In Search of the Time and Space Mach (3 page)

Superspy Alex Crane was being pursued by the treacherous Baron Lichtenstein and his hungry pack of wolves. Alex had uncovered the Baron's scheme of smuggling top-secret Government plans out of the country in a collection of talking dolls and was now running for her life with the Baron and his wolves in hot pursuit. They were gaining fast. Just as Alex was about to pass through the gates of the Baron's estate to safety, she tripped and sprained her ankle. She tried to stand up but the pain was too great. The wolves were gaining on her fast. She could hear the Baron's laugh of victory as they were about to pounce.

Was this the end of Alex Crane? Would the wolves eat her alive? Would Spyforce lose their greatest ever spy?

Max woke in terror. Someone had thrown something large and woolly over her and was trying to smother her. She struggled beneath the furry weight, trying to breathe, trying to scream, fighting for her life. Maybe it was the heavy-footed man who had terrorised her last night and had come back to kill her. Or maybe it was her weird uncle and aunt who wanted to chop her up and feed her to the chickens. She knew they were crazy. Probably crazy enough to kill.

They weren't going to do away with her that easily, thought Max. She struggled, using all her strength against the smothering weight. Then she felt a long wet slap across her face. What was that? Then she heard a bark.

A dog! It was a dog!

‘Get off me!' she screamed. ‘I said get off me!'

Max gave the dog one big shove and it landed clumsily on the floor next to her bed. But it thought she was playing and jumped back up on her again.

‘Will somebody get rid of this maniac dog before he kills me!' she yelled.

Eleanor came into the room and laughed as she pulled the dog off Max.

‘Ralph, I know you're excited to have a new guest in the house but at least let her wake up before you say good morning,' said Eleanor.

Max was furious that Eleanor thought it was so funny. She'd almost been killed! Eleanor wouldn't be laughing if she'd found her lying blue in the face with her eyes wide open, having taken her last dog-smelling breath.

‘Sorry about that. Ralph was only trying to be friendly,' said Eleanor apologetically.

‘Well I'd appreciate it if you controlled your
dog so I'm not attacked every morning when I wake up,' Max said sharply.

Eleanor looked hurt.

Max wiped the dog spit from her face and brushed dog hairs off her pyjamas.

‘He didn't mean any harm, but I'll make sure he sleeps outside from now on.'

Ralph gave a yelp. Eleanor wouldn't really leave him outside all night, would she? Not after all these years and besides, he hated being alone in the dark.

‘Come on, Ralph. Let's leave Max to get dressed in peace,' said Eleanor. Ralph looked away from Max, let out a small whimper and, with his tail sagging to the floor, he quietly left the room after his mistress.

Max threw off the blankets in one angry sweep. Finding her slippers under the bed, she took her toilet bag and dog-smelling self to the bathroom. When she got there, she stood in the doorway with her mouth open as she looked at what was to pass for a bathroom for the next six weeks. It was a small room with one window up high and a small cracked mirror that hung even higher from a crooked nail. Even hardened criminals had it better than this, she thought.

The walls were a floral mess of pale pink and green tiles that looked like they had come straight out of a magazine from the 1950s. Tiles had fallen off the walls and were piled on a shelf waiting to be fixed. The bathroom cabinet was so small Max wondered that anything could fit in it, and the toilet lid looked heavy enough to break her arm just trying to lift it up. The bath was so deep she thought she was going to need a ladder just to get in and above it the shower nozzle poked out from the wall like a miniature metal weapon left over from the war. Around the bath hung a bright yellow curtain splattered with ducks and rainbows.

Nothing matched, nothing was her height, everything was a nightmare.

As Max tried to get up the courage to enter the room, she thought of her mother. There was a lot about her Max didn't like, but one thing she did have was a sense of style, which Eleanor must have missed when they were handing it out.

‘Why me?' muttered Max. She took a deep breath and stepped through the doorway, wanting to wash away every trace of the smelly dog as quickly as possible.

After cleaning up, Max felt better but when she got to the kitchen she met her next horror.

Breakfast!

Eleanor smiled as she saw Max enter the room.

‘Just in time,' she said, as she placed before Max a plate of fried eggs, bacon, toasted white bread and a large mug of tea.

Max gulped hard trying to imagine eating it all.

Unlike the bathroom, the kitchen was a big room with light pouring in from the yard. There were cupboards everywhere. The benches and shelves were cluttered with jam jars, sauce bottles, biscuit tins, recipe books and canisters with tea, flour and sugar written on them. There was a spice rack with what looked like every spice in the world and a walk-in pantry that was filled from the floor to the roof with boxes, tins, packets and containers. The floor was like a giant checkerboard of linoleum and right in the middle was a high wooden table covered with jars of spreads, a jug of milk, cups, a pot of tea, a large loaf of bread, a sugar pot, some cereal boxes, a toaster, knives, forks and spoons, egg cups shaped as miniature Humpty Dumpty characters and nestled right in the middle of it all, a small vase of flowers. Max's eyes fell on the plate in front of her.

‘Thanks, but I'm not hungry,' she said.

‘Not hungry? Rubbish,' said Ben, sliding his
toast through the yellow egg goo on his plate. ‘You didn't have dinner last night, you must be hungry.'

‘It's just that I usually have freshly squeezed juice and fruit salad for breakfast,' explained Max.

‘That's not enough to keep a young girl growing big and strong,' her uncle scoffed as he kept eating and Max noticed him give Eleanor a quick wink. ‘Besides, you'll need extra energy to work around the farm.'

Big and strong? Work around the farm? Not only was she sentenced to spending her holidays miles from any kind of civilisation, but she was also going to be used as child labour. Knowing she had no choice, Max sat at the table, scraped the butter off her toast and made a note to call the child welfare authorities as soon as she could.

