SHADOW IN THE SEA Jack woke in the morning and saw that his television and other stuff were gone, was alarmed for a moment, then he realized that he was not in his bedroom but in Optimus's cab, where had gone to sleep while playing chess with him on his dashboard computer screen. "I dreamed about Smith & Malton's all night! Cor! what a place!" he thought. "Wakey wakey! Rise and shine! Time to let me go to haul a steel mill roll from Dudley to Swansea. You filling my cab with Z's all night.", said Optimus. Two days later, some of Smith & Malton's men and Wheeljack stood on parade while Captain Hurlock drove away in his harbour's artic cab with a flatbed trailer carrying a sheeted-down long bulky cylindrical load with rounded-tapering ends. Mr.Malton was there, very impressive with his thick overalls and helmet, and canvas tool pouch on his chest, and blowtorch with large aqualung sized cylinders worn on his back with gas lines arching over his shoulders and down and up to a blowtorch head in a holster on his chest. "That's another off the production line. This model is quite popular. Thankyou for your interest. Bye." he said to Captain Hurlock over his CB walkietelkie. "Odd. He also wanted certain design features that I can't see much use for if any." Mr.Malton thought, "Oh well, he pays for them, I make them. Still, something a bit peculiar's trying to surface in the back of my mind about them.". "If that Mr.Wernicke's got it right, this thing should have no fake memories of `Cybertron' etc, to cause preconceived unwanted sympathies and dislikes and phobias that clash with my own plans for its personality - it's always worked before with these things." Captain Hurlock thought as he passed the Bristol turnoff. He reached Crabhaven late at night at nearly high tide and backed down the left boat slip into the sea. His load floated off from under the loadsheet. "That's it. You're in your own world now. Come back to the quay and let me get into your control compartment." he said to it over his radio. [168] In the morning Wernicke's phone rang, and Optimus answered it. Mr.Malton replied, wanting Wheeljack. Optimus called him to the phone. "I may as well tell you that Captain Hurlock rang me to tell me that he got his load home safely.", said Mr.Malton. "I'm all right. Our Shockwave [who as made real at Wernicke's transforms into a mobile refuse destructor, not a ray gun] won't be pleased. He'd just cleaned that waste ground near you when the funfair came onto it last night as I was passing. Just like he'd been told wouldn't happen!" said Wheeljack. Mr.Malton said "What!?" angrily and rang off. In Smith & Malton's building 4, Mr.Malton over the public address system suddenly called for attention and said "All personnel assemble at no.2 gate, except as needed for safety!". They obeyed, some reflecting that at other places it was the union, not the management, that called the men out; "but at least we're paid for these security callouts.". The men pulled their helmet visors down and collected transparent shields and pickaxe handles, expecting anything from a trespasser on the back-land to a large armed incursion after valuables. (The previous call had been to a teenage gang fight on the back-land; it ended with both gangs in no condition to make trouble on the streets for a while, and a dumper-load of gang insignia and weapons and bicycles for Smith & Maltons's works destructor recycler to consume tracelessly.) At no.2 gate. Mr.Malton addressed his men: "Last month I told you that I and others had managed to pressure the corporation into cancelling the annual funfair on the Inkerman Street site. I regret to inform you that this promise has been broken. First thing I knew was when the showmen came and set up as usual last night. Nothing gets done without action - we march! Picket the site!". There was a chorus of complaints in the ranks:- "Yaah! My son 'ad 'is bike pinched there last year. tools went in the night from my garden shed.". "9am till 11pm, noise, litter, baby kept awake, too many dishonest slot machines like they stopped at Worcester that time! Someone speak with forked tongue!". "Gang fights, drunks, pickpockets - we don't want the funfair!". "Pity that my daughter's pretty little kids' story about three good little dolls enjoying all the fun of the fair, didn't tell about the noise and the mess and the dishonesty and the rowdiness! Children should learn the truth from the start!". They marched to the fair at a steady hard rhythmical jogtrot of heavy boots on hard road, and without stopping first arranged themselves in rank across the entrance. They had such things as "Fair closed" and "Fair cancelled" and "No entry" stickytaped to their shields. Some of the showmen thought that they were official, and complained "'Ere, what's 'appenin'? They said we could come on 'ere.". But the rank stood firm and closed up. The rest of the squad men went through the fair. One broke into a hoopla stand and confronted its owner, who said "`Smith & Maltons' on your 'elmets: you ain't police, you're some bunch of workmen! We were told we could come on 'ere! Oi, get out of my stall - ooff!" as a pickaxe handle found his solar plexus. The squad man pushed him aside and soon found that hardly any of the rings could fit at all over any of the stands, except those with the very cheapest prizes on, and he said so. Meanwhile from the next stand came the sound of a similar scuffle and a voice saying "That's not wood, that's formica! No wonder the darts won't stick in over most of the board!". [169] A woman led past a child, who complained "Mummy, I want to go to the fair - why won't the men let us in?". "Because it's a bad place full of thieves. Keep your money for later." she said, and then asked one of the pickets: "Can I join your demonstration? We also were told that there'd be no fair.". A showman approached one of the squad men and, trying to put on an important air, said: "I'm in charge here. I'm the local rep of the showmen's guild. We've been allowed to hold a fair here since Henry the 7th - royal charter - off or I call the police ...". The squad man knew that this was random lying, but, pretending to believe it, replied: "Meaning a proper fair, where farmers sell produce and animals - if you are what you claim to be, at all!". "Ha ha funny. I've a living to earn.". "Try earning an honest living! One of you tried to take my son's bicycle as he was riding past, last year.". "You lot wouldn't be so brave without your fancy riotsquad gear, you bunch of nimbies!". "Don't you call me a namby-pamby! couldn't shift steel pipe and rod all day in Goods Incoming!". "No!, you ignorant stevedore. It's people who want something but `Not In My BackYard'!". "I don't want the funfair at all! Theft follows you lot about like chicken feathers after a fox. You employ ruffians, you attract ruffians, you are ruffians. They provide rubbish skips, but you leave your mess anywhere.". "Always the same accusations!". "Only 3 rides, but 29 fruit machines, 11 stalls selling rubbish, 10 dishonest games. Off with you and stop cheating our children!". A policeman who had arrived, was content to watch, for he also had had enough of the funfair. "Washing getting pinched off lines." said one of two women who had joined the demonstration. "I'm in the Women's Institute. We also campaigned for the fair to be stopped, and I thought they'd agr--" the other woman started, but stopped as a squad man shouted "Behind our line now!, miss." and pushed the two women back out of the line with the side of his pickaxe handle, as gently as he could in a hurry. She felt annoyed, but the command "Prepare to receive enemy charge!" soon told her that she was safer out of the front line, as six showmen brandishing lengths of wood or iron ran at the picket in an untidy attempt at a 1-2-3 wedge formation. The leader of the wedge, one Higgins, reached the picket line just as a policeman pushing in from behind it said "To avoid serious disturbances, I am ordering all parties here to pack up and move on, now!". "But we've only just unpacked our stuff." Higgins moaned. "Move on! With or without your junk!" the policeman ordered. "The nimbies win again. Time to move on already" said Higgins, and turned round to find that his five followers were some way away. [170] "Chickens!" he angrily accused them, "Try to charge-in-wedge with you jailbait! You stopped as you got near them! We better pack up and move on, without as well as with that cop running to a magistrate for an order.". "Only 3 scruffy rides, but 29 illegal addictive fruit machines! They told us the fair was stopped!" a woman accused. By now more policemen had arrived; one of them recognized two of the showmen and told the pickets to hold the showmen there. Prowl drove up and transformed, startling many people. The showmen finally realized that further resistance was of no use. "About time something was done about that lot!" said the woman. The policemen and Mr.Malton's men quickly herded the showmen together against the high brick wall at the back of the site, and handcuffed them all. "I've been wanting to do this for a long time." said a police sergeant, "Now to get this lot photographed and fingerprinted, and correlated with petty crime reports in all the places where they've been recently. Now also to contact the traffic department to give their vehicles the full treatment, same as those tinkers last month.". "Two of them are the same two gipsyish characters that we caught climbing wire near my non-ferrous store, and said they were after rare