‘No thanks,’ said Ben. ‘I want to go up.’
But he kept noticing more things that added to his apprehension. There was the brake handle, for instance. It looked like a bicycle brake on a stick poking out of the floor. For some reason a Velcro strap was hanging off it. And then there was the door. It had a rotating catch that was so fiddly he hadn’t been able to close it when he first got in. Kelly had watched him fumble with it, then impatiently batted his hands out of the way and fastened it herself. Now he kept wondering if it was about to come undone.
Kelly consulted the map spread out on her knee, then spoke to the control tower through the mouth-piece. ‘This is microlight Tango Eight Five Sierra Golf. Requesting permission to take off.’
Ben heard their reply. ‘Go ahead, Tango Eight Five Sierra Golf. Take off runway zero-nine under your own discretion.’
‘Ben,’ said Kelly, ‘we’re going up. Last chance if you wanna get out. Oh, and don’t touch those pedals or that handle beside you or we’ll crash.’
Ben had a set of pedals in his foot well and a lever between him and the door. He made sure his hands and feet were well away from them. But he did it casually, as though he wasn’t worried. It was clear that Kelly would like nothing better than for him to bottle out.
Sweat trickled from the heavy foam pads around his ears and down into his collar. Kelly pushed the centre stick forward and opened the throttle. The lawnmower engine gave a roar. The white propeller became a blur. Suddenly the machine was moving forward with purpose.
They gathered speed, then Kelly pulled the stick back and the nose came up. Ben realized the ride had suddenly got smoother. He could no longer feel the wheels on the runway.
They were in the air.
They climbed steeply. Over the parched scrubland and the corduroy vineyards. Over a road, which shrank to a narrow ribbon. A lone van was trundling down it, the size of a grain of rice. Ben’s entire body was rigid, waiting for disaster.
Kelly levelled out the craft to cruising altitude. A breeze blew in through the back of the open cockpit behind Ben, making him glad he was wearing the flying suit. It also made him feel like he was dangling from a giant kite. But they were flying, really flying, in a way you could never experience inside an airliner.
A huge grin spread across Ben’s face. This was awesome. He looked across at Kelly and gave her a double thumbs-up.
He didn’t see what she did next. Suddenly Ben’s stomach left the flying suit. They were slipping sideways and downwards — fast. His shoulder and hip slid across the seat and banged into the door. The ribbon road was zooming towards them. The engine wailed in his ears like in films he’d seen of Second World War Spitfires plummeting to the ground.
Just as abruptly, they were flying level again, gliding through beautiful deep blue sky, the engine purring gently above their heads.
Ben let go of the seat and breathed a long, silent sigh of relief. Well, at least his door had held.
Kelly’s eyes were shining. Her face had lost the unfriendly scowl; instead she was glowing with pride. ‘That,’ she said, ‘is crossing the controls. What do you think of my baby flying machine?’
Ben nodded emphatically before he got his brain in gear to reply. The machine might look like a shaky contraption on the ground, but in the air it was magic. ‘Amazing,’ he said. ‘Can I have a go?’
‘Maybe,’ said Kelly.
Chapter Two
A few hours earlier …
Ben had thought Australia would be a nice change from England in February. The small town of Macclesfield in Cheshire, where he lived with his dad, was at its least appealing in winter. The days were short; in fact, they never properly got light. It drizzled all the time. The sky was the colour of dishwater. It was so cold you had to wrap up like an arctic explorer when you went out.
Then his mum had phoned. She and Ben’s dad had separated years before and she now travelled the world as a roving ambassador for the environmental organization Fragile Planet. Right now she was in Adelaide, South Australia to speak at a conference on weather science. Would Ben like to come out to stay with her for half term? Ben jumped at the chance. It was a long way to go for just seven days, but Ben couldn’t wait to wear flip-flops on the beach, try his hand at surfing, and relax beside the barbecue in the long, warm evenings.
But, he thought as he first arrived in the country, so far it wasn’t turning out to be the wonderful experience he had hoped for. For a start, the flight was delayed and his mum couldn’t meet him at the airport because she had to give an important speech at the environmental conference. Instead, when he stepped off the plane, he saw a woman in the airline uniform holding up a placard with his name on. She guided him through arrivals and took him outside to get a taxi. He had just a few seconds to bask in the southern hemisphere warmth and look up at the blue sky before she shepherded him into a car with air conditioning so extreme it could have started an ice age.
His escort got into the back seat beside Ben. On the journey into town she gave him a frightening list of dos and don’ts for his stay in Adelaide.
‘Don’t go out without sunscreen, ever. Reapply it every two hours. Set your watch or your Blackberry or your phone to remind you so you don’t forget. Cover up your arms and legs. Drink plenty of water. Don’t go on a journey unless you have high-factor sunscreen and water with you. Ditto if you play sports. Try not to be outside anyway between eleven in the morning and three in the afternoon. Familiarize yourself with the symptoms of heat exhaustion and dehydration; it’s all in this leaflet’ — she handed him a folded piece of paper — ‘so make sure you read it. Don’t touch any spiders or caterpillars; there’s a section about them in the leaflet too. Don’t use hose pipes — we’re having the worst drought since records began. Don’t light any fires, for any reason, anywhere.’
Ben’s brain was reeling with all these instructions, but this one pulled him up short. Fires? he thought. What are the teens around here like?
At the hotel he was briskly hustled up the steps and into the air-conditioned reception. Finally he was left in his room with instructions to unpack and wait for a call.
The room looked out over pale beaches and the sparkling blue marina. The sands were empty; no sunbathers, but it was ten on a Monday morning, so most people would be at work. There were lifeguards out in the bay and people working on the boats in the marina. During an English summer, people working outdoors in the sunshine wore as little as possible, but here they wore long sleeves, long trousers and hats with wide brims. Cars went by in the street below. More than half of them had soft tops or sun roofs, but they were all closed. So were the windows.
People here didn’t welcome the sun. They hid from it.
This was South Australia. Not far away was the infamous hole in the ozone layer. In this part of the world, the sun wasn’t a benevolent relief from the cold; it was a cosmic blowtorch.
Ben’s mother would have scolded him for forgetting that. Anyone who took the environment for granted, or didn’t seem to be taking enough care of it, felt the rough edge of her tongue. Dr Bel Kelland didn’t balk at haranguing popes and presidents, and the way she spoke to world leaders on television gave the impression she thought of them as spoiled children with too many toys. Bel was a woman on a mission, all right. She wanted to make her mark on the world. Although, more accurately, you might say she wanted to stop other people making their mark on it. Sometimes Ben was proud of her, but just as often the things she did embarrassed him.
Ben’s father, Russell Tracey, wasn’t like Bel at all. He was brilliant but shy, happy with his quiet, uneventful life in a small town in Cheshire. Russell and Bel were both scientists, but in every other way they were poles apart, as opposite as the climates of England and Australia in February.