“What does that mean?” asked Jem.
“Play the cassette,” explained Jeremy, pointing to the black box.
“What is it? A game?”
“It’s a device for recording sound.” Jeremy pressed play.
A wicked little laugh ricocheted around the steps and nooks and crannies.
“Tiny Jack,” said all the Tootings at once.
“Fun, fun, fun,” cackled the voice of Tiny Jack.
“If you are looking for Commander Pott or his wife or my dear friend Little Harry, then . . . HA! HA! FOOLED YOU! They’re not here and they never were here! If you think you heard them calling for help as Big Ben crashed . . . that was me!” And with that he did a perfect imitation of the voice of Commander Pott: “Big Ben to Kent, Big Ben to Kent . . .”
The imitation was so lifelike that Jemima whistled. Her whistle blew out the candle.
While Jeremy was relighting it, Tiny Jack did an impersonation of Little Harry saying “Dinosaurs!” that was so lifelike that Mum gasped, but this time Jeremy moved the candle out of the way in time.
“I sent you those radio messages from the comfort of my luxury yacht! There was never anyone in Big Ben!”
“But if Mummy and Daddy weren’t in Big Ben,” said Jemima, “then where are they?”
“Turn off the tape,” said Jeremy. “Let’s try to do this logically.”
“DO NOT TURN OFF THAT TAPE!” shrieked Tiny Jack from the tape machine. “YOU LISTEN TO ME, NOW. When I was a little boy I was abandoned, left all alone, in New York, with nothing but the Diamond As Big As Your Head. The people who did this — I thought they were my friends. I thought maybe they were just playing hide-and-seek. But they weren’t. Well, now it’s my turn to play hide-and-seek. If you want Commander Pott, or Little Harry, or Mimsie, come and get them. In a moment I’ll start counting. Those so-called friends were you, the Tooting family. And now it’s my turn to abandon you in the middle of nowhere.” He laughed loud and long. “If you’re worried about Commander and Mrs. Pott, and Little Harry, don’t be! They’re all here on Château Bateau, just relaxing and making friends.”
“That’s nice,” said Jemima.
“We’d be thrilled if you could join us. But you probably can’t.”
“Poor Tiny Jack,” said Mum. “I hadn’t thought about that before. We left him alone in New York. He was just a little boy. We put him back where he belonged. It’s the first rule of time travel. Have fun, but put things back where they belong when you’ve finished. New York was where he belonged. No one belongs on their own.”
“He did have the Diamond As Big As Your Head,” pointed out Lucy.
“I think that makes it worse.”
“EXCUSE ME, ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME? When you pressed play on that tape recorder, you initiated the detonation sequence for a massive bomb that is hidden somewhere in this building and that will blow Big Ben to smithereens on the last stroke of midnight!” He laughed again. “The fun never stops with Tiny Jack!”
“Ah,” said Dad.
“Oh,” said Mum.
“Counting to a hundred,” said Tiny Jack. “One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . .”
“Quick! We’re about to be blown to smithereens!” said Jem.
“Oh, I’m sure you clever boys will save us,” Jemima said with a smile.
“Don’t worry!” said Dad. “There’s no way that the mechanism will still be working after fifty years in the Arctic.”
The words were no sooner out of his mouth than they heard a grinding of gears above their heads. Then silence. Then something went tick. The gears again. Another tick. The clock had started.
“British engineering,” said Jeremy. “Best there is.”
Tick.
“How long till Big Ben strikes midnight?” asked Jem.
Tock.
“It said five minutes to twelve on the clock,” said Jemima.
Tick.
“Sorry, three minutes . . .”
Tock.
“. . . before we’re blown to smithereens.”
It’s impossible to hurry downstairs with a lighted candle if you need the candle to stay lit. So they went slowly, step by step, with the ticks of the clock filling the air. The slower they stepped, the faster it seemed to tick.
They tumbled out of the door into the Arctic wind.