plants." said Mr.Malton. Every year the teachers at the school that I teach at, have to warn the children about this place." said Prowl, who was in robot form standing high above the stalls and the vehicles. The law's search of the showmen's vehicles and equipment was thorough. "Two outstanding summonses on you, and jumping bail. Get in.". "How long's that rear light been like this? And you're four months out of tax.". "Untaxed fuel in a road vehicle." said someone examining a lorry with `Gordio's Gallopers' painted on its side. "Licence for that television?". "... serial number. This generator was stolen from a farm. Stealing or receiving.". "Brittle stuff making sharp points and edges. This lot goes to the council's toy safety department.". "There's also a council by-law controlling gambling machines.". The law ran its course. The showmen's vehicles and stalls were taken to a pound. Mr.Malton led his men back to his works. Next year there was no funfair in that town. [171] Mr.Malton put his welding gear on again and restarted work, thinking: "After that interruption, back to work! After all this publicity, some council officials won't casually `forget' promises just to get a bit of site usage fee.". He finished that job, then decided to rest for a while, since there was no point getting so tired that he started making mistakes. It was now late evening. He sat on an old mattress in a corner, leaning against a wall, still with his blowtorch cylinders on his back, and relaxed. "Captain Hurlock rang to say that his sub's working all right." he thought tiredly, "I've got two more of that sort of sub nearly ready, both with that same special set of extras as he wanted. Although I still can't see much use for them in its normal use. And that TV news item `Froggy would a-wooing go' keeps surfacing in my mind, for some reason. What does what in my subconscious want? People think of ducks as funny creatures, and they have inspired dozens of cartoon characters; then that program calls them destructive monsters.". In his frogman's kit he swam on over the flat empty seabed. In all the long time underwater that his oversized two-cylinder aqualung gave him, he had seen no life except occasional scared fish. "The third time I may as well have left my lobsterhook at home. Nothing much here." he thought. "Nor here." he thought a bit later, "That TV programme was right. The common domestic duck an efficient clearer-out of pond life, even fully-grown frogs and toads. Nothing but empty sand and mud.". He saw a shadow and looked up, to see a large duck reaching down at a fish. "One of the culprits, still trying to dredge something up." he thought. The duck caught and swallowed the fish while another fish got away. The duck reached down again with its long neck and grab-sized beak. Somehow it seemed bigger than before - far bigger. He swam away desperately along the seabed at his maximum unaided speed of 2 knots, but not long, for a high underwater cliff stopped him. [172] No sign of any holes in it. "Oh no! What biologists call `the eternal truth' -" he realized, "I've eaten much which came from the sea, so eventually - an interesting point to philosophize about - by those not directly involved!". Desperately he curled up against the base of the cliff. The duck, now as big as a small dredger, put its head and flexible neck under, seized him by one arm, hoisted him out of the water, and, with the easy skill of a routine job done many times before, pointed its head upwards as it turned him and swallowed him headfirst, aqualung and all. Its double-hinged jaws and throat easily distended enough for his greatest width across his chest, cylinders, arms, and inflated lifejacket. His trailing legs and rubber fins vanished inside its closing flat beak. A bulge went down its throat and disappeared into its body with an efficient-looking finality as it stowed the frogman away for processing. It swam on and continued dredging for anything else that it could find. He found himself in a tight warm slippery place among dredgings and fish, too tightly constricted to reach his left shin to get his knife. He squirmed in vain as genetically engineered extra stomach enzymes started to dissolve the rubber and nylon parts of his diving gear - including his breathing tubes, cutting off his air. He felt himself head-up as the duck dived again. "Here it ends," he thought, "like when the numerous frog population of the Marple Lakes in Cheshire was tracelessly disposed of in three years by about twenty domestic ducks which someone let use the water. Except for a bit behind a dam which the ducks didn't find.". His skin was now unprotected, since his rubber diving suit was now dissolved away except for its cloth lining, which felt somewhat like an overall. His aqualung felt different. The constriction around him changed. He wondered what in Cousteau's name was happening now - and he opened his eyes and stretched and stood up. He was in his factory, and it was 7.14 am. He felt uncomfortable after sleeping all night in his overalls and welding gear. "No wonder I had an odd dream." he thought, "First time since I was a small boy that I've dreamed of being chased by a monster! I've never actually scubadived in my life! Agh, dreams! If that was an odd corner of my brain suspecting something and trying to tell me about it, why can't it tell me properly in plain language? Perhaps it was nothing.". He yawned and got himself some breakfast and went to start to help to mend the CEGB's centrifugal pump. [173] The damage to the pump was bent and broken blades, which had to be built up with weld or replaced. He finished the job and telephoned: "Mr.Allithwaite? Mr.Malton here. We've mended your centrifugal pump again, but some time the blades won't take any more welding. Your men must stop running without an intake filter, expecting your pump to keep chewing up old prams and driftwood as if it was a heavy-duty grinder like in the dredgersubs I make.". "I try to," said Mr.Allithwaite, "but the filters keep choking, messy job clearing them, if I'm away they're tempted to run without a filter. When can I collect it?". "Next Monday. Not earlier - I've got a Ministry of Defence order being collected." said Mr.Malton. He returned to helping to assemble a dredgersub's grab-arm. "Dddggg." he grunted as he lifted a hydraulic ram, "These are heavy. One more size 3 dredgersub grab on its way. I wonder who'll end up having it?". To fit some internal parts, he crawled into the grab's hollow inside through the hole in its rear that the intake-conveyor cover would later connect to. As he fitted the rack plates which push the grab's contents down the intake, he found himself thinking "I wouldn't like to get near one of if I ever scubadived - grrr, that funny feeling trying to surface in an odd corner of my braincase - I wish it'd come out and tell me properly what it wants! Something about something that was in the news recently - oh, it's gone again. Lets get on with the work.". He finished that job. Someone told him that the second of the M.O.D.'s two dredgersubs was ready for the last stage. He collected from a storeroom a strong metal box about 2 feet cube with many wires emerging from it. Holding it, he felt the usual feeling of life in his hands, for it was the sub's brain. He crawled into the sub's innards with it and fitted it, then telephoned Wernicke's for Wheeljack or someone to come and do his bit and program its life-instincts and personality into it. He remembered how he had held Captain Hurlock's sub's brain and personality in his arms before, and the narrow escape that some of its component chips had had from being burnt for the fuel value of their wrappings by a bunch of tramps who had pilfered round goods-incoming when someone with more charity than sense had unauthorizedly let them doss in an unused storeroom. "That callout squad from Toolmakers Department didn't spare their pickaxe handles time." he reflected, "Never mind all that pitiful ink spilt by people whose own stuff was safe, trying to claim that a few scruffy little immediate wants matter more than the future, being generous with everybody's stuff than their own, and it's only the monkey instinct to prove dominance by putting someone else to loss that's at the bottom of it.". He crawled out from DS2's cramped insides, stretched, and put his blowtorch cylinders on, reflecting that it was in the end better to keep stuff with him than to leave it and risk it being stolen or have to keep going back for it. Its cylinder pressure gauges showed over his shoulders, and he could read them in a piece of shiny steel plate used as a mirror - safer than long pressure gauge tubes to catch on things. Its gas tubes arched over his shoulders; the torch head was in a holster on his chest. He telephoned: "Captain Buckley (RN)? The two G3 subs are ready for collection tomorrow at 10am as planned. I fitted the special equipment that you ordered, and the sealed components that you sent.". "You say you're Mr.Malton. I was told that a Mr. - Blowtorch? - was organizing it." Captain Buckley replied. Mr.Malton laughed briefly and explained: "Mr.Malton here of Smith & Malton's - the men here often call me `Captain Blowtorch' because I spend much of my time welding and metalworking with one - the subs'll be ready as promised.". [174] In the night two dark blue naval low-loader artics arrived and backed into the works. Next morning Smith & Malton's overhead cranes lifted the two G3 grab dredgersubs and loaded them onto the artics. Captain Buckley was there