Four

Lisa broke the awed silence. “Well, I guess that explains why we feel like one girl instead of three when we do that.”

Then it was Holly’s turn to chase the silence into a corner. “Don’t know about little bullets, that thing looks like it’ll deflect a nuclear bomb - and before you ask - I have no plans to try it experimentally.”

That caused a certain amount of laughter, some nervous, some excited, and a couple I’d swear were hysterical. Beth just smiled.

“I really don’t know where we go from here. You three are now so far beyond what we know, or thought we knew, that I don’t think there’s any point running any more tests or experiments on you. Just promise me you’ll keep telling us what you’re up to, and what you manage to achieve.

Lisa spoke for all three of us. “You know we will Beth. Err - there is one other thing. You know how we made Holly ‘wake up’? Well we might be able to do it to others as well.”

She explained about Yoshiko, and about being able to send the sense of the words, even when the person thought at doesn’t speak the same language.

Eventually Lisa must have had enough. “Let’s vanish,” she ‘said’. “Frankly, I’m hungry again and I think I want a bit of fun for a while. These last few days have been too serious for words.”

I ‘said’, “Yes, good idea.” But Holly just sent a picture of a hand with a thumb sticking up. The thumb was about three times too big for the hand, a sort of cartoon thumb. Brilliant. I think Beth wondered why we were all three grinning, but she’s used to us having conversations nobody else can hear.

General Lisa led her troops out of the lab building and into the town proper. There we happened upon a convenient McDonalds. If the staff wondered why we ordered two burgers each, they didn’t comment. Good job we get some money from the jobs we’d been doing, we were going to bankrupt mums and dads if we carried on at this rate.

Telepathy is brilliant. As I was pushing food into my mouth, I was also discussing what we might like to do for the rest of the afternoon.

“Well I vote we hit the shopping centre and check out the local male population,” I ‘said’ with my mouth full.

“Weren’t much good last time we looked”, ‘said’ Lisa, likewise physically engaged.

“Might be better this time, you never know. Anyway, Holly’s not been in the centre much. She might find something that takes her fancy, and I don’t mean a new dress.”

“Hey, knock it off,” ‘said’ Holly. “Not into that stuff quite yet. Mind you ... no harm looking I don’t suppose.”

“Jody, I hold you personally responsible for the deplorable attitude of our youngest member,” ‘said’ Lisa in a pompous ‘voice’. Then she laughed and nearly sprayed the next table with crumbs.

Our local shopping centre was a patchwork of shops, some cheap, some expensive. Naturally we chose to tour the expensive ones. Just about one of the most expensive was a jewellers. The most expensive - and the most noisy today. There seemed to be an argument of some kind going on.

“Seems like fun in there today,” said Lisa. “Let’s go and see what’s going on.”

As we got nearer the shop, we were almost run over by people running out.

“Get away girls,” one woman screeched. “There’s men in there with guns.”

Guns eh. Wouldn’t bother us. I said so.

“Need to be careful,” said Holly. “If stuff bounces off our shield, it might hit people around us. We’ll be ok, but ...”

“Ok,” said Lisa. “They’ll probably not come out this way anyway. I wouldn’t. Let’s go in and see if we can persuade them to go out the back door.”

That suited me. I had a trick I wanted to try involving guns. Soon enough, the rush of people leaving the shop dried up a bit. The three of us advanced on the door.

“Shields up,” ‘said’ Lisa.

I ‘heard’ Holly laughing. “Yessir Captain Kirk sir.”

As one girl, in more than one meaning of the words, we advanced into the shop. There seemed to be four or five men in woolly hat-things waving guns, and about the same number of staff. The staff had their hands up, good survival instinct there I thought. We walked slowly, waiting to be noticed.

Eventually a couple of guns were pointed in our direction. We’d had much bigger guns than that, and missiles, fired at us - a couple of little handguns? No problem. Now for the trick I wanted to try.

