Delinquents, Chapter Three

On into dark unfrequented space-lanes the Mini-Flash motorists trawled, until they came upon a gargantuan asteroid which to 4-H-N resembled the sort of sea-stone which a myriad marine-worms had burrowed through and through. Like a petrified bath-sponge writ large it hung, each of its million mantle-holes the mouth of a different twisty approach to an interior which looked lit, and not by flame for this amber luminosity tended more to the fade than the flicker. So it all seemed to 4-H-N at any rate, though by now she was starting to suspect she’d had one tappy smell-bomb too many.

Low to the bolide the star-coupés swooped, so its riddled crust rolled along under their fenders. Mini-Flash Meteor was sitting beside 4-H-N, and the latter asked her where they were? The answer that came back was: “We’re where you get out.”

“Why would we stop here?” queried 4-H-N.

“Dearie,” Mini-Flash Meteor drawled in reply, “whoever said anything about stopping?”

Sharply the toecap of her beige boot propelled 4-H-N over the car door and out of the moving vehicle, bag and all. Before she so much as knew what was happening she smacked the asteroid’s surface at a speed that squeezed all the breath from her body, and next second was sliding and scraping head over heels down one of the tunnels. This turbulent ride came to an end when 4-H-N thumped onto rough sand somewhere well within the labyrinth’s cavernous guts, grazed and aching all over.

There she lay a long time. It would have been hard enough to know what to do about this turn of events even if she hadn’t smelled so much, though that factor was obviously no help at all in regaining some grasp of reality. Mindful however it had seldom seemed more important she do so, 4-H-N at last rose shakily to her feet and looked around her.

She was in what looked like an ocean catacomb, only it was dry. Towering rock-formations gaping with caves stretched from the sandy floor to untold altitudes lost in gloominess far above. Yet there was plenty of light to see by, that softly-shifting apricot glow 4-H-N had observed from outside, which pulsed from half the openings. As the clone watched, one of these erupted with a dull rumble and a mirage-shimmering transparent column the same shade blew from one pothole and receded into another higher up. Geothermal activity. Clearly such agitation from the asteroid’s core was what had hollowed its shell to its present dimensions.

This would have fascinated 4-H-N’s parents, but it was giving her a sudden sinking feeling. She stabbed her forefinger at the button on her wristwatch which would call for Micro-Mallet, but to no avail. The signal was dead. Amid ambient radiation and interference like this, 4-H-N wasn’t surprised. She might stand a chance of reconnecting if she could make it back up to the crust, but just now that felt a long way away.

A movement caught the corner of her eye and she gasped aloud, whirling to face whatever it was. There were other things alive in here. From one of the caves at ground-level a great glistening bulb of reddish-purple blubber was lurching and shuffling at an alarming rate. It was like a sea-anemone, except that it was larger than 4-H-N herself, and sure enough as it jostled near it unpuckered its slimy dome and a multitude of fleshy tendrils wriggled out of the orifice and stood up like horrid hair. In swift succession these began to shoot the interstice between creature and clone, each pointed tip reshaping itself into a cup. Greedily these clamped down on 4-H-N’s legs or hemline, and she squealed as she felt through her socks the gritty friction from her shoes’ flat soles dragging forth to the monster’s maw.

Wild panic stirred in 4-H-N an unlikely memory which nevertheless was by the next instant her straw to grasp at. The suckers were clustered in greater number on her skirt than on her bare thighs. Darting a hand to her waist she unclasped, then pinned her gaze to a single dot on the grotto wall far-off and commanded her feet to carry her twirling round and round in circles across the floor. The forward push from 4-H-N’s hips rolled her skirt from a loop to a straight and she span out of it and away, pulling free as she did so from the few suction-cups clinging her legs which were twisted loose by the pirouette. On completing each three-sixty 4-H-N whipped her head back about and fixed again on her distant focal point, staving off dizziness until she was out of the ravening anemone’s range, whereat she ceased her pretty revolutions and instead hot-footed it in her knickers the old-fashioned way.

Only after several adjoining caverns, by which time she was quite certain she wasn’t being chased, did 4-H-N allow herself to stop and catch her breath. Between heavy panting intakes she offered up thanks, profuse thanks, to Suzie Phung, wherever she was. That day in the Houkase High ballet studio when she’d taught 4-H-N how to spot had just paid dividends like Suzie could never have known.

That’s it, 4-H-N, a little voice inside then remarked. Now’s the time to remember what real friends are like. Maybe if you’d tried that an hour or two ago, you wouldn’t be in this mess.

4-H-N sighed. She didn’t need to feel any sillier, standing here with her frilly-back panties on show. Which even in itself beggared belief, two identical skirts ruined in as many quarter-phases. Was the universe trying to tell her pink flounce wasn’t her style? Be that as it may, 4-H-N was getting out of here. She’d survived the jungle world, not to mention two high schools. She could survive this.

The clone went over to one of the tunnel-mouths which was at that moment venting, and put her hand experimentally in its stream. Hot, but not scalding. Rough and full of silty particles, but bearable. What was more, 4-H-N already knew from practical experience that the tubules were wide enough to accommodate a girl of her figure. Was it possible? It’d be a bumpier trip than the smooth escalation she was used to, but could one of these get her where she needed to go? Funny, reflected 4-H-N, how much this place had in common with the flight-simulator. Even down to its tentacle-traps.

Wait. Wait a minute. 4-H-N’s head was still muzzy from the smell-bombs, but it was fast dawning on her that these correspondences couldn’t have happened by chance. Not when she and the Mini-Flashes had been talking about the simulator earlier that very evening, not when their whole acquaintance in fact had begun with it. In unceremoniously dumping her here, the girls might even have meant –

Something hard struck 4-H-N in the shoulderblade with sufficient force to throw her flat on her face once more. As she sprawled, a spectacular swish of straight silky silver embellished the entrance of Mini-Flash Bobbypins, swooping from unseen ceiling-vaults to land lightly before 4-H-N’s eyes. The flaxen-haired girl was holding in one hand a square-ended flight-simulator slingshot.

“You know how this game’s played,” Mini-Flash Bobbypins said to 4-H-N with her cruel smile. “First to three.”

The ache in 4-H-N’s shoulder made her disproportionately keen to rob Mini-Flash Bobbypins of the early lead she’d claimed. Scrabbling in the sand for her bag she grabbed her own catapult, and from prone position drew back the stock and immediately released it with zeal.

It should have been a can’t-miss, but the chamber clunked on empty. Of course it did. Stupid of her to even try such a thing. How far were they from the wi-fi at Flash Club Headquarters? Combine that with abundant radioactive interference, and the prospects of 4-H-N’s weapon being able to sustain an anaphasic ball were, well, those of the proverbial anaphasic ball in an asteroid.

Laughing mockingly Mini-Flash Bobbypins ascended to a lofty cave-mouth and slipped out of sight. She didn’t leave 4-H-N much to mull over. With a mob of Mini-Flashes up top and only one of her, it seemed a safe bet that refusing to participate in this sick little contest wasn’t included among her options. Decidedly less of a certainty was that winning the so-called match would mean a free ticket home. That would be presuming more on her new friends’ sporting natures than she’d yet been given grounds to do. By the very same token however, she couldn’t say for sure the Mini-Flashes were above abandoning her here if she lost. 4-H-N didn’t appear to have any choice but to play along.

Now she was confronted with something she knew how to do, after a fashion at least, the clone found her mind was slowly starting to work again. She couldn’t see whatever it was Mini-Flash Bobbypins had hit her with, but could testify it wasn’t anything that vanished painlessly on impact. Not with sensation still in the process of returning to her left arm. If this giant alien rock-pool was supposed to be some sort of Flash Club flight-simulator, then it should by rights contain an equivalent to the ammunition-reload panels. It had equivalents to everything else. And if a rock-pool it was, then it surely followed it would likewise have…

There. Amidst the otherworldly coral in a sunken concavity swirling with orange-ish ether was a veritable family of native oysters and clams. 4-H-N hurried over and plunged her hands through the warm to haul out the largest one. She prised it open and her eyes lit up. A pearl of the very size and shape to fit snugly in her slingshot, its lustrous skin all of an incandescent sheen, and which on 4-H-N’s picking it up proved as heavy and unyielding as a snooker ball. She set it upon her catapult’s tray and slotted the stock into place, charging her cartridge with the fire-stone.

4-H-N knew that even on the most bizarre of battlegrounds she was equal to headlining the leader-board at any fair competition. This wasn’t going to be one of those, because Mini-Flash Bobbypins could fly and she couldn’t. If however 4-H-N was fated to exit the arena with just a participation-ribbon pinned to her panty-ruffles, it wasn’t going to be for lack of trying.

END OF CHAPTER THREE