The Ancient Starship (2 page)

Where the glass had been chipped away by the archaeologists, she could see the grey-green hull of the spaceship itself. Enough had been uncovered to show the scorch marks where it had burnt its way through our atmosphere, the dents and gouges where space debris had hit it, and then – most unmistakably – writing that was nothing like any human system Amelia had ever seen before.

She glanced sideways at Sophie T to see if she still thought it was a hoax. Her mouth sagged open and her face was quite white. Sophie F was frowning at the screen. Shani was sitting perfectly still, half-smiling.

‘Well,' muttered Ms Slaviero. ‘I'm obviously going to have to rethink my policy of listening only to disco hits in the car on the way to school.'

When the home bell finally rang, Amelia ran out the door so fast she accidentally knocked over the bin. Charlie was right behind her, and up ahead she could see that her not-quite-a-dog Grawk was waiting in the shade of an oleander bush, his yellow eyes glowing.

‘You know,' she puffed as they ran along the beach road, ‘for a minute there, when Callan started yelling, I almost thought –'

‘That it was me shooting my mouth off,' Charlie said bluntly. But he wasn't offended.

Amelia shrugged. ‘Sorry.'

‘No chance,' he went on. ‘Nothing I've ever said or done has ever impressed anyone around here.'

That sounded horrible to Amelia.

Charlie wasn't feeling sorry for himself. ‘So you know how I'm getting my revenge on them all?'

‘No.'

He grinned. ‘Now that I have the coolest, most unbelievable, most impressive news ever, in the whole universe, literally, I'll
never tell them anything.
'

She laughed with him, but felt a little pang, too.

Then she didn't have enough breath for anything but running as the path started its steep climb up to the headland. By the time they reached the top of the hotel's long driveway, Amelia was too weary to take much notice of the number of cars parked there. And when she and Charlie had chucked their bags down on the veranda and crashed through the hotel's main doors, she didn't stop to think before yelling out in the lobby, ‘Mum! Dad! There are aliens in Egypt!'

As her eyes adjusted to the dim indoor light, she realised that there was a line of complete strangers standing at the reception desk.

Ah,
she thought as they all turned to stare.
Those would be guests.

A man in a black suit and bowler hat paused with his room key in his hand, his forehead wrinkled in perplexity. The woman behind him scowled at Amelia, and pulled her two little children close, as though Amelia's bad manners might be catching. And the old lady behind her just looked too tired to be kept waiting any longer.

Behind the desk, Mum raised her eyebrows and said nothing.

Oops.
The hotel had officially opened for business this week, which meant that for the first time, regular human tourists were coming to stay at the hotel, as well as the aliens that had been coming all along, disguised with holo-emitters. Amelia had only recently got used to the idea that the hotel really was her home, and now it had all changed again, and she had to get used to strangers living in the hotel with them.

‘Dad is at Tom's,' said Mum pointedly. ‘Why don't you –?'

Amelia and Charlie were back out the door and running down the hill before Mum could even finish the sentence.

Tom, the caretaker, lived at the bottom of the hotel grounds, behind a wall of ancient magnolia trees. He had a little wooden cottage in a clearing that just happened to be directly on top of the natural cave system where the gateway opened.

‘Hey!' yelled Tom, as they burst through his door.

The tiny cottage seemed full of people. For the second time in two minutes, a group of adults turned to her. Amelia could have kicked herself. At least this time Dad was there too, grinning cheerfully. Beside him, an extremely old, wrinkly woman bent over her walking stick with her grey hair pinned up in a bun.

‘Hello, here's trouble,' she cackled.

‘Ms Rosby!' said Amelia.

‘What are you doing here?' asked Charlie.

A square-shaped man with very short hair snorted disapprovingly.

‘I can't believe you don't already know, Charlie,' said Ms Rosby. ‘I thought you two knew everything around here before anyone else.'

The square man narrowed his eyes.

‘What –?' Charlie began.

‘Why, the starship in Egypt, of course!' said Ms Rosby.

‘That's quite enough, Rosby!' snapped the square man.

‘That's what we came to tell you,' said Charlie. ‘We saw it on the news at school.'

‘You see, Arxish?' Ms Rosby smiled sweetly. ‘Hardly a secret, is it?'

Amelia had heard of Arxish before. He, Ms Rosby and someone called Stern were the Big Three – Gateway Control's top alien agents stationed on Earth. Ms Rosby had helped Amelia's family out of a tough spot before, when a guest had made a serious complaint against them. She not only made sure that Dad and Tom kept their jobs, she'd also given official permission for Amelia and Charlie to be included in the gateway's secrets. She was rather fond of the two kids, actually. Despite her old-lady appearance, she was only six years old herself.

Arxish, though, was quite a different person.

Dad had said very little about him in front of Amelia, but she had gathered enough clues here and there to know he was one of the Control agents who believed the gateway should be taken away from humans and put directly under the authority of Control.

