Stormbreaker

traveling too fast. It plowed into the burning wrecks, flipped over, and continued, screeching along the runway on its back before it too burst into flames.
    Alex saw little of this. He was suspended underneath the plane by a single thin white cord, twisting around and around as he was carried ever farther into the air. The wind was rushing past him, battering his face and deafening him. He couldn’t even hear the propellers, just above his head. The belt was cutting into his waist. He could hardly breathe. Desperately, he scrabbled for the yo-yo and found the control he wanted. A single button. He pressed it and the tiny powerful motor inside the yo-yo began to turn. The yo-yo rotated on his belt, pulling in the cord. Very slowly, an inch at a time, Alex was drawn up toward the plane.
    He had aimed the harpoon accurately. There was a door at the back of the plane, and when he turned off the engine mechanism in the yo-yo, he was close enough to reach out for the handle. He wondered who was flying the plane and where he was going. The pilot must have seen the destruction down on the runway, but he couldn’t have heard the harpoon. He couldn’t know he’d picked up an extra passenger.
    Opening the door was harder than Alex thought. He was still dangling under the plane and every time he got close to the handle the wind drove him back. The current was tearing into his eyes and Alex could hardly see. Twice his fingers found the metal handle, only to be pulled away before he could turn it. The third time he managed to get a better grip, but it still took all his strength to yank the handle down.
    The door swung open and he clambered into the hold. He took one last look down. The runway was already a thousand feet below. There were two fires raging, but at this distance, they seemed no more than match heads. Alex unplugged the yo-yo, freeing himself. Then he reached into the waistband of his trousers and took out the gun.
    The plane was empty apart from a couple of bundles that Alex vaguely recognized. There was a single pilot at the controls, and something on his instrumentation must have told him that the door was open because he suddenly twisted around. Alex found himself face-to-face with Mr. Grin.
    “Warg?” the butler muttered.
    Alex raised the gun. He wondered if he would have the courage to use it. But he wasn’t going to let Mr. Grin know that. “All right, Mr. Grin,” he shouted above the noise of the propeller and the howl of the wind. “You may not be able to talk, but you’d better listen. I want you to fly this plane to London. We’re going to the Science Museum in South Kensington and we’ve got to be there in less than an hour. And if you think you’re trying to trick me, I’ll put a bullet in you. Do you understand?”
    Mr. Grin said nothing.
    Alex fired the gun. The bullet slammed into the floor just beside Mr. Grin’s foot. Mr. Grin stared at Alex, then nodded slowly.
    He reached out and turned the joystick. The plane dipped and began to head north.

TWELVE O’CLOCK

    LONDON APPEARED.
    Suddenly the clouds rolled back and the late morning sun brought the whole city, shining, into view. There was Battersea Power Station, standing proud with its four great chimneys still intact, even though much of its roof had long ago been eaten away. Behind it, Battersea Park appeared as a square of dense green bushes and trees that were making a last stand, fighting back the urban spread. In the far distance the Millennium Wheel perched like a fabulous silver coin, balancing effortlessly on its rim. And all around it London crouched; gas towers and apartment blocks, endless rows of shops and houses, roads, railways, and bridges stretching away on both sides, separated only by the bright silver crack in the landscape that was the River Thames.
    Alex saw all this with a clenched stomach, looking out through the open door of the aircraft. He’d had fifty minutes to think about what he had to do. Fifty minutes while the plane droned over Cornwall and Devon, then Somerset and the Salisbury Plains before reaching the North Downs and on toward Windsor and London.
    When he had got into the plane, he had intended to use the radio to call the police or anyone else who might be listening. But seeing Mr. Grin at the controls had changed all that. He remembered how fast the man had been when he encountered him outside the bedroom. He knew he was safe enough in the cargo area, with Mr. Grin strapped into the pilot