Sprockets (5 page)

Jim and Dr. Bailey were so tired they could hardly groan. Don José Salazar was too angry to be tired. He had lost his pearl-handled pistols in a deep ravine. He had lost both his scouts, whom he suspected of being bandits. He had lost one of his precious cameras, and finally he had lost his way in the darkness.

Now he was in the middle of losing his temper.

“Peegs!” he roared. “Peegs and worms! Peegs, worms, and bandits!” He paused and then shouted, “If I ever catch those unspeakable, unmentionable, unhallowed, unholy, unnecessary, un—un—un—”

“Sir,” said Sprockets. “Are you referring to your lost scouts?”

“Shut up!” roared Don José. “Let me be unhappy in peace!”

“Sir,” Sprockets pleaded. “I beg you to be unhappy quietly, or you will be heard.”

“I want them to hear me!” Don José shouted. “What's happened to the rascals?”

“Sir,” said Sprockets. “They have been captured by Prof. Vladimir Katz and his men.”

Dr. Bailey sat up. “Nonsense!” he said. “Utter, complete, positronic nonsense!”

“Reedeeculous!” said Don José. “That Vladimir Katz, he is miles behind us on the other trail!”

“Sirs,” said Sprockets, “I regret to inform you otherwise, but he is ahead of us. I can hear him with my superaudio hearing. By the sound, he is only seven hundred and sixty-nine feet away. He has captured your scouts, Don José, and now he is ordering his men to come and capture us.”

“There's something fishy about this,” said Dr. Bailey. “Sprockets, how can you understand what he's saying to his men if you don't know Spanish?”

“Sir, he is not speaking Spanish. He grunts in low German when he speaks unspeakably, but he talks to his men in Zapotecan, with which I am familiar. I would deduce, sir, that his men are renegade Zapotec Indians.”

“Well, bless me!” said the doctor. “Bless me!”

“Sir,” Sprockets continued hastily. “I would suggest that we hide quickly, for they will soon be here. We have no weapons, and I believe they are armed to the teeth. They sound very bloodthirsty. There is some mention of slicing us in little pieces and feeding us to the mountain lions.”

There was no time to search for a good hiding place. They crouched in the black shadows behind the rocks on the side of the trail. Now the only sounds in the stillness were the occasional rattling of falling pebbles, and a distinct ticking that came from Sprockets.

“We'd better turn him off,” whispered the doctor. “They are bound to hear him tick, and he squeaks every time he moves.”

“Oh, please—” Sprockets began, but that was as far as he got.

CLICK
!

He was turned off. It was the last thing Sprockets wanted, for he had a plan—a beautiful plan—that would have saved them all. But now he couldn't use it. He was helpless.

The next few minutes were the worst Sprockets could remember in all his short life. He couldn't turn his head or actually see anything, but he was vaguely aware of movement, of fierce Zapotec Indians armed with long, sharp machetes creeping stealthily down the trail toward them.

The Zapotecs reached the rock where Sprockets was hiding. They stopped. There were hurried whispers among them. Then a guttural voice gave an order. The Indians moved soundlessly on.

A minute passed. A cloud drifted over the Moon, and suddenly it was dark again on the mountain.

Dr. Bailey whispered: “Here's our chance! Let's get away from here!”

The doctor touched Sprockets' switch that clicked him on, and started to leave. But Sprockets stopped him.

“Wait!” he whispered. “They are coming back! Please don't turn me off again. I have a plan.”

Before the doctor could protest, Sprockets darted squeaking down the trail toward the approaching Indians.

When he was a few yards away from them he paused, adjusted his voice button in a way he hoped would be proper for the occasion, then instantly turned on his ultraviolet perceptors.

Again he glowed like a hot hobgoblin. Violet fires circled his head and shot in blazing streaks from his eyes. He raised his arm and pointed a fiery finger at the approaching Indians and Prof. Vladimir Katz.

In a hollow voice—as dreadfully hollow as his button would allow in Zapotecan—Sprockets said: “Flee to your homes, Zapotecs! Flee for your lives! Have nothing to do with Vladimir Katz. He is a man of evil.”

Five fierce Indians stopped in their tracks. They stared at him, utterly astounded. Their mouths dropped open, and their gleaming machetes dropped from their hands. Abruptly, without a sound, all five of them whirled and fled, leaping like mountain goats to get away from this fiery horror with the pointing finger.

Only Prof. Vladimir Katz stood his ground. Or rather, he tried to stand his ground. He was a fuming, wheezing, waddling barrel of a man with no hair on his head, no neck under it, and a great many chins—possibly four or five. Being very learned in several ologies, he should have known better than to think of trying to stop five fierce Zapotecs with a sudden urge to go home. So, naturally, he was knocked sprawling, and might have rolled off the mountain if Don José Salazar had not pounced upon him and sat upon him hard.

