“Not good?” asked Dot nervously. What in the name of the Net was the matter now??

“I fear not!” said Walpurgis gravely. He beckoned Dot towards the screen. “See for yourselves!”

Dot, Fromage and Wiz came closer to the screen, Wiz putting his front paws up and Fromage scampering up Wizzie's back to get closer.

“$£%^&*((+)^%$£”£$R¬!”&Y&*) said the screen - which was also making a kind of burbling noise, as if it didn't like what it was showing either, ~?|~|~@?|~@\\//./\\\+)(*”$£!!

“More ratatouille!” said Fromage. “Pardon, my TricTrucTracker amis, what ees all zis?”

“Oh!” said Walpurgis. “I thought everyone could read a search-find, if they were on the Net!”

“Well they obviously can't, can they Walpurgis?” said the TricTrucTracker called Eldenbeam, shaking his head with its funny spoon-shaped beak from side to side, and making a little clucking noise. “Really! Why didn't you put it in clear for our friends?”

“Who's in charge here?” said Walpurgis crossly, swivelling round to face Eldenbeam.

“Well, that - “ Eldenbeam began - but a warning rumble from Samson stopped the argument in its tracks.

“On we go, must get on” said Walpurgis, glancing nervously at Samson's big round face beaming down at them from the end of the server space.

Once again the TricTrucTracker's leader tapped the screen with his beak. This time, however, he left the beak touching it and slowly drew it across and down, side to side. As he did so, a pale blue light came out from under the beak.

And suddenly the screen became clearer. Or at least, it wasn't full of “$£%^&*((+)^%$£”£$R¬!”&Y&*) !

What it showed looked very like map of the London Underground - or the Lunderground, as Dot's Gran likes to call it! Only, this one was in 3D, and a globe shape, like the world. All the time it was slowly turning - just like our planet too. On top of the “map” were hundreds and hundreds of little pinpricks of light, in dozens of different colours - some of them quite hard to tell apart, especially the reds - there seemed to be scores of them alone.

But, Dot found, if you relaxed you could begin to see the differences quite clearly - like in one of those crayon sets with loads of pencils all in different shades.

Wiz let out a little yap of dismay. “How are we going to find Mr Mouse in all that?” he wuffed, his tail firmly down, tucked between his hind legs.

“THAT is the problem!” said Walpurgis. “What you see are all the Lost Mice - where a net-call has gone out for help. Your Mr Mouse is quite an old mouse - a Hyphenmarc 650R. They are all this colour” - and once again he tapped the screen. All the coloured dots disappeared except a small blue group.

“They belong to a species we call the Ceruleans - cheeky, energetic, a bit scaredy-cat, full of talk and fun. Very rare. Quite hard to handle, too!”

Samson let out a little grunt of laughter (well, little according to him) which made everyone jump again. “Takes one to know one!” he rumbled.

Walpurgis ignored him. “Now - these all are Lost Mice, as I say. Dropped downbehind a computer desk, left at someone's house, perhaps even stolen and abandoned. And each - ” he tapped the screen again “has a cybermark. As long as they have some feedback power from when they were last plugged in - which lasts quite a long time, whatever your real world computer experts say - we can pick that up with a search-find. ”

Beside each of the blue dots, a set of numbers appeared. Like KT99877-09-55-XA. It was hard to read them at first, but with another tap of his beak Walpurgis made the numbers larger.

“Of course, if they're plugged in it's even easier” Walpurgis went on. “Lots of transmitter power then. But, the thing is, none of these cybermarks matches your Mr Mouse. Not yet anyway!”

Dot felt her hopes sag. It looked like the search for Mr Mouse was over before it had even begun!

“So... what can we do?” she asked, trying not to show her disappointment.

“Well there is one thing” said Walpurgis. “It might not work - but it's worth a try.”

He beamed round at Dot and her friends, and all his companions.

“We can boat it!”