7~
The night in Chinatown was typically quiet. What few people there were walked to their various destinations in silent peace. Except Mr. Chen, who jangled the group of keys in his spindly, aged hands after locking the front door of what was left of his coffee shop.
With his back to the street, he almost hadn't notice the soft putt-putt of the white convertible VW as it closed in on his establishment and then stopped to park.
Chen pocketed his keys and turned to watch Marcie and her friends disembark from the bug, then lean against its side as they regarded him.
"What brings you here?" he asked the assembly.
Jason gave a worryingly look as replied, "Personally, I don't know. All I do know is that I gotta get home soon before my mom get worried, or mad, which in most cases is the same thing."
Chen gave a quizzical look in response to the comment. Marcie waved Jason's words away. "Don't mind him, Mr. Chen. We just came over to see if you were okay."
Chen brightened at that. "Oh, yes, my child. You and your friends didn't have to go through all of that trouble."
"That's alright, sir," Marcie calmly said. "Besides, those robots who attacked you could be creeping around here tonight."
The look of askance returned to Chen, sharply. "What? What are you going on about, my dear?"
"This," Marcie said simply, holding up the still blinking component Jason extracted from the downed robot in the laundromat. "We had our electronics guru, Jason, here, take a closer look at it."
"I cracked that unit open and I found out that what I took out was kinda like a airplane's little black box, only, y'know...white," Jason explained. "It's been sending out a distress signal ever since, broadcasting to some central location."
"True, it was risky carrying that little white box around in my car, but it worked out in the end. We were able to trace the signal to that location." Marcie quietly told him. She then pointed to the small radar dish that was poking out from the Clue Cruiser's front fender. Itself, pointing at the front of Chen's shop. More specifically, at the Asian.
Chen bristled and puffed up in sudden indignation. "You...you think I had something to do with those crazy robots? They attacked me! You were there. They even attacked you, remember?"
Daisy assumed a flippant, knowing pose. "Yeah, we do. I don't know how you could've known that, though. Especially since you said that one of the robots knocked you out, earlier today."
"And, guy, when I picked you up," Red chimed in. "I felt something like a TV remote control in your suit."
"Plus, the fact that when we came to you, you said that you didn't understand why they'd attacked you. That you ran a coffee shop, not a laundromat," Marcie added. "How did you know that they hit laundromats, as well as appliance stores? We never told you about that."
Chen began to stammer in his attempt for an answer, causing Marcie to hold up one of her hands in dismissal.
"Face it," she said. "The attack in your shop wasn't real. At least, the part about the robots attacking you wasn't. It was just to keep us from suspecting that you were controlling the robots."
Red folded his broad arms against his even broader chest. "You sent those can openers after us to make the attack on you look legit, and if they happened to take us out, that would just be another win for you, wouldn't it?"
Chen found himself enough composure to answer clearly and angrily. "You children obviously don't know what you're talking about. Any of you. I am just a hard working Internet cafe owner who was just assaulted today. If you don't like what I'm selling in my shop, you can always go to another internet cafe and tea house, but don't insult me with lies and false accusations!"
"Well, you're right about one thing, Mr. Chen," Marcie said coolly. "I don't like what you're selling. I think I'll take my chances and stick to my guns about what I just said. It's a shame, too, since I thought you had the best Chamomile I've ever tasted."
The angry lines on Chen's angular face suddenly shifted smoothly into an honest, smirking sneer. The full weight of evidence pulling his lies down.
"Why, thank you, my dear," he shrugged in mild defeat. "When I get rid of all of you, I'll make my Chamomile tea the house special in honor of you."
"Oh, and your Colombian Roast, too," Daisy jumped in happily, somehow forgetting the rising threat in the air and hoping that he might add that as a special, as well.
"Hey, don't forget your won-ton soup!" Jason added enthusiastically.
"Your cappuccino was alright," Red muttered non-commitally before getting cut off by annoyed Mr. Chen.
"Enough!" he yelled at them. Then he reached into his suit.
Marcie and her friends' hearts suddenly jumped in their chest and they tensed as they saw the action. A weapon!?
Red fearfully raised his hands, saying nervously, "Okay, what if I said that it was better than alright?"
When they saw that his hand pulled out a small, white box and then press a button on its face, the group let out a collective, grateful sigh.
Four robots floated from behind the rear of the shop, like conical ghosts, and stopped behind him in a guarding position.
One of the machines closest to Chen, silently raised a hand holding a large, glass disk to him to appraise.
He chuckled aloud as he carefully hefted it in both hands and looked admiringly at its face and rear.
"Ah, finally, it's here, at last," he whispered in private triumph. "In Crystal Cove, of all places."
Marcie was about to ask a question, when a faint whine from above made Marcie turn her attention, expectantly, to the night sky.
"What is it, Marcie?" Daisy asked her. "It's just a plane, that's all."
"Daisy," Marcie muttered, causing the rest of the gang to bring their gaze upwards, as well. "That's no plane."
From a moonlit patch of clouds, something shinning in that same ethereal light, descended. As it lowered itself closer and closer into the watchers' range of vision, they could make out its shape and some details, even in the dark of night.
