Books

The Gremlins Complete Text

"I said used postage stamps. It's the only thing they eat. Transatlantic-special-delivery-airmail stamps are their greatest delicacy."

"I don't believe it," said Gus, and went off to look for some used postage stamps which he could offer to Gremlin Gus the next time he saw him.

But Gremlin Gus didn't seem to respond to the postage-stamp treatment, and Gus himself became more and more worried. It came to a head one morning not long afterward when Gus was dicing with a bunch of Messerschmitt 109's and Heinkel 111's over the Channel.

He squirted one of the Heinkels, which dived away leaving a long plume of smoke in its wake. he was just about to have a go at another when he glanced in his mirror and saw a Messerschmitt on his tail, pouring incendiary bullets and cannon shell at him. He saw more than that. He saw smoke pouring out of his starboard wing just where his gas tank was, and through the smoke he saw Gremlin Gus kneeling down and playing the white-hot flame of an enormous blow torch through a hole in the smolderig wing onto the tank itself.

Just as the whole wing went up in flames, Gremlin Gus jumped aside, wriggled into the cockpit, and sat on Gus's knee. He was laughing so much that for a time he couldn't speak.

"You'd better jump before you bump," he said at last. "You'd better jump before you bump!"

Gus had no choice. He opened the hood, undid his straps, turned his machine over, and fell out, and Gremin Gus went with him, clinging jauntily to the harness of his parachute. Together they tumped over and over in a hundred mad somersaults until Gus pulled the ripcord and the parachute billowed out and pulled them up with a jerk.