asked Finn.
Grandma stiffened and called to Yo-yo, who had reached the house and was scratching at the back door.
Grandma didn’t like to talk about Finn’s dad, Ethan Drake, who had disappeared in a lab accident before Finn was born, fire consuming him so completely that only the sphaleritefn4 stone he wore around his neck was recovered. The same stone – that Finn’s mother had worn until she died of cancer two years ago – now hung around Al’s giant neck, next to the nDen.
“Nobody knows exactly what your dad was doing just before he passed away,” said Al. “We have some of his notes from around then, but your mum had just had you and most of his assistants were sitting exams.”
“I didn’t know he’d left notes. Can I read them?” said Finn.
Al frowned. He’d spent the best part of thirteen years crawling all over them. He could probably recite them.
“Tea! We must get in and put the kettle on before it gets dark,” Grandma interrupted, trying to move things on.
But Al was in the moment, and it was clearly an uncomfortable one.
“They’re complicated, Finn. A mess, in fact. Lots of stuff that looks like answers but isn’t. It’s not what you want,” he said, cryptic and awkward.
“And cake! We have plenty of cake,” Grandma said, taking out her keys to let them in.
“What’s that supposed to mean? Will you show me or not?” said Finn.
“Maybe. One day.”
“Sherry!” concluded Grandma, hurrying them into the house.
By the time they got back to Lab One it was late.
Al opened the Sony Walkman and said goodnight to Finn at the edge of the nano-compound.
“We’ll try the experiment again tomorrow, and every day, till we get it right,” he said, winking and walking away.
Finn took comfort as he watched him go. His uncle might wear glasses held together with tape, but he was reassuringly massive, in brain as well as bulk.
Everything was dark and Finn supposed the others had already gone to bed.
Then he heard a voice.
“Feeling any better, Noob?” Delta asked, using her nickname for Finn.
Suddenly – POP! – all the lights came on at once, dazzling him.
“What the …?!”
As Finn’s eyes adjusted to the light, he could make out three figures, some balloons, and … a Thing.
“Surprise!”
September 29 22:58 (GMT+1). Hook Hall, Surrey, UK.
Delta slapped Finn on the back.
“Happy nearly-birthday!” grinned Kelly.
“Thought we’d cheer you up,” said Stubbs, deadpan.
They stood back and let Finn take in the Thing.
The others had been testing it for the last month. He’d glimpsed parts of it before, designs on-screen, but he’d never seen the whole thing.
“The nCraft?” said Finn.
“I see you’ve been paying attention,” said Kelly.
“Say hello to the X1 Experimental Nano-thruster,” murmured Stubbs, reverentially.
Delta bit her lip excitedly, like they had pulled off the best birthday surprise ever.
“Guy’s a genius,” said Kelly, roughing Stubbs’s remaining hair.
“It’s fast as a whip and can turn on a pin!” said Delta.
“It’s –” Finn tried to put it into words – “a little ugly.”
Three faces fell at once. He thought Kelly would cry or hit him. “This isn’t a beauty contest!” he yelled.
It was, thought Finn, like one of those weird deep-sea fish that had evolved in the perpetual gloom of an ocean trench. Roughly the size of a limousine at their scale, it had a gawping front grill like a great mouth and two headlamp eyes. It had multiple stubby wings and rudders that looked like fins, and a tail section with a scorched and nasty-looking exhaust, and its underside was regularly pockmarked with clusters of small thruster units.
“I’m not being mean,” said Finn, apologetically. “I’m just saying it looks like an ugly bug and when you go into production—”
“It’s the prototype!” shouted Kelly. “You think we’d let you near one of the new X2 models?”
“So shallow,” sighed Delta.
“Hey, I’m still twelve –” Finn checked his watch – “just. I’m meant to be shallow!”
“Well then I don’t suppose for one moment,” said Stubbs, “you’ll be wanting a go.”
And with that he flicked a switch on the outside of the craft. Computers and gyroscopes woke within, turbines turned over and the Bug came alive. Lights blazed all over its body and it floated off the ground, suspended on a cushion of air, flexing its tail and wings to keep absolutely steady.
“Wow,” said Finn, gobsmacked.
“We’ve ‘borrowed’ it for one night only. Not a word to anyone, especially not to Al,” warned Kelly.
“Note the extraordinary stability,” Stubbs began, gearing up to explain the technicalities. “A central jet runs a compressor that feeds cold gas rockets all over the body controlled by an intelligent thrust-vectoring syst—”
“OK, OK, I want a go!” said Finn.
With a high-pitched hum from the jet engine beneath them and the hiss of collective thrusters, they rose steadily towards the roof of the Central Field Analysis Chamber. On top of the Bug was an open cab with four seats, a roll cage, a windscreen and some crude controls. It was like sitting in a fat flying sports car, thought Finn, yet with a ride so gentle they might have been in a bubble. There was also a mount for an M249 Minimi light machine gun, to defend themselves against insects and any other threat they might face in the outside world.
They had to be careful, the craft was supposedly strictly out of bounds in Lab Three, but the Duty Techs were in Lab Two and Stubbs and Kelly had nobbled some of their monitoring equipment, smuggling the Bug out through the model rail network, first to the nano-compound in Lab One, then into the vast, empty spaces of the CFAC.
Finn was just
