…how an ordinary schoolgirl became an

INTERNET VOYAGER!

"Defragment him?" said Dot nervously. "What... what does that mean?"

It sounded horrible!

"Oh it won't hurt" said Ron. "He'll be right as rain when it's all over!"

The squidglet let out a very soft "Brrrrrrrrrrrrr" in Dot's hand. He was fast asleep now, having a rest after all that pinging about. Wiz had gone right off too after his drink. It was funny, thought Dot suddenly as she looked down at him lying asleep on the Search Zone floor, how she didn't seem to need anything to eat or drink while she was net-voyaging. She'd been away from home for ages now (though back at home in real world time less than one-millionth of a second had passed by!) and she still didn't want anything. Wiz had certainly been thirsty though.

The squidglet gave a little "Hic!" as he lay in Dot's hand. It reminded her that she still didn't know what "defragmenting" meant - she'd been "wool-gathering" as Gran would say, or "Away with the fairies", which was Uncle Ron Thomms' way of describing the way she just "went off" some times, daydreaming.

"Won't hurt?" she said, looking very hard at Ron. "Why should anything hurt him at all? What are you going to do with this... this "defragmenting"?"

Ron gave a big sigh. "WELL" he said "Defragmenting means we turn him back from being a separate bit of a blackdown that's got lost, from a fragment you see, into part of the ol' blackdown again. It's our rules, see. I mean, that's where he belongs, after all! In there he's just a bit of something that's a right nuisance, and that's all. We can handle that in the Search Zone. But if... "

"He won't feel a thing" said Deirdre kindly, interrupting Ron. She could see that Dot was upset. "And he'll be back in his home, see!"

"But... but..." Dot went, trying to get her thoughts together. "He's not really a blackdown kind of creature now is he? You said he was a... a what was it?"

"A turner" said Ron glumly. "Yersss well he is that, 'an all... but what I was going to say was - there's just a chance he might turn BACK and get away and start growing into a blackdown again, just like what most squidglets do normal-like. 'N if hedid, he'd be a REALLY bad one - 'cos he can read all our safety programmes, long as he's with us, an' he'd take all that with him, programmed in... he can't help doing that see, and then where would we all be?"

The squidglet let out another long purr, smacking its lips in its sleep (Dot noticed they were lovely red colour.)

Then suddenly she had an idea.

"But couldn't he be really useful though?" she asked. "If you kept him, wouldn't he be like... like those canaries down a mine, kind of?"

Deirdre looked very puzzled, her big owl's eyes open wide. "Canaries down a mine?" she went. "What do you mean dear?"

"Well" said Dot "in history once at our school we were finding out about coal mines in the olden days when - "

"Coal? What's that?" said Ron, lifting up his baseball cap and scratching his sleek bulldoggy head.

"Oh!" said Dot, feeling quite important because AT LAST she knew something that Ron and Deirdre didn't "Forgot you wouldn't know about that, 'cos of living in the Net all the time... well it's black stuff you can dig out of the ground and make fires with. Kind of like rock and it burns... it comes up in little lumps about the same size as squidglet. Everyone used to heat their homes with it in the olden days!"

Ron looked even more puzzled than ever. "So... what... " he went.

Dot realized she hadn't explained properly. "Well you see" she said in a rush "to get it you had to dig a mine which was a big big hole straight down into the earth, really deep, and men had to go down the hole and dig lots of things like kind of tunnels underground. They had to go along the tunnels to find the coal. Then when they found the coal they had to dig it out with big things, tools I mean, called pickaxes, and then it had to be collected up and brought back to earth so people could buy it. But it was REALLY dangerous being deep down in the earth like that - specially 'cos there used to be this gas which could come and explode and kill everyone! So what they used to do was, they took canary birds in cages down with them, 'cos the canaries could tell whether there was this gas coming before the men down the mine knew about it... so when the canaries showed the gas was coming the men knew they had to get out."

"Tywhoo!" went Deirdre in an excited way (the first time Dot had heard her make an owly kind of sound.) "So you mean... little squidglet here might be able to tell us when a blackdown was coming before we knew - because he used to be part of one himself? That would be BRILLIANT! Wouldn't it Ron?"

"Yesss" said Ron. "It would! Save us no end of trouble! Thing is though - what about getting a PTR?" He saw Dot's face and grinned. "Sorry Dotto old thing! PTR - Permission To Remain!"

"Well we'll just have to ask the Head Mopple" said Deirdre, still smiling all over her face. "That'd be all right! Come to think of it, we could go and see him now - wouldn't take long!"

Oh NO Dot thought - not ANOTHER hold-up!!

But then the little squidglet opened his eyes and looked straight up at her. "Brrrrrrrrrrrrr" he purred again - and then gave her another big, slow wink. Then he snuggled down again in her hand and went back to sleep.

Dot gave a long, long sigh. He was sooo sweet.

And if it meant saving him from being defragmented - what else could she do...?