"Put me down here, Pablo!" Alice said to the shed's pilot.

"I don't think I've got any choice," answered Pablo.

"What do you mean?" asked Alice.

"Whirlybird gaining on the stern, Pablo!" shouted Stripey the Zebraman. "Her cannon is loaded!"

"I think we're about to be fired at!" cried Pablo. "Nobody panic!"

But of course, everybody aboard did panic, especially when they heard the cannon-ball whizzing through the air towards them! The cannon-ball hit the left leg of the shed! The leg crumpled up like a roasted chicken leg that has been kept too long in the oven, and then the whole world keeled over to one side and crashed to the ground!

Everybody tumbled out of the fallen shed into the graveyard. The garden shed was splintered into a thousand pieces and Pablo Ogden was shaking an angry fist at the hovering whirlybird. "How dare you!" he cursed at Mrs Minus, who was gazing down calmly from the safety of the whirlybird; the Snakewoman was smiling at him with her evil little fangs. "I'll get you for this destruction!" Pablo shouted.

"I don't care for you," responded Mrs Minus. "It's Alice I want."

But Alice didn"t want to be wanted by Mrs Minus; all that Alice wanted was to reach the house of her Great Aunt in time for her journey to the past. All around her were jutting gravestones and sculptured angels. The old house was lying in the midst of all these memorials and it looked as dead as a doornail. Why, even the doornails in its rotting door looked as dead as doornails!

Alice looked around quickly to see that all of her fellow shed-travellers were alive and well. Miss Computermite had reduced herself to her former size in order to scurry into the nearest crevice; Long Distance Davis had become a shiny snail slithering along a gravestone's edge; Stripey the Zebraman had turned into a mere play of shadow and light amongst the tombs; Captain Ramshackle was already burrowing a deep sett into the cemetery's soil; Pablo Ogden was still cursing at Mrs Minus on the whirlybird as it lowered itself to the ground.

All amongst the gravestones the policedogmen were gathering in their packs, but they were keeping their distance, and Alice couldn't work out why. Inspector Jack Russell stepped forwards from the pack of dogs, but he merely looked at Alice along the sights of his long snout; he didn't even try to arrest her. Alice was puzzled by this uncommon behaviour, but then she heard Whippoorwill squawking from the garden of the house, and Alice rushed forwards to greet him. It wasn't really a garden of course, it was just an extension of the cemetery. The parrot was perched upon a crumbling gravestone set directly in front of the house. Alice expected Whippoorwill to deliver yet another riddle, but no such thing happened. Alice saw that he had a little something lodged in his beak, which forbade him to make even a single squawk.

It was a jigsaw piece. Alice realized that this jigsaw piece was Whippoorwill's last and final riddle. She pulled it loose, and saw that it was a crooked picture of a blur of green-and-yellow feathers. Alice added it deftly to the others in her pinafore pocket, and it was only then that she noticed the names engraved upon the gravestone that Whippoorwill was perched upon:

Indeed, there was a rash of radishes growing all around the grave. Alice suddenly remembered Professor Chrowdingler's ruling that she had to eat some radishes backwards in order to return to the past. But how do you eat a radish backwards? Alice pulled up a knotted specimen by the leaves, and then bent double in order to thrust her face through her legs, backwards, and then she bit into the root. Naughty Whippoorwill, when offered some radish, mimicked her to do the same. Alice laughed, to see such a backwards parrot!

If Alice was suddenly expecting to be transported back to 1860, she was to be bitterly disappointed. "Oh Whippoorwill!" she exclaimed. "The chrownons in this radish haven't worked! I fear that we're trapped in the future forever!"

But then the door to the old house opened up with a creaking sigh, and Celia the Automated Alice stepped onto the porch. "Fear not, my little sister," stated the doll, calmly, "we are almost home." Celia was looking so much like Alice by this time, that Alice really did think she was seeing herself walk towards herself!

"Celia!" cried Alice. "So you managed to reach our Great Aunt's house before me? And you managed to escape the snakes!"

"Not quite yet," answered Celia, "for isn't that Mrs Minus creeping through the gravestones towards us, with her fangs glinting in the sun?"

Alice looked over her shoulder; there indeed was the evil Civil Serpent, and her fangs were glinting! "But why aren't Inspector Jack Russell and the other policedogmen trying to help Mrs Minus arrest me?" asked Alice.

"Professor Chrowdingler had posted her evidence of the Serpent's Newmonia crime to the police yesterday," said Celia, "and the Inspector received that evidence a mere thirty minutes ago."

"So the police are now on our side?"

"It would seem so."

"So why won't they arrest Mrs Minus?"

"The police are scared of her."

Alice looked around at the approaching shape of Mrs Minus. The Snakewoman had become even more of a snake than a woman, and she had drawn out an evil-looking pistol.

"Well I'm scared of her as well!" said Alice.

"So am I!" squawked Whippoorwill, as he fluttered into the house.

"And so am I!" copied Celia. "Alice, come into the house quickly!"

It started to rain again (and quite viciously this time, with some streaks of lightning!), as Alice ran into the antique house after her sister.

Once inside the house, they locked the front door behind them and ran towards the breakfast room from which Alice had long ago vanished. There, still, was the ancient grandfather clock and the empty birdcage, and there, still, the uncompleted jigsaw puzzle upon the breakfast table. Nothing had changed except for the thick dust which settled in waves over the decaying furniture. The rain was still lashing against the window, and the cemetery was still brooding in the downpour, and the lightning was still flashing. The clock was tick-tocking away at five minutes to two (even though it was now covered in horrible cobwebs).

Alice quickly removed the eleven jigsaw pieces from her pinafore pocket, then proceeded to slot them into place in the mouldy old jigsaw puzzle of London Zoo: the termite into the Insect House; the badger in the Badger House; the snake in the Reptile House; the chicken into the Hen House; the zebra into the Mammal House; the snail into the Gastropod House; the cat into the Feline House; the fish into the Aquarium; the crow into the Aviary; the spider into the Arachnid House; the parrot also into the Aviary. At the adding of that piece, Whippoorwill fluttered back into his cage. Eleven creatures were now feeling quite at home, but still the twelfth jigsaw piece was missing.

"Oh where can that final elusive piece be?" Alice cried whilst searching all over the room for it. "It must be here somewhere! Help me find it, Celia!"

Celia had her head stuck in the clock's case, saying, "I'm doing my best, Alice." Then she popped back out: "But all I've found up to now is this." She was clutching the very first feather that Whippoorwill had dropped in his flight to the future.

"That's no use," replied Alice. "Quickly! Keep searching."

"Four minutes to two, Alice," whispered the clock.

"Oh dear!" cried Alice. "The jigsaw piece must be somewhere! Perhaps it's fallen down the sofa cushions?" Imagine her surprise to find that three identical old and wizened women were sitting on the sofa! So covered in dust and cobwebs they were, and so ancient and withered, that Alice had thought them merely part of the furniture until then! "And who are you three"?" she demanded.