It was enough to make anyone gasp. No sooner had Adrienne fired the motors of her shiny bright red search engine, than the sky seemed to open like a curtain behind Samson the Server. Only, the “curtain” didn’t open one to each side like the one in your bedroom probably does: instead it was as if it had been turned on its side and was opening up one side towards the ceiling, the other side down towards the floor!

As it opened and Adrienne flew them towards it, Dot and the crew could see a huge new net-sky, criss-crossed with white, blue, orange and gold shafts of light like searchlights. It seemed to go on forever, and everywhere they looked, little search engines were zooming about, dipping between the shafts of light or flying into them and coming out the other side. Not all the search engines were like Adrienne’s old-style steam train, either; some were little space ships, some looked very like cars – cars of every kind and age, there was even a Ford like the one in ‘Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets’ – and one searcher was riding a bike!

Many of them had little wings out on either side, with hundreds of tiny red lights shining down underneath them – pinpoints of light that reminded Dot of those laser pointers that were banned because they were bad for your eyes. Below them on the floor of the search zone were millions and millions of multi-coloured lights – stretching out as far as they could see, like what you see when you look down on a town at night from an aeroplane, but much, much bigger.

The funny thing was though that none of the lights was red…

“Like – wow!” said Mr Mouse. Even he was impressed!

Wizzie whined anxiously and Dot gave him a quick hug. She was feeling a bit scared herself, but she wasn’t going to make him feel worse by showing it. “Don’t worry Wiz!” she said. “I’m sure our new friend knows what she’s doing… but what IS all this Adrienne?”

Adrienne turned round and waved one tiny paw towards the amazing scene. The sweet smell of her scent drifted past Dot’s nose. It was lovely and somehow made Dot feel better.

“Thees is your search zone Dot” Adrienne said with a smile. “Somewhere in ‘ere – we will find what your papa needs to know!”

“But… how?” said Dot, more confused than ever.

“Ah – simple!” said Adrienne. “Watch my friend Heinz over there – ‘e is homing in now I think!”

She pointed towards a hedgehog wearing a “hard hat” like Bob the Builder, who was flying just above them in a search engine that looked like one of the new Mini cars. Suddenly, the red lights under his little wings stated to flash on and off, faster and faster, so that the underside of his wings sparkled like fireworks. But it wasn’t just happening in any old way – there was a pattern to the flashing that Dot could just make out, even though it was incredibly fast. Then, below him of the floor of the zone, light after light stared to turn red too – and suddenly Dot saw they were all flashing in the same pattern as the ones from under Heinz’s wings.

Heinz looked down at Adrienne and gave her a big grin and a thumbs up sign.

“Search complete I think!” said Adrienne quietly. “Now watch!”

Suddenly, all the sparkles of red light shot up from the search zone floor and into the red lights on the underside of Heinz’s wings. As they did so, each little point of light on the floor that had turned red went back to the colour it had been before – blue, green, yellow, pink. 

“There!” said Adrienne. Adrienne flicked on her radio. “But you ‘ave too many Heinz!” she said.

A crackly voice with a German accent came back. “No no Adrienne” it said. “My client wants all this!”

With a wave Heinz, turned his search engine way. Adrienne chuckled. “Always vairy hard-working my good friend Heinz!” she said. She turned to Dot. “OK Dot!” she said. “You see? Those red lights are all the information that Heinz was looking for. They are now stored in his engine memory and he can show what he has found to the person who wants to know.“ She flicked a switch and two little wings, just like on the other search engines, came out from the side of her engine with a humming sound. “So, Dorothee! You see how we do this – now let us start the search for your father!”