in person, in a naval uniform with much gold braid, and had mixed opinions about the ceremonial suitability of Mr.Malton's thick overalls and helmet and chest pouch and backpack blowtorch instead of a business suit. "At least he looks like work and not like some smooth financial city type." he thought. He and Mr.Malton discussed a few final things while the loads were being sheeted over. "I got your cheque." said Mr.Malton, "Two type G3 dredgersubs as requested. Where will you be using them?, so I know where to go if they need attention.". "If they need attention, we'll bring them to Portsmouth Dockyard and call for you." Captain Buckley replied, "Oh, your computer consultant Mr.Wheeljack, you said you'd send a photograph of him, but your office sent a photo of a car instead!, a white Lancia sports car, to be exact, like that one over there. Just so that I know him if I have to contact him.". "Wheeljack, show your other half." said Mr.Malton into his walkietalkie. The driverless car's bonnet lengthened and split into legs; its body half-collapsed; parts of its sides became arms; a head unfolded from its rear end; and it stood, about 20 feet high. Captain Buckley in astonishment forgot his naval ceremonial manner and gaped vacantly, then said startledly: "What in %^%^&'s name!? I've seen a lot of odd contraptions in our and other people's navies - it's some sort of robot - !! Like my son's got in his toy box, but the real thing like in his videocartoons!". "No. I'm a Transformer. I am Wheeljack." it said. "About the same." said Captain Buckley, a bit scaredly. "If there are any queries with those subs' onboard computers, contact James Wernicke. I live at his factory." said Wheeljack. "Well!" said Buckley, "I going to offer you a dinner out and a ticket to an opera - but your size and electromechanical -". "And I'd fill the place with exhaust. It's good of you, though." said Wheeljack. A rank of Smith & Maltons men were standing to attention in rank in welding gear. "A very fine turnout you've got here." said Captain Buckley, thinking that it was an unusual place to find a guard of honour needing inspecting, and in unusual kit - for example, how could they "slope arms" or "present arms" a blowtorch head? [175] The two artics with their bulky cylindrical sheeted loads left Smith and Malton's factory entrance and set off south. Captain Buckley left in one of them; Mr. Malton, at the gate to see them off, said to the Autobot engineer Wheeljack: "Well, Wheeljack, that's two more of them off, they're quite popular. You and Optimus have helped quite a lot with design features. Where they're in operation already, they're bringing in so much metals from old wrecks and old tipped rubbish that industry'll soon wonder how they managed before, having to import so much, and the mines getting shorter.". Wheeljack replied: "They extract any metal in dredged silt, and turn any organic matter into fuel - often one of them can easily keep a small inshore fishing port in fuel!, like at Captain Hurlock's place.". "Can you give one of my men a lift to the post office with some urgent parcels?", asked Mr. Malton. Wheeljack agreed. A Mr. Robinson came out of a building with some parcels and got into Wheeljack, feeling rather nervous, for it was his first ride in a car that literally had a mind of its own, in a brain which was electronic but able to think like a human's. Such things take getting used to. "There's now eleven of us." said Wheeljack as he set off, "We've had a new one for a week.". Mr. Robinson said: "Unlike some firms, Smith and Malton's sends post promptly, never mind idly sticking it in internal post too late on Friday for it to get to the post room before Monday, who in their turn don't get it to the GPO in time for sending on till Tuesday!, like some firms do, and then with a second class stamp on so it takes several days in the post even within Britain.". "Same as book publishers." Wheeljack replied, "If someone orders a book, it takes about 3 weeks to come from within Britain, and about 3 months to come from abroad! Anyone'd think they still deliver by packhorse and rowing boat. Once Optimus needed a book urgently, he waited a month and still no answer to enquiries, so he sent Laserbeak to Elsevier's [a publisher] in Amsterdam with the money in his cargo compartment; they brrrm'ed [= complained] loudly about disrupted procedure, but after some arguing handed over the book. Why can't they send books by return of post always?". As they arrived at the post office, a small boy across the road said to his mother: "Look, Mummy! It's Wheeljack! I told you there's a real one of him!". Mr.Robinson took the parcels into the post office and went home by bus. Wheeljack went back to James Wernicke's computer factory where the real