“So you just happened to be in a bar when the call came in to these guys?” said Butler doubtfully, throwing some emergency field packs to the stranded dwarfs below.
Mulch tugged the virtual joystick, quickly pulling the gyro into the clouds.
“Yes. It’s fate, my friends. I went against my own kind for you. I hope you appreciate it. Or rather, I hope your rich master appreciates it.”
Butler closed the hatch, shutting out the rush of air. “The way I remember it, I did most of the saving.”
“All you did was mess up my plan,” snorted the dwarf. “I was going to let them stun you both, winch you aboard, and then make my move.”
“Brilliant plan.”
“As opposed to throwing yourself into the gyro rotor blade?”
“Point taken.”
There was silence for a moment, the kind of silence you would definitely not get in a human flying machine. Also the kind of silence you get when a small group of people wonder just how long they can keep emerging from certain-death situations with a reasonable amount of life in their bodies.
“We’re off again, I suppose?” said Mulch eventually.
“Off on another save-the-world, nick-of-time, seat-of-the-pants adventure?”
“Well, in the space of one night we have been attacked by zombie wrestling fans and invisible dwarfs,” said Butler glumly. “So it certainly looks like it.”
“Where to?” asked Mulch. “Nowhere too sunny, I hope. Or too cold. I hate snow.”
Butler found that he was smiling, not with fondness exactly, but not with wolfish menace either.
“Iceland,” he said.
The gyro dipped sharply as Mulch momentarily let go of the V-joystick. “If you’re kidding, Butler, that’s not funny.”
Butler’s smile disappeared. “No,” he said. “It isn’t.”
CHAPTER 7 HOW DO I LOVE THEE?
Vatnajokull; Now
Orion Fowl chose to strap himself into the emergency evac harness directly behind Holly and spoke into her ear as she piloted the escape pod through the glacial wormhole excavated by the rogue probe.
Having a person talk directly into one’s ear is irritating at the best of times, but when that person is spouting romantic nonsense while the owner of the ear is attempting to wrestle with the controls of a twenty-year-old escape pod in a high-speed pursuit, then it’s a little more than annoying-it’s dangerously distracting.
Holly scrubbed the porthole with the sleeve of her suit. Outside, a single nose beam picked out the wormhole’s path.
Straight, she thought. At least it’s straight. “How do I love thee?” wondered Orion. “Let me see. I love thee passionately and eternally. . obviously eternally-that goes without saying.”
Holly blinked sweat from her eyes. “Is he serious?” she called over her shoulder to Foaly.
“Oh, absolutely,” said the centaur, his voice juddering along with the pod’s motion. “If he asks you to look for birthmarks, say
“Oh, I would never,” Orion assured her. “Ladies don’t look for birthmarks; that is work for jolly fellows, like the goodly beast and myself. Ladies, like Miss Short, do enough by simply existing. They exude beauty, and that is enough.”
“I am not exuding anything,” said Holly, through gritted teeth.
Orion tapped her shoulder. “I beg to differ. You’re
Holly gripped the wheel tightly. “I’m going to be sick. Did he just say pastel blue?”
“And dolphins, little ones,” said Foaly, happy enough to be distracted from the fact that they were now chasing the probe that had blown up their shuttle, which was a bit like a mouse chasing a cat, a giant mutant cat with laser eyes and a bellyful of smaller spiteful cats.
“Be quiet,
Holly could not afford to be distracted, so to shut out the babbling Orion, she talked herself through what she was doing, recording it all on the ship’s log.
“Still going through the ice, an incredibly thick vein. No radar, or sonar, just following the lights.”
The light show on display through the porthole was both eerie and colorful. The probe’s engines shot beams along the carved ice, sending rainbows flickering across the flat planes. Holly was sure she saw an entire school of whales preserved in the glacier, and maybe some kind of enormous sea reptile.
“The probe maintains its course, a diagonal descent. We are transitioning from ice to rock now, with no discernable delay.”
It was true: the increased density seemed to have no effect on the probe’s laser cutters.
Foaly could not resist a smug comment. “I know how to build ’em,” he said.
“But not how to control ’em,” Holly rejoined.
“You have displeased the princess,” cried Orion, thrashing in his harness. “Were it not for these accursed bonds. .”
“You would be dead,” said Foaly, completing the sentence for him.
“Good point,” Orion conceded. “And the princess is calm now, so no harm done, goodly fellow. I must mind my knight’s temper. Sometimes I rush to battle.”
Holly’s ears itched, which was purely from stress, she knew, but that didn’t stop them itching.
“We need to cure Artemis,” she said, wishing for a free hand to scratch. “I can’t take much more of this.”
The rock face flashed by outside in a confusing meld of grays and deep blue. Ash, pulverized stone, and chunks of debris spiraled down the tunnel wall, further impairing Holly’s vision.
She checked the escape pod’s communications station without much hope.
“Nothing. No contact with Atlantis; we’re still blocked. The probe must have seen us by now. Why no aggressive action?”
Foaly squirmed in a harness built for two-legged creatures. “Oh yes, why no aggressive action? How I long for aggressive action.”
“I live for aggressive action!” thundered Orion squeakily, which was unusual. “Oh, how I pray that dragon will turn ’round that I may smite it.”
“Smite it with what?” wondered Foaly. “Your secret birthmark?”
“Don’t you mock my birthmark, which I may or may not have.”
“Shut up, both of you,” snapped Holly. “The light’s changed. Something is coming.”
Foaly smooshed his cheek against the rear porthole. “Ah yes. I expected that.”
“What did you expect?”
“Well, we must be below sea level by now, so what’s coming would be a great big bit of ocean. Now we’ll see just how well I did design that probe.”
The light bouncing off the tunnel wall had suddenly become dull and flickering, and a huge booming
Holly knew from her training that she should relax her muscles and ride the impact, but every cell in her body wanted to tense up before contact.
Keep the nose straight, she told herself. Cut through the surface. Underneath is calm.
The water closed around them like a malevolent fist and shook the pod, battering its occupants. Everything that was not bolted down became a missile. A toolbox gave Foaly a nasty welt, and Orion’s forehead was punctured by a fork that left tiny wounds where it had struck.
Holly swore like a sailor as she battled to keep the nose down, fighting the fury of nature, talking to the pod as though it were an unbroken bronco. A rivet pinged from its housing and ricocheted around the cabin, knocking a
