The Ancient Starship (6 page)

He yawned and scratched the red stubble on his chin, and then went on. ‘Control monitor all the archaeological and exploratory work on Earth. In fact, Arxish is the head of that whole department. So they've known for months what was coming, and had been steadily developing a plan to deal with it. What they didn't expect was the news to leak and speed up the dig before they'd made the swap.'

‘The swap?' said Charlie.

‘Yes. Once the pod had been discovered, the archaeologists had to dig up
something
. Arxish has a very low opinion of humans in general, but even he admits that we would notice if a big, solid, buried-in-glass object simply vanished from under our shovels. On the other hand, Arxish is determined to keep all alien technology out of human hands.'

‘But why?' said Amelia. ‘We're not allowed to know about aliens until we discover them for ourselves, but we're not allowed to discover them either … well, that's not fair.'

‘I know,' said Dad. ‘I've had the same argument with Control more times than I can count. Ms Rosby sees it our way, and thinks it can only be good for everyone – Control, Earth and all the travellers through the gateway – if humans know the full story. But Arxish and his faction have more votes, and they've convinced head office that we humans have to figure out interstellar space travel on our own first. Letting us get hold of an alien spaceship, they say, would unnaturally speed up our technology and science, and … well, Arxish thinks he's protecting us from ourselves by keeping Earth ignorant.'

‘That's –' Amelia spluttered.

‘That's cool, Mr Walker,' Charlie cut her off. ‘But what about the
spaceship?
'

‘What about the swap?' James added.

‘Right, right.' They'd reached the end of the lawn, and Dad pulled aside the banksia branch to let the kids onto Lady Naomi's path. ‘They used the same teleporter that took us to Egypt to get the ship out of its glass casing. It was genius! They just beautifully folded the fourth dimension there and the ship slipped neatly into Lady Naomi's clearing here. So then the ship was safely away, but there was a huge glass cavity in the ground. Next they reversed the teleporter so that it worked like a kind of 3D printer, and just filled in the space. And I mean, seamlessly! Down to every last wrinkle and bump in the glass. Just
beep-boop-bip!
' He mimed pressing buttons. ‘Type in
green chrysoprase,
upload your design, factor in the right radiation signature for the supposed age of the thing, and it's built almost instantly! From the electrons up! Job done, we go home, and the archaeologists of Egypt have a whole new career ahead of them! Everyone's a winner!'

‘But we just got cheated out of our aliens,' Charlie protested.

‘Yes, well, there is that … I can't say I like it, either, Charlie.'

They trudged around the last bend and saw Arxish and Ms Rosby standing beside an awkward-looking Lady Naomi. When she saw Dad and the kids, her face brightened and she came over to them at once. Amelia noticed Grawk had disappeared again.

‘I'm not sure about this, Scott,' Lady Naomi said in a low voice. ‘The starship is one thing, but I didn't agree to have this lot take over my facility.'

Dad patted her shoulder. ‘It'll only be a day or two at most. And Ms Rosby and I will do our best to make sure Control come through with some upgraded equipment as a way of saying thanks.'

Lady Naomi considered him, her frustration slowly giving way to a small smile. ‘All right. You've got me there. Just keep that Arxish away from me – he's obnoxious.'

‘So where's the spaceship?' said Charlie.

Amelia nudged him and pointed. Hadn't Charlie noticed? Lady Naomi's holo-rock was significantly larger than it had been.

‘Where?' said Charlie.

Lady Naomi took out her little gadget and the rock vanished. This time, in front of the workstation, a large dark-green object hung in midair. It was somehow both bigger and smaller than Amelia had expected – about the size of a very large freezer chest. Quite enormous for a freezer, in fact, but not very big at all if you were inside it while blasting through space.

One part of her mind was simply astonished that a thing she had first seen in a far-away country on the news was now floating only metres from her. Another part of her was sort of deflated. It was nothing at all like the sleek, shiny, gorgeous-looking ships she'd seen in movies.

Charlie didn't appear to be disappointed. Or bothered by how the ship had glowed red on Lady Naomi's radiation scan. He walked right up to it and ran his hands over the burnt surface. ‘Cool …'

‘Hey!' snapped one of the Control agents. ‘No touching!'

‘Don't be ridiculous,' Ms Rosby said bluntly. ‘This thing has travelled light-years through space, survived asteroid belts, burnt up through this planet's atmosphere, and survived a terminal velocity impact with the surface. What damage do you think the kid will inflict?'

The agent muttered to himself. ‘Yes, by all means,' he said grimly. ‘Fondle the ship to your heart's content … if we can't discover how to open it, how to read the writing on the sides, or how to determine its origin, why not let the human pup have a go?'

Amelia saw his mouth twist, and the other guy in the crew looked sullen, too. Clearly, this puzzle was too big even for Control.

Dad stayed out all night with the Control crew and Lady Naomi, trying to open the ship. At breakfast, he finally staggered in, but from the look on his face, Amelia knew they'd made little progress.