From the looks on their faces, the other two agents in the room agreed with Arxish. Amelia didn't know how Dad could be so happy knowing he was surrounded by aliens who thought he was nothing more than an ignorant, half-wit Earthling.

‘Tell Mum I won't be home for dinner,' he beamed.

‘Ready, Walker?' said Arxish, holding out a strange clockwork steering wheel. Ms Rosby and the other two crowded around and held on, leaving space for Dad's hand.

‘Ready for what?' said Charlie.

Already Dad had taken hold of the wheel. It hummed, its centre spun, and a swirl of light blossomed out, enveloping all five beings touching it. They flared green for a second and then vanished, leaving Amelia, Charlie and Tom staring at empty air.

Amelia and Charlie were still standing dumbfounded when the door to the cottage opened again. James thudded in, bright red in the face and puffing.

‘I'm putting a lock on that door!' snapped Tom.

‘Did I miss him?' James gasped.

‘Do any of you kids know how to knock?' Tom pushed past Charlie and went to his desk, rifling through his papers. ‘This is my home, you know. Do any of you think of that?'

‘Sorry, Tom,' said James. ‘You're right.'

‘Don't see me bursting into
your
rooms,' Tom muttered to himself.

James pushed his hair off his face and fanned himself, panting. ‘Dad's gone, I take it?'

‘Yep,' said Amelia.

‘How?'

‘Good question,' said Charlie. ‘What
was
that thing?'

‘Teleporter,' Tom sniffed. ‘The show-offs. They'll want to be careful, zapping into Giza at sunrise with half the world's film crews on standby.'

‘A teleporter!' James's face broke into a goofy grin. ‘I wish I'd seen it. How does it work? It can't be electrical, can it, with all this magnetic interference –'

Tom sighed. ‘Was there something you wanted, James?'

James shrugged and looked around Tom's cottage. ‘Just … you know … wondered if there was anything I could … help with?'

Amelia smiled to herself. It had taken several weeks and a face full of toxic Lellum slug mucus to make James believe that the aliens in this place were even
real
. But since then, all his science-geek/mad-inventor/gadget-genius circuits had kicked in, and he'd been driving Tom crazy, trying to learn everything he could about the gateway.

Tom gazed at him, one stony eye fixed on James and the other hidden beneath a black eye-patch. ‘If you really want to help, you can put my charts in order.'

It was quite obvious to Amelia that this was the sort of offer that was supposed to send James running back up the hill, but instead James looked as excited as a kid on his birthday.

‘Thanks, Tom! You're the best!'

Tom grunted, and turned back to Amelia and Charlie. ‘Now, what do you want?'

‘We just wanted to see what was happening,' said Charlie.

‘Well, don't look at me. You think anyone tells me anything? Rosby might have, if she'd come here on her own, but Arxish won't say a word. As far as he let slip to your dad, Control want to cover up this whole situation.'

‘Why?' said Amelia.

‘We're a non-stellar planet, aren't we?' said Tom. ‘Never left our own solar system. So far as they're concerned, we might as well be living in caves and trying to make fire.'

‘But
we
know,' said Charlie.

‘Exactly,' said Tom, and before either Amelia or Charlie could ask him what he meant by that, a gust of wind blew out of the gateway stairwell, flooding the cottage with the smell of grilled cheese. A wormhole had just connected to the gateway, opening up a path to an alien world.

Grawk, who had been lurking outside the cottage all this time, now wandered in, sniffing the air appreciatively.

‘
More
guests?' said Charlie, straining to see what was happening in the other room.

‘What do you expect?' said James casually. ‘We're a hotel.'

‘But there's already a line at the front desk!' said Charlie. ‘Also, since when are
you
so –?'

‘Shh!' said Amelia. Whoever was coming through, she didn't want the first sound they heard on Earth to be Charlie complaining about them. Still, she understood what he meant. So far, they'd only ever had one or two groups of guests coming through the hotel at a time, and already that had been more than enough to deal with. What would it be like when the place really started to fill up?

‘Hey,' said James, unrolling a chart and squinting at it. ‘Am I reading this wrongly, or is this connection an hour and a half early?'

Rather than answering, Tom just grumbled and went to his drawer of holo-emitters, pulling one out for the new arrival. Once the holo-emitter was activated, it was impossible to tell who was really human and who was just faking it.

Amelia heard footsteps coming from the stairwell and, despite everything, felt a shiver of excitement. She didn't think she'd ever get bored of seeing what amazing creature came through the gateway next.

The visitor's head emerged from the stairwell in Tom's other room – a neat, pretty scarf tied over its hair, and a nice, oval face beneath.

Amelia frowned slightly. As the alien appeared, step by step, Amelia's disappointment grew. A plain navy blue jacket. Nicely polished nails at the end of ten fingers. Two hands and two ordinary arms. A pair of legs in navy trousers ended not in flippers, tentacles or robotic wheels, but two neat leather shoes. She was so …
ordinary
.