“Why?” asked Becky.
“Because…because…” I said. “Because that’s the thing. That’s the reason we’re here. We can’t sit here just looking at it.”
“No,” said Becky. “I didn’t bring you all this way so you could be cooked alive.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“We’re going to sit here and look at it. See if it happens again.”
So we just sat there looking at it. For a long time. A very long time. And it didn’t happen again. Becky wandered off to pee and came back again. I fell asleep and woke up when the pins and needles got really bad.
“OK,” said Becky. “Let’s go and take a look. This is driving me nuts.”
We did a commando shuffle through the dark. Down the slope from one shadow to the next. A tree. A rock. A bank of earth.
I thought about Dad, the model planes and the Aubergine Parmesan. I thought about Mum and her natty suits. I thought about my little room with the octopus poster and the cardboard skeleton. I thought about gravity and the Industrial Revolution. It all seemed a very long way away. Like something happening in a model village, tiny and silly and not quite real.
It wasn’t fear. It was something way past that. It was like walking away from a car accident. I felt shocked and spacey and full of adrenaline.
We reached the back wall of the ruin and crouched down. And that was the weird thing. The stones were cold.
There was no noise from inside, either. I looked at Becky. She looked back at me. The blade of her penknife flashed in the starlight.
She nodded and mouthed the word, “Go.”
We stood up, tiptoed round to the front of the ruin and leaped through the hole that used to be the front door.
The place was completely empty. Moonlit walls. Dirty flagstones. Some weeds. Some little flowers. Nothing burned. No scorched earth. No crispy little person-remains. Nothing. It was just like it had been when we passed it earlier that night.
Dead or not, the man had vanished. I looked up. Had the blue beam vaporized him? What would happen to us if it came on again? Would we be vaporized too?
“Becky,” I said nervously, “maybe we shouldn’t hang around in here.”
She wasn’t listening. “There has to be a way out. A hidden door. A secret hatch.”
“Becky, please.” I tugged at her sleeve.
She scraped the floor with her boot. She ran her hand over the stone walls. She ferreted among the scraggy plants growing in the corners.
“I’m leaving,” I said. “I really don’t like this place.”
“Give me the wristband.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Yeah?” said Becky. “Well, you think of a better one. In the meantime, give me the wristband.”
I gave her the wristband.
It happened as soon as she peeled back the silver foil. The interior of the ruin was illuminated by fifty pinpricks of green light set into the stone walls. Beside the door a panel had appeared.
I snatched the wristband back and wrapped it up in its foil again.
“There’s a button,” said Becky.
“Just don’t press it.”
“Oh, right,” said Becky. “So we’re just going to stand here and look at it. That’s not going to get us very far, is it?”
She pressed the button. The floor beneath my feet dropped away and I found myself being lowered into a round shaft.
“Help!”
“Jimbo!” yelled Becky. She threw herself onto the ground and grabbed my hand, but I was falling too quickly and our fingers were pulled apart.
She stood up again and jabbed frantically at the button. It was too late. A thick plate was sliding over my head, cutting off the hole and shutting out the light. I banged on the walls and yelled.
Above me, I could hear Becky grunting as she struggled with the covering to absolutely no effect. A striplight came on over my head. I looked around. I was standing in a tall white ceramic tube. The walls were smooth as glass and on one side was a panel of buttons, dials, screens and gauges. Above me, the tube was sealed tightly by the steel plate.
“Jimbo…! Jimbo…! Jimbo…!” came the muffled sound of Becky’s voice.
I gazed at the panel of buttons. Maybe one of them opened the door. But which one? And what were the others for? Press the wrong one and I might be microwaved, or crushed. The tube might fill with water. Or sulphuric acid. Or cockroaches.
I was finding it difficult to breathe. Was I running out of air, or just hyperventilating? I fumbled in the pocket of Craterface’s jacket and took out his spanner. I bashed the wall as hard as I could. It clanged like a church bell and my fingers hurt. I hadn’t made a scratch.
I put the spanner back, took out the wristband and unwrapped it. Instantly the panel came alive. Figures and symbols flashed up on a blue screen. Needles shook and quivered. Buttons glowed.
“Jimbo…! Jimbo…!” Becky was still shouting faintly.
“I’m still here,” I shouted back. “I’m trying to get out.”
I wrapped the wristband in its foil and put it back into my pocket. Then I picked up the orange notebook. I opened it at the page where Charlie had written down the code from Pearce’s attic: Trezzit/Pearce/4300785.
The map reference was Coruisk. This was Coruisk. Perhaps the other numbers meant something too.
“Jimbo…!” shouted Becky, her voice dulled almost to silence by the ceiling of the tube.
I crossed my fingers and punched the numbers into the main keypad. “Four…three…zero…zero…seven…eight…five…”
The word ‘Pearce’ flashed briefly on the screen, followed by a spurt of letters and symbols. I heard a low throb coming from machinery beneath my feet.
I pressed my back against the curved wall. I zipped up Craterface’s jacket, braced my feet, took a deep breath and held on tight.
Nothing happened for several seconds. Then I heard the boom! Except it was much closer and much louder this time. I thought my ears were going to rupture. Every atom in my body was vibrating. I felt horribly seasick. My clothes were soaked in sweat. I covered my ears with my hands and fell to the floor and curled up into a ball.
The atoms in my body slowly stopped vibrating. My ears still hurt, but the nausea was fading. I got slowly to my feet. The word ZARVOIT flashed across the screen and there was a short bing-bong like a doorbell. I heard a little hiss and turned to see that one of the sides of the tube was sliding open.
The tube had gone downwards. I was in a cellar. Or a bunker. Except that there was light pouring through the gap, and it was white and it was bright and it was very much not underground. I gripped the spanner tightly.
It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. I was looking out into a vast white hangar. I looked up. No Coruisk. No Becky. No ground. Just a smooth white ceiling twenty metres above my head.
Around the room were huge, high windows. Outside the windows was a black sky thick with stars. This wasn’t a dungeon. This wasn’t a cellar or a bunker. I must have travelled through some kind of tunnel. I was somewhere else on Skye. Or I was on the mainland. Or I was on that whale-shaped island sitting in the bay.
And that’s when I saw them. Seated at a long table nearby. Mrs Pearce. Mr Kidd. The man from Captain Chicken. Inspector Hepplewhite. They were all wearing long violet robes.
This could not be happening. A few more minutes and the alarm would start beeping and I’d head into the kitchen and there would be a big cooked breakfast waiting for me. Sausages, toast, scrambled eggs.
Captain Chicken stood up and started walking towards me.
“Sausages, toast, scrambled eggs,” I said to myself. “Sausages, toast, scrambled eggs.”
“Welcome, James,” he said, “and well done. Well done indeed.”