Free Frozen in Time by Ali Sparkes Page A

impressed. ‘You’re not really like a teenager, are you?’ he said, folding his arms and peering at Freddy.
    ‘What’s a teenager supposed to be like?’ asked Freddy.
    Ben opened his mouth to answer, but then he was silenced by the door being bashed open violently, and Polly hurtling in, followed by a confused looking Rachel.
    ‘FREDDY!!!’ yelled Polly, in panic. ‘FREDDY! We’ve got to go back down! Now! Oh, Freddy! WE FORGOT BESS!’

 
    Freddy looked stricken.
    ‘Oh no! Poor Bess! We left her down there.’
    ‘Who’s Bess?’ asked Ben and Rachel, at the same moment.
    ‘Oh, how dreadful we’ve been!’ whimpered Polly. ‘So selfish and caught up about ourselves that we left her down there, all frozen, on her own!’
    ‘Well, come on then!’ Freddy propelled her back through the door and soon all four of them were racing down the stairs, slithering through the garden and splashing across the stream to get back to the hatch. It was hugely different from their first trip. Now, instead of fearful, Ben and Rachel were utterly intrigued by it and thrilled beyond measure that someone else was about to be defrosted, before their very eyes.
    Uncle Jerome had been down there for the past fifteen minutes, while they’d been showing Freddy and Polly their rooms. They found him in a state of absolute rapture.
    ‘It’s perfect! Just perfect!’ he gasped as soon as they ran into the sitting room. He’d been rifling through some of the supplies boxes. ‘It’s a 1950s time capsule! Imagine! Untouched for fifty-three years, until today!’
    ‘Yes, yes … amazing!’ said Freddy as they all flew past him and straight through the next door. By the time they reached the torpedoes chamber Uncle Jerome was right behind them, demanding to know what was going on.
    ‘Come right in,’ ordered Freddy. ‘We have to seal the room again first.’ He ignored Uncle Jerome’s urgent questions in a way which hugely impressed Ben and Rachel, while he went to the console and punched the red button which Rachel had first hit that morning. Once again there was the hissing noise, followed by the mechanical workings noise, and the door locked itself.
    ‘That’s what happened the first time,’ Rachel whispered to Uncle Jerome. ‘We thought we were sealed in like Egyptian mummies, for ever.’
    ‘It has to seal, to equalize the air pressure before the chamber can be opened,’ said Freddy.
    ‘You mean to tell me there’s someone else in here?’ gasped Uncle Jerome. ‘But I looked in them all. The end one is shut, of course, and I couldn’t open it, but I could see through the glass—there’s nobody else in it!’
    Freddy went to the first chamber and peered into the glass. He gave a grin and said: ‘You didn’t look hard enough.’ As the hissing noise eased off there was a click and the glass window smoothly rose up, as it must have done for Freddy and Polly earlier, only Ben and Rachel had been too hysterical to notice. Polly ran to Freddy’s side and gasped ‘Bess! Oh, Bessie! Are you all right?’ Then Freddy leaned over, reached right down into the chamber, to where his feet would have lain had he been in it, and pulled something out. Something sneezed. Something snuffled. Polly took the something from him and cuddled it with a sigh. ‘She’s all right! She’s waking up!’ And she turned to face them, delight all over her face, and a puppy in her arms.
    ‘Good lord!’ said Uncle Jerome, while Ben and Rachel just groaned with delight. The puppy was a brown Labrador with liquid eyes and shining fur, floppy ears, and big paws which dangled sleepily from Polly’s arms as she hugged it to her. ‘A fifty-three-year-old puppy!’ added Uncle Jerome. ‘Astonishing! Truly astonishing!’
    ‘We only got her a week before we got frozen,’ said Polly. ‘We came home from school and found that Father had already frozen her six times. She’s actually six months old, but she’s spent half that time frozen, so