The Warriors of Brin-Hask by Cerberus Jones Page B

the gateway. Anyway, what if one of the holo-emitters failed?
You know how freaked out we were when we saw Miss Ardman turn into a berserko dinosaur
right in front of us.’
    Charlie nodded, and both of them shuddered.
    He shook himself, and said, ‘Talking of failed holo-emitters, I’ve got bad news and,
well, bad news.’
    ‘Go on.’
    ‘I still can’t figure out how to get mine to shift from menu mode to cloaking mode.
And also … I sort of can’t find it.’
    ‘What?!’
    ‘Yeah, I was looking for it this morning, and it wasn’t in my room, so then I thought
I’d left it in my desk at school –’
    ‘You took our holo-emitter to school? ’
    ‘But it wasn’t there either. So now I don’t know where it could be.’
    ‘And you’re just mentioning this now?’
    ‘I don’t think I lost it at school,’ Charlie said calmly. ‘It’s probably at the hotel.
Hey, watch it!’ he yelled as a car drove too close beside them. ‘Oh, it’s Mum!’
    They sped up, groaning as the mayonnaise jars banged against their legs, but eager
to get to Mary’s car.
    ‘What on Earth are you two carrying?’ Mary leaned out her window, amused.
    ‘Mayonnaise,’ said Amelia.
    ‘For Tom,’ said Charlie, heaving his bags into the boot of the car, and then gratefully
climbing into the back seat.
    ‘Tom?’ The amusement was gone, and Mary looked sharply at them both. ‘You’re running
Tom’s errands for him?’
    ‘We don’t mind,’ said Amelia.
    ‘I do,’ said Charlie. ‘Those bags weighed a ton.’
    Mary turned back to the steering
wheel, muttering to herself.
    It was a relief to sit back and let the car do all the work up the steepest part
of the hillside to the hotel, which stood right at the top of the headland, sheer
cliffs falling away on all sides.
    ‘Come on,’ said Mary. ‘Leave Tom’s stuff where it is, he can wait. Come inside and
I’ll get you an ice-block each.’
    That sounded perfect. Amelia followed Mary into the hotel with nothing more complicated
in her mind than whether she should go for raspberry or lemonade. But when Mary opened
the front door, there was Amelia’s mum – the phone in her hand and a shocked look
on her face.
    ‘It was them,’ said Mum. ‘The complaint went through, and they’ve decided to follow
it up in person. Immediately.’
    The complaint? It took Amelia a second or two to figure out what Mum meant, and then
she was just as stunned. Miss Ardman – their first alien guest. What a disaster that
had been. So bad that Miss Ardman had threatened to report them all. And now, apparently,
she had.
    James, Amelia’s older brother, slouched through the front door and stared at them
all suspiciously.
    ‘What’s going on?’
    Mum glanced awkwardly at Mary, and then said, ‘Oh … a bit of bother with the Health
Department. They’re sending an inspector tomorrow.’
    Amelia frowned, not following the story now. Miss Ardman had called the Health Department?
    ‘On a Saturday?’ said James.
    The sound of falling saucepans and breaking glass exploded from the kitchen at the
end of the hallway, along with the muffled sound of Dad cursing.
    ‘Oh, for pity’s sake,’ Mum moaned. ‘What now?’
    A huge brown rat, its eyes glinting red in the afternoon sun, burst through the kitchen
door and sped past them all.

As the rat scuttled over the toes of her shoes on its way through the lobby, Mum
screamed.
    Not in fear, not in disgust, not even in surprise. She screamed in frustration.
    ‘This can’t be happening! Rats in the kitchen? On top of everything else?’
    Dad ran out of the kitchen in pursuit of the rat, but stopped when he saw everyone
in the lobby.
    ‘What do you mean everything else ?’ he asked her.
    Amelia saw Mum lift her eyebrows warningly in James’s direction as she said carefully,
‘That customer complaint has gone through and they are sending someone to investigate
tomorrow.’
    ‘They?’ Dad yelped. ‘Tomorrow? But we’ve got rats in the