CHAPTER 10
IT GETS EVEN STICKIER
Pruneman was forty feet from the ground and falling fast. Larryboy had to act quickly. But that was easier said than done. His string of gum had now turned into five strings of sticky stuff, creating a bubblegum web inside the cockpit.
The caped cucumber pressed the Larryplane joystick, and the plane dove down toward the falling prune. But Larryboy was so busy untangling himself from the gum that he nearly drove the Larryplane right into the side of the balloon factory.
Pruneman was thirty feet from the ground.
There were now ten strings of sticky gum connecting the controls to Larryboy’s face.
“Plungers away!”
Larryboy managed to fire two plungers at Pruneman, but having to shoot through the maze of gum, one of them hit the side of the building and stuck. Still connected to the plunger’s tether line, it caused the plane to whip around the building like a carnival ride.
Pruneman was twenty-one feet, four and one half inches from the ground.
Larryboy had only one hope left—a heat-seeking plunger that Archie had just invented. It had never been used before.
Pruneman was thirteen feet from the ground.
“That’s roughly four meters in metric measurements!” Pruneman yelled as he fell.
POW! ZIP!
The heat-seeking plunger tore through the tangle of gum and streaked across the sky.
Pruneman was only three feet from the ground.
THWACK!
The heat-seeking plunger hit Pruneman smack in the middle of his back and stopped his fall just in time.
“Nice gadget,” Pruneman noted, as he dangled just two inches from the cement. “We’ve got a toilet backing up in the lounge you might want to look at.”
Although he was pleased he had saved the old superhero, Larryboy was frustrated beyond belief. Outback Jack and his Balloon of Doom had vanished into the dark night, and Larryboy was in no shape to pursue him. Twenty-five strings of gum now crisscrossed the cockpit, and even more gum decorated the upholstery.
Larryboy had just enough gum left to blow a bubble, but it popped in his face.
“Drat.”