Transformers lived, after James had made a real Optimus as a copy of the fictional Optimus. As he arrived, he saw James at the front door, wearing his riotsquad gear as usual (a habit which he had developed after a few scrapes with intruders), in a heated argument with a man and a woman. [176] The man wore a bowler hat. As he got closer, he recognised the woman as Mrs.Elizabeth Brown who Prowl had confronted once. The man was saying: "I'm Mr.Elliott. Since your Mr.Prowell's [= Prowl's] nosying into pupils' private lives instead of sticking to teaching, caused a chain reaction which led to me losing Mrs. Elizabeth Brown's plentiful able and willing help (she was an absolute tower of strength), I am wondering if you would care to contribute instead!?, so that we can afford the scenery and costumes to get our production of `Macbeth' on in time?!". "You best talk to ." said James, who had much experience in brushing off unwanted unofficial callers. Mrs.Brown angrily adapting said: "Weary se'ennights [= weeks] nine times nine, may and your tin cans [= robots] wither peak and pine [= be ill and unhappy]! My Keith [= her husband] gets caught, and at once sacked even if he does get let out, and he owed money and still does, which takes all my dental receptionist job pay, and I've got to go cleaning in the evenings to make it up!". Prowl arrived; James pointed him out to Mr.Elliott, who, expecting a man, complained "That's his . I want .". "That car him, it's alive, a robot. I should know!" said Mrs. Brown, who remembered all too well her unexpected ride in him. "What!?" said Mr.Elliott, who had not heard of such things before except in fiction. "There's no getting away from `Macbeth', it seems!" said Prowl, "Not guilty!, why I had to interfere to help her son Jack and then tell the welfare. Then when Keith was in crime, Sideswipe and Laserbeak and Jazz interfere, to protect honest people? Much of your stage money from Mrs.Brown was `embezzled' from her home budget and from her son Jack's upbringing!". Mr.Elliott, anger overcoming surprise at being addressed by a talking driverless car, replied: "Can't people spend money for things outside the house?!, you alien wirebrain copied from children's stories! I've put so into this play, and now it's kicked into touch because I can't afford adequate scenery!". "I am called Prowl." said Prowl, correcting the wrong form of his name which Mr. Elliott had used. In the meantime two other men arrived; one of them said: "Why shouldn't she be asked to keep money for house matters first? Back at school we acted those plays scenery, only a few props - like Shakespeare himself did when touring with his travelling actors who he wrote plays for. Enough of women using money and time on everything else when the household needs it!". The other of them said: "We're Richard and Stephen Simmons, neighbours of the Browns. You got Keith who often drank with us, into trouble; you trade with that place Smith and Malton's whose $#%^&'s *&^%$#'ed us when we went over their fence to see what they're up to; Prowl stirs up mud asking Keith's son nosy questions instead of sticking to school teaching - do something in compensation, and give us and our scuba gear a lift to Crabhaven so we can look at certain things, and perhaps find what that Hurlock's up to.". "Stir up mud?" said Prowl heatedly to the Simmonses, "If parents can't treat their children decently, teachers including me have a right to interfere and bring matters to the attention of the authorities! When welfare people called at the Browns' door, you two kept ordering them off and telling them that Jack Brown was all right when you knew perfectly well that he wasn't. That Keith Brown indeed drank with you - spending too much money and time in the pub instead of on the household. An unpleasant character, who got entangled in crime and couldn't get out of it. Now you two want our help!". James added: "I can tell if children are telling the truth. Jack told me truth. An irony and a pity it is that after seeking in vain for decent treatment from the warm flesh of his own kind, he in the end found love and comfort from cold steel and silicon! With us, his wants are consulted, he can criticize things, he can use the word `my', he has personal freedom, comfort, his own property and somewhere secure to keep it, access to books and the public media, warmth and a meal as soon as he gets home from school, and no nasty interrogations when a biscuit or a slice of bread disappears, and no locking up everything out of his reach! You two have been known to run tales to Keith about what Jack was doing out of the house, and saying that if you had any children, you'd treat them the same. Now you two come cap in hand for one of Optimus's people to be a free taxi for you on some