Just then the screen door slammed and there stood the gangliest boy with the wildest hair she'd ever seen.

‘I've given Ralph a talking to and left him outside,' he said.

Her uncle swallowed the final piece of his egg goo combo.

‘Linden, this is Max. She's staying for the holidays and needs to be shown around the place. Think you can do it?' said Ben.

‘No problem. What's the weather going to be?' asked Linden.

‘Larry's been digging holes like there's no tomorrow, so I'd say we are in for a good drenching tonight,' Ben forecast.

This was too much for Max. Who was Larry and what did digging holes have to do with rain?

Eleanor noticed Max's confusion.

‘Larry's our pig. We can tell the weather by how he behaves.'

Linden saw Max needed more convincing.

‘He's only been wrong two times before and that was because he had a cold.'

Now Max knew she was living in the Land of the Loonies.

‘Right. I'm off,' said Ben, wiping his mouth. He walked over to Eleanor, picked her up under the arms and gave her the sloppiest kiss Max had ever seen two married people give each other. Yuck! She looked away and waited for them to stop.

Eleanor straightened herself out.

‘I'll see you all about lunchtime and not before. I've got lots on and could do with some peace around the house.'

Max was sceptical. Lots of work? How hard could it be to scrub floors and feed chickens? At
least being with Wildboy would be more interesting than being indoors cleaning out cupboards.

Outside, Linden called Ralph who ran quickly towards him.

‘Oh, so the horse is yours?' asked Max.

‘No, he belongs to Eleanor and Ben,' Linden explained. ‘But he stays at my place two nights a week. He won't be any problem. You won't even know he's around.'

‘You bet I won't because I'm going my own way,' said Max, turning on her heels.

‘But Ben asked me to show you around,' said Linden.

‘I think I can show myself around.' And with that Max was off. She wasn't going to spend any more time than she had to with Farmer Brown Jnr. She'd make her own fun.

But it was later, while Max was in the back paddock, that she found herself in trouble.

She'd been walking through the tall grass cursing the day she was driven to this wasteland. Flies buzzed around her face and up her nose no matter how many times she swished them away, her favourite T-shirt was being snagged by scrubby bush and burrs stuck their gnarly prickles into her new baggy pants. When she stopped to try and get them
out, she found herself ankle-deep in mud.

‘Yuck! Swampland. Just what I should have expected,' she said out loud.

When she tried to lift one foot, she sank a little deeper. And when she tried lifting the other, that got her even further into trouble.

Now Max really started to worry. Every time she moved she sank deeper into the brown smelly slime. She tried again to lift one foot out, but this time she became unbalanced and fell forward into the mud. She put out her hands to break her fall, but all she felt were a few sticks and rocks floating in the stinky mess and no solid ground. She was really done for now. What would Alex Crane do in this situation?

‘You need a hand?' said a voice behind her.

Max twisted around. Great! Just my luck. I get stuck in some mud and Country Boy and his hound turn up out of nowhere. She could hear him now, laughing at her and calling her the mud queen, just like all the kids at school would have done, making sure everyone within a two hundred kilometre radius knew about it. And making jokes like, ‘How does someone get a pat on the head? Sit under a cow'. All the corny ones Toby Jennings would have let fly by now.

‘No. I'm fine thanks,' she said stubbornly.

Linden offered his hand.

‘Come on. You'll never get out of there without help.'

‘I can do it by myself,' Max insisted.

‘Okay. Whatever you say. I'll be here if you need me,' said Linden.

He pushed his hair out of his eyes and watched as Max struggled with the mud and cow pats and bits of tree and other things that squelched around her. She tried to find solid ground, but only managed to sink deeper into the filth.

The stuff was up to her waist and ponging like mad when she really started to panic.

‘Well don't just stand there,' she yelled. ‘Help me!'

Linden picked up a long, sturdy stick and held it out to her over the oozing mess. Ralph stood on the edge of the mud and supervised the whole operation.

‘Wow! You're heavier than I thought,' gasped Linden.

‘Just get me out of here,' said Max, losing her temper.

When she was freed from the mud pool she looked like a giant chocolate stick.

Linden couldn't help but smile. Max did look pretty funny.

‘I'll walk you back to the farm,' he said, trying to keep himself from laughing.

‘I can go by myself,' said Max, scraping great clumps of mud from her clothes.

‘I was going there anyway. It's almost lunchtime,' offered Linden.

Great! Now she had to walk with him all the way to the farm where he'd laugh as he told her uncle and aunt how stupid she was, getting caught in the mud. Max folded her muddied arms across her even muddier chest and walked a few paces ahead of him.

Some holiday this is going to be, she thought.

‘So where are you from?' asked Linden.

What was it going to take for Country Bumpkin to realise Max wasn't interested in any of his chat? She walked on in silence, hoping he'd get the point.

He tried again. ‘How come you're spending your holidays here?'

This kid just wasn't getting it.

‘Let's just get to the house,' said Max dismissively.

‘I was just asking …'

Max swung around, put her muddy hands on her muddy hips and really gave it to him.

‘Listen Farmboy, I'm here because I have to be, not because I want to be and just because you got me out of that mud hole doesn't mean I have to talk to you or anyone else if I don't want to. And guess what? I don't want to! In fact, the only thing I really want is the quickest way off this farm. So let's just get back to the house as soon as we can so I can wash this mud from my skin before it soaks into my head and starts eating my brain.'

Linden sighed as he watched Max walk away.

Sometimes girls were hard to understand.

Ralph barked like he was thinking the same thing.