The Underground City (19 page)

Read on for a sneak preview of Neil and Clara’s next adventure in
Firestar
…

It wasn’t actually a very impressive satellite, as satellites go. Silver, shiny, vaguely round and cov-ered with a variety of antennae that did absolutely nothing to improve its
appearance
, it circled the earth emitting a regular, high-pitched bleep that would have driven you crazy had you been close enough to hear it.

The bleep, however, was music to the ears of the NASA engineers at Cape Canaveral who had just launched the satellite into orbit. Crowded round the flickering banks of monitors, they breathed sighs of relief as they heard it and when the init-ial outburst of cheering had died down, relaxed thankfully as they tracked its path across the black reaches of space. Powerprobe, for so they had christened it, was behaving just as it should.

“Well done, Mr Easterman,” the magician said seriously, his eyes taking in the smiling, trium-phant face of the young man who stood by his side. Nevertheless, he frowned slightly, for given his hip appearance, he still found it hard to believe that Chuck Easterman was a scientist at all. Young, fit and tall, with hair that stood up in gelled spikes, he looked more like a pop star than anything else. Powerprobe, however, had been his idea and his reputation as the latest whiz-kid on the block was well deserved.

Chuck, for his part, looked at the professor standing at his elbow with deep respect. So much so, that had you told him, there and then, that the man was actually a magician, he’d quite frankly have thought you as nutty as a fruit cake. The word called up visions of richly robed, elderly men who wore
pointed hats and wielded magic wands and, to be fair, there was little sign of anything remotely magical about the dull, soberly suited gentleman beside him. Besides which, NASA might “do” rockets, space stations, moon landings and the like but it most certainly didn’t “do” magic in any shape or form. Nevertheless, fantastic as it might sound, magic was very much in the air — and powerful magic at that.

As it happened, many months were to pass before Chuck, totally flabbergasted, learned that he’d had a magician on his team. And not any old magician either, but the mighty Lord Jezail of Ashgar: a magician of great power; a magician who was quite determined that Powerprobe shouldn’t fail; a
magician
who, all along, had had his own dangerous agenda …

At the time, however, as Powerprobe was bleep-ing its way happily across the heavens, Chuck only felt a deep sense of gratitude towards the man who’d done so much to help him. “Thank you, Professor Jezail,” he answered, revelling in the knowledge that despite the problems they’d had, Powerprobe was actually in orbit. “If it hadn’t been for your input,” he admitted candidly, “I doubt if Powerprobe would have got off the ground at all.”

“A pleasure, dear boy,” the magician smiled. “It’s been a
project
well worth working on and, if Powerprobe’s lasers behave as they ought, then we should be making some dramatic
discoveries
quite soon.”

“Well done, Professor,” one of the engineers interrupted, shaking his hand, “and congratu-lations, Chuck! You’ve both done a great job!”

“Thanks, Jim.” Chuck grinned and, as the engi-neer gave the thumbs up sign, he turned to bend over a computer to check the stream of data that was coming in. “Lasers still responding, Pat?” he asked the technician who was monitoring the sat-ellite’s progress. Pat Venner looked up from the screen and
grinned reassuringly. Chuck was his flatmate and he knew only too well how worried he’d been.

“Fine! Fully operational!” he replied.

Chuck’s heart lifted at the certainty in Pat’s voice. Despite everything, the lasers were working! “I can’t believe it’s all going so smoothly,” he said, his voice mirroring his relief. “I’ve just been telling Professor Jezail, here, that at one stage, I thought Powerprobe would never make it!”

Pat looked round at the two men, his eyes glint-ing with amusement. “It’s been some project,” he allowed, “and sorting out the lasers the way you did, Professor! Well … everybody reckons you must have waved a magic wand or something!”

Lord Jezail’s eyebrows lifted as he smiled in gen-uine
amusement
. “Perhaps I did,” he answered.

“It must have been something like that,” Chuck nodded, not knowing just how close he was to the truth, “for, quite frankly, I could only follow your reasoning so far before I got totally bogged down.” He frowned, shaking his head. “You know, I really haven’t a clue how you managed to sort that com-puter program out at all. At one stage I was quite convinced that the software had a virus in it.”

The professor looked at him shrewdly, a slight frown in his eyes. Chuck was obviously a lot brighter than he’d reckoned and the fact that he’d even suspected a virus was a tribute to his intelli-gence; for there was, indeed, a virus in Powerprobe. He knew, because he’d put it there himself!

A computer scientist would probably have said that the virus lodged so carefully in Powerprobe’s software was possessed of artificial intelligence. Nothing so complicated, however, had crossed the magician’s mind. To him, it was a hex, pure and simple — a hex with a mind of its own that would do his
bidding
. Sly, nasty and malevolent, it was a mirror image of the
magician himself. He called it Malfior and it knew its master.

Like all viruses, Malfior hid itself, unnoticed and unseen, in its new home and, content to follow the magician’s instructions, waited patiently until it was time to go into action — which was probably why it wasn’t immediately apparent that there was anything at all wrong with Powerprobe.

So, at the beginning of its mission everything went well. His task completed, Lord Jezail departed and as Chuck and the team of NASA experts set-tled to the complex task of satellite monitoring and data gathering, it wasn’t long before the work became almost routine. Indeed, Powerprobe had been bleeping its way blamelessly round the world for about six weeks with quite satisfactory results when its lasers picked up on a mind-boggling source of power.

This was what Malfior had been waiting for. It could only be Firestar. This was it! It obeyed its instructions to the letter and, even as the laser locked on, Malfior slid down its beam to lodge itself, unnoticed and unseen, in its new home.

Powerprobe’s reaction was immediate. As the laser hit the strange power source, its computers went berserk as things went monumentally pear-shaped. Everyone knew it the moment an ear-splitting shriek shattered the silence of the busy control room.

It wasn’t the noise, however, that caused Pat Venner to push his chair back violently from the bank of monitors. With a cry of terror, he scram-bled to his feet and, backing away, pointed a quiv-ering finger at his screen, his voice incoherent and his face, chalk-white with shock.

“What’s that?” he croaked wildly. “What the devil’s that?”