“We need to get out of here,” yelled Jeremy, “as quickly as possible.”
“I think we’re aware of that,” said Lucy. “If we don’t get blown to bits, we’ll freeze to death.”
“Chitty will save us,” said Jeremy.
“Are you sure?” said Lucy, her teeth chattering. “Take a look at the wheels.”
After her long flight, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’s twenty-three-litre engine had been extremely hot. When she landed outside Big Ben, the ice beneath her wheels had melted. But in the time it took for the Tootings to get up and down those three hundred and ninety-three steps, that melted ice had frozen again. So the top half of Chitty was sticking out of the snow, like a square of chocolate sticking out of ice cream, while her wheels and undercarriage were locked in the ice. Her headlights blazed and then faded, then blazed and then faded. It seemed this was the automobile version of keeping warm by blowing on your hands.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got a pickax in your pocket?” said Jem to Jeremy.
“No. Sorry.” He was already stabbing away at the ice with his little pocketknife.
“Even if we free the wheels,” said Lucy, “Chitty will never gain enough traction to drive over the ice.”
“We could try running away really fast,” said Jem.
“When our greatest national icon is being sabotaged?” gasped Jeremy. “I don’t think so.”
The others were huddled in the doorway. It was so cold that it was almost impossible to think any thought apart from I’m so cold. Even the thought We’re about to be blown sky high by an exploding Big Ben seemed less important than I’m so cold.
“This is probably silly,” chattered Jemima, “but what about Daddy’s antigravity paint?”
Everyone stared. Everyone could see at once that if they could just free Chitty from the ice in time, and apply the paint quickly enough, she would be up in the air before the explosion. It was such a good idea that they all felt slightly warmer.
“Only goes straight up in air,” said Lucy. Her lips were too cold for full sentences.
“Sails?” chattered Jemima.
“Got duvets,” said Mum. “Could use.”
“We’ll never get wheels free in time,” said Jeremy. His pocketknife had made just a few little pecks in the ice.
Jem ran to the toolbox. He’d had a brilliant idea. “Stand back, all of you,” he commanded. He had found a can of de-icer. Now he sprayed it on the front passenger wheel. The ice crumbled.
He swept it away with his boot.
“That’s amazing,” said Jeremy. “Can you do it again?”
“Sure.”
Jem de-iced all four wheels while Jeremy fitted a pot of Pott’s Patent Antigravity Paint to the paint gun. “There you go,” he said, offering Jem the nozzle. “You spray. I’ll work the pump. The more paint we get on her, the higher she’ll go.”
Jem was pleased and surprised that Jeremy had offered him the fun part of the job. The paint froze into hard little beads almost as soon as it left the nozzle, but it melted again when it touched Chitty’s still-warm undercarriage. He sprayed her front wheel wells and her tyres. In a few moments the front end of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was rising into the air. “Ga gooo ga!” blared her Klaxon.
She doesn’t like that, thought Jem. It’s because she’s not in control. She likes to be the one in charge.
“Quick!” shouted Jeremy. “We need to balance her.”
“What if she floats off completely before we can get on board?” asked Jem.
As if the car herself had heard him, a message lit up on the dashboard. From the corner of his eye, Jem caught the faint glow of the
warning light.
“Message from Chitty!” he called.
“What does she say?”
DROP ANCHOR!
(Obviously as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is a sailing vessel as well as an automobile and flying machine, she has an anchor.) That’ll steady her, thought Jem. She’ll be happier then.
I SAID
DROP ANCHOR!
“All right, all right,” said Jem, swinging himself on board and pressing the anchor release. The anchor plunged itself into the ice, steadying the car. Chitty seemed calmer now. Jem went back to turning her crank handle. Chitty was now floating elegantly just a metre or so off the ground. Her headlamps were level with Jem’s eyes. It was the first time in all their adventures that he had been face-to-face with Chitty, except when crouching down to turn her crank handle.
