“Bark bark BARK!!!” went Wizzie, his silky brown and cream ears streaming out like two flags beside his head as the wind rushing past them got faster and faster.

“Holy CAMOLEY!!” went Mr Mouse, leaping out of his truck and wriggling his way down inside the neck of Dot’s T-shirt for safety. “Wake me up when it’s over, kid!”

“Giggle giggle!” went Dot as Mr Mouse’s little paws tickled her neck and back, scrabbling away in his frantic search for a safe place for a small mouse.

It was just as well Dot was giggling, because they were in real danger. Adrienne was punching every button she could find and pulling back on the control stick of the search engine with all her strength – but still they went on down, down, down towards the search zone. All the time the little tune – WHAT is it, thought Dot, I’ll go crazy if I don’t work it out! – all the time the little tune went on and on, “Da da DAH da, da da DAH da, DAH da da… DAH da da…

OF COURSE! It was ‘Frère Jacques’, the French nursery rhyme – that was the search music Adrienne had chosen. Crazily, Dot found herself singing it as they rushed towards the search floor. “Frère Jac-ques, Frère Jac-ques, dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?”

Adrienne turned round and grinned quickly at Dot. “Justement, that’s right!” she laughed. “Try and sing us out of trouble Dorothee!”

Too late! CRASH THUMPETY SCREECH BASH CRASH BAANNNNG!!

******************************

They’d landed – but not in a good way. Adrienne’s search engine was on its side, a long scratch in its glossy red paint and the engine’s “funnel” (like a stream train’s, but there just for fun) knocked off and lying on the floor of the search zone.

“Culottes!” said Adrienne crossly (that’s French for “Pants!”, by the way.) “I ‘ave only just brought my engine back from ze repair shop – she will ‘ave to go in again now!” She pressed a shiny gold button on the side of the engine and with a gentle hiss, the little machine slowly straightened up till it was standing on its wheels again.

Adrienne went down the side of it muttering to herself as she saw more scratches and dents. She was a very unhappy squirrel!

But apart from the damage to the engine, everyone seemed all right – probably because, as Dot found when she climbed out of the truck, the  “floor” was all soft and spongy like the special mattress on her mum and Dad’s bed! She felt a bit breathless and scared, but she was OK – and she could tell Mr Mouse was too, as he climbed up out of the neck of her T-shirt and stood on her shoulder, looking over the wide search zone stretched out all around them.

“Holy Camoley!” he said again. “What a place!”

And it was weird. Apart from being all soft and squashy underfoot, everywhere you looked the little lights of the search links were sparkling on and off, blue and green, yellow and pink and hundreds of other colours too. They were all around - even where they were standing. Every so often some of them – often quite a long way apart, scattered all over the search zone – would turn red and shoot a ray of light up to one of the search engines flying overhead, showing that another link had been found for someone searching on the Internet.

Dot felt a fizzing kind of feeling under one of her feet. She moved it and a beam of red light shot up from where she’d been standing, linking to a search engine that looked like an old-fashioned bath tub. It made her jump!

Adrienne waved up at the bath tub. “Zat’s Silviana!” she said. “You were blocking her search!”

Dot felt herself go red. “Sorry!” she said.

“So – what made us go for the big dive?” asked Mr Mouse.

Adrienne looked worried. “We ’ad a system crash, just as I said… but I don’t know why. Unless…”

“Unless what?”

“Unless Blackshanks the Baron is back in business!” said Adrienne grimly. “ We must find ‘im!” Then suddenly her mouth dropped open and her eyes opened very wide.  “And someone else too I think Dorothee!”

Dot gasped. Wizzie! Where was Wizzie?