I looked carefully at one of the guns held by one of the men. Then I firmly ‘told’ it not to be in his hand, but in mine instead. Then I did exactly the same to other gun pointing in our direction. Now I had two guns and two of the men didn’t. I waved my new toys as menacingly as I could.

“I think all you nice staff members should lie flat on the floor,” I heard Lisa call out. They didn’t move so she shouted, “Now, dummies!”

When General Lisa gives orders, people do as she tells them. The staff hit the floor like felled trees. Not a moment too soon. The remaining couple of guns opened fire on us.

I didn’t try to return fire. Somehow I knew exactly what would happen if I did - and busted fingers figured quite prominently. Holly had been busy deflecting bullets. They were turning through a neat right angle and embedding themselves in a handy bit of wall to our left. I had the thought that it ought to look like the films, where all the glass display cases would have been shattered in a huge shower of glass and stuff. Our way was much neater.

The ‘hail of bullets’ was really more like trickle. It wasn’t long before there were little clicks instead of bangs. Lisa smiled and said, “Give up yet?”

I think It was that that pushed the men over the edge. They ran for it - through the back door - just as Lisa’d said.

Outside was a car, engine running, doors open, the works. Our men jumped in and the car sped off. Lost them? Not ruddy likely. We three could fly far faster than any piddling car. We proceeded to do this.

Now I guess Supergirl and her friends could have flown high enough to go in a straight line, following the car with x-ray vision or whatever. Despite what I like to think now and then, we weren’t actually Supergirls. We had to follow the car along the streets, just a few tens of metres up. Lisa had made a telephone appear. In order that she didn’t accidently try to fly through a building while distracted on the phone, she made us link up. This had the effect of making her follow us exactly, and we could listen to her phone conversation.

“Emergency. Which service do you need?”

“Police please. We’re chasing jewel thieves.”

The tone of voice at the other end was sceptical. It also said, ‘not my problem, the cops can deal with it’. “I’ll put you through.”

There were clicks and stuff, then, “Police. How can I help?”

“We’re chasing armed men down Market Street. They’ve just tried to rob Stevensons in the centre. You’d better hurry, they’ve turned into Bridge Street. I think they’re heading out of the town.”

“They won’t get far running.”

“They’re not running. They’re in a car. We’re in the air above them.”

“You’re what?”

“What I said. Look, this is Lisa Chandler speaking. I have Jody Kenyon and Holly Merrick with me. Ask your colleagues what that means, then get a move on!”

I almost laughed as I got the impression the cop was about to say ‘Yes Ma’am’. He didn’t though. There was a pause while he obviously took advice. Then he was back.

“Traffic have said can you give them details of the car?”

“Thought you’d never ask,” said Lisa. “Hang on one tick”

I knew what she needed. “I ‘said’, “Black Audi A6 estate. It’s the 3 litre Quattro model. Probably nicked.”

Lisa repeated all this down the phone together with the registration number. “Do you want me to stay on the phone and tell you where we are?”

“Could you?”

“No problem. Ok. They’ve turned right into Link Road. Now left into Kings Drive. Doing probably forty or so miles an hour. Now right into Melrose Road. Oops, just squeaked through the lights at Queensway.”

Lisa’s running commentary continued for some minutes. I wasn’t sure how she knew all the road names, not sure - but not surprised. “Heading for the District roundabout and the Leeds road I think. Yep. Straight across the roundabout and onto Leeds Road. One of your chaps is behind them.”

“Should be one in front as well. Can you see from where you are?”

“Yes. Not moving. One of them’s out of the car.”

I think I ‘said’, “Stinger,” just the merest fraction before the cop on the end of the phone.

Those things must be fiendishly difficult to use, at least when you see them on TV they don’t usually get it right. This time? Spot on. The Audi went straight over the spikes. The guy working it even managed to get it out of the way of the following traffic car.

