“What?” said Cambor. “Keyboards? We haven’t used them in years!”

“So how do you make your computers work?” asked Wiz, looking very puzzled.

“Oh!” said Poolbear. “Easy-peasy! Like this!”

And he held up his hands, crossed together with the fingers linked together, in front of his face.

ZLINK! In front of him a strange, cloud-like shape appeared. It was full of colours – green, gold, red, purple and many more – all moving round each other in different shapes.

“Give me a thought!” said Poolbear. “Anything will do! But don’t say anything – just think it, like you do when you make a wish.”

Wizzie shut his eyes tight and kept very still. Then he opened them again. “Right!” he said.

The little cloud stopped moving. Then, one of its colours (a sort of bluey-red, if you want to know) suddenly glowed more than the rest – and they were all surrounded by a huge round wall of information – pictures, word, sounds, smells – even different temperatures: you could feel some bits of it were colder or warmer than the others.

And all about – dog food!

“HONESTLY, Wiz!” said Dot crossly. “We’re trying to rescue Mr Mouse, not think about your tummy!!”

Wiz looked embarrassed. And so he should be.

“There you are!” said Poolbear, beaming. “Clever, isn’t it? We call them thought-clouds! You just have to think of what you want and the cloudsearch system goes and finds out what you what from the books in the book-forest!”

Back came Cursor!

“Ah!” said Drindel. “I know! There’s one in Old Times, Betimes!”

“Of COURSE!” said Poolbear, snapping his fingers. “In the museum of Phargon!”

The doors of Old Times, Betimes - the museum of Phargon - swung back in front of them.

They’d found it deep down one of the paths in the book forest. It felt like it had taken ages to get there, even riding on Snaffkins.

But it probably hadn’t, thought Dot. It was just because she was worried about Mr Mouse.

The big heavy brown doors to the museum didn’t seem to have been opened in years – but the Children of the Casement soon fixed that. They’d just held hands and each put the forefinger of their free hand on the door.

“There!” said Carvelia, “I haven’t been here for ages!”

“Yes!” said Thoranon, smiling at her. “It was that time we wanted to try out that funny old Vista system on a real old-time computer!”

“Mmmm!” said Carvelia. “Don’t know how people put up with all that clunky old stuff!”

“Er… ” said Wiz. “How are we going to find this keyboard?”

It was a good question. As far as the eye could see, Old Times, Betimes, the museum of Phargon, stretched away into the distance.

“No problem!” said Poolbear. “Off we go, Snaffkins!”

“Ting-a-ting!” went Snaffkins.

Two minutes of wheeling past old PC’s, PDA’s, gameboys (“Tried those too” said Thoranon “Really boring!”), digital printers and thousands and thousands of other old-time computer bits and pieces – just two minutes or less brought them to a big hall marked ‘KEYBOARDS’.

Snaffkins ting-tinged to a stop and they all floated down.

“But there are MILLIONS of them!” said Dot, staring round at the thousands of shelves all round her, each one with a keyboard on it. “Which one should I use?”

Back came Cursor!

“OK!” she said out loud. “Ctrl + Z, here we come!”

ZFLIIIISSH!

And there was Mr Mouse – looking kind of puzzled – but back in one piece.

“VERY funny!” he snapped. “Next time, I’ll do the flight bookings!”