The Fourth Bear

and Fuchsia just thought they were growing heavy cucumbers, but McGuffin, flitting around with his Men in Green in the background, was changing, crossbreeding, bioengineering and reseeding until he had created a devastatingly destructive power that could be created in a grow bag with nothing more complex than a dibbler and a watering can.”

“You mean…?”

“Right,” growled Jack. “Cuclear energy.”

They all fell silent, pondering on the geopolitical ramifications of such a discovery.

“Hold on a sec,” added Jack in a worried tone. “Fuchsia’s champion was almost at fifty kilos, and he had six others nearly as large that were stolen this morning—where the hell are they now?”

“There were seven thermocuclear devices?” queried Parks, who had latched on to Jack’s outlandish explanation without too much difficulty, as should you. “This is very worrying. The destructive power of a group of devices wouldn’t be arithmetic but exponential—we’re talking a total yield of perhaps fifty kilotons—enough to flatten everything for a half mile in all directions.”

“Jack,” said Mary in a nervous whisper, “we were all requested to be present at the Bob Southey at seven o’clock, but no one knows who asked us.”

The implication wasn’t lost on him. He turned to look at the Bob Southey, then at all the crowds milling about. Everyone was here: himself, Ash, Mary, Parks, Briggs, Bartholomew, Vinnie, even the Bruins, who were being treated in the Southey Medical Center. Everyone, in fact, but NS-4 who’d legged it off to QuangTech. It wasn’t a siege. It was a trap.

“Mary, tell Briggs to evacuate the area immediately and then look for McGuffin. This is going to be one hell of a bang, and he wouldn’t miss it for anything. I’d start checking out distant ridges or any other good viewing points.”

Jack didn’t wait for a reply and ran toward the entrance ramp of the underground garage where he had busted Tarquin Majors—and straight into a cordon of police officers.

“You’re going to have to let me through,” he barked to the Sergeant in command. “There’s a thermocuclear device in there which could destroy half of Reading.”

“Briggs warned us about your little tricks,” retorted Chapman with a faint smile. “No one goes in, no one comes out.”

“I’m head of the NCD, Sergeant. In matters concerning my jurisdiction, I have unlimited access—you know the rules.”

“You’re right about that,” returned the Sergeant, “but you’re not head of the NCD, now, are you?”

“I’m here under DS Mary’s orders—she’s head of the NCD in my stead.”

“Think I don’t read the papers?” replied Chapman with a smirk. “She’s been suspended, too.”

“I don’t have time to argue!” yelled Jack, and he tried to push his way through, but there were four of them, and they held him tight.

“For God’s sake—”

“I’m head of the NCD,” said a voice behind them, “and you can release my associate and let us both pass.”

“You?” said Chapman, staring at the small alien who was glaring up at him. “An alien constable who no one else will work with?”

“I’m NCD and have a badge to prove it. In the event of a superior officer being incapacitated or suspended, authority devolves to the next-ranking officer. In this case, me.”

Chapman looked at Ashley, then at Jack, then nodded to the other officers, who released him. Ashley didn’t wait a second, darting through the cordon with Jack close behind.

“Thanks,” muttered Jack as they hurried into the gloom of the underground car park.

“Never mind that,” replied Ashley. “What are we looking for?”

“Seven cucumbers, each one the size of a small torpedo. They’ll be in a red van.”

They found it on the lower level. Jack looked in the driver’s window. There were several green coveralls dumped on the passenger seat. The key wasn’t in the ignition. He cursed, went round to the back and was just about to open the rear doors when he realized that the van was radiating heat. He touched the door handle with a saliva-tipped fingertip, and it hissed malevolently at him.

“Shit,” he said. “It’s begun.”

He wrapped a handkerchief around his hand and threw open the doors, ducking to avoid the hot waft of air that rolled out. The interior of the van was filled with the giant cucumbers Jack had last seen in Hardy Fuchsia’s greenhouse, with the uppermost cucumber resting on a digital scale. A tube from a bottle was leading into the giant vegetable, with a time switch metering the weight-gaining contents. The digital scale read 49.997 kilos, and already the cucumber’s smooth skin was turning from green to a dark orange and giving out large quantities of heat—the paint on the van’s sides was starting to blister.

They both stared at it blankly for a few seconds.

“I don’t know the first thing about disarming thermocuclear devices,” admitted Jack, the fear rising in his voice. Bomb disposal was usually a case of cutting the blue wire, but there weren’t any wires in sight—and the reaction had already started.

“Well, don’t look at me,” retorted Ashley, going a deeper shade of blue.

“I thought you were meant to be an advanced alien race or something?”

“We are,” replied Ashley indignantly. “I’m just not that good on low-tech stuff. How are you on steam engines and windmills?”

“Okay, okay—let’s not argue about this.”

Jack moved closer and winced with the heat. The cucumber was starting to glow from within, and lighter patches the size of small coins were appearing on its skin.

“We need a moderator,” said Ashley, having just worked out the principles of nuclear-fusion theory from scratch. “The light hydrogen isotopes of deuterium and tritium are combining to form a heavy helium atom and a spare neutron. It’s the spare neutron that continues the reaction—soak up that and this cucumber is just a large and very hot vegetable.”

“So what do we need?” asked Jack, not having understood a word.

“Half a ton of graphite.”

“Graphite? Where the hell are we going to get that from? A million pencils?”

“Or just plain water.”

Jack looked around desperately for a few fire buckets or something and then took an involuntary step back as the reaction grew even hotter. The light patches on the cucumber’s skin formed into dimples and then collapsed inward into holes, which projected shafts of pure white light from the rapidly overheating core. The same effect was beginning to start on the other cucumbers. Even though they were under the necessary fifty kilos, the single critical cucumber was bringing them all up to ignition.

“I’ll find some,” said Jack, making a step to go. But Ashley stopped him.

“It’s already full of holes,” he said. “There’s no time. Do you have your penknife?”

Jack rummaged in his pocket and drew it out, his hands shaking as he snapped open the large blade.

“I have a liquid core that will do just as well—only take care. As well as being an excellent moderator, it’s also a powerful molecular acid—don’t get it on yourself.”

Ashley closed his eyes and pulled open his jacket to reveal his taut, transparent skin.

“I need a breach in my membrane, sir. You’ve got to stab me.”

Jack stared at him. They took another step back as the heat intensified. The paint had caught fire on the outside of the van.

“I can’t, Ash.”

“Jack,” said Ashley as he placed a single sucker digit on Jack’s forehead, “you must do this.”

“Of course,” replied Jack as the power of Ashley’s infinitely superior intellect pushed aside the barriers of illogical emotional reasoning. “It’s all so very clear.”

And he plunged the knife into the alien’s abdomen without delay. Ashley had tensed himself, and Jack pulled