It took mere moments for Mulch to get control of the flight systems and drop the gyro down to scoop up Juliet.

“Hi-ho, Jade Princess,” he called from the pilot’s chair. “How’s the wrestling career going? I have an alter ego now too. Tombstone, they call me. What do you think?”

“I like it,” said Juliet, kissing Mulch’s cheek. “Thanks for rescuing us.”

Mulch smiled. “There was nothing on the TV. Except pay-per-view, and I refuse to buy programs, on principle. Except that chef guy with the foul mouth. I love him and what he can to with a turkey crown and a couple of string beans.”

Juliet’s newfound memories reminded her of Mulch’s obsession with food.

“So you just happened to be in a bar when the call came in to these guys?” said Butler doubtfully, throwing some emergency field packs to the stranded dwarfs below.

Mulch tugged the virtual joystick, quickly pulling the gyro into the clouds.

“Yes. It’s fate, my friends. I went against my own kind for you. I hope you appreciate it. Or rather, I hope your rich master appreciates it.”

Butler closed the hatch, shutting out the rush of air. “The way I remember it, I did most of the saving.”

“All you did was mess up my plan,” snorted the dwarf. “I was going to let them stun you both, winch you aboard, and then make my move.”

“Brilliant plan.”

“As opposed to throwing yourself into the gyro rotor blade?”

“Point taken.”

There was silence for a moment, the kind of silence you would definitely not get in a human flying machine. Also the kind of silence you get when a small group of people wonder just how long they can keep emerging from certain-death situations with a reasonable amount of life in their bodies.

“We’re off again, I suppose?” said Mulch eventually.

“Off on another save-the-world, nick-of-time, seat-of-the-pants adventure?”

“Well, in the space of one night we have been attacked by zombie wrestling fans and invisible dwarfs,” said Butler glumly. “So it certainly looks like it.”

“Where to?” asked Mulch. “Nowhere too sunny, I hope. Or too cold. I hate snow.”

Butler found that he was smiling, not with fondness exactly, but not with wolfish menace either.

“Iceland,” he said.

The gyro dipped sharply as Mulch momentarily let go of the V-joystick. “If you’re kidding, Butler, that’s not funny.”

Butler’s smile disappeared. “No,” he said. “It isn’t.”

CHAPTER 7 HOW DO I LOVE THEE?

Vatnajokull; Now

Orion Fowl chose to strap himself into the emergency evac harness directly behind Holly and spoke into her ear as she piloted the escape pod through the glacial wormhole excavated by the rogue probe.

Having a person talk directly into one’s ear is irritating at the best of times, but when that person is spouting romantic nonsense while the owner of the ear is attempting to wrestle with the controls of a twenty-year-old escape pod in a high-speed pursuit, then it’s a little more than annoying—it’s dangerously distracting.

Holly scrubbed the porthole with the sleeve of her suit. Outside, a single nose beam picked out the wormhole’s path.

Straight, she thought. At least it’s straight. “How do I love thee?” wondered Orion. “Let me see. I love thee passionately and eternally . . . obviously eternally—that goes without saying.”

Holly blinked sweat from her eyes. “Is he serious?” she called over her shoulder to Foaly.

“Oh, absolutely,” said the centaur, his voice juddering along with the pod’s motion. “If he asks you to look for birthmarks, say no immediately.”

“Oh, I would never,” Orion assured her. “Ladies don’t look for birthmarks; that is work for jolly fellows, like the goodly beast and myself. Ladies, like Miss Short, do enough by simply existing. They exude beauty, and that is enough.”

“I am not exuding anything,” said Holly, through gritted teeth.

Orion tapped her shoulder. “I beg to differ. You’re exuding right now, a wonderful aura. It’s pastel blue with little dolphins.”

Holly gripped the wheel tightly. “I’m going to be sick. Did he just say pastel blue?”

“And dolphins, little ones,” said Foaly, happy enough to be distracted from the fact that they were now chasing the probe that had blown up their shuttle, which was a bit like a mouse chasing a cat, a giant mutant cat with laser eyes and a bellyful of smaller spiteful cats.

“Be quiet, goodly beast. Be quiet, both of you.”

Holly could not afford to be distracted, so to shut out the babbling Orion, she talked herself through what she was doing, recording it all on the ship’s log.

“Still going through the ice, an incredibly thick vein. No radar, or sonar, just following the lights.”

The light show on display through the porthole was both eerie and colorful. The probe’s engines shot beams along the carved ice, sending rainbows flickering across the flat planes. Holly was sure she saw an entire school of whales preserved in the glacier, and maybe some kind of enormous sea reptile.

“The probe maintains its course, a diagonal descent. We are transitioning from ice to rock now, with no discernable delay.”