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The Gremlins Complete Text

Then Stuffy told of how, when patrolling at thirty-five thousand feet, he had flown through one of those enormous cumulus clouds and disturbed a swarm of spandules. There were shouts of derision when he had spoken, and Jamface said, "Stuffy, you're imagining things!" But Stuffy was serious.

"These spandules," he said, "are terrifying creatures. They're a breed of high-altitude gremlins, to be found only above thirty thousand feet. They live in the rolling valleys of huge, white cumulus clouds, and all day they eat hailstones. They're at least three times as big as ordinary gremlins, and their bodies are speciall designed for high-altitude work. They're covered with long, black hair to protect them against the terrific cold, and their faces look rather like oxygen masks – which probably helps them to breathe the thin air. Their bodies are flat and thin, and therefore not affected by the pressure.

"The ones I saw," continued Stuffy," had no legs – just short arms with suction gloves on their hands. With these they attached themselves to my wings, looking like nothing so much as a lot of washing flapping on the line. They hung there and blew great puffs of cold air onto the leading edges, and layers of ice began to form all over my plane. While they worked they crunched hailstones, and the noise of their eating sounded like thunder.

"Naturally, I went into a spin and didn't come out for twenty thousand feet, by which time the ice had melted away.

"The funny part about it was," concluded Stuffy, "that one old spandule got his hand caught in my starboard aileron and got carried down with me. As soon as we got below thirty thousand he just melted away, and all that remained on the wing was a pair of suction gloves and a damp patch with a few black hairs sticking to it."