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dark fringe which hung across his brow from a neat side parting and rubbed his hands together, sitting on the edge of the torpedo under the glass which was now suspended above him at an angle, like the bonnet of a sleek racing car. ‘Shocking cold,’ he muttered and then leaned over and hammered unceremoniously on the torpedo next to him. ‘Hey! Polly! Get up, you lazy coot!’ At this there was a higher note of hissing and the girl’s glass cover suddenly popped up too, like the boy’s. A draught of cool, slightly sweet air flowed from it and Ben heard a sleepy murmuring from inside. He smacked himself on the face with both fists. It hurt. Yep. He was still awake. The boy was giving him an odd look.
    ‘I say, Poll—wake up fast will you? There’s a lunatic boy and a half dead girl here.’
    Rich , thought Ben. Considering.
    Polly sat up, yawning and scrubbing at her eyes. ‘Who? What? Oh, dash it! I’m frozen. He’s done it again, hasn’t he? Left us in too long. It’s really too bad. I bet I’ve missed Hilary’s party!’
    Ben simply could not get his jaw to close. He kept gasping and blinking and shaking his head and trying to wake himself up and then he realized that Rachel was coming round at his feet and he simply did not know what to do.
    ‘Who’s he?’ asked Polly, sitting up fully and also rubbing her hands. She peered at Ben as if he were another species.
    ‘Can’t say,’ said the boy, who was getting out of the torpedo now, somewhat unsteadily. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and grey flannel shorts. ‘Oh heck— I think you’re right. He’s left us too long again. I’ve never been this wobbly before. He probably got going on some new experiment and hasn’t eaten for two days—much less think about us. I’m jolly well not doing this again, I tell you. Look, will you two stop all that gibbering! It’s perfectly all right. The door will open again in a few minutes. It’s just a time delay, you ninnies.’
    ‘T-time delay?’ gulped Ben. Rachel had just sat up and begun all the gaping, gasping, blinking, and pinching stuff he had been doing himself only seconds ago. She looked like a mad fish.
    ‘Yes. The air pressure has to be equalized before the lids can be sprung,’ explained the boy. ‘It’s probably a bit too complicated for you to understand. Don’t worry. I’d like to know how you got in here, though.’
    ‘We—we d-dug …’ said Ben, and Rachel, who was now past the mad fish stage and getting unsteadily to her feet, nodded feverishly.
    ‘Yes … we dug.’
    ‘We … dug …’ repeated the boy, slowly, a patient smile on his face. ‘Well—we … Freddy and Polly ! Are both of you called Doug then?’ He raised one eyebrow and gave a slightly wonky grin.
    ‘No! We dug —we dug down. With spades! That’s how we got in!’ said Ben, his more normal voice finally bursting through. He felt that this was not the time for sarky humour.
    ‘Right-oh!’ said Freddy. ‘If you say so. But you’d better scarper or you’ll be in a lot of darn trouble when my father catches you. And if you tell anyone you’ve seen this place, you’ll be in even more trouble. There are forces, you know, more powerful than …’
    ‘Oh pish! Don’t be such an idiot, Freddy,’ said Polly—who was clambering out of her own torpedo now. ‘They must be Father’s students. And they must be trustworthy, or he wouldn’t have let them in.’ She wore similar shorts to her brother and a pale pink blouse with a neat round collar. Her clothes looked as if they’d been washed, pressed, and put on that morning. She dropped off the edge of the torpedo and her legs immediately gave and she crumpled to the floor with a surprised squeak.
    ‘I should go easy,’ said Ben. ‘I don’t think you’ve used those for a while.’
    ‘Thank you,’ she said, primly. ‘But I don’t think I’ve forgotten how to walk in one week!’
    ‘One week?’ echoed Rachel and she and Ben exchanged appalled