“Scoundrel!” roared Don José. “Peeg! Trespasser! Stealer of purple saucers—”

“Let me go!” Professor Katz tried to roar back, though he could only wheeze. “I am a friend of the governor of Monteverde. When I tell him of this outrage—”

“Fool!” said Don José, “
I
am the governor of Monteverde. You are in this country without the permit. For a brass peso I would have you put in the jail for life. Instead I will only fine you till your purse she is very thin. Then I will deport you to the worst place I can think of—if I can think of a worse place than Vladivostok or Sputnik-sky, which may take me years and years.”

6

He Finds the Saucer

Sprockets was so tired when it was all over—or rather, his little atomic battery was so run down—that his eye lights practically went out, and all of a sudden he collapsed in the trail with a loud squeak and a
tock
.

Jim rushed over to him. “Are—are you sick or something, Sprockets?”

“I am deplorably depleted,” Sprockets answered in a very weak voice.

“What's ‘deplorably depleted' mean?”

Sprockets was always surprised that Jim, who was so smart, had trouble with so many words. “It's my battery,” he answered faintly. “It's dreadfully low from using my ultraviolet perceptors.”

“If only we were home,” said Jim, “Mom could give you another hot shot.”

“That would be wonderful,” Sprockets whispered, tingling at the thought. “But I will fully recharge myself if I lie here six hours, fifty-seven minutes, and twelve seconds. Please let nothing disturb me.”

“Just one question,” Don José interrupted, his mustachios quivering in his eagerness. “Has the leetle mechanical one any way of knowing where the purple saucer is?”

Even Professor Katz, securely bound, and just as securely gagged—so no one would have to listen to him speak unspeakably in low German—pricked up his thick ears at the question.

Sprockets said, so faintly he could barely be heard, “Yes—I—will—tell—you—when—I—am—recharged—”

While Sprockets was recharging, Jim built a campfire, and Dr. Bailey and Don José went up the trail and found the captured scouts, who had been tightly bound and gagged by Professor Katz's Zapotecs. Then everyone slept till dawn.

When daylight came they all had breakfast, and Don José sent the scouts back to Monteverde with Professor Katz, with orders to lock the professor in the Monteverde jail.

Now they all stood around Sprockets, looking at their watches and waiting until the recharging period was up.

“Six seconds to go,” Dr. Bailey said finally. “Five—four—three—two—one—Ah, bless me!”

Sprockets sat up suddenly, blinking his eye lights happily.

“The saucer,” Don José prompted.

“Yes, sir,” Sprockets replied. “One minute, please.”

He stood up straight and adjusted his cerebration button. Then he touched both his instinct and his special perceptor buttons. A halo of color began flashing merrily around his head. So finely attuned was he at this moment that he could have located practically anything anywhere, including all the lost umbrellas that the Bailey family had misplaced during the last seven years.

He began turning slowly. When he became aware of a faint, distant, and very unworldly hum—the sort of hum that couldn't have come from anything but a flying saucer—he stopped and pointed.

“It is less than five miles to the southwest,” he announced, shutting off his three buttons so he wouldn't drain his battery. “I am calculating the distance in a straight line.”

We'd better start hiking,” said the doctor. “Five miles in this country is nearer twenty on foot.”

“And I believe, sir,” Sprockets added, “that we had better hurry. By the sound of it, I would deduce that there is nothing wrong with the saucer's motor. I would further deduce that they have been recharging. You see, sir, my positronic inductors are responding to unusual radioactivity, and it seems evident—”

“Save it!” snapped the doctor. “Get going!”

There was a scramble to pack blanket rolls and knapsacks, and when they started down the farther side of the mountain, Sprockets led the way.

They went up and down, down and up, around and across, over and under, up and down again, and in every direction except straight ahead as one does in level country. They slid, crawled, stumbled, and climbed, dropped and climbed again, and all except Sprockets panted, groaned, grunted, and often said “Ouch!” or “Oh, my poor feet!” or used other words that should not be mentioned. Sprockets only ticked and squeaked, though occasionally he
tocked
when the trail was dangerous.

Finally they crawled over some boulders and slid down into a little open valley. Ahead of them something—a bright purple something—pulsed and glimmered and hummed faintly.

It was the purple saucer, and it looked just like a flying saucer is supposed to look, except for its color. There seemed to be nothing wrong with it; in fact, it floated, motionless, a few feet above the ground.

They stopped, breathless, and stared at it. Dr. Bailey's mop of white hair stood straight up. Don José Salazar was so surprised that he dropped his precious remaining camera.

Jim whispered: “A
flying saucer
! The
real thing
!”

Don José Salazar whispered, “Except that it is
very
purple!”

Dr. Bailey whispered: “Bless me!
Incredibly
purple!”

Jim whispered again, “D'you suppose it has
purple people
in it?”

“I declare,” said the doctor. “I never thought of that. It is a distinct possibility. But let us pray that it has purple
people
of some kind in it—not purple
things
. I wouldn't care to meet any kind of
thing
in this remote spot.”