scuba diving trip.". Richard Simmons angrily replied: "Yes, we back up Keith. We pay too much rates to support noseyparkers and interferers, till a man's children aren't his own any more, children say `my' this and that till they think they own it, and the law won't let us knock out of them silly undisciplined ideas that all sorts of fancy modern things are theirs by right, that schools fill their heads with instead of sticking to reading and writing and adding up and getting them earning quickly. Everything's gone wrong with society, and people answer back and won't obey. This stops now, starting with any children me may have in the future.". "Excuse, you two." said Mr. Elliott, "I think we were here first. Macbeth. Scenery, cost of. Mr. Wernicke, how about it?". "Other times I may have felt charitable towards the stage." said James, "But in view of the history of this matter ...". "Ouh!" Mrs. Brown exclaimed, "You philistines! Us act on bare boards, like in the beginnings of English theatre, before people had heard of scenery!? Forget it, we'll get no good here.". She and Mr. Elliott went disappointedly away. Richard Simmons, who had little patience for the stage, said: "Anyway, the play isn't as it actually happened. Macbeth killed Duncan in fair battle (look in a history of Scotland), then had a long and popular reign. No assassination. No witchcraft. Forget Jack. Jack's out of our lives now, thanks to all sorts of interfering modern laws. He was only a miserable whining $#% anyway. What I want to know is this: What's Crabhaven's harbourmaster Captain Hurlock want with Captain Blowtorch? What fancy equipment or whatever's he having made for him? I thought we'd convinced Hurlock that he can't legally stop scuba diving at Crabhaven. These traceless group disappearances of scuba divers that have been recently, make us uneasy. Bad enough with that illegal seaborne patrol that's been raiding divers' camps here and there, `arresting', interrogating, asking to see `diving permits', seizing kit, as if they were some sort of legal sea-police, with riotsquad gear, handcuffs, teargas, guns, training, the works. Oh well, they'll try it once too often and the police or the Navy'll catch them. The sea's everybody's, not fishermen's private property.". "I see." said Prowl, "As it is said, you want `freedom and equality, but only for those now on or above your level'. Captain Hurlock tries to stop you from diving: you complain. Keith doesn't give his Jack a fair deal, you don't complain, but support Keith. That doesn't match. I see. To many people, `freedom for me' means `my own kind to get first choice of everything'. Anyway, if you want to nose about Crabhaven harbour like sea commandoes, that's your affair, and if one of us didn't take you to Crabhaven, you'd hire a car and go anyway. If one of us takes you, at least he can see what happens. There've been odd goings-on at diving sites recently.". Inside, Ratchet was in robot form servicing Hoist, who was in his form of a green towtruck with orange lifting-gear. "When'll you be finished servicing me, Ratchet? I've got another breakdown to pick up." Hoist queried. "When I've been through the proper full procedure. Your winch clutch'll need new plates soon" Ratchet replied. "Is our latest addition ready yet?" asked James, who entered leading Richard and Stephen Simmons. "Yes. He's complete and alive. Optimus did his bit with the `Creation Matrix' computer program a week ago." Ratchet replied. Ratchet, who had heard the discussion on `Macbeth', and in his ambulance form had seen enough shed blood, added: "In `fair battle', and how many soldiers on both sides die or are injured in someone else's quarrel?, leaving my human equivalents of the time to pick up the pieces. If I could choose, I'd prefer the play's version! One death only and nobody else hurt!, in that part of the story.". Coming back to the matter in hand, Ratchet pointed to a yellow Volkswagen Beetle and said: "That's Bumblebee. He'll be delivering some parts tomorrow from Smith and Malton's to Captain Hurlock at Crabhaven, who ordered them. Bumblebee also will want to look around; `Captain Blowtorch' [= Mr.Malton] once rode in Optimus Prime and told him that he'd had vague disquiets about something.". Richard asked doubtfully: "If that Mr. Malton is doubtful, why did his men jump us two like that? as if we were thieves.". "You shouldn't have gone in over their wire!" said James, "Try writing or phoning in! Anyway, his `feeling' isn't anything definite. The more he tries to define it, the more it slips away.". "Oh well, if that robot wants to scout round there as well as us, that makes three. When can he take us?" asked Richard. "Tomorrow, 7.30 am from your house. I suppose you two know what you're doing." said James.