HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS OF robot hands covered the cottage, and were picking it apart. Gertie could hear them scuttling and snapping bits off as they tried to pull the house down, piece by piece. In the distance, she could see her friends bashing at them with things from the garden. Kolt was holding an oar, while Birdy had some kind of medieval lance. Robot Rabbit Boy was hurling moonberries, which were just bouncing off. But this gave Gertie an idea.
About five or six minutes later, as the robot hands were lifting off an entire section of roof, there was an almighty thrumming in the sky—like a thousand angry lawn mowers. Kolt, Birdy, and Robot Rabbit Boy turned quickly to see a fighter aircraft diving toward the cottage—all Rolls-Royce Merlin engines roaring like thunder.
From the cockpit of the aircraft, Gertie could see her friends jumping up and down. The aircraft rattled and shook with the speed of her dive. When she was within a hundred yards, Gertie checked her altitude and airspeed, then pushed hard on the firing button. The Browning machine guns screamed as over a hundred frozen moonberries crackled through the air, exploding upon impact. Any robot hands caught by a direct hit were smashed to pieces, while the others were splattered with winter moonberry juice, which instantly fried their circuits.
Gertie passed over the cliff, climbed steadily, then banked her aircraft to come round for another pass. Kolt, Robot Rabbit Boy, and Birdy were now waving their hands and paws in the air, cheering her on. Gertie lined up the cottage in her sights, then slowed her airspeed and let rip with another barrage of frozen moonberries, pummeling the robot hands and flooding their electronic brains with every Keeper’s favorite fizzy drink.
After a fifth run, and then a sixth, Gertie saw the high-tech limbs on one of the walls scramble down to the grass in a bid to get away. Gertie dove upon the cottage from a different direction, cutting off their escape, then firing mercilessly upon the nasty things. Bits of thumb and finger flew into the air. The remaining limbs then turned and scrambled off the cliff to avoid being obliterated by the deadly rain of fruit.
When Gertie noticed she was running low on fuel, she opened her glass hatch against the rushing wind and waved to her friends. When she noticed the gold, flashing Black Hole Muncher at Kolt’s feet, she brought her aircraft around for an immediate landing.
The three other Keepers rushed over as she touched down on Turweston Passage. Birdy was most excited. Not only had Gertie saved their home from robot limbs, but he had seen the flying machine in action.
“I never imagined frozen moonberries could be so useful!” Kolt said. “That was the best food fight I’ve ever seen.”
The cottage was literally dripping with moonberry juice.
“Sorry about the mess, Kolt.”
“Mush.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that, the Slug Lamps have already started licking it off—their tongues will be purple for the next year.”
As they hurried back to the garden, Kolt showed Gertie how they had imprisoned a few dozen robot hands in some old lobster cages. Some of the limbs had formed fists and were banging against the bars to be let out.
“This Russian rocket ship is our only chance now,” Kolt said as they rushed over to it. “But the problem is all the rivets are rusted through, which means the moment we arrive in space, it’ll fall apart, and we’ll just be floating there.”
“Won’t we have space suits on?” Gertie said, remembering that she’d seen them in a case at the back of the Sock Drawer.
“Yes, but they don’t have much oxygen.”
Gertie checked the tub. Inside, the insect was happily perched on a robot finger, napping.
“We’ll just have to hold our breaths then,” she said, but secretly hoped Birdy might think of something. “Whom are we returning the ant to?”
“A Doctor Brady, who lives on some space station.”
“Who is Doctor Brady?”
“No idea . . . except I do remember there was a Brady who invented pollination drones to replace honey bees killed by pesticides.”
“Is there a chance the space station is the Losers’ headquarters?”
“Oh dear, I hadn’t thought of that,” Kolt said, “but it makes sense, if it’s where the hands have been coming from.”
“My brother might be there!”
“Whatever that’s worth . . .” Kolt said.
Gertie knew he was right. This might have been her brother’s idea. She didn’t know. She felt further from him than she ever had and it scared her.
“Listen,” Kolt said, “returning the ant and getting rid of these annoying hands is easy—it’s the bomb that’s our real dilemma.”
“Because we need a black hole,” said Birdy.
“Not only a black hole,” said Kolt. “I’m afraid there’s more.”
“What now?”
“Dollop butter.”
“We also need a spaceship that can get us out of the black hole’s gravitational pull, as we don’t want to get pulled in. . . .”
“How strong is the force of attraction?” asked Birdy.
“Quite strong.”
“Like how strong?” Gertie wanted to know.
“It’s sort of the strongest force in the known universe times a million.”
They all spun around with grave expressions to the rusting tin-can spaceship, which Gertie thought looked like an expensive garbage can that had been rolled down a mountain and then left to decay in a pit of slime.
“Maybe I could try and use Newton’s laws, to calculate the pull of a black hole?” Birdy said, noticing some faded charts and diagrams on the sides of the rocket ship. He pointed them out and they all went for a closer look. When Gertie leaned in to examine some dirt on one of the diagrams, three aluminum panels fell to the grass with a clatter.
“How is it going to resist the gravitational pull of a black hole if it can’t even resist the force of us looking at it!” Gertie said.
“Wait a minute . . .” said Birdy, who was still studying the faded charts, “these are Newton’s three Laws of Motion, and there’s an equation that represents Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation . . . plus some kind of formula for something called the speed of light from a guy called Einstein, which is 3.0 x 108 m/s . . .”
“I returned his slippers once, old Albert Einstein. He gave me half his sandwich and a glass of milk. Such a nice man. Did you know he could play the violin?”
“Focus!” Gertie cried. “What about Skuldarkian seawater? To give us the thrust we would need.”
“Couldn’t hurt to try,” Kolt said. “I’ll fill up the rocket’s tanks. Gertie, go to the Sock Drawer and bring back four space suits, please, and hurry. Robot Rabbit Boy, stand guard on those lobster traps!”
“Lavender!”
“Birdy, come with me inside this rocket. We’re going to power it up with Skuldarkian seawater and get you working with the onboard computer.”
“Okay,” said Birdy. “But what’s a computer?”
“Ooh, well, just imagine a picture that can change every few seconds, and that’s connected to a nonhuman brain with the ability to calculate things quickly with total precision, but without any emotion whatsoever.”
“But how is Birdy going to help us if this is the first computer he’s ever used?” Gertie said, still looking at the dilapidated wreck of their spacecraft.
“Are you still here?” Kolt snapped.
“Are we really going to travel through time and into space in this bucket?”
“It was your idea!” Kolt said. “Now please go and get the space suits while Birdy and I tap into this old Soviet computer and get the thing functioning again. If the mainframe has an artificial intelligence option in the form of a remote transmitter, we might even be able to reprogram the robot hands we trapped. . . .”
“Reprogram them to do what?” Birdy and Gertie asked together.
“To hold this piece of space junk together so I can put my key in the time machine and we can disappear in a cosmic mist, travel to the twenty-seventh century, and save humanity, again.”