It looked to be a white airship, but the gasbag had a strange form. It was far too angular, too conical, and it certainly wasn't a zeppelin, for it looked too short. And even though they could see the glowing windows from its gondola, the long, dark aerodynamic fins that adorned its length, as well as the large, strange-looking pylon that extended from its flattened rear, gave the whole craft the anachronistic look of some spacecraft fashioned from aesthetics of the 1960's.
It kept lowering until it came so close to the tall, curved roof of the coffee shop that Marcie and the gang thought it was going to crash.
Although it was a testament to the pilot's skill that destruction was averted, the gang were mentally preparing to jump back into the Cruiser and high-tail it to a safer distance, when it finally stopped mere feet above Chen's shop.
From that distance, the gang could make out more of its surface detail, and from that, they could see that the airship's entirety was completely metallic, with a large hatch covering sitting well behind the gondola. And because it glided down in a near-vertical descent without any kind of thrust to be felt, it also seemed to be, impossibly, anti-gravitic.
Only Chen seemed nonplussed by its appearance. In fact, he seemed almost giddy about it.
"Ah, good work calling them, my PERILbots," he gloated. "It seems that I'm going to deliver the formula in style."
"What the heck is that?" Red asked, his eyes still glued to the unfamiliar sight before him.
"I know what it is," Marcie said with deadpan depression. "It's a SpaceBlimp, courtesy of PERIL."
Either in reply to her answer or due to simple satisfaction over the night's events, Chen gave a triumphant cackle, as the wide, metal hatch cover slid open and a huge, articulated hose snaked out of the hatch's darkness.
First, it sucked up the still laughing Chen and the robots, and then it quickly vacuumed the screaming kids just as they were beginning to scatter from the front of the cafe.
Then the umbilical retracted back into the maw of the hatch. The hatch slid closed, and then the SpaceBlimp began to rise quietly back into the night sky.
The interior of the gondola was, arguably, the busiest part of the vessel, with its helmsman, comms officer, radar man, and other green and black uniformed bridge officers focused on ship work, as the town's horizon, seen from the panoramic windows, gradually began to sink.
An armored door that led into the bridge opened, and Chen proudly led the procession of Marcie and her friends, guarded by an escort of the four PERILbots, inside.
A man in a tailored green and black suit, sitting on large chair that sat on a dais in the center of the room, swiveled it around to take the group in.
Chen left the captives and walked over to the man, who asked him, "Was the mission successful, Agent 2-11? We received the pick-up signal from one of our PERILbots moments ago."
"Look for yourself, Commander, "Chen said boldly, as he held up the washing machine window for the man to see. The commander had to lean forward and peer into its face to examine it, but when he saw the etchings on its surface, he straighten up in his chair and smiled broadly.
Then he gave a casual look at his prisoners. "And who are they?"
"Troublemakers," Chen sneered. "Nothing to worry about, but they know too much about us to let go."
Jason's rising fear was, for the moment, overridden by his sudden curiosity, and so he asked Marcie, who seemed to know more about who these people were than any of them, who they were.
"They're PERIL," answered Marcie in a strange, sneering voice. "The guys I told you about when I ran into Charlie Chan in Macau."
She then directed a sneering question to Chen. "Why are you here? Did you find out that Charlie Chan's daughter, Suzie, was here in Crystal Cove and wanted to kidnap her again?"
"Not at all, Miss Fleach," Chen answered, not noticing the change in her voice as he enjoyed his victory. "In fact, we weren't even aware that they were here in town, so focused were we our great mission. But thanks for telling us. I'm sure Interpol would thank you, as well."
Any look of confidence in knowing what was going on, slipped off Marcie's face and was replaced in sudden confusion.
"Interpol?" she asked incredulously. "Charlie Chan was an Interpol agent?"
"Of course," Chen explained. "Why else would he be keeping tabs on us in Macau? Why else were we forcing him to drop his investigation of us by kidnapping his children? He knew about our secret laboratory there."
He then walked up to peer, suspiciously, into Marcie's face. "We knew that he had help from someone, as well, a girl. But when we looked all over Macau, we couldn't find her. I suppose that was you, Miss Fleach?"
"Maybe," she growled from the side of her mouth. "I certainly didn't see you as someone who worked for PERIL. Why?"
Chen's eyes bore into hers. "Why? Because they offered me something that I could never get as the operator of some boring, old coffee shop. Power and prestige. They made me a sleeper agent here in Crystal Cove years ago. And an Internet cafe was the perfect cover for me to monitor you young idiots as you wirelessly networked and cruise the 'net via the radio frequency receivers built in to my shop's counter. I was activated when I got the call to look for the formula."
Marcie couldn't help but perk up at that. "Formula? What formula?"
"Nothing that you should concern yourself with," Chen dismissed. "I heard you talking about the thefts in my shop earlier, and knew that you were a threat to my operation. That's why I sent the robots after you, when you came back to the cafe. If they didn't finish you, then, at least, they would scare you from pursuing the matter further."
