Avalon, Chapter One

Joe gripped the circuit-board in both hands, and steeling himself for the pull, dragged it free of the two hard-drives between which it was wedged.

“Is this what you were looking for, Flashtease?” he asked.

“That’s exactly it,” the Mini-Flash boy confirmed. “Someone tampered with that life-sign scanner so it’d send false signals to the rest of the fleet, probably a reading that there were only Grindoes on board. No doubt about it now, Joe. Whoever it was who kidnapped Petunia hijacked this ship later the same night, and snuck along with the rest of the armada on their voyage to the twin planets. They’ll have faked an equipment-failure as soon as they neared Nereynis-orbit, and let the planet’s gravity do the rest.”

“If they have threatened her, my friend,” Joe commenced, “or frightened her, or harmed so much as one precious upturned violet hair, then by the very cause to which we both are pledged I vow...”

Flashtease was trying not to smile. “I know, it’s going to be awkward,” he told Joe patiently. “But can you leave off the matchmaking long enough for us to go and rescue her?”

Together they climbed the Grindotron battleship’s tilted deck and sought the emergency-escape, Flashtease leading the way and Joe in his accustomed position behind the bumping grey tunic and frequent flares of yellow. “I swear that girl gets her knickers in more trouble than the rest of the second gender combined,” Flashtease went on. “Still, it was good of old Flashthunder to stop by the space-lounge again and tell the gang what he’d seen. He’s always been a round sort. Pity he didn’t get a proper look at the kidnapper, but even so. It’d be great to have him with us all the time, if only he wasn’t Alliance.”

On every point of the above Joe agreed wholeheartedly. It had moved him to receive the long-range telecommunication and learn his supporters had continued to hold regular meetings at their usual venue even in his absence, while he himself had been busy failing to accomplish the mission which had brought him to the galaxy’s tail-end. Never had it been so important he return to more populous stars and resume his teachings post-haste. However, the question of periodic gatherings held in his name was keeping Joe and his small hand-picked company here at the twin planets longer than planned.

For word had reached them of another group of followers, these personally unknown to Joe, who met at an island on the watery world of Nereynis and celebrated what this quadrant called Joe’s interpretation of The Four Heroes’ cause. The headlining act at these mysterious beach-parties was said to be a girl-singer of description unmistakable to Joe and friends. It would have been difficult to imagine a more obvious trap, but knowing that Petunia had indeed been abducted, there was little choice but to spring it all the same.

Flashtease threw open the exit-hatch and he and Joe clambered out into dazzling sunlight. They were standing on the Grindo ship’s nosecone, which was the one part that still poked out above otherwise unbroken blue ocean all round the horizon’s rim. Drenthis and Nereynis and were non-identical twins, or strictly speaking stepsisters, and the latter was a sultry experience after the former’s cold desert. Despite this Joe’s black leather jacket stayed stubbornly on his shoulders as he and Flashtease made their way to where their scarlet-painted space-racer was parked above the waves.

“You know, you could probably take that thing off and I’m sure Petunia would think it was just because it’s hot here,” hinted the diplomatic Mini-Flash.

“I will endure mild discomfort, Flashtease, before I tacitly admit certain individuals were correct on certain points,” was Joe’s superb response. With that they were underway, one of the duo not without an involuntary rolling of his big blue eyes.

The daytime heat held on well into sunset. Nereynis’s vast uncluttered sky became a heaven of red crowded with mercury-tinted deep rose clouds, and the fathoms over which Joe and Flashtease cruised were steadily darkening from strawberry to Beaujolais to jet. Since the trap was so manifestly intended for our hero, it would have been imprudent to make his presence known before ascertaining just where on the island Petunia was and what sort of guard she was under. Discovering as much had been the task of Joe’s other three companions, all of whom stood a better chance than he of blending in unnoticed at the anticipated festivities. A radioed report from this trio was due as Joe and Flashtease came in sight of their destination.

It bulked round-backed from the roils, undulating densely-jungled hills etched black against the ruby firmament. In shape it reminded Joe somewhat of Glastonbury, rising above the surrounding flood-plains, though on the whole this world was more reminiscent of Planet Exegesis. That being so, Joe was happy to take its humidity over a blanketing of deadly mutagenic force. It was one less thing to worry about.

Glancing to the passenger-space beside him however, our hero deduced he was the only one onboard who felt that way. Flashtease’s fidgets were putting him in imminent danger of fraying his underwear-elastic on the seat-cushion, and a fitful flush seemed almost to be making his freckles sizzle. Joe’s heart went out to him, for our hero knew this agitation wasn’t just down to the temperature. Being the age he was Flashtease badly needed to be doing, not sitting, when every sniff of Nereynis’s spicy evening air tickled the nostrils with enticement. Joe could also guess it must have been more maddening still to be safe on perimeter patrol while a pair of girls took the risks. This wasn’t the pettiness it would have been back on Earth, but rather a consequence of real sociopolitical anxieties common to all his friend’s kind. It beggared Joe’s imagination that here in this quadrant a generation of boys as young as Flashtease was already being forced to confront obsolescence.

Our hero took his foot off the gas. If recent painful experiences had taught Joe one lesson, it was that the boy who waited outside his house for him one sunset long before this was not accepting his help or guidance anymore. It was time to stop dwelling on him, and save the help and guidance for the boy who needed him now.

