ATDTDA (15): I'd be getting in the air, if I were you fellows, 427-428

[Paul Nightingale]

The Chums "[prepare] for departure with feelings of regret, unable to escape
a suspicion that somewhere in the bustle of lectures, exhibits, picnics, and
socials they had missed something essential". Evidently memories of the
Academy experience cannot be entirely repressed; but it is recollection of
an absence, perhaps something to do with the profusion of ellipses. Cf. the
conclusion to "the figurehead dispute" on 112: "After a while the boys would
come to think of the episode as others might remember a time of illness, or
youthful folly."

Here, Miles' "[lapse] into English" is perhaps an attempt to
explain/summarise what has happened to them, at the end of a section where
nothing is explained; while Darby's response ("Thanks a lot, Bug-brains")
indicates that this has been part of the "brief aberration".

Messages are now received by radio. On 425 "the Tesla device [comes]
squawking to life" following Alonzo's reference, perhaps initiated by him in
the way he initiates the meeting with Mr Ace; and then "[t]he next Tesla
transmission was to ascertain their exact moment of departure" (427),
without which knowledge they are, so to speak, frozen in Time.

At the beginning of Ch29 "messages arrived ... via the usual ..." etc (397);
somewhat anachronistic, but designed perhaps to keep the boys on their toes.
Cf. their arrival at Candlebrow: "Meals were served throughout the day and
night, according to a mysterious timetable ..." etc (408). On that occasion
they "conscientiously mastered the intricacies of access and scheduling"; so
what we have, pre-Academy, are a series of moments in which the Chums are
disciplined, are shown to subject themselves to said discipline, and this is
what they return to, the Tesla voice a kind of Foucaultian technique, one
designed to ensure they can be trusted to govern their own behaviour. On
425: "... a detailed surveillance maintained over the Chums even from its
deep bureaucratic distance", or even especially from a distance. By the
bottom of 427 the Tesla is able to listen in and respond, as though present
in person: "Mustn't jeopardise a perfect record of doing as you're told."
(428)