Beyond, other scientists and technicians fanned out. Those gathered in the control gallery watched onscreen.
Waiting for the newborn Scarlatti was a titanium harness – a sausage-shaped cage – that would muzzle the beast’s wings and stings to allow the attachment of the miniaturised tracking device to its thorax.
Once harnessed, the Beta would be transferred to the loading bay ready to receive the nano tracking device the moment it was available – all achieved via airlocks to prevent the Beta’s hypersensitive nervous system getting a hostile fix on any crew scent. They wanted it focused on the Alpha Scarlatti’s pheromones and nothing else.2
Slowly, the giant insect began to wake. Deceptively slowly.
Just below the nascent Scarlatti’s squirming head, Spiro used the tweezers to split open the rest of the husk…
SNAP!
“Ahhhh!” screamed Spiro.
The creature seemed to explode in his hand – whipping its huge tail clean through its dead outer layer. Bursting out. Vile and wet. A cluster of scales and stings – poisonous yellows and reds glistening through black. The clatter as it unstuck and buzzed its silver-black wings for the first time…
WWKWZZZWZWZWWKZWZWKZ
“Will someone please get a grip,” hissed Professor Lomax.
Dr Spiro was stunned. Finn dropped the heat lamp and grabbed the flipping, writhing Beta. He felt it struggle against his thick glove like a frenzied rat. Finn held on and waited for Spiro to jump back in. But Spiro seemed to need a moment to recover. Finn looked across at him. Up close, his eyes were strangely speckled, blinking sporadically behind his glasses. More like a computer trying to reboot than a person reacting in surprise.
Finn wondered if he should yell for Al to take over, but Spiro just as quickly snapped out of it, pinning down the Beta Scarlatti with the tweezers. Between them they manipulated the beast into the titanium harness, carefully closing the topside release mechanism so as not to nip the monster’s furious wings.
It was like a nightmare cigar – silver, live and absolutely lethal.
Spiro fed it through an airtight duct to the smaller tank on Professor Lomax’s sterile trolley. Finally, a small grey atomiser unit on the outside of the trolley was switched on to produce a mild anaesthetic steam that would keep the beast subdued until release.
When it was all over, Spiro was relieved but also angry with himself. Again Finn noticed he seemed to be blinking strangely. Maybe he was just nervous. Finn wanted to tell him it was OK, nobody would mind, but it was not the sort of thing a kid could say.
“Congratulations,” Professor Lomax said instead, with heavy sarcasm, “a triumph.”
What an odd couple, Finn thought as they walked off in opposite directions, Lomax pushing the trolley through to the loading bay.
“That’s what happens if you hang around entomologists too long,” Al warned Finn. “You develop…”
“Oversensitive antennae?” said Finn.
“No. A sting,” said Al.
The conversation was interrupted as the first countdown alarm sounded.
BEEEEEEEEEEEP. “T-MINUS TEN.”
Ten minutes to zero hour.
DAY TWO 05:50 (BST), Hook Hall, Surrey
Everyone moved at once – Al so quickly that Finn had to jog to keep up.
They made their way into the centre of the CFAC where they both climbed up to Al’s cockpit command pod. It was crammed with control computers and sat just in front of the Large Accelerator. Finn’s final job was to bring down the perspex dome of the pod and shut Al in.
“Are you going to watch from down here with the Bug Club, or up top with the Bigwigs?” Al asked.
The politicians and honoured guests would be watching the action in the control gallery with Commander King. Most of the scientists would be opposite in the laboratories along the north side of the CFAC. They were already jostling for position, noses pressed up against the glass, spectacles clashing.
“I’ll stick with the Bug Club.” There was a great view down into the Large Accelerator. “Think it’s going to work?” asked Finn.
“The chances of disaster are always between one in three and evens.”
That didn’t sound too promising, but Finn knew everyone had done all they could. All they needed now was… luck.
He touched the stone at his chest, then pulled the leather tie from round his neck.
“Take it, for luck,” said Finn, handing the lump of spharelite over to Al.
“Luck? I’m a man of reason.”
“My mother would insist,” said Finn.
Al grabbed his head and gave it an affectionate knuckling. “Oh, ye of little faith…” but took the stone all the same.
“You’re not going to sneak on the mission without me, are you?” asked Finn, the thought suddenly occurring to him.
“I’m the only one who knows how to drive this thing. And frankly, do you think me, you and your friend Hudson who can’t move his bowels would be a better choice than trained killers like Kelly and Ms Salazar?” He looked over to where Salazar and the crew were being laid out on trolleys ready to be anaesthetised.
“My name’s not Frankly,” said Finn, “and hers is not Ms Salazar, it’s Delta, and can you stop staring at her like that? It’s so embarrassing.”
“Hey!” said Al and knuckled him again a little harder. “I am not staring!”
The five-minute alarm sounded.
“Promise you’ll let me have a go at this one day?” said Finn.
“No, but I do promise we’ll get to the Pyrenees for a full week in the summer, and as guests of the President of France. Imagine the catering.”
Finn brought the lid down and secured it over Al, who grinned and gave him the thumbs up.
He was the picture of absolute happiness.
DAY TWO 05:56 (BST). Hook Hall, Surrey
Finn knew he should be excited as he walked back to the labs.
Instead he felt suddenly tired, really tired, and he could think of only one word. “Summer,” Al had said. “We’ll get to the Pyrenees for a full week in the summer.”
There was a concept in quantum physics that Al had tried to explain to Finn that he just couldn’t get his head around, and yet it seemed to be true, called the Uncertainty Principle. It meant the more you could know about the position of a particle, the less you know about its momentum, and vice versa; or, as Finn figured it, the more you knew what you wanted, the less you could have it.
The last eighteen hours or so had been extraordinary, brilliant, engaging, exciting and important: and in a few short minutes it would be over. It was ungrateful, he knew, but he had a gut full of that awful end-of-holidays feeling. Summer was an age away. He could see himself back at school and sense the empty weeks stretching ahead.