3:10 to Ingoldmells, Chapter Three

Flashsatsumas had at least had the foresight to bring an emergency medical kit. Having groped his way deliriously to it along the forecourt he’d now thrown open the small satchel and was treating himself, in both senses of the word. So Maureen sat and watched bemused, as far above her head a plastic automaton contorted hugely in some sort of bid to acclimatise itself to existence, while her friend in his tangerine rubber sundress shovelled down slices of death-by-chocolate one after another.

“What is this?” demanded the titan from on high, in a sinister sing-song voice which jangled with level-crossing bells. “For what purpose have I been summoned into being?”

Finally Flashsatsumas, by now more or less confident he was back to himself, pushed the bag of cake aside. Maureen didn’t mind if she did.

“So does this mean,” she began, then finished her mouthful and continued, “he’s going to obey us? Is that the way it works?”

That was a good question. Mini-Flash Juniper had told Flashsatsumas she’d seen Joe do this just once, and she’d spoken with characteristic Special Program vagueness on whether the latter had been in command of his creation, if it could be so termed, or whether in routing the enemy force it had merely done something it already meant to. Flashsatsumas judged there were enough sources of uncertainty in the foregoing for him to be pretty sure what Juniper’s response would have been had he mentioned to her his plans to try the trick alone, but putting all that out of mind he stood.

“OK, now listen up, ZY-29,” commenced Flashsatsumas, diminutive and short-skirted and to outward appearances not especially reminiscent of Joe. “You’re here because – ”

“You?” the other thundered. “An orange-coated gnat? You dare assume authority over one who serves only Master Yon? He will reward me richly for such a pair of prizes!”

Vast square-fingered hands thrust to scoop up Flashsatsumas, and Maureen where she sat, as the rest of ZY-29 clunked and bunked to locomotive mode. It all happened a little too fast to say exactly how, but Maureen knew what a steam engine looked like and it was to the cabin of one of these she thudded, or at any rate a shoddy life-size mock-up of one. Flashsatsumas meanwhile had come to rest against the opposite bulwark, where he was slumped with legs splayed and pants showing, as one who couldn’t quite establish where it was he’d started to go wrong.

“Picked a changeable robot that’s too changeable by half,” was Maureen’s verdict.

Through the engine room’s open sides the camp was already rattling by. ZY-29 with wheel-brackets elbowing back and forth ferociously plunged into the Old West quarter, where he was not out of place amid the trappings of a fiberglass Nineteenth-Century Texas and most of the crowd greeted him with cheers. Over by the shooting-gallery however, where Mini-Flash Juniper was just seeing off the piece of chocolate cake which had brought her to herself, Pat for an instant spied red and green lights and a most familiar disgruntled face high above him on the rampaging runaway train.

“Here!” he yelled. “That thing’s got me sister!”

And where there was Maureen, Juniper concluded. This turn of events was likely connected to her recent memory-hiccup, though without a shadow of doubt more so to her ever having let Flashsatsumas out on his own in the first place. She gave chase at once, well ahead of Pat snapping out of it and taking off after her.

Not even Mini-Flash Juniper however could have hoped to match pace with ZY-29 for long. Flying or on foot wouldn’t have made any difference to horsepower such as his. By the roadside though was something that could have helped a good deal, but Juniper ran straight past it, not knowing what it was.

Quick-thinking Pat on the other hand saw the string of passenger-carriages parked behind another type of engine, and was behind the wheel of this last before his next breath.

Mini-Flash Juniper was running short on those, and the rear buffers of ZY-29 were pulling ever into the lead, when she heard motor-roar and a clangorous bell. So she turned mid-stride and there was Pat, upright in the driving-seat to lean halfway out of his charger, steering one-handed while holding the other palm-first and outstretched.

He swept her off her feet.

The kidnapper was shouldering smokestacks behind him but it was a different contest now. Pat floored it, while Mini-Flash Juniper quickly regained her composure and began to clamber leggily onto the roof. They were galloping down a road that ran alongside the boating-lake, and the wind that whipped through Juniper’s hair so disarrayed her school skirt as to reveal that underneath her uniform she wore some decidedly non-regulation items.

Not the laciest of which was a little leather holster. With one thumb Mini-Flash Juniper flipped its press-stud.

Anything from ZY-29’s world ought by rights to work against him as well as for.

That one evidently boasted a rear-view mirror and comparable thoughts, for he threw his mass-produced caboose into a squealing cacophonous swerve. Flashsatsumas and Maureen flew free, splashing together into the lake. The hog that had housed them was rising up rapidly and starting to shift to its robot mode as Mini-Flash Juniper took aim.

It was high noon, the sun beating down directly overhead.

Juniper fired off her cap and ZY-29 vanished in a giant fireball.

After the driver of the hijacked train had puffed like the other one from the pub where he’d been earning his pay, and barred Mini-Flash Juniper and Pat from ever going near his pride and joy again, there’d seemed to be nothing to prevent the four friends heading back to their respective chalets so that two of them could dry off. Nevertheless, and even though Maureen was one of the soaked-through duo, she and her brother were insistent there was something Juniper had to do before that.

Pat talked her through the first part. “So, like this?” she asked, raising the gun to her lips and blowing by-now imaginary smoke from its muzzle.

“Right,” said Pat. “And then, ah…well, it’s a bit difficult for me to…”

Beseechingly he cast his gaze across the rest of the company.

“Don’t look at me!” laughed Flashsatsumas. “We may have taken care of ZY-29, but this sort of thing isn’t my speciality!”

Maureen strode over and yanked up Mini-Flash Juniper’s skirt so her frills showed.

“Hopeless case,” explained the former, gesturing at Pat. “We’d have been here all day.”

Juniper was inclined to agree, so happily let Maureen show her how to hang the pistol on her trigger-finger and spin the thing round before slotting it neatly into the holster. She was a quick study, and there was applause as soon as the feat was accomplished.

“Jenny of the wild frontier,” Pat declared, beaming as though what he’d just witnessed had made his day complete.

And the girl to whom he referred, whether her name was Jenny or whether it was Mini-Flash Juniper, blushed back at him and smiled.

END OF CHAPTER THREE