The Verruca Bazooka by Jonny Moon Page B

the board was an old foot pump with twin rubberpipes connecting it to both fuel tanks.
    “Pump!” shouted Jack, after checking that the path at the bottom of the hill was clear of dog-walkers and other park users.
    Oscar frantically pumped with his right foot, rapidly filling the bottles with air. The bottles began to swell, the plastic straining. Oscar kept pumping. Something would have to give. If Jack had made a mistake in his calculations the plastic would rupture and Oscar would end up – not for the first time -on his bottom. If Jack was right, the corks he had wedged into the bottle tops would be expelled like bullets from a gun, propelling the skateboard – and Oscar – forward at great speed.
    POP! The two corks blew at exactly the same moment and Oscar’s jet-powered skateboard launched on its maiden voyage.
    Oscar came hurtling down the hill with hisarms outstretched to balance. The launch velocity had given him a much faster than usual start and now, as the board careered down the path, it picked up even more speed.
    Oscar let out a cry that could have been excitement or fear (or possibly both). Moving at maximum speed, he hit the ramp.
    Thrown violently into the air, he threw his arms back behind him, like the ski-jumpers he had seen on the Winter Olympics. Jack watched with a mixture of awe and pride as, for a long glorious moment, Oscar flew through the air. It worked! he thought.
    But then he had another thought. What about landing?
    At that moment, gravity woke up and remembered about Oscar. Jack had to cover his eyes as his friend returned rapidly to earth. Luckily, he landed in a bush, which absorbed the impact like one of the gym mats at school.
    Unluckily, it was a rose bush.
    “Ow!” said Oscar, picking thorns out of his bum. And then, more enthusiastically, “Wow! How cool was that?”
    “Why don’t you ever learn?” asked Jack, helping Oscar disentangle himself from thehedge. “You always crash when you do stuff like this”
    Oscar grinned. “Yeah but the bit just before the crashes – that’s awesome!” He dusted himself down and noticed that one of the inflatable arm bands had burst on impact. “And your safety gear was brilliant.”
    Stripping off Jack’s now deflated limb protectors – and the helmet – Oscar stowed them all in his bag and turned to Jack.
    “How about that Frisbee thing now?”
    At the very moment that Oscar was climbing out of the bush, a grey squirrel appeared on the path nearby. Neither of the boys saw it. If they had seen it they may have noted that it was acting rather oddly. Rather thanscurrying across the path between trees like normal squirrels it was sitting perfectly still and looking around like an automated security camera scanning a car park. There was a very good reason for this – as anyone who looked closely at the squirrel’s eyes would know. Because they were cameras.
    There was a mechanical hum as the mysterious robot squirrel moved forwards to get a better view. Then it scanned the park and zoomed in on the boys as they began to play with the remote-control toy.
    Nearby, a man watched carefully as the images from the Squirrel-Cam were fed back to his monitor. Could these boys be the oneshe was looking for? They had courage, certainly, and ingenuity too. Both qualities the Watcher needed in any recruit. He sent a signal to the squirrel. Focus on the two boys. Follow them…
    The heli-frisbee proved to be a great success. It was flying like a dream. The boys each took turns with the remote control and practised swooping it around, taking it low to the ground and then back up into the sky again. At one point when Oscar was at the controls it almost took the head off a rather dense squirrel that seemed mesmerised by the boys’ activity. The heli-frisbee flew right at the poor creature, but all it did was stand there as still as a statue, looking at the device.
    At the very last moment Jack managed to push the creature outof the way, saving it