CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
Alf fingered the Spoocebow and frowned. “I…uh…I don’t think you really mean this.”
Chief Andy’s huge painted face didn’t change expressions – which it never seemed to do. “Not kidding. We teach you Spoocebow.”
Alf looked doubtfully at the weapon. It consisted of a curved wooden stick, about three feet long, with a small hole carved in the center for spooce. The spooce shoved into the hole had been charged at the local ZapHenge to gain its powerful electric quality. The trigger could be pulled off to load spooce, then shoved back into place. When pushed down, the trigger would shove the spooce out the tiny hole at the front end, sending out thin beams of electric energy.
Or at least, that had been Alf’s first impression of the naturalist weapon. It looked too big and awkward to be carried around easily, but it didn’t weigh much. The problem would be shooting it – no one had ever trusted Alf with dangerous weapons before, due to his habit of not knowing who to point it at, and he wondered why Jake had not intervened.
“You point at target,” Andy said. “You pull trigger. You kill. When out of spooce, pull off cap, reload, put cap on, pull trigger.”
Alf frowned. “I thought there would be more of a trick to it.”
Andy’s face actually stretched into a grin. “Trick is hitting what you aim at.”
Both of them turned at the sound of pattering footsteps. A Mudokon native was charging forward, waving his tomahawk in the air, shouting something in a language Alf had no hope of understanding.
Andy’s smile dropped, and he said something.
The Mudokon replied in a distinctly positive tone.
Andy turned to Alf. “He say Sligs coming. More than hundred of them.”
Alf sighed. “And I don’t even know how to use the Spoocebow yet…”
* * *
|