They had also had no opportunity to take on extra supplies in Sundia, so their food was beginning to run low. Will, Annalie and Essie tried to work out how many days it would take to get back, and how they could parcel the food out to make it last. Will spoke optimistically of catching some fish along the way, but he knew perfectly well they had little chance of catching anything in this vast, empty, desert ocean.
Worse still, Spinner’s condition did not seem to be improving. They kept his wound clean and dressed and dosed him with antibiotics, but he seemed to get a little weaker every day. He needed proper medical care.
‘But if we try and take him to a hospital in Dux, we’ll get caught for sure,’ Annalie worried.
‘We can take him to the clinic at home,’ Will said. ‘They’ll look after him there, no questions asked.’
Will and Annalie had grown up in a sprawling slum where there were no government services, and unofficial clinics were the only places that the slum residents, many of them undocumented or illegal, could get medical care.
‘Didn’t Spinner say they were still watching your house?’ Essie asked.
‘Yes,’ Will said, scowling.
‘There are probably other places like that somewhere else,’ Annalie said. ‘Maybe in Southport.’
‘Yes, but you need to know where to go,’ Will said, ‘and we wouldn’t have a clue. Go to the wrong place and it’s all over.’
The problem seemed unsolvable, but if they couldn’t solve it, Spinner could die.
Then one morning, Spinner did not wake up. He lay in his bed unconscious, unable to be roused. Graham sat at his shoulder, nuzzling him with his beak repeatedly.
‘Wake up, Spinner,’ he urged. ‘Wake up!’
But nothing could wake him.
‘What do you think it means?’ Annalie asked Essie fearfully.
‘I don’t know,’ Essie said. ‘I’m not a doctor.’
But they both knew it wasn’t good.
‘Is there any way we can go any faster?’ Annalie asked Will.
‘You know there isn’t,’ he said crossly.
They were still a week away from Dux, and that was an optimistic assessment.
Will stood for a moment gazing down at Spinner, his face creasing. ‘I’ll see if I can do something with the engine,’ he said.
He stomped off onto the deck, and alternated between tinkering with the boat’s engine and minutely adjusting the sails so he was certain they were getting maximum velocity from the wind.
Annalie and Essie stayed at Spinner’s bedside.
‘We sailed so far,’ Annalie said. ‘We went through so much. It can’t end like this. It just can’t.’ She began to cry.
Essie put her arm around her. ‘He’s going to be okay,’ she said. ‘He’ll pull through. We all will. Something will happen. Something always does.’
But this time she couldn’t help feeling, Maybe, this time, something won’t happen.
Pod was keeping an eye on the pumps; one of them had run out of battery and the water was visibly rising. Blossom appeared, and wordlessly began bailing with a bucket while Pod fitted the new battery and got the pump going again. Soon the pump was whirring again, but Blossom kept bailing until the water was gone.
‘I’m sorry about all this,’ Pod said quietly.
‘Which part?’
‘I promised I’d keep you safe.’
Blossom looked at him, her bright eyes narrowing. ‘What? Do you think we’re not going to make it back to land?’
Pod hesitated for just a moment.
Blossom, seeing it, said, ‘Don’t be such a baby. We’re not giving up and we’re getting back to land. And then you’re going to take me to Violeta, remember?’
‘Right,’ Pod said. In spite of himself, her defiant attitude made him feel better.
Essie went up on deck. For the millionth time since they left Sundia, she pulled out her shell to look for a signal. For the millionth time she didn’t find any.
She thought back to the last conversation she’d had with her father. I wonder if I told him I loved him? She must have, but she couldn’t remember, and the fact that she couldn’t remember tormented her. And she hadn’t sent a message to her mother in months. She’d been angry at her—was still angry at her—but now, at what felt like the last, she wished that she had.
She flicked open her shell and tried to compose a message, but words failed her. She typed and deleted and typed and deleted.
And then she heard a horn blow.
She looked up from her shell.
It was a boat.
It was large and sleek and swift, a private vessel, not a military boat. And it looked like it was coming straight towards them.
Will was suddenly there beside her. He shot a signal flare into the air; it soared up, vivid red. The boat gave two more toots on its horn as acknowledgement.
‘They’ve seen us!’ Will said. ‘They’re coming!’
The others were all running up from below. ‘Who are they?’ asked Annalie. ‘Admiralty?’
‘Pirates?’ asked Pod.
‘I don’t think they’re pirates,’ Will said. ‘I don’t know who they are, or what they’re doing out here in the middle of nowhere.’
‘Who cares?’ Essie said. ‘So long as they can help us.’
The boat was upon them in no time. It came alongside the Sunfish, and then a man came out on the deck, tall and lean, looking down at them with a smile. ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you,’ he said.
‘Daddy!’ Essie screamed.
Rescued
Everest Wan had been searching for Essie from the minute he was released from jail. After she called him from Gantua, he’d got his tech experts to discover her whereabouts by tracing her shell, but by the time his agents reached the little port, she was gone. She’d surfaced again in Sundia; after that, a mix of top-level information and good guesswork had led him to the South Outer Ocean, and the Sunfish.
Everest took the whole crew aboard and transported them with all speed back to Dux. Spinner was put into the care of the best private doctors, just in