Suddenly she drifted slightly upward, swaying like a balloon that’s about to drift away. “Whoa!” called Jem, grabbing her by the bumper and trying to steady her, as though she were a nervous carthorse.
“All aboard,” called Dad. “And anchors aweigh!” He pulled on the anchor release and the great chain rattled back up into Chitty’s undercarriage.
“Hey! Wait for me!” called Jem as the car floated higher. He just managed to grab the hook of the anchor before it disappeared. Jemima reached over and helped him climb over the door and into the seat. The backseat of course. Jeremy, as ever, was in the front.
The Westminster chimes rang out their nursery rhyme tune as though nothing in the world could ever go wrong.
Then Big Ben itself rang.
A single, doom-laden BOING . . .
BOING . . .
The rich Rolls-Royce tone of Big Ben cruised through the howling of the polar wind.
“The stroke of midnight,” Mum gasped.
“Quick, Jem. Jump in!” shouted Dad.
BOING . . .
Chitty was free. Up she rose, not thrusting skyward as she did when her mighty engines were running, but thrust backward and forward in the howling wind.
BOING . . .
“Hoist the duvet!” yelled Dad. “We need to get clear before we crash into the tower wall!”
BOING . . .
Was that the fifth or sixth?
“Hold on, everyone!” Mum had got the duvet in place. She cast it wide. It filled with wind. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang rocketed through the air.
Two seconds later Big Ben was no more than a shrinking pile of snow.
Boing.
Twenty-one and a quarter seconds (and three boings) later the whole sky filled with sparks and flames.
Boing.
Big Ben was erupting like a Roman candle — flinging glass and bricks across the ice.
No more boings.
After the thunder of the explosion came a gust of hot air, pushing Chitty farther and faster.
“That was close,” said Jem.
“We’re saved!” cried Jemima.
“Not quite,” said Lucy. “Look at the wings.”
A spray of frost was forming on the leading edge of Chitty’s wings. They watched in fear as the frost thickened into ice, and the green of those great sweeping wings turned white. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’s mighty bonnet lurched downward, like the carriage of a roller coaster. The white Arctic rushed up to meet them. The ice on Chitty’s wings was weighing her down. Dad struggled to keep her in the air.
Jem jumped up. Mum tried to pull him back down. “Keep calm,” she said. “I’m sure Dad’s got it all under control.”
“I am calm. I just need to . . .”
“You’re going to overbalance the car.”
He was trying to climb into the front.
“Jem, this is not the time to argue about who sits where.”
Jem snatched his arm free, reached past Dad, and grabbed hold of the Chronojuster’s ebony handle. He pushed it forward as far as he could.
A blizzard of stars swarmed around their heads. The polar wind blew straight through their bodies.
“Jem, what are you doing?! Get off!” yowled Dad. “Get back into the back.”
“He’s gone crazy!” yelled Jeremy.
Jem kept pushing and pushing. Nothing would budge him.
“Leave him!” cried Lucy. “I’m sure he knows what he’s doing. Look at the wings.”
The wings that had been white with ice were green again. The car that had been plummeting earthward was floating, like a feather.
“I remembered Lucy telling me that fifty-five million years ago the North Pole was covered in tropical forest.”
“Of course,” said Lucy, “the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum! Why didn’t I think of that?!”
“All we had to do was travel back fifty-five million years to when it was warm, then fly south.”
“That’s actually rather brilliant, Jem,” said Jeremy.
“Thank you.”
“No. Thank you.”
“The weather is so lovely,” said Jemima. “We could take the top off.” Dad pressed the button and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’s leather roof lifted up and retracted. “We’re flying so smoothly. It’s almost like swimming.” They took off their gloves and coats and threw them in the back. They rode the thermals of hot air that curled up from the rain forest. They gazed in wonder at the carpet of steaming green jungle below.
“That’s the world before it started . . .” Jemima sighed.