The thing about the Quattro is that it has skinny tires, wide enough across but not very high. It’s called low-profile. That means there isn’t much air to let out. The Quattro stopped in a shower of sparks. Five men fell out and scattered.

“Chase the ones with the guns,” ‘said’ Lisa. “That way nobody should get hurt.”

There were only two guns, I had the other two. For some reason, both men chose to go the same way - probably thinking they could help each other to shoot their way out of trouble. Didn’t work.

The three of us followed above them, I’m not even sure if they knew we were there. We followed as they ran round a few corners and across a couple of gardens. Eventually they slowed to a walk. Lisa decided we should pounce.

“Land in front of them,” she ‘said’. “But stay together.”

“Lisa,” ‘said’ Holly. “We don’t need to do that. I can protect us at umpteen metres apart.”

Lisa isn’t our Director for nothing. “Right. Holly and me in front, Jody behind. Wave the guns a bit.”

So that’s what we did. The sight of Holly and Lisa just dropping down to land in front of them must have upset the men a bit. They turned to run away - to find gun-toting Jody behind them! I grinned as I thought to myself, ‘Come on. Make my day’.

The grin was set to last for only a second. They were both carrying guns - reloaded guns - and they used them.

The grin wasn’t missing for long. Just because Holly wasn’t standing next to me didn’t mean all the bullets hit me. What they hit was a metal dustbin - with a sound like a huge bag of spanners dropped from about a mile up.

While I had the gunmen’s complete attention, Lisa had been busy. Leaving Holly to see to protecting me, she’d found a washing line. That proceeded to make like a snake, wrapping itself around the two men’s legs. They only noticed this when they tried to run away after their guns were empty.

Running away didn’t happen. Falling flat on their faces happened instead. The three of us proceeded to sit on the backs of the two men to await reinforcements. These arrived at the run, obviously drawn by all the noise we were making.

Seemed like the whole Police Force had turned up. The three of us got to our feet and let the cops haul our men to their feet. Then they noticed me holding guns.

“For Heaven’s sake be careful!” cried one of the cops.

“What’s the matter?” I grinned. “Oh, ok. Hang on.”

One by one, I pulled the clips out of the guns, laying them in a neat line on the ground in front of me. That included the other two empty ones Lisa’d collected off the two men as they fell over. Soon I had a line of four disassembled guns.

“Safeties are on, no bullets. Safe enough for you now? Wouldn’t want to fire one of those anyway. Cheapo Polish imports. You’ll be wanting all our fingerprints?”

There were a lot of bemused expressions as evidence bags were produced and bits of gun sealed away for later scrutiny I supposed. The cops looked a bit shocked. Holly added fuel to the fire.

“Right. All the shots here ended up in the dustbin - yes - all of them. Just because that’s not where the guns were pointing is no reason for doubting. By the same token, all the shots in the jewellers - again - all of them - will be in the same bit of wall to the left of the doorway. Two guns fired all the shots, the ones with the currently empty clips. Jody took the guns with full clips off the men before they had time to pull the trigger.”

Lisa took charge again. “You’ll find plenty of people at your HQ who know how to contact us. If you have any problem, speak to the Ministry of Defence, or the CO of the airbase north of the town.”

“Ok,” she ‘said’. “This time we give them a show. Yes?”

“Oh, goody,” I ‘said’. “Can we try some aerobatics?”

“No. Behave. A dignified withdrawal - at least until we’re out of sight.”

The three of us lifted into the air more or less together. It took only a few seconds to be high enough and far enough away so the men couldn’t see us. Laughing out loud, Lisa did a loop-the-loop. “Whoo. I enjoyed all that! Did I say I wanted some fun for the rest of the afternoon?”

“Brilliant,” said Holly. “Anyway, my place for tea? Mum’s stocked up again after last weekend.”

As we made our way through the air to Holly’s, she made her shocking-pink mobile appear to ring her mum to put the kitchen on Red Alert.