But it's not all good news - for now, a sad moment in their search has arrived...

“Goodbye? Oh... but why...”

Dot could scarcely believe that she and Wiz and Mr Mouse's cousin Fromage wouldn't be travelling on with the TricTrucTrackers.

“Can't you come with us? Please?” said Wiz, wagging his tail like mad and putting his paws up onto the computer station next to him.

“Mais oui, certainement!” * said Fromage, hopping down onto Dot's shoulder and spreading his mousey little arms out wide. “You are our guides, nos copains!” **

Walpurgis sighed, and Lucia gave a little slump as she bobbed gently in the net-air, her bow just a metre or so away from the shimmering wall in front of them.

“It can't be” he said at last. “We are pure net-people - not like you Dot or Fromage or dear old Wizard. We just don't exist outside the internet... ”

“Well, we do” said Eldenbeam, giving Dot a little pat on her arm. “But only as lots and lots of computer code. Here's the first bit of my name, for example!” He put his paw flat onto the bottom right hand corner of the squidgy TracMapper “keyboard”.

A circle with strange triangle shapes moving within it appeared. “Acquiring E in Eldenbeam” said a husky female voice.

/\@@;;;cvbf109087%%^^|||__++++/\/\/\}{}{} it went.

Eldenbeam pushed his paw down again on the keyboard.

“Acquirement in standby” said the husky voice.

“That” said Eldenbeam “is the first part of the top line of the letter 'E' in my name. Just my name. About 0.2% of it in fact. You can imagine how much code goes into making up me, the whole of me…”

“But... why does that matter?” asked Dot. She just didn't understand.

“Well first of all” replied Eldenbeam “because if I come out onto a screen in realworld, that's all you’ll see. Millions and millions of lines of it. Not your furry old friend!” He gave Dot a sad little smile.

“And secondly” Carmeramalita chipped in “Even if you can find a programme that could download us onto a realworld computer... all that computer code is open-source and has no protection. Anything or anyone can get into it. And if any of it is changed – even one character, even by accident - we vanish! For ever!” She smiled in her gentle way at Dot, but the warm brown eyes above her funny spoon-shaped beak were very serious.

Dot gulped. Lucia gave a little shudder, as if remembering something she'd rather have forgotten.

“Where to?>” she asked.

“Nobody knows, for sure” said Katzilow grimly. “Because no TricTrucTracker has ever returned once that's happened. It might be Void, of course. Remember Sofdamern?” he said, raising his eyebrows at Hombellyton.

Hombellyton shuddered. “How could I forget?” he replied. “He was such a good guy, too!”

There was a silence. Dot didn't know what to say. But she did know about Void - the great cold, dim, dust-strewn sub-world where those who'd done wrong on the net were sent, and where abandoned or corrupted programmes of all kinds ended up - a kind of musty, dead moonscape with no light, a foggy grey that just went on forever. And ever.

She knew she was one of the few net-voyagers who had ever escaped from Void, after she'd gone in to rescue a Searcher – a Borzoi dog, called Luis de la Zarpana. ***

Of course - they couldn't risk that. She couldn’t risk that. So it had to be goodbye...

Dlip!

Suddenly, the shimmering wall in front of Lucia stopped moving. As it did so, an oval shape outlined in red appeared on its shiny surface, with a purple line down the middle. Then, like those things you see on trains that tell you where you're going, a sign started to run across it in pale silver letters.

It read: “PLEASE BE WELCOME TO CYBERGATE KONSTAM 0945OP. HOME OF CHIP-AND-CHIP-AGAIN ECO-CYCLING.”

“Here we are” said Walpurgis. He gave Dot a big hug - she could feel the warmth of his furry body through her T-shirt. “I hate partings - let's make it quick! And we can always net-voyage together again - Samson can find us wherever we are!”

All the TricTrucTrackers - her best ever search-friends - clustered round Dot and Wiz and Fromage.

“Good luck!” said Hombellyton “The very best of luck!”, wringing her hand as if he'd never stop, and stroking Wizzie in his favourite place, just behind his long silky ears.

“Don't forget us” said Katzilow, his eyes a little moist. “We've had such a good time, haven't we?”

“Think you'll miss the Food Mountain” said Eldenbeam gruffly. “Better for the diet though - think you might be putting on weight!” He pressed a little leather pouch into her hand and turned away, muttering to himself.

Carmeramalita gave Dot a warm kiss on her cheek - nice and soft, even though her beak looked quite hard! “Take care now, Dot” she said. “Look after your Mum and Dad for us when they're online!”

I am NOT going to cry thought Dot!

Obviously not what Fromage was saying to himself. He was in floods!

“You 'ave been ze best amis du monde”**** he sobbed. “I am so triste! Le plus triste du net!”*****

Wiz looked so sad too, his ears drooping and his tail doing that very slow sweep of his, along the deck of Lucia. Swish-swish... swish-swish...

But then -

Dlip-dlip-dlip! The oval in the centre of the shiny wall slowly opened, showing - from the inside of a computer, of course - what looked like a busy workshop, with lots of workers in bright green overalls going to and fro.

And there on a bench to one side – with a little target symbol round it that glowed a brilliant white, on-off, on-off – was a computer mouse.

MR Mouse! It HAD to be!

It really was... time to go…