“In fact,” said Lucy, “the world started long before this. Fifty million years is the day before yesterday to a geologist. There are already mammals down there and crocodiles. But,” she added, “it is the world as it was before anyone made any mistakes.”
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was moving at the same speed as the tropical breezes, so the air around them felt as still and hushed as the inside of a tent on a summer’s afternoon. It was only when they looked down and saw the green blur miles below them that they realized how quickly they were travelling.
“Oh, I could live like this,” Dad said dreamily. “Just drifting along on the breeze like a massive dandelion seed.”
“Thank you for saving our lives, Jem,” said Jeremy. “Now can we go and save our parents’ lives, please?”
“Where do you want to start?” asked Dad. “Tiny Jack could be anywhere in space and time, stealing things.”
“He’s angry with us for leaving him in New York in 1926,” said Lucy. “He wants revenge. We don’t have to look for him. He’ll come looking for us. Let’s go home.”
“You left him in New York?” asked Jemima. “When he was just a little boy?”
“Well, he was from New York; we just put him back where we found him,” said Dad.
“Ah,” said Jemima. “All the same, it does seem to be a habit of yours to leave little boys behind all over the place. That’s how we met Little Harry, after all.”
Dad took the handle of the Chronojuster and eased it forward. Lucy leaned over for one last look at the great forest of the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum. She could see the great sweep of the coast, and the ice spreading across it like frosting. She just had time to think, If I can see the sweep of the coast, doesn’t that mean we’re unusually high? before the tingle of the time breeze stopped her thinking at all.
When the time breeze stopped blowing through them they knew they were back in the twenty-first century, because when they looked down they could see roads and cities twinkling like fairy lights. The great patches of darkness must be the sea.
“There’s something down there,” said Dad, pointing. “What is it? Like a tiny bird.”
“That’s a plane. That’s a big plane. A passenger plane. We’re higher than a passenger plane.”
“The sky is changing colour,” said Jemima. “It used to be blue, but now it’s going turquoise. Please don’t think I’m complaining. I do like turquoise. But I think turquoise is probably not the colour of air you can breathe.”
“I think you should take us back down now,” said Mum.
“I’m trying,” said Dad. “But we just
keep floating upward.”
“Daddy’s antigravity paint really does work very well.” Jemima smiled proudly.
“The only problem with paint,” said Lucy, “is that you can’t turn it off.”
“So where are we going?”
“Well,” said Lucy, “I don’t think we’re going to Basildon.”
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang rose higher and higher. She passed through ranges of clouds that seemed like mountains. The needle of her altimeter crept across the dial until it couldn’t creep any farther.
But still they climbed.
They could look down on the cloud mountains now and see them as puffs of white hovering over the wide blue ocean.
And still they climbed.
The air grew thin and ice-cold. Breathing in was like inhaling ice cubes.
Still they climbed.
“Not wishing to trouble you” — Jemima wheezed —
“but is anyone else finding it slightly difficult to breathe?”
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang swayed from side to side as if looking for a way down.
But still they climbed.
There was nothing even Chitty could do about the antigravity paint. A message flashed up:
ENGAGE SUN DOME!
“What on earth is the sun dome?” asked Dad.
FOURTH ON THE
LEFT, BESIDE THE
CIGARETTE LIGHTER
Dad followed Chitty’s directions and found a little wheel. He turned it, and out of the space where the roof canopy was normally stored rose a great glass dome, which clicked into place just in front of the windscreen.
“We’re in a goldfish bowl!” Jemima laughed.
“The toughened glass will help deal with the changes of pressure we’re experiencing in our ascent,” said Lucy. “The dome shape will concentrate the sun’s rays and help keep us warm.”
“How super,” said Jemima.
“What about breathing?” asked Jem.
“That hissing sound is the oxygen fountain,” explained Lucy.
Suddenly Chitty was buffeted from side to side. They all clung to their seats.