Read Online Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane - 2 by Suzanne Collins - Free Book Online Page B

pitcher's mound and they'd fire off a hundred-mile-an-hour fastball that left the batter cross-eyed.

    As if even slouching had been too much of an effort for him, Ripred slid down and lounged along the wall of the cave. "Yes, echolocation. Tell me what you know about it."

    "I know bats use it. And dolphins, maybe. It's like radar. They make a sound and it bounces off of something and they can tell where it is without seeing it," said Gregor. "But people can't do that. I can't do that."

    "Anybody can do it, to some extent. In the Overland, some blind people use it with excellent results," said Ripred. "The Underland humans don't give it much attention, but in this, they are fools. All the rest of us down here use it to some degree."

    "You mean, the roaches and the spiders and —" started Gregor.

    "All of us. Generations in the dark have helped the skill evolve. But if you could master even the most rudimentary elements of it, echolocation would be invaluable to you," said Ripred.
    "Say, for instance, if you lost your light in a cave with a rat." Gregor saw Ripred's tail coming, and his hand lifted to block it, but the rat was ahead of him this time. It was actually his hind foot that smacked the flashlight out of Gregor's hand and sent it spinning into the cave wall twenty feet away. The beam pointed into the stone, leaving them virtually in the dark.

    Ripred's voice startled him. "And now I'm back here," the rat said from behind him.
    Gregor whipped around and, from somewhere off to his left, Ripred whispered, "Over here now."

    The flashlight came spinning back across the floor and bumped into Gregor's feet. He picked it up and saw the rat was again slouching against the wall, on the far side of the cave from where the flashlight had been.

    "So teach me," Gregor said, unnerved.

    Ripred began by having him close his eyes and make a clicking sound, bouncing his tongue off the roof of his mouth. Then he had to listen very carefully to how it sounded. It was supposed to sound differently when he directed it toward a cave wall than when he directed it at Ripred. Then Ripred had him turn off his flashlight and click and listen and point it wherever it sounded like the rat might be. He really did try, but he'd only had about three hours of sleep in the last two days, plus all the craziness of being back in the Underland and the prophecy and the training and —

    "Focus, Overlander! This could save your life!" Ripred snarled as Gregor miscalculated his position for the tenth time in a row.

    "This is stupid, Ripred — it all sounds the same to me!" Gregor snapped back. "I can't do it, okay?"

    "No, not okay. You will practice. Every time you get a chance down here and when you go home, if you get home, whenever you can," ordered Ripred. "You may not master it, but clearly you can only improve!"

    "Okay. Fine. I'll practice. Are we done?" Gregor asked with some attitude. He'd about had it with the rat.

    Suddenly Ripred's nose was inches from his own. The rat's eyes were narrowed in anger.

    "Listen, Warrior," he hissed. "One day you will find that it matters not if you can hit three thousand blood balls if you cannot locate one in the dark. Understand?"

    "Yeah," Gregor managed to get out. Ripred didn't move. "So, I'll practice. I will," said Gregor. "For real."

    "Good. Now let's go get some sleep. We're both done in," said Ripred.

    As they silently made their way back toward the city, Gregor wondered if Ripred would think twice about killing him. When they had been on the quest to get his dad, Ripred had kept him alive because they had mutual need: Gregor needed Ripred to find his dad. Ripred needed Gregor to help defeat King Gorger so that he could be the leader of the rats someday. Ripred must still need Gregor for "The Prophecy of Bane." But when Gregor had stopped being of use to the rat, would he be expendable?

    Gregor's feet dragged as he climbed up the flights of stairs toward where he thought his bedroom was.