Part 14 (1/2)

So did Tess, but if she had been a dragon at that moment, she would have burned his nose again. 'Don't be an idiot, Kevin,' she said. 'We've only survived so far because we can Switch! If you couldn't dodge those missiles and disappear at night you wouldn't stand a chance!'

Kevin sighed. 'I suppose you're right,' he said.

'But this way you still have a chance. With the speed we can travel as dragons, we could be in Ireland before morning. We might even have time for some bit of a party. At Lizzie's, maybe?'

'It's a bit risky, isn't it?' asked Kevin. 'They'll be able to follow us on radar, won't they?'

'So what?' said Tess. 'We've been dodging planes and missiles for two days, now. What could they possibly throw at us that we couldn't handle?'

Kevin said nothing. Tess rubbed her gloved hands together and blew on them. 'Come on, Kevin,' she said. 'It's too cold to stand around and think about it.'

'I suppose it is,' said Kevin. 'The only problem is, I still don't really know what I want to be. There was something nice about not having to choose, you know?'

'But you don't have to choose right now. You'll have all today and tonight to think about it. And in any case, you'll probably know when the time comes, won't you? The same way as you knew it was right to come up here?'

Kevin brightened. 'You know something?' he said.

'What?'

'For once in your life, you might be right.'

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.

GENERAL WOLFE WAS ON the edge of his seat. 'Come on, my tricky little friends,' he said to the moving blips on the monitor in front of him. 'You just keep right on going the way you are.'

The two UFOs were heading south, right out in the open above the Norwegian Sea. He had been following their progress for some time, watching the satellite pictures with growing antic.i.p.ation. If they carried on in their present direction, they would soon be crossing the north-west tip of Scotland. And when they did, he would have a little surprise waiting for them.

At an air base in North Wales, Scud Morgan and his team were getting ready for take-off. They were in a line of planes similar to their own, crawling towards the runway, waiting their turn. The snow was still thick on the fields all around, but the skies were clear.

Scud was champing at the bit. 'Know something?' he said.

'Not a thing,' said Hadders, who was carefully checking over the instruments on the panel in front of him.

'I got a feeling we're going to see some action tonight.'

'I guess that's why they're sending us up there, Scud.'

'Yeah, course, I know that. But this feeling is more than that. It's in my bones, you know? like, we were the first guys to spot those two aliens out there, weren't we?'

'I never saw any aliens.'

'What were they, then? They weren't planes. Everyone knows those two things weren't planes. You must be some kind of a nut-head if you think those two things are planes.'

'n.o.body knows what they are,' said Hadders, 'and n.o.body knows how to stop 'em. But it seems to me that there's no sense in talking flying saucers here and getting ourselves into a stew.'

'A stew?' said Scud. He jammed on the brakes as he came up on to the tail of the plane in front, and the three of them lurched forward into their seat-belts. 'Who's getting into a stew? I'm not getting into a stew. Are you getting into a stew? n.o.body gets into a stew in this bird, not as long as I'm in command, anyhow.'

Hadders sighed and continued with his last-minute checklist. 'All I'm saying,' Scud went on, 'is that I got this feeling. We were the first to see those two aliens, and I got an idea we're going to be the last.'

'Did you see any aliens, Jake?' said Hadders.

'Couple of planes,' said Jake.

There were no missiles aboard the bombers which lifted off, one after another into the star-lit sky. They were fully loaded though, but this time with another kind of weapon.

When Scud and his crew took off, Tess and Kevin were still well out over the Norwegian Sea. They were flying low, skimming close to the waves, enjoying their flight. The night air was clear and fresh, and they were beginning to believe that they had finally left the battlefield behind.

Once they had pa.s.sed over the line of new ice that the krools had made, they got the occasional glimpse of a whale breaking the surface of the sea, and they knew that they were heading away from the cold, towards life again. Tess looked across at Kevin flying beside her, and it seemed that it was the first time she had been able to relax for days. What they had done was ridiculous, impossible. It made no sense at all, and yet it was true, and they had done it. The starlight s.h.i.+mmered from the metallic scales of Kevin's back as he turned to her and winked. She was a dragon, flying with another dragon across the sea beneath the stars, and she took time to drink it in and fix the images and sensations into her mind. Because she knew that whatever else happened, she would never feel like this again.

Within an hour, the thirty-five planes had reached their positions and were set in a holding pattern, waiting.

'You got a reading on them yet, Jake?' said Scud.

'Just what the satellite's sending.'

'They far off?'

'About fifteen minutes, I guess.'

'What's that on the radar, then?'

'Let's see. FT6R. That's Pete and Jeremy coming round again. Hi, guys.'

'Jeremy!' Scud spat. 'That's what you get for working with this British crowd. Whoever heard of a serviceman called Jeremy, for G.o.d's sake? Wouldn't you think he'd change his name or something? How can anybody fight a war when there's people called Jeremy flying around all over the place? How's a man supposed to think straight?'

'I'm not sure this is a war, Scud.'

'Read your book, Hadders. That's what some people do. Some people are born to read books and some are born to fight wars. I don't care what anyone else says, but when I'm in a plane, I'm fighting a war.'

Hadders broke one of the last spines from his comb and picked his teeth with it. 'You can say that again,' he said.

As the north tip of Scotland came into view, the two dragons did a quick loop-the-loop of delight. Wolfe, along with fifteen a.s.sembled advisers and a.s.sistants, held his breath. When the two UFOs resumed their course the print-outs on his table fluttered in the breeze.

They were over the land now, with the ragged western coast of Scotland to their right. Beneath them, the trees of huge forestry plantations poked their dark heads above the snow, and occasionally the sharp eyes of the dragons could make out the roofs of abandoned villages and isolated farmhouses. Tess was surprised to find that now and then she got a whiff of wood-smoke. There were people still surviving somehow, despite the depth of the snow. She was looking down, trying to get a glimpse of the heat of hearth-fires, and Kevin must have been as well, otherwise they would have not been taken so utterly by surprise by finding themselves flying straight into the path of an oncoming plane.

'They're going to pa.s.s right under us!' yelled Jake.

'And we're going to get 'em,' said Scud.

'OK,' said Hadders. 'Just take it easy, now. We all clear of other planes, Jake?'

'All clear. And we're on computer count-down, seven, six ...'