So, without making too much of it, Joe intimated it might be alright for Flashtease to go and join his peers. Beaming back, the Mini-Flash exclaimed at once: “Hey, great!” and next second had kicked shoes and socks into the footwell and skimmed his stuffy tunic over his head. Joe had to admit he’d been envisaging dropping Flashtease off onshore, but verbal expressions of this intent were still floundering in the early stages of composition well after his small friend in the yellow pants had skipped barefoot over the side of the car door and ended in an almighty splash.

Our hero had to watch the opaque waters some while before Flashtease resurfaced. When he did, flicking from his fair hair pomegranate-segment beads of moisture into the lowering dusk, all he was able to breathe aloud was a near-blissful: “Oh!”

“Maintain communicator-contact, my friend,” Joe instructed, setting course again to scout the island’s border. “Once we have learned how lies the land I shall be with you.”

They parted company, Flashtease immersed to the neck giving Joe a last thankful grin through the starry dewdrops speckling his cheeks. More than intuition told our hero what he must have felt on plunging unchecked into that cool obsidian serene, and whereabouts on his overheated little person its mercies were most appreciated. Thoughts of Neetra made Joe mindful of a stifling layer all his own, one he wished he could divest himself of as easily and summarily as Flashtease his uniform. Although, in a more literal sense, the jacket had to stay on. That was a separate issue.

Flashtease had noted his friends’ location on the racer’s dashboard radar, and on gaining the coast it was no trouble to negotiate a short stretch of foliage and find his way to them. He would not have struggled anyhow to know where the action was, for the further into the interior Flashtease forged, the more a murmurous hubbub swelled and more frequent were the glimpses of torch-fire flickering through the black boughs. It came as no surprise therefore when just ahead of what was evidently the party-site, Flashtease saw tucked away in the treeline the sweet suppleness of two girl Mini-Flashes clad in bikinis they’d bought at Drenthis Market, and the lean shape of a young man named Contamination whose radioactive luminescence further picked out his companions’ curves.

“Pleasant swim?” that one greeted Flashtease shrilly. “I was starting to worry our trip to this galactic backwater hadn’t been a success, but not as long as you’re getting your lengths in.”

They edged nearer to see. Beyond the brush in a wide clearing it looked like the party was about to begin. Under the light of tall flambeaux and colourful neon bulbs, quite some number chatted and lolled and drank from paper cups. At one end of the sandy glen stood a ramshackle wooden stage, upon which a golden-haired girl somewhat older than the Mini-Flashes had just this minute appeared. She was wearing a swimsuit and a superior smirk.

“Surf-chick’s laying down a vibe I don’t feature,” Mini-Flash Splitsville whispered to the others. “Something about this whole crazy scene’s got me hitting the brakes.”

Various youngsters in bathing-dresses, men, blobs and tentacled miscellaneous were eagerly gathering round the podium, whence their haughty hostess rapped out:

“Whether you’re a repulsive creep from outer space or a sun-kissed stunner like me, everybody here knows it’s all about the cause. But while those squares back home are waiting for Joe, let me hand you over to someone I know. She’s been there. She’s met him. And she’ll tell you what went down. It’s the girl who’s quite literally got a Four Heroes logo on her knickers, Petunia!”

A lilting lead-in burst on cue from loudspeakers at either side of the stage, and as the slinky blonde slipped out of sight her erstwhile audience gave it up for the girl they were much more interested in seeing. Their hearts however could never have glowed as those few out amidst the undergrowth did, when the star of the show safe and well and unharmed made her enchanting entrance on the boards. Then as the mischievous music romped out its rollicking introduction her little flat-soled shoes tapped her deftly in time to centre-stage, petticoats and hair-tips at a steady bounce, the tight white sweater and ankle-socks a-sparkle. Favouring her devotees with a twinkly salutation was enough to drive them wild, then scraping a shy pointed toecap to pose with her milk-bottle thighs together, Petunia the very picture of theatrically agitated eyelashes and pouty pink lips began to sing.

Flashtease and friends stared from their hiding-place. It didn’t exactly look as if she’d been mistreated. What was more, although Petunia happened to be very good at this sort of thing, the Mini-Flashes had been expecting some indication at least she was performing under duress. A cage might have been taking it a bit far, but they’d gone into this assuming the kidnappers’ plan was to parade their prize in hopes of drawing out Joe. Watching nothing less than a typically tantalizing routine, bestowed on raucous revellers whose enthusiastic enjoyment seemed nothing less than genuine, was making the situation stranger by the minute.

“This is certainly putting my own kidnap-ordeal into perspective,” said Contamination. “All that complaining about a few gruesome scientific experiments, when I might have had to endure these heights of misery and privation instead.”

“Contamination’s right, there’s something funny going on here,” decided Flashtease. “Flashshadow, think you can find out more without being spotted? We need to get to the bottom of this, and I’m not talking about Petunia’s dance!”

Already amid such shade it took concentration to make Flashshadow out. Her friends more or less heard her utter something staunch about giving it the old Mini-Flash try, after which they weren’t even sure whether a soft rustle of leaves and the faintest glimmer of pastel-pink panties betokened her departure. She was skilled at her craft, and this ghost in the invisible bikini went unseen by all.

The blonde in the ordinary swimsuit, however, saw the other three clearly enough. One of them gave off light, for Plomonoog’s sake. If Joe and his faction had brains they’d be dangerous. Magnolia, for it was she, smiled with cruel satisfaction and set off at once through the woods.

END OF CHAPTER ONE