then I will have to shave your hindquarters while you sleep.”
Artemis crawled to the steel bench. “Are you saying that you people knew about these amorphobots all the time?”
“Of course we did. They attacked us in Iceland. Remember?”
“No. I was unconscious.”
“That’s right. Seems like ages ago.”
“So I endured trial by squid for nothing?”
“Oh no. Not for nothing. It would have taken me minutes to make the connection, and even then it would only have been a theory.” Foaly typed a code into his phone, releasing it from the pressure suit’s helmet. “Whereas now we can check the programming.”
Foaly hooked his phone to the bot’s brain and was delighted to see its readout light up. He ran a few checks and was easily able to pinpoint the shadow program. “This is a little puzzling. The bot was sent new mission parameters by the control orb. Charmingly enough, it’s actually telling its gel to kill us all right now. That’s why we never detected any outside interference-there was none. It’s a simple little shadow program, a few lines of code, that’s all. Simple to kill.” He did so with a few taps of the keyboard.
“Where is this control orb?” asked Artemis.
“It’s in my lab, in Haven.”
“Could it have been tampered with?”
Foaly didn’t have to think about this for long. “Impossible, and I’m not just being typical me and denying that my equipment is responsible. I check that thing most days. I ran a systems check yesterday, and there was nothing out of the ordinary in the orb’s history. Whoever set this up has been feeding the probe instructions for weeks, if not months.”
Artemis closed his eyes to blot out the shining fours that had appeared in his vision, floating around the craft’s interior, hissing malignantly.
“I need everyone to sit in a line, on the opposite bench, small to tall.”
“That’s the Atlantis Complex talking, Mud Boy,” said Holly. “Fight it.”
Artemis pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. “Please, Holly. For me.”
Mulch was delighted with this game. “Should we hold hands, or chant? How about:
“Number poetry?” said Artemis skeptically. “That’s ridiculous. Please, sit where I ask.”
They did, reluctantly and grumbling, Foaly and Mulch arguing for a moment over who was smaller. There was no argument over who was tallest. Butler sat hunched at the end, chin almost between his knees. Beside him sat Juliet, then Foaly, then Mulch, and finally Holly, who had set the ship on neutral.
Five, thought Artemis. Five friends to keep me alive.
He sat, still clad in the pressure exoskeleton suit, watching his friends and taking strength, letting his ideas build.
Finally he said, “Foaly, there must have been a second orb.”
Foaly nodded. “There was. We always grow a backup. In this case we used the clone, because the original was damaged. Only minor damage, true, but you can’t take chances with space travel. The first was sent off to be incinerated.”
“Where?”
“Atlantis. Koboi Labs got the contract. This was obviously before we realized how deranged Opal is.”
“So, if we accept that Turnball Root got hold of the second orb and had it repaired by Vishby, or whoever else worked for him, then would the probe obey commands from that orb?”
“Of course. No questions asked. They could be sent by any computer with a satellite link.”
Butler raised a finger. “Can I say something?”
“Of course, old friend.”
“Foaly. Your security sucks. When are you guys going to learn? A few years ago the goblins built a shuttle, and now you have convicts running your space program.”
Foaly stamped a hoof. “Hey, pal, less of the judgmental attitude. We’ve stayed hidden for thousands of years. That’s how good our security is.”
“Five ten fifteen twenty,” shouted Artemis. “Please. We need to work quickly.”
“Can we tease you about this later?” said Mulch. “I have some great material.”
“Later,” said Artemis. “For now, we need to work out where Turnball is going and what his final objective is.”
When there was no argument, he continued. “If we assume that Turnball used his orb to control the probe, and used these amorphobots to carry him away, can we track the amorphobots?”
Foaly’s head movement was somewhere between a nod and a shake. “Possibly. But not for long.”
Artemis understood. “The gel dissipates in salt water.”
“That’s right. The friction between the water and the bots wears down the gel, but as soon as it separates from the brain, it begins to dissolve. No charge, no cohesion. I’d say with a melon-sized bubble, you might get a few hours.”
“It’s already been a few hours. How much longer do we have?”
“It may already be too late. If I was allowed out of my school desk, I might be able to tell you.”
“Of course, please.”
Foaly swung his arms forward, lifting himself from his awkward seated position, and clopped into the cockpit, where he quickly entered the gel’s chemical makeup into the gyro’s rudimentary computer and dropped a filter over the portholes.
“Luckily for us, the mercenaries decided to leave the scanners intact. Everyone pick a window. I’ve run a scan for a specific radiation, and the gel trail should show up as a luminous green. Shout if you see something.”
They all took a porthole, except Holly, who sat in the pilot’s chair, ready to take off in whichever direction the trail led.
“I see it!” said Mulch. “No, wait. It’s a really angry squid looking for his little nut. Sorry. I know that was inappropriate, but I’m hungry.”
“There,” called Juliet. “I see something, portside.”
Artemis switched to her porthole. Winding from the depths of the crater was a wispy stream of shining bubbles that disappeared as they watched it, the lower bubbles separating into smaller blobs, then toward the end of the trail, some were disappearing altogether.
“Quickly, Holly,” said Artemis urgently. “Follow those bubbles.”
Holly opened the throttle. “Now there’s an order I never thought I’d hear from you,” she said.
They sped after the bubble trail in the mercenaries’ gyro, though Foaly did argue that technically they were not bubbles but globules, for which information he received a punch on the shoulder from Juliet.
“Hey, don’t punch me,” protested the centaur.
“Technically, that was a rap, not a punch,” corrected Juliet. “Now this. . this is a punch.”
The trail grew fainter before their eyes, and Holly quickly programmed in a projected course whenever the globules changed direction, just in case they disappeared altogether.
Artemis sat in the copilot’s chair with a hand over one eye and his second hand in front of his face.
“The thumb is generally acknowledged to be a finger,” he told Holly. “In which case we’re safe, because that makes five fingers. But some experts argue that the thumb is completely different and is one of the things that sets us apart from the animals, and in that case we only have four fingers on each hands. And that’s bad.”
He’s getting worse, thought Holly anxiously.
Butler was stumped. If someone were threatening Artemis, the correct protective action was usually pretty obvious:
How can I trust any order Artemis gives me? the bodyguard wondered. It could simply be a ruse to get me out of the way. Just like Mexico.
He squatted beside Artemis. “You do have faith in me now, don’t you, Artemis?”
