Ant Attack (7 page)

“Nothing to worry about,” said Josh, with a happy smile.

“He's just got ants in his pants,” said Danny.

Tarquin had at last gone home with his mother, wearing a spare pair of Danny's shorts and crying loudly. Mom brought a cup of tea and some little cakes out to them in the garden.

“Just to say thanks,” she said. She handed them the tray as they sat on the garden bench. “For trying. He's an annoying boy. Gives you heartburn.”

“You'll never know,” mumbled Danny, through a mouthful of cake.

Josh picked up the pink-iced sponge cube and stared at it as Mom went back indoors.

“Well go on, then,” said Danny. “You love French Fancies.”

Josh raised his eyes up above the cake. He stared at Danny, a slow smile spreading over his face.

“Now I know what I saw in the ants' nest!” he breathed.

“Yes,” said Danny. “Ants. A lot of them.”

“Not just ants! I saw a tiny turtle too!”

“A tiny turtle too?” echoed Danny, wondering if Josh had decided to start making up funny songs. “A tiddly turtle too … having a piddly poo?” he ventured.

Josh sprang to his feet and slammed the cake down on the plate. “DANNY! I KNOW WHERE ANOTHER REPTOSWITCH CUBE IS!” And he began to run toward the sidewalk. “COME ON! Petty's going to get another of her missing cubes back today! That'll be four out of six. Maybe that will be enough to crack the reptile S.W.I.T.C.H.code. You never know!”

At the sidewalk, they peered down into the crumbly brown nests in the cracks. “I saw sparkly glass in the ants' nest tunnel, just before we ran back out,” explained Josh. “And while I was looking into it, I saw a turtle looking back up at me! It couldn't have been a real turtle. Not in an ants' nest. It must be a hologram! A hologram in another one of Petty's missing cubes!”

He poked his fingers down into the nest, scattering dozens of panicked ants. “Here! This is where we came out, I'm sure. Danny, help me get the slab up!”

“What are you two doing?” called Mom, looking out of the kitchen window.

“Just looking at an ants' nest,” called back Danny.

“Oh, that reminds me,” said Mom. She disappeared back through the window.

The slab was heavy, but between them, Josh and Danny managed to pry the edge up and lift it away. Underneath, a secret world was revealed. A flat gray plain of soil and grit and roots, with centipedes and woodlice fleeing across it as the daylight struck them. A complicated network of passages wriggled across the surface, and scores of ants were running along them in a frenzy.

Josh and Danny knew that the tunnels went much deeper than this. “How far down was the cube, then?” asked Danny.

“Can't be that deep—maybe ten inches …?” guessed Josh. “Look—there's the main entrance.”

He pointed to a larger hole through which a long chain of ants was hurrying.

A shadow fell across them. Josh and Danny glanced up, and there stood Mom. She was holding a glinting deadly weapon in her hand. A kettle.

Steam rose from its spout in menacing curls.

“Look out,” said Mom. “I've been meaning to do this all week. We've got far too many ants.”

“NOOOOOOO!!” screamed Josh and Danny, both together.

Mom blinked. She had expected Josh to protest a bit—but Danny? He didn't even like creepy-crawlies! She'd poured boiling water on nests before, and he'd never batted an eyelid!

“You can't!” cried Josh. “It's cruel! You'll wipe out an entire family and all their babies.”

“DON'T DO IT, MOM!” begged Danny.

Mom stepped back, shrugging. One steaming splash of water hit the nest. It left a crater of hot mud. “All right! All right!” she said. “But don't blame me if you get ants in your pants like Tarquin!”

“We won't mind!” said Danny.

At last, Mom went away. They breathed a huge sigh of relief. It was one thing to wipe out a nest of ants when you'd only just noticed them by your toes. Quite another thing when you'd met them all and been in their house.

“OK, I'll be careful,” said Josh. He prodded his fingers gently and slowly down through the main entrance. After only a few seconds, as the crumbly earth gave way, he felt a cold, hard angle of glass. In a moment he had seized it and wiggled it out of the embrace of the grass roots.

He knelt back and held it up to the light. One perfect glass cube, with a tiny, delicate hologram of a turtle inside it. He and Danny stared at each other, grinning excitedly. Then they leapt to their feet and tore around the house. Seconds later, they were hammering on Petty's front door.

Petty Potts pulled them into her hallway and slammed the door. Then she took the cube from Josh's hand and stared at it, thrilled.

“Where was it?” she whispered.

“In an ants' nest in our yard,” said Josh. “We would never have found it if we hadn't been turned into ants ourselves.”

“Oh yes,” said Danny, suddenly remembering.

“What were you thinking of, giving S.W.I.T.C.H. spray to Tarquin?”

“I didn't give it to him, you donkey!” said Petty. She was still smiling mistily into the cube. “He just grabbed it when I left it on the wall for ten seconds.”

“You've got to be more careful,” said Josh.

“I am careful,” insisted Petty. “And anyway, if you hadn't been turned into ants, we would never have got this back!”

They didn't bother to go on arguing because she was too entranced by the cube to pay any attention. She walked into the kitchen and got two boxes down from a high shelf. One was red velvet, and one was green velvet. The red one, as she opened it, revealed a set of six perfect glass cubes. The BUGSWITCH cubes. Their six holograms contained the six parts of the code for making BUGSWITCH spray.

Now Petty opened the green box. In this lay three cubes and three empty dents. Petty pressed the fourth cube into its dent and sighed happily.

“Just two more to find!” she murmured. “Two more and the REPTOSWITCH code will be mine again! Mine! MINE!”

She glanced at Josh and Danny and coughed. “I mean … ours.” She smiled at them. “And when it's complete, you two will be the first humans on Earth to know how it feels to be a reptile! An alligator! A giant lizard! A python! Whatever you want! I will be able to make the spray…”

“Will it make us rich?” wondered Danny. Danny liked money.

“Of course,” said Petty. “But more importantly, it will make us the most famous scientists in the world!”

A shadow moved outside Petty's kitchen window. She flinched and went to stare outside. “Did you see that?” she whispered.

“What? It was probably just a cat,” said Josh.

Petty turned away from the window and stared at them both. “You ought to know…” she said, her eyes glittering, “… that the closer we get to finding the REPTOSWITCH code, the more dangerous it could get.”

Danny blinked. “Look, we've been nearly eaten by a centipede and then burnt alive by a magnifying glass today. I think we know how dangerous it gets.”