The SpaceBlimp's commander gave a smile and a shrug as he regarded Chen. "I wouldn't worry, Chen, it's not like she or her friends will be in a position to tell any one over the Pacific Ocean of what they've heard."
He gave a self-satisfied gaze to the youngsters. "PERIL is going to financially capitalize on the growing helium shortage that countries like Australia and America is suffering from, by creating a synthetic form of the gas that we will sell to them and other countries through our front companies."
Daisy, Red and Jason gave expressions that ranged from mild confusion, blank incomprehension, and the dawning of worried understanding.
Except Marcie. Her expression was one of shocked anger.
'"Great minds think alike" be damned,' she thought.
"That was my idea!" she snarled aloud in the gondola. So loud, in fact, that some of the distracted bridge officers turned their heads momentarily to the source of the exclamation behind them.
"Of course it was," the commander said, waving her rage away with lazy hand before continuing his tale. "Anyway, we were close to coming up with a working formula to test when, thanks to Charlie Chan and Interpol, they found the laboratory where the formula was being worked on."
"All of that had something to do with washing machines?" Red asked incredulously.
"Strangely enough, yes," the commander said. "According to our reports, one of our scientists, who was working on the formula, escaped the raid and hid in a appliance factory. He reported his location to us and then told us what he did next. Fearing that Interpol would catch him, he took a glass cutter that he found in the loading area of the factory, found a washing machine that was on its way to being shipped out of China, and etched what little of the formula he knew into its window."
"Heavy," Jason mutter in admiration.
"Yes," agreed the commander. "He managed to tell us the model of the washing machine, before Interpol tracked him down. Alas, he killed himself to keep the secret. We sent agents to the factory after Interpol left and managed to track the shipment to California, but we couldn't narrow it to a specific location. So we've been searching every city and town in the state. Crystal Cove was the next place to search."
"And I've finally found it!" Chen crowed at them. "When I present it to our leader, The Monarch, he'll reward me most generously. Maybe he'll even give me command of my own SpaceBlimp. Then I'll join the others as we fight to crush Australia's zeppelin fleet. Those fools! They should have never stuck their noses into our business when they protected that American cargo transport from our ambush."
Political understanding dawned on Daisy's face. "No wonder the news talks about you guys and the Aussies."
"Yes," the commander said to her. "And how ironic it would be to have them buy our brand of helium to keep afloat, never knowing that their money is helping to keep us afloat."
The commander dipped one of his hands down to a control panel set in the front of the arm of his command chair and depressed a small, white button.
From a far wall slid open several panels that revealed manacled alcoves, and it didn't take the gang long to figure out who they were for.
"Now, no more questions," Chen barked at them. "You are all now prisoners of PERIL."
The commander turned to the helmsman. "Set a course for our secret base in the Pacific," he ordered. "Who knows? Maybe these fools might make good PERIL agents, if we find them useful.
Marcie could see the starry heavens begin to slowly rotate away as she growled to Chen, "I guess you need to be a fool to join PERIL."
"Humph," he scoffed in reply. "We just want your smarts, not your smart mouth."
Chen glanced over to one of the PERILbots who accompanied him in the aircraft, hovering near the helmsman's avionics board.
"You! Take off her jacket," he commanded it. "She has chemicals hidden in there. I saw her use them to help disable one of your lot, earlier."
The robot guard floated over and took Marcie back to the flight board, put its hands under her arms and lifted them open. Since she never buttoned her jacket, it opened up from her raised arms.
It then began to rummage through its inner pockets, taking out various capsules, small tools, a magnifying glass, and two small vials of acid, putting them all on an unoccupied area of the slightly sloping the avionics board, for the sake of its convenience.
"And the rest of you robots," Chen said to the other floating automata. "Get ready to put the prisoners into the holding cells."
While the rest of the gang was either focused on Marcie's confiscated items on the control board or their rising worry as the other PERILbots approached them, Marcie's closed mouth starts to move about.
With a soft crunch, Marcie bit down and spat out a leaking Insta-Ice capsule at the flight board. The liquid began to congeal and freeze across its surface almost immediately.
The helmsman was the first to notice the ice growing and spreading out, knocking over her other capsules and, importantly, the acid vials.
Both glass tubes fell on each other and shattered, releasing their cargo, which quickly began eating a bubbling hole through the metal floor, destroying vital wiring and cables as they flowed down.
The airship suddenly bucked and tilted upward, and a violently, shuddering list was suddenly felt throughout the airship.
So violent was the movement, that when the floor shifted out from underneath Chen's feet, he, to his horror, let the washing machine window slip from his hand, which then bounced against the back of the helmsman's helmet.
With a deflected spin, the window finally fell against the steel floor and broke, but because it was so thick, it cracked apart in only three large pieces and a few distant shards.
Although the PERILbots easily righted themselves in mid-air, most of the officers and all of the gang, with the exception of the helmsman, who was hanging on desperately by the control yoke, and Chen, who managed to be quick enough to hang on to one of the arms of the fallen commander's chair, stumbled and rolled roughly to one side of the control cabin and stopped harshly, as a sore pile, against one of its wide windows.
Clearly to everyone on board that the SpaceBlimp, it was not as ship-shape as it once was.