The Hollywood Mission by Deborah Abela Read Free Book Online

complexion and fell for it.
    â€˜No, Miss.’
    â€˜Go to sick bay and lie down for a while.’
    A kid called Grace with wild orange hair, fluoro braces and an annoying habit of skipping everywhere she went, skipped alongside Toby to sick bay. He lay on the bed and watched Grace skip her way back out the door. When she’d gone, he went to the lockers and easily picked Max’s lock. He opened her bag and saw the communicationdevice Max had been speaking into. Up close, it looked like a mini computer.
    â€˜Welcome to your new owner.’ Toby grinned, but when he pressed the same keys Max had, nothing happened. He checked for a power switch but gave up when he saw something else: Max’s notebook.
    â€˜Now I’ll find out what you’ve been up to.’
    Toby put the communication device back in Max’s bag and flicked through the pages of her book. They were crammed with stories of rescues from erupting volcanoes, escapes from menacing thugs, descriptions of flying backpacks called PFDs and flying through the sky at hyper-speeds in an invisible jet.
    â€˜This stuff can’t be real,’ he muttered, but there was something about the way the stories were written that made him think they were true. He then read about her trip to Mindawarra to test the new Time and Space Machine. His face swelled into a bulging smile as if he’d been stung by an ingenious idea. ‘This machine sounds too good to waste on Max.’
    He put the notebook back in her bag and reached for the leather pouch. ‘Now what do we have here?’ He undid the string that held it closed and pulled out a purple box-shaped device. It had asensor at the top, an LCD screen above a computer-like keypad and three keys labelled scan , activate and transport . There was a rod at the side and a green light labelled power .
    â€˜This must be the Time and Space Machine,’ he whispered excitedly. ‘It’s a little daggy looking but if it’s going to fly me round the world I guess I can live with that.’
    With his brilliant idea whirring inside his head, Toby carefully placed the machine into his own bag and, finding Max’s address book, wrote down where her father lived. Then he heard footsteps at the other end of the corridor. He had to be quick. He searched through his bag until he found a small block of timber from his woodwork class. The footsteps came closer. He slipped the wood into the pouch, tied it up and replaced it in Max’s bag just in time to slip around a corner and watch Principal Peasers hum past in a haze of hippie love.
    A smug smile appeared on Toby’s lips as he watched her walk away. He’d be good at this spy work, and deep in his heart knew that Max would be overjoyed that he’d decided to join her. He crept back to sick bay with a warm feeling circling in his stomach, knowing life was about to get very, very exciting.

They were the best father–daughter team in Spyforce since Alex Crane and her dad. They’d beaten baddies in Botswana, fought criminals in the Pacific and captured kidnappers in Kalimantan. They were tough, smart and always knew what the other was thinking without having to say it. Max sat in the passenger side of the desert buggy with a map fluttering on her lap.
    â€˜The hotel should be …’
    â€˜â€¦ coming up on our right,’ her dad answered above the noise of the engine.
    Max smiled. ‘Yeah.’
    They were in the Sahara Desert, in the sandswept and majestic country of Algeria. The temperature had reached 48 degrees Celsius and the hot dry wind was gluing itself to their skin in multiple layers.
    A faint dot of green appeared in the distance and as they approached they knew they’d found it: the oasis they were searching for. Surrounded by imposing mountains of sand and sweeping stretches of dry golden plains was a lush eruption of rich green trees, shrubs and palms.
    Cool air poured over them as they