Hitch checked his GPS module on his phone. "Misty, we've made a bit of an error," he said.
"What's that?" Misty asked. "All I can see is desert and sand. This place looks flat and desolate to me!"
"We've arrived in the wrong place entirely," Hitch explained. "We were supposed to be sent to Karratha, but we're miles from there. Hundreds of miles, as a matter of fact." He showed her the display. "As you probably know, the local area is absolutely chock full of mining operations, and we seem to be standing right above one of these operations right now." He began to walk forward to where some smoke and noise seemed to be being produced, before stopping. "Don't look down if you don't like heights," he said.
Misty, luckily, wasn't too bad with heights provided she remained on solid ground. She glanced down and almost immediately stunned at the size of the operation below her. The open cast mine extended for hundreds of feet below them, and seemed to run onwards for miles. Each roadway for machinery collecting supplies and equipment seemed to be hundreds of miles wide, and the vehicles lumbered about, transporting heavy cargo to the loading dump nearby to be taken elsewhere by rail.
"We need some form of transport," Misty said. "I'd suggest we don't travel to Paraburdoo in a fried out combi."
"Well, I'm hoping to go into law enforcement, so following a hippy trailhead full of zombie would probably not be advisable," Hitch mentioned. "Not to mention the risk of running into strange ladies who make us nervous."
They decided to try and find a way down, but soon found that was easier said than done. There were no obvious ladders or ramps to use in order to get down from the top of the mine to the bottom, where the railway equipment was. And the fact the mine was packed to the brim with heavy machinery didn't exactly help navigation, as huge machines lumbered about like dinosaurs, their machinery hacking away at the earth itself to extract the useful things that they found. But they were not in Wimbledon.
It was then Hitch spotted something. "Anchoring cables," he said, pointing to them. "Those run from the top of the mine to the bottom, but nobody has thought to use them as transport." He collected some pieces off the floor. "Time to fabricate a harness."
Within a few minutes, he had two ziplining harnesses assembled and set up, and helped Misty into hers before setting up his own. "Are you sure this is safe?" Misty asked.
"The Special Forces do this sort of thing for traversing buildings," Hitch said. "We should be fine." After a few moments, they set off down the hill and into the mine. The cables seemingly ended quite abruptly, and they tumbled out of the sky and bounced on some matresses.
"How did those get there?" Misty asked.
"Plot convenience," Hitch replied.
Then spoke a voice. "Are you vandals? Driver says vandals break in and smash things."
"Well, this day keeps getting weirder," Izzy said, as she checked the GPS and speed tracker on the laptop. To say they were going slowly was a bit of an understatement. In fact, the freight train they had borrowed was going very slowly, not exceeding 30 miles an hour. In a country like Britain, this would be less of an issue. But the issues here constituted distance. It was like travelling from London to Newcastle by road, only it was incredibly dusty. And the slow speeds would only continue, as this was as fast as the engine could go.
"I wonder how Misty and Hitch are doing," Aurora said.
"You could always ring them on the satellite phone and find out," Isaac suggested.
So this is exactly what Aurora did. There was a few minutes of beeping as a connection was made, The beeping soon stopped, and a voice spoke up on the other end. "Good afternoon, Mrs Moonbow. I haven't heard from you in a while."
"Hello, Hitch," Aurora replied. "May I ask where you are right now?"
"Well, that's a bit of a challenge to pin down right now. The GPS can't make its mind up as these hills are causing all sorts of interference around us. It's an interesting challenging environment to operate in, but luckily we were able to secure some form of transport across the Outback."
"Are there any signs telling you where you are?" Aurora asked. "Hopefully you'll be able to pin down where you are from signage alone."
"In theory," Hitch replied. "Hold on, there's a notice here now. "Ah! You are now leaving Mesa A. I can figure out where I am!"
There was another brief pause as Hitch checked something. "Perfect! We take a right at West Creek Junction and follow you guys to Paraburdoo! Our method of transport might be unconventional, but it's gonna get us there."
"What exactly are you travelling on?" Aurora asked.
"An old steam locomotive we found inside the mine. His name's Pendennis Castle. He's been out in Australia for a few years now, but he's still fully functional and can take us there. He even asked me if I knew somebody called Scotsman. Not sure what that's all about, but oh well!"
"Hopefully we'll see you soon," Aurora said. "Bye!"
"Are they safe?" Izzy asked.
"Yes, and not only that they're only a few hours behind us. If they can work their locomotive and try to catch up, we should be able to get to Paraburdoo together and on time."
"We've still got another three hours to go," Izzy replied. "Who fances a board game whilst we wait for our destination to arrive?"
"No," Isaac said. "We need to stay focused on the task at hand. The enemy could be anywhere, and could attack us at any moment. The outback is perfect in that regard, as it provides limitless places for a foe to hide from the enemy."
Back at Pendennis Castle, things weren't going too well. The train had been forced to stop for water, and Hitch was trying to scrounge water from the landscape whilst Misty managed the boiler. "These controls are more complex than what I'm used to!" Misty said.
Moments later, Hitch returned with some water and a truck. "This should keep us going," he said.
"You're not going anywhere!" shouted a voice. Hitch turned to see troops surrounding them.
"Oh, hello Sprout," he said. "Still playing at being a soldier?"
"You'll stop making wisecracks if you know what's good for you!" the former Generalissimo of Falmouth replied. "Cuff them!"
Hours later, the Moonbows finally arrived at Paraburdoo, and followed the instructions to what they hoped was the thing they needed to find. They dug in the ground and pulled out an old box, before retreating back onboard the train to examine the contents.
"Some paper, with some numbers on it," Izzy said. "Could they be a code?"
"There's no obvious pattern to them," Isaac said, looking closely at them. "These may need decoding by an expert."
Suddenly, a large diesel hoved into view, a massive hydraulic claw on the top snapping at them. "Looks like you three found yourself in a place you shouldn't be."
Argyle was having similar trouble with the fragments they had found on top of the Jungfrau. He shifted the numbers back and forth, but no matter what he tried he couldn't get something that made any sense. "I've studied a lot of strange things in my time but this makes no sense," he admitted, sighing as he did so. "These numbers and letters seem to have been picked at random."
Sunny took a glance. "Perhaps it's a code, like a Ceasar shift?" she suggested.
"Number codes are notoriously hard to break, as we know. Virtually any symbols can be assigned to a number, whereas a Caesar shift is a case of working through all the possible combinations as there's only 25 possible options." Argyle glanced to Goldie. "Any thoughts?"
"Map coordinates, maybe?" Goldie suggested. "Incomplete ones at that, but map coordinates. It could be worth running them into Google maps and seeing what comes up as a result,"
Argyle carefully reproduced the numbers in the search engine, and then took a look at what the system suggested. "It's pointing me to somewhere in Britain," he said. "But it can't complete the location find as lots of digits are missing."
"See? We're one step closer now."
Argyle glanced to his books and directory, on which he had scribbled some notes. "This is more complex than anything related to Sodor I've ever researched." He stopped. "I think we need to call in some extra help in this field, somebody who knows this sort of thing better than anybody else in the world."
He looked over. "Get me Firelight!"
Sunny opened the door, revealing Firelight to be standing on the other side. "Sure thing!"
Argyle shook his head. "Not that quickly, Sunny!"