Akiko and the Great Wall of Trudd Read Online Free

time.
    BRRRRRRRRUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!
    All at once the doors flew open and out came an avalanche of stone and sand. Mr. Beeba, Gax, and I continued backing away as wave after wave of the gravelly gray rocks poured out of the doorway, over the steps, and onto the grass. If Spuckler had waited any longer he would have been buried alive!

    A minute or two later the last of the rocks came tumbling out, and all that was left was a huge cloud of white dust hanging in the air. Only a tiny sliver of space remained between the top of the doorway and the mountain of stones that had just poured out of it.
    “Well, I’ll be gol-
darned
!” Spuckler exclaimed, scratching his head with one hand. “They went and filled the thing with
rocks
!”
    “They did nothing of the sort, Spuckler,” Mr. Beeba stated authoritatively. “This wall is simply so old it’s disintegrating from within.”
    All at once I had an image of what it must be like inside the wall, with every ceiling and floor ready to cave in at the slightest footstep.
    “Well, in that case,” I said, adopting my best leaderlike tone of voice, “I don’t want anyone going in there. It’s
way
too dangerous.” There was a moment of silence as we all looked at one another, trying to think of what the next step would be.
    Finally Spuckler cleared his throat and spoke.
    “The way I see it, there’s only one way we’re gonna get past this thing,” he said, shielding his eyes from the sun with one hand as he looked up at the very top of the wall, “and that’s by climbin’
over
it.”

Spuckler took charge of the climbing plans, with Mr. Beeba as the self-appointed naysayer. I sat down and rested on the grass while the two of them bickered about how best to scale the wall. Finally they came up with a plan they could both agree on. Sort of.
    “First thing we gotta do is tie ourselves together,” Spuckler said, pulling a large quantity of rope from a compartment inside Gax and tying one end of it around his own waist. He then tied the middle of the rope around my waist and handed the other end to Mr. Beeba, who tied it around himself as best he could.
    “This way if one of us falls, the other two can pull ’im back up,” Spuckler explained in a tone of voice that was probably supposed to reassure us.

    “Sounds like a recipe for
disaster
, if you ask me,” Mr. Beeba moaned.
    “You prefer goin’ it
alone
, Beebs?” Spuckler barked, squinting angrily.
    “Er . . . maybe I need to tie this knot a little bit
tighter
,” Mr. Beeba whimpered, busying himself with the rope.
    Meanwhile, Gax had produced three suction-cupped legs, which allowed him to scale the wall almost effortlessly. He scampered up and down the wall for practice, making a series of little popping sounds as he did.
    “Wow, Gax,” I said. “You’re better at going up walls than any of us!”
    “ IT’S NOTHING SPECIAL, MA’AM, ” Gax replied modestly. “ MOST ROBOTS OF MY GENERATION ARE CAPABLE OF WALL CLIMBING. THESE SUCTION CUPS WERE INSTALLED AT THE FACTORY, AS A MATTER OF FACT. ”
    I tried for a moment to imagine the factory where Gax had been built. It must have been a pretty interesting place.
    “Now, there’s just one rule b’fore we start,” Spuckler said, staring first at me, then at Mr. Beeba.
“Don’t look down
. It’ll make ya dizzy.”
    The two of us nodded and tugged nervously at the rope, checking it once more.
    Finally it was time to start climbing. Spuckler took the lead, I went next, and Mr. Beeba was underneath me at the bottom end of the rope. Gax followed Mr. Beeba, and Poog just sort of floated alongside us, two or three feet from the wall.
    Before long we were almost thirty feet from the ground. Then forty. Then fifty. The stones were cut very roughly, so there were plenty of little ledges to hold on to. At certain points it was no harder than climbing a steep flight of stairs. At other times it was a lot trickier than that. There was one spot where most of