy saw it too. They would have to ask Kolt—though so much of the island remained a mystery, even to him.