Akiko on the Planet Smoo Read Online Free PDF Page B

people are in rather short supply here on Smoo.”
    â€œShort supply?”
    â€œThat is to say,” he continued hesitantly, “there aren’t any at all. What I meant was that if there
were
such books and I had them in my library, I’d have certainly gotten around to reading them by now.”
    â€œI can’t
believe
this,” I said, starting to feel kind of panicky again.
    â€œBut, Akiko, the whole reason we’ve brought you here is because of your
expertise
in rescuing people,” he said, eyeing me suspiciously. “Surely there’s nothing written on the subject that you don’t already know.”
    â€œYeah,” I answered, trying my best to sound confident. “Sure. I mean . . . when it comes to rescuing people, books are, um, you know, no substitute for real experience.”
    â€œUndoubtedly,” Mr. Beeba replied. He didn’t look entirely convinced.
    Finally we arrived at the ship we were going to use and hoisted the bag into its trunk. Mr. Beeba invited me to sit in the backseat while he got behind the wheel in front. Poog, who didn’t need a seat, just floated along beside us.
    After we were both settled in, Mr. Beeba fired up the engines and carefully steered the little ship through a huge opening in the wall. I looked over the edge and caught a dizzying glimpse of the lower portions of the palace, which stretched hundreds of feet to the ground. Before long we emerged from the towers and flags and glided out over the desertlike surface of Smoo. Mountains and boulders of all sizes zoomed by on either side of us as we made our way through valleys and canyons and across wide open plains.
    I really had no idea where they were taking me, but I figured it would look pretty unprofessional to start asking a lot of questions. After all, Mr. Beeba obviously still thought I was some kind of rescue expert, and I didn’t want him to lose confidence in me. He looked pretty nervous as it was.
    Suddenly there was a burst of high-pitched noise near one of my ears. For a second I thought I was being attacked by some sort of insect. Then I realized it was Poog talking to me in his weird warbly language. Needless to say, I didn’t understand a single word.
    â€œPoog says to plug your nose, Akiko,” Mr. Beeba explained. “The man we’re going to visit raises Bropka lizards for a living. They are among the most foul-smelling creatures on the planet.”
    He paused a moment, then added, “In fact, Spuckler himself is not exactly a treat for the nose. He really should bathe more often than he does.”
    I slumped down in the seat and hoped he was just exaggerating.

Before long we flew over a big wooden shacklike building way out in the middle of nowhere. It looked like it had been built one room at a time, hammered together from pieces of scrap wood, with no plan or blueprint. The rickety structure was surrounded on all sides by hundreds of really strange-looking two-headed lizards, most of which were lazily wandering from one patch of grass to another. Fortunately they weren’t very scary looking. They actually seemed like very peaceful creatures, content to just stand there and graze like a bunch of cows. Poog was right about the smell, though. They were just about the stinkiest animals I’d ever caught a whiff of! I took Poog’s advice and gave my nose a good plugging.

    Mr. Beeba brought the ship in for a landing, sending half a dozen or so lizards scattering in all directions. I looked up and saw a man sitting on a rock, feeding the lizards right from his hands.
    The first thing I noticed was his hair, which looked like it had never been anywhere near a comb in the man’s entire life. It was a very deep blue color, almost black, and it sprang from his head in curvy spikes like the top of a pineapple. His unshaven face was long and very narrow, and he smiled at me with big white teeth, as if I were already an old