Maybe I was a little old for it, but that's what I was doing there in the Moran III jungle.
I got the shield off my cigarette lighter and jerked out the dinky little damper rods for the pile and started easing the two little bricks toward each other with the point of my lead pencil.
I heard something that resembled a death rattle come from Charlie's throat as the fingers of the alien closed down on it and my hand twitched. A blooming light stabbed at my eyes and I flicked the lighter away from me.
The explosion was a dud.
It lit up the jungle for a radius of half a mile like a giant flashbulb, but it exploded only about ten times as loud as a pistol shot. The mass hadn't been slapped together hard enough or held long enough to do any real damage.
The natives weren't fools, though. They got out of there fast. I wished I could have gone with them. There was undoubtedly an unhealthy amount of radiation hanging around.
"Now!" I told Bronoski.
He ran into the clearing and found four bodies sprawled out: Charlie Baxter, his two guards and the native spokesman.
Charlie and the native were both technically unconscious, but they each had a stranglehold on each other, with Charlie getting the worst of it.
Bronoski pried the two of them apart.