30

A Trip To The Cloak Room.

Dredly, Sage and Greta stood at the edge of the golf course of doom and formulated a plan to get themselves out of there and defeat their evil nemesis, The Fabulous Fernando. Their plan was simple, it had to be - none of them were all that clever. Greta would take on the shape of the guard Sage had knocked unconscious with the golf ball. Then, posing as the man, she would take Sage, Dredly and the guard back to Fernando. She would claim that the man was the bear in disguise and then she, still posing as the guard, would locate and switch off the generator powering the cloaking device. Then they would simply have to await the arrival of the authorities. It was dangerous - there was no telling what Fernando might do to Sage and Dredly in the meantime - but it was the only plan they were able to think up. However, there was another danger...
"What about your hat?" Dredly asked urgently before Greta made her transformation. "All these guys wear black berets. What if you turn out in a homburg - won't they spot it?"
"Hey, for sure everything is copasetic! I'll say that in the struggle one of you tried to overpower me with the hat and it got stuck to my head."
"Nice excuse."
They stood back and Greta made the transformation. In a moment she was the perfect double of the guard - apart from the gleaming yellow sou'wester atop her head.
"Oh man, are we in luck or what?" She beamed, "If I was going to try to overpower anyone with a hat, a sturdy sou'wester's the one I'd choose."
Greta was right. In duels between milliners it had traditionally been the weapon of choice. Five minutes later they had been picked up by a jeep full of Fernando's goons, who bought the hat story without question. One of them even had a tale about the time he'd been assaulted by some do-gooder with a sou'wester. It had left him hospitalised for a month and traumatised for life.
"Even now I can't go anywhere near the sea." He drawled as they approached the white building. Then he got on the radio. "We've got 'em Number 1."
"Good. Bring them straight to me." Fernando's voice sent a shiver down Sage's spine. Were they doing the right thing? But then danger reared up, as the real guard started to come to. Disaster! The man would finger them for sure! Sage looked to Greta. She could see the danger.
"Hey, the bear's coming round." Said one of the other guards.
"Not for long he isn't!" Greta said firmly and then punched the guard flush on the chin with all her force. There was a stomach churning crunch as his jaw was pushed up into the ganglions of nerves below his ears. He slumped back. He would be out for hours.
The jeep stopped at the side entrance of the white bunker and they all got out. Sage and Dredly were forced to carry the guard between them, which they thought was a little unfair since he was a baddy, but which they didn't question lest they blow Greta's cover.
"I'm going to go and... Report!" She said, then gave Sage and Dredly a nod. Now they'd find out if their plan was intelligent or simply inept.
"Boy, you people are in trouble!" Said one of the guards as he escorted Sage and Dredly into the building and down a long, white corridor. It led to a lift, its steel doors glinting in the harsh, institutional lighting. They got inside and descended,
"I mean he's not just going to give you a ticking off, he's really going to give it to you good." The guard continued, "Boy he's mad, really mad. Wouldn't surprise me if he flayed you alive or fed you to otters or something."
"Thanks, you're a real comfort." Dredly replied as the lift came to a halt and the doors opened. The guard pushed them along another anonymous passageway. They turned left at the end, went down yet another gleaming hall, turned right, took a left and started down a fifty yard corridor, again in white, which ended in a plain white door.
"Don't you people ever get lost?" Sage asked, for he himself was thoroughly discombobulated.
"Nah, you get used to it... Although one guy did get lost for a week once."
Dredly wondered how Greta was getting on. Would they have to hold out for a week? They could only pray that she didn't get lost. At the end of the passage the guard stopped them and knocked at the door.
"Come!" It was Fernando. The door swung open and they were pushed inside.

In another part of the facility, Greta was moving through the blank corridors with an ease and apparent sureness of where she was going that belied the fact she had never been taken on a guided tour of the place. The reason for her easy progress towards the shield generator is best explained in the following extract from Douglas Haversack's excellent treatise 'Polar Bears: A Treatise' of 1876.

"... Although Polar Bears, as travelling companions, are mendacious, shifty and will ultimately lead you astray, or even to your doom, they do possess a most excellent sense of direction. However, this does not hold in non-polar circumstances. Yes, they can forage for food in the snowy wastes of the Arctic; yes, they are brilliant at stalking young, unwitting seals; and yes, some of them can carve intricate and delightful ice-sculptures using their razor-sharp claws, but take them out of their natural environment and place them in a city or even a small town and you will quickly find they know jack-shit about anything that doesn't involve snow. Their famed 'sense of direction' only works when the land around is a featureless white expanse. The minute an object, such as a bush, is added to the landscape, the polar bear gets confused. It is too much for them to think about. They cannot use their sense of direction in tandem with the assimilation into their minds of physical features. It is therefore sensible, when being chased by a polar bear, to keep a plant of some kind handy. Simply place it on the snow as you run and as soon as the bear sees it, it will become hopelessly lost..."
Fortunately for Sage and Dredly, Fernando had not employed a Feng Shui expert when designing his fortress. There were no bonsai trees in strategic positions to channel energy. There were no indoor rockeries to dissemble negativity. There were no ornamental fountains to promote harmony. There was only mile upon mile of white, empty corridors and Greta loved it! She was in her element. Fifteen minutes had passed since she had left here friends and she knew that she was already close to the shield generator.

However, on the way she had seen things that had deeply troubled her. Fernando was planning a maelstrom of mayhem. She had seen the labs where his scientists were breeding a horde of feral hamsters. She had overheard that they were going to flood pet-shops with them at Christmas time and that by Boxing Day Europe would be devastated. Meanwhile, one whole level of the facility had been devoted to the manufacture of soft drink cans with faulty ring-pulls. If they ever got out it would not be long before North America was overtaken by mass annoyance and perhaps even general hysteria. Then there was the plan to put disintegrating pockets into the world's trouser supply. The resulting havoc caused by lost keys and change would be nothing next to the ensuing deluge of pocket fluff, which would engulf the planet. And she, Greta, was the only creature that could stop all that... Though on the other hand, she had also stumbled across a plan to drown the town of Barnstaple in strawberry jelly, so maybe Fernando wasn't all bad... Nevertheless, the fact was that Greta had only one intention - to smash the whole lot. Finally she arrived at the shield generator. She knew she was in the right place because her sense of direction was perfect, because she caught the whiff of grease and hum of a big electrical device, and because there was a sign with 'Cloaking Device Shield Generator' on the door. This was it! She opened the door and stepped inside.

Can Greta save the day, or will she end up totally bewildered by an indoor plant left on someone's desk? And what is the Fabulous Fernando going to do to Sage and Dredly?

Find out in the next gut-wrenchingly frightening chapter...

"NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL EVIL!"

Oh yes, and the result of last week's vote was that 67% of you thought Greta's idea was better than Sage's. Probably best not to tell him, because he's got enough on his plate right now...