The man in the bowler hat came into the dining room behind Dad, and went straight to the table he'd sat at for dinner the first night. Amelia was pleased. She knew that Mum and Mary would be relieved he was OK. And he was OK, wasn't he? He was looking –

She jerked back in her chair and the butter knife in her hand banged so hard on the edge of the plate, she chipped it.

‘What's up with you?' said Charlie, pausing between bites of toast.

Amelia whispered, ‘That's
not
Bowler-Hat Man. It's the same hat, but it's not the same man.'

Charlie peered at their neighbour. ‘Same suit, too. I recognise the gravy stains.' He shrugged. ‘Maybe his holo-emitter is playing up. Or maybe he just decided he wanted to be better-looking, and hoped no-one would notice the change.'

Charlie's explanation was so reasonable, Amelia was almost convinced. But he'd overlooked a vital fact.

‘But the man in the bowler hat isn't an alien, Charlie. He didn't come through the gateway, and he didn't get a holo-emitter from Tom. Don't you remember? He came in a hire car like the other human guests. And his car is still outside the hotel!'

‘But then …' Charlie's eyes widened. ‘If the guy didn't leave in his car, where is he?'

‘And,' said Amelia, ‘who is this guy? And what is he doing in the other guy's clothes?'

It was so disturbing, Amelia ran straight to tell her mother. Not that they could find her. Amelia tried the library, which Mum used as an office, her parents' bedroom, the kitchen, and even the ballroom. Eventually, they found Mary upstairs in the guest wing, making up beds.

‘She went down to Tom's,' said Mary. ‘She'll be back in a min–'

But Amelia and Charlie were already running. They knew better than to run madly through the lobby, so instead they went the other way, down the corridor to the back of the hotel where the servants' stairs led out to the gardens a secret way.

They got out to the ballroom deck and lawns just in time to see a black-hatted figure creeping past the hedges. The fake Bowler-Hat Man, and he had one of the hotel's giant laundry-chute bags over his shoulder. A
bag
.

One large, knobbly object was crammed into the bag, and it looked exactly the right size and shape to be a human body.

Amelia and Charlie froze, unable to believe what they had just seen. Or
thought
they had seen …

As if they didn't have enough to think about between the alien spaceship and the weird scarf lady and Control sticking their nose in everything, now they had to deal with a –

Amelia stopped, not wanting to say the word
murderer,
even to herself.

Amelia tapped Charlie on the arm, then pointed to the other side of the hotel. If they were quick enough, they could run around the whole hotel and see where the impostor was going without the risk of following along behind. If that
was
a body in the bag, there was no way Amelia wanted to get caught spying.

Charlie nodded, and they sprinted as quietly as possible around to the front of the hotel, meeting Grawk on the way. Amelia put a finger to her lips to warn him they were being sneaky.

Looking out over the hotel grounds, they saw the top of the bowler hat just disappear below the brow of the hill as the man headed down to the bush. For a moment, Amelia was worried he was heading for Lady Naomi's workstation, but he was actually bearing further left, more toward the maze.

Amelia, Charlie and Grawk were totally exposed, running across the open grass of the hill after him, with nowhere to hide and no way to pretend they were doing anything other than chasing him. But they had no choice. If they waited until he got to the bush before they started after him, they would lose the trail.

Luckily for them, he didn't turn to check behind him.

‘I reckon that's the real Bowler-Hat Man he's got in there,' said Charlie quietly. ‘And now he's going to dump him in the bush.'

‘Listen!' Amelia whispered.

The man had started picking his way into the bush, and even from their distance, they could hear the crunching, snapping sound of leaves and twigs under each footstep.

‘We can't follow him in there,' she realised.

‘We can't let him get away with murder!'

‘No, but Charlie, he'll hear us from miles away if we go after him. And if he murdered the real Bowler-Hat Man, what's to stop him murdering us too?'

Charlie paused over that, and then Amelia noticed Grawk wagging his tail and staring at her intently. Grawk, who had known Krskn was bad news before anyone else had any idea he was there. Grawk, who could tell it was Charlie even when he was disguised with a holo-emitter. Amelia still wasn't sure just what Grawk knew or how he knew it, but by now she was happy to trust his judgment.

And right now, Grawk looked as relaxed and pleased as Amelia had ever seen him. She nudged Charlie. ‘Look! He's onto something!'

Once Grawk had their attention, he took off – trotting through the grass with his head held high, sniffing the air, his ears cocked toward the bush.

‘I think Grawk's tracking him,' she said. ‘But not following him – look. He's working out where he's going.'

Indeed, Grawk bounded twenty or more metres downhill, sniffed and listened a bit more. Then he blinked solemnly at Amelia, and walked into the bush.

‘Brilliant, Grawk,' she whispered. ‘Look, Charlie. The bush is thinner here, and there are all those rocks ahead. If we're careful, we can get in there without making a sound.'