Sprockets Read Online Free PDF Page B

saddle if he hadn’t been clinging tightly and had his balance button on.
    â€œWow!” Sprockets said fervently. “I didn’t know I had that in me!”
    Hurriedly he turned off the button that had caused such a commotion, and rode on, using only his night vision. His ultraviolet perceptors were so strong that they had showed him every hoofprint on the bare rock for as far as he could make out the trail, which he memorized instantly. It was midnight when he reached the spot where Don José Salazar and his party had left the horses and gone ahead on foot.
    Sprockets tied his burro to a bush near the horses, oiled his squeaky leg, and patiently began climbing through the narrow pass.
    With his balance button turned on, he was able to climb very easily, though squeakily, over places where ordinary humans had to pant and groan and spend much of their time resting. It is not surprising, therefore, that he caught up with the others just as the Moon came up over the mountain peaks. The Moon, which had been rising on the other side of the mountains, now shone upon them, round and full and bright.
    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.
    â€œPeegs!” 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—”
    â€œSir,” said Sprockets. “Are you referring to your lost scouts?”
    â€œShut up!” roared Don José. “Let me be unhappy in peace!”
    â€œSir,” Sprockets pleaded. “I beg you to be unhappy quietly, or you will be heard.”
    â€œI want them to hear me!” Don José shouted. “What’s happened to the rascals?”
    â€œSir,” said Sprockets. “They have been captured by Prof. Vladimir Katz and his men.”
    Dr. Bailey sat up. “Nonsense!” he said. “Utter, complete, positronic nonsense!”
    â€œReedeeculous!” said Don José. “That Vladimir Katz, he is miles behind us on the other trail!”
    â€œSirs,” 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.”

    â€œThere’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?”
    â€œSir, 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.”
    â€œWell, bless me!” said the doctor. “Bless me!”
    â€œSir,” 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.
    â€œWe’d better turn him off,” whispered the doctor. “They are bound to hear him tick, and he squeaks every time he moves.”
    â€œOh, please—” Sprockets began, but that was