The Arctic Incident

Root’s pointy ears quivered. “Digger?”


“Exactly,” nodded Holly. “A bit more than coincidence. Foaly came to me at that point, and I advised him to get some satellite photos before taking the file to you. Except .. .”

“Except Mister Digger is proving very elusive. Am I right?”

“Dead on.”

Root’s coloring went from rose to tomato. “Mulch, that rascal. How did he do it?”

Holly shrugged. “We’re guessing he transferred his iris-cam to some local wildlife, maybe a rabbit. Then collapsed the tunnel.”

“So the life signs we were reading belonged to some rabbit.”

“Exactly. In theory.”

“I’ll kill him,” exclaimed Root pounding the control panel. “Can’t this bucket go any faster?”





Los Angeles


Mulch scaled the building without much difficulty. There were external closed-circuit cameras, but the helmet’s ion filter showed exactly where these cameras were pointed. It was a simple matter to crawl along the blind spots.

Within an hour, the dwarf was suckered outside Maggie V’s apartment on the tenth floor. The windows were triple-glazed with a bulletproof coating. Movie stars. Paranoid, every one of them.

Naturally there was an alarm point sitting on top of the pane, and a motion sensor crouching on a wall like a frozen cricket. Only to be expected.

Mulch melted a hole in the glass with a bottle of dwarf rock polish, used to clean up diamonds in the mines. Humans actually cut diamonds to shine them. Imagine. Half the stone down the drain.

Next, the Grouch used his helmet’s ion filter to sweep the room for the motion sensor’s range. The red ion stream revealed that the sensor was focused on the floor. No matter. Mulch intended going along the wall.

Pores still crying out for water, the dwarf crept along the partition, making maximum use of a stainless-steel shelving system that almost completely surrounded the main sitting room.

The next step was to find the actual Oscar. It could be hidden anywhere, including under Maggie V’s pillow, but this room was as good a place to start as any. You never know, he might get lucky.

Mulch activated the helmet’s X-ray filter, scanning the walls for a safe. Nothing. He tried the floor. Humans were getting smarter these days. There, under a fake zebra rug, a metal cuboid. Easy.

The Grouch approached the motion sensor from above, very gently twisting the neck until the gadget was surveying the ceiling. The floor was now safe.

Mulch dropped to the rug, testing the surface with his tactile toes. No pressure pads sewn into the rug’s lining.

He rolled back the fake fur, revealing a hatch in the wooden floor. The joins were barely visible to the naked eye. But Mulch was an expert, and his eyes weren’t naked—they were aided by LEP zoom lenses.

He wormed a nail into the crack, flipping the hatch. The safe itself was a bit of a disappointment, not even lead lined. He could see right into the mechanism with the X-ray filter. A simple combination lock. Only three digits.

Mulch turned the filter off. What was the point in breaking a see-through lock? Instead he put his ear to the door, jiggling the dial. In fifteen seconds the door was open at his feet.

The Oscar’s gold plating winked at him. Mulch made a big mistake at that moment. He relaxed. In the Grouch’s mind he was already back in his own apartment, swigging from a two-gallon bottle of ice-cold water. And relaxed thieves are destined for prison.

Mulch neglected to check the statuette for traps, plucking it straight from the safe. If he had checked, he would have realized that there was a wire attached magnetically to the base. When the Oscar was moved, a circuit was broken, allowing all hell to break loose.





Chute E37


Holly set the autopilot to hover at ten thousand feet below the surface. She slapped herself on the chest to release the harness, then joined the others in the rear of the shuttle.

“Two problems. Firstly, if we go any lower, we’ll be picked up on the scanners, presuming they’re still operating.”

“Why am I not looking forward to number two?” asked Butler.

“Secondly, this particular chute was retired when we pulled out of the Arctic.”

“Which means?”

“Which means the supply tunnels were collapsed. We have no way into the chute system without supply tunnels.”

“No problem,” declared Root. “We blast the wall.”

Holly sighed.“With what, Commander? This is a diplomatic craft. We don’t have any cannons.”

Butler plucked two concussor eggs from a pouch on his Moonbelt.

“Will these do? Foaly thought they might come in handy.”

Artemis groaned. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear the manservant was enjoying this.





Los Angeles