real life, Ton was still sitting next to Pip’s bed. He’d watched him through the night, and had now fallen fast asleep in a chair that was much too small for his big body. He was snoring softly, and a drop of saliva was hovering on the brim of his lower lip.
The little boy, too, was sleeping – but fitfully. His blue rash had intensified during the night, making him look as if he’d had an unfortunate encounter with a fountain pen. Graphs and figures were flashing on a monitor next to his bed. A diagnosis was blinking in the left-hand corner of the screen: “Variated mumpskins”.
In the underground laboratory, Sabatina had also fallen asleep in her chair, and out of consideration for his human “pet” Max had dimmed the lights.
Max, however, was as alert as ever. Through the small hours he had kept himself busy with different tasks that would have taken a team of human scientists a month to complete. He’d continued with the routine monitoring of atmospheric conditions across the globe, calculated the wind speeds moving across deserts, ordered stores for Monpetit’s pantry from the local grocer, and also kept track of the rate at which the invading algae was spreading over the Pacific Ocean.
One thing he hadn’t managed to do, however, was establish contact with his cyber-girlfriend, U6. She was simply not responding to his calls.
In the corner of Anna’s bedroom, Mutt was suddenly activated. He was programmed to wake up precisely at six o’clock every morning.
Anna had tried numerous times to reset his alarm clock, especially over weekends, but she hadn’t been able to unravel some of the secrets of his programming – partly because of his thick instruction manual, which she’d been too lazy to read thoroughly. And while she was sure Ton could have figured it out, it was no use asking him to help: Ton believed in an early start every day.
Mutt’s eye lenses started to glow, and the next moment he was bouncing around the room. Anna woke with a start to find her sheets tightly wrapped around her body.
As soon as she opened her eyes, she knew that that was the day she was going to find the Chivonne.
She sat on the edge of her bed, absentmindedly patting Mutt’s bobbing head, her thoughts spinning as fast as his wagging rubber tail.
She had the coordinates of where the ship had disappeared, and the Submarine Explorer was equipped with sophisticated electronic sensors that were able to locate the wreck, even if it was lodged deep in the seabed and covered by a layer of lava. Max had assured her that it would be possible to free the old ship from the molten lava using ultrasonic vibrations. A salvage operation like that would be too much to undertake on her own, but if she could find the ship, and make some recordings with the Explorer’s scanners …
Although Max’s hardware was situated somewhere in her mother’s subterranean laboratory, he could link to the submarine’s controls. He could go with her, at least virtually, and guide her to the lost ship. She knew she had no chance of convincing her mother to launch an expedition to find the Chivonne – so far, she hadn’t even had a moment to tell her about the dagger.
No, if she wanted to find the ship today, she would have to do it on her own.
Anna went to find Ton, who by then was awake too, and in the kitchen straining fresh coconuts to make the coconut milk Pip liked so much. He looked tired and worried, and started talking without even saying good morning.
“Today, Anna, your mother and Max are doing their best to save the earth from total annihilation. Pip has come down with a nasty attack of variated mumpskins, a serious computer virus that attacks biotrons. He’ll get better, but for the next forty-eight hours or so he will need my undivided attention. Your eggs are poached, and lunch will be served at the usual time. But may I suggest that you do not disturb your mother, or ask me to accompany you on any hare-brained adventures to the depths of the ocean to retrieve a treasure that may or may not even exist. If that Hodoul ship has been on the bottom of the ocean for two hundred years, it can stay there for another few days.”
As usual, Ton had read her mind. Anna knew better than to argue, and she sat down to her poached eggs and toast.
But her mind was racing. It was Saturday, and she had the whole day ahead of her. How could she possibly wait? She’d never be able to concentrate on something so ordinary as tending to her sea slugs or practising backwards summersaults on the beach. She’d been planning to teach Mutt to become invisible, a trick that was listed in his manual, but suddenly even that seemed a dull prospect.
She’d been in the Submarine Explorer many times before. Her mother had even taught her how to drive it …
“But what’s the fun in discovering a long-lost wreck on my own, hey, Mutt?” she asked.
The little robotic dog made a whining sound and rubbed its cold head against Anna’s leg.
“Of course! I’m not alone – I have you, Muttsie!” She scratched his rubber ear and he rolled over – another part of his basic canine programming.
“And with all the on-board recording equipment, I could send videos of the site directly to Papa because the Space Ark has a direct connection with the Sub!”
That was the deciding factor. Anna had been longing to speak to her father.
“You know what, Mutt?” She washed down the last of her egg with some ice tea. “No one has told me not to go looking for the ship on my own. Ton only said not to bother anyone today. Well, we won’t!”
Chapter 16
THE SUBMARINE EXPLORER
Anna collected two bottles of water, a large chocolate bar and a box of cookies, and stuffed them into a satchel – she was not going on any adventure without food! She dressed in her purple swimming costume and collected her swimfins, waterspecs and aquabreather – just what she’d take if she was on her way to the beach for a picnic and a swim.
Mutt bounced merrily behind her as she walked down the footbath to the beach. If her mother emerged from her laboratory now, Anna decided, she would tell her everything – maybe she’d be equally excited about the prospect of finding a perfectly preserved pirate’s ship, and would join Anna’s expedition. In her heart, that is what Anna was hoping for. She purposefully lingered in the little hut above the laboratory, and even stamped her feet on its wooden floor planks and coughed as if something was stuck in her throat.
But Sabatina didn’t appear.
Finally, with a sigh, Anna opened the wooden hatch that concealed the steps down to the cavern where the Submarine Explorer and the Jetcopter were kept.
The deep circular cavern was carved out of the pink granite from which the island was formed. A small colony of bats fluttered as Anna entered, but quickly settled again. The air was damp, and a few fluorescent light bulbs mounted against the walls shimmered with a pale-green glow. Anna’s eyes adapted quickly to the gloom. To the side of the small artificial lake of dark water, the smooth shape of the Jetcopter loomed, its wingblades drooping. An oval object bobbed next to a concrete jetty: the Submarine Explorer.
The small egg-shaped submarine was made of the same semi-transparent material as the admiral’s Space Ark: tougher than steel. Two water-jet engines powered it and it
