Theincreasingly purple light in the glass tubes drained away to returnto plain white light. He’d fed the aether to something, butwhat?
I passedtwo large crates stacked upon each other and sped past the jumbleof tables and electrical and aetheric accoutrements in Tok’s workarea towards his female captive. Subconsciously I’d already decidedto let the two men deal with Tok - I had my own priorities toattend to.
To the fading background sounds of gunfire and thestrange flump! noise of Sir Percival’s pistols as they pursued Tok throughthe crates I swung my gun behind me and examined how Hazel-eyes wasfastened to the pillar. She, in turn, examined me - her potentialsaviour.
She was,as I recalled, slightly shorter than me, and her dark green dressclung to her body… No, I had to rescue her first before anythingelse.
Brassmanacles enclosed her wrists and ankles and were connected by ironchains fed around her body and the brick pillar. A mass of thickmetal attached the four chains to the pillar round the back. Shewasn’t going anywhere for the moment.
I raisedmy goggles to my forehead and glanced into her puzzled face. Shehad a lovely nose. Then I saw realisation like dawn breaking acrossher face. “You?” she said as if not believing it was the same ‘me’as last night. I suppose she had to get past the goggles and pinkhair first.
“Hello, I’m Alice. Forgive my haste, I don’t do this veryoften.”
I lookedover at the tables for tools to cut the manacles, failing that thechains as I could remove the manacles at leisure later.
Spying apair of bolt cutters on a further table I headed towards them butnoticed movement a stone’s throw away. In their crates the penguinswere stirring.
Ten
Hurriedly I picked up the bolt cutters and moved around thepillar so that I could attack the thinner manacles around her rightwrist. Hazel-eyes saw what I was doing and pulled her wrist as faraway as she could from the bolt-cutter’s blades, wincing as themetal chafed her skin.
Havinggained purchase on the manacles I desperately forced the handlesclosed. “What’s your name?” I grunted out.
“What?”
“Your name. I’d like to know who I’m rescuing.”
“Katherine.”
Soundsof splintering wood reached me and, still forcing the handlestogether, I quickly glanced round. The penguins were graduallybreaking out of their wooden pens. But why weren’t they hopping outas their name indicated? They seemed strangely sluggish.
Suddenlythe bolt cutters jerked my arms downwards as they’d cut through themanacles. Katherine cradled her sore right wrist against her torso.There didn’t seem to be much blood.
Ichecked on the penguins and saw they were moving even more slowly,like clockwork toys winding down. Maybe Tok didn’t have enoughaether to set them at their normal pace?
RelievedI moved on to her left wrist and again she pulled away from it togive the bolt cutters space.
Suddenlyshe startled me with a loud scream.
“What?” I asked.
Thesound of splintering wood came to me closer than that for thepenguins.
“I’m grateful for you trying to save me, Alice. But I thinkyou should save yourself and go after Toby!”
“What are you talking about?”
I lookedinto her frightened face. She wasn’t looking at me but at an anglebehind my shoulder.
A loudmechanical simulation of a roar assaulted my ears. Turning round Isaw the other advantage to Tok of using this basement, as it wasapparently also connected to the Natural History museum – with itslong metal fangs glinting, a large fur-coated, purple-eyedsaber-tooth tiger looked down at us.
Eleven
The topfour crates atop the towers around Tok’s workspace were in bits onthe floor. Three purple-eyed saber-tooth tigers roared at theirfreedom. It looked like Tok had rummaged through the cast-offs of arich lady’s fur collection as they all wore mangy moth-eaten coats.For a reason that totally eluded me (although it kept with Tok’stheme of flightless birds), the fourth crate contained a dodo,albeit purple-eyed. On gaining its freedom it gave a celebratorysquawk sounding rather like an ostrich laying an egg.
Idropped the bolt cutters and swung my gun round. Had the Tesla-coilrecharged enough? The power gauge was something I’d always meantget round to fixing. It currently fluctuated between full capacityand dead as a… well, dodo.
With notime to put my goggles back into position I took aim at the closesttiger which was still standing in its ruined crate, and fired.Thunder boomed around the basement and the gun’s bright lightningseemed to momentarily stall the tiger’s movement. It seemed to glowfleetingly from within before it’s aether exploded. I pulled mylong coat around myself and stood in front of Katherine, shelteringher from the blast and metal rain, blinking tears from myeyes.
As soonas the squall ended I quickly aimed at the next closest tiger – Ifelt the dodo was currently the least dangerous beast as it didn’tappear to possess razor-sharp fangs or claws (although its beaklooked like it could give nasty nip). The tiger had already jumpeddown to a worktable and seemed to be stalking toward us.
At thesame time that the dodo made an ungainly jump down from its crateplinth so too did the tiger leap towards us, light glinting off itsteeth and claws. Katherine screamed again at the sight of metalclaws heading in our direction and I fired. Fortuitously the gun’slightning caught the tiger and also found the dodo, joining themwith blindingly bright light, seeming to momentarily suspend themin mid-air before they exploded with shocking noise. Again Isheltered us from the double blast and falling metal rain, fur, andfeathers.
Quicklyturning round but momentarily blinded I couldn’t see the thirdsaber-tooth tiger. Where had it gone?
“Do you know where it is?” I asked Katherine.
“No!”
I heardpanic in her voice. Having been nearly deafened by the aethericexplosions I didn’t know if the pursuit of Tok had ended yet. Idecided to stay in front of Katherine protecting her as much as Icould while waiting for my armed compatriots to return.
Movementfrom my left made me swing the gun towards it but it was just acrate toppling over after being pushed out of position by theexplosions.
Katherine screamed directly in my ear and I turned to see thethird tiger, it’s wide mouth open, purple-eyes flaring as
