As for the Beller, he would be in an absolutely strange and frightening world. He could speak no word of the language and he would want to cling to his bell, which would be embarrassing and inconvenient for him. But he could have gone in any direction.

The only thing Kickaha could do was to head toward the nearest gate in the hope that Wolff and Chryseis would also be doing that. If they met there, they could team up, consider what to do next, and plan on the best way of locating the Beller. If Wolff and Chryseis did not show, then everything would be up to Kickaha.

Moo-Moo sat down by him. She put her hand on his arm and said, "My, you're muscular!"

"I have a few," he said, grinning. "Now that you've softened me up with your comments on my hardness, what's on your mind?"

She leaned against him, rubbing the side of her large breast against his arm, and said, "That Lou! He sees a new chick that's reasonably good-looking, and he flips every time. He's been talking to you, trying to get you to give your girl friend to him, hasn't he? I'll bet he offered you money for her."

"Some," Kickaha said. "What about it?"

She felt the muscles of his thigh and said, "Two can play at that game."

"You offering me money, too?" he said.

She drew away from him, her eyes widening and then she said, "You're putting me on! I should pay you?"

At another time, Kickaha might have played the game out to the end. But, corny as it sounded, the fate of the human race on Earth really depended on him. If the Beller adjusted to this world, and succeeded in making other bells, and then the minds in these possessed the bodies of human beings, the time would come when... Moo-Moo herself would become a mindless thing and then a body and brain inhabited by another entity.

It might not matter, however. If he were to believe half of what he read in the magazines and newspapers, the human race might well have doomed itself. And all life on the planet. Earth might be better off with humans occupied by the minds of Bellers. Bellers were logical beings, and, given a chance, they would clear up the mess that humans seemed to have made of the entire planet.

Kickaha shuddered a little. Such thinking was dangerous.

There could be no rest until the last of the Bellers died.

"What's the matter with you?" Moo-Moo said, her voice losing its softness. "You don't dig me?"

He patted her thigh and said, "You're a beautiful woman, Moo-Moo, but I love Ann. However, tell you what! If the Gnome King succeeds in turning Ann into one of his Bad Eggs, you and I will make music together. And it won't be the cacophony that radio is vomiting."

She jerked with surprise and then said, "What do you mean? That's the Rolling Stones!"

"No moss gathered here," he said.

"You're not with it," she said. "Man, you're square, square, square! You sure you're not over thirty?"

He shrugged. He had not cared for the popular music of his youth, either. But it was sometimes pleasant, when compared to this screeching rhythm which turned his teeth in on himself.

The bus had moved out of the desert country into greener land. It sped along the freeway despite the increasing traffic. The sun was shining down so fiercely now, and the air was hot. The air was also noisy with the roar of cars and stinking with fumes. His eyes stung, and the sides of his nostrils felt needled. A grayish haze was lying ahead; then they were in it, and the air seemed to clear somewhat, and the haze was head again.

Moo-Moo said something about the smog really being fierce this time of the year and especially along here. Kickaha had read about smog in one of the magazines, although he did not know the origin of the word as yet. If this was what the people of southern California lived in, he wanted no more to do with it. Anana's eyes were red and teary and she was sniffling and complaining of a headache and clogging sinuses.

Moo-Moo left him, and Anana sat down by him.

"You never said anything about this when you were describing your world to me," she said.

"I didn't know anything about it," he said. "It developed after I left Earth."

The bus had been traveling swiftly and too wildly. It had switched lanes back and forth as it squeezed between cars, tailgating and cutting in ahead madly. The driver crouched over his wheel, his eyes seeming to blaze, his mouth hanging open and his tongue flicking out. He paid no attention to the sound of screeching brakes and blaring horns, but leaned on his own horn when he wanted to scare somebody just ahead of him. The horn was very loud and deep and must have sounded like a locomotive horn to many a startled driver. These usually pulled over to another lane, sometimes doing it so swiftly, they almost sideswiped other cars.

After a while, the press of cars was so heavy that the bus was forcedto crawl along or even stop now and then. For miles ahead, traffic was creeping along. The heat and the gray haze thickened. Moo-Moo said to Baum, "Why can't we get air conditioning on this bus? We certainly make enough money!"

"How often do we get on the freeway?" the manager said.

Kickaha told Anana about Baum's proposal.

Anana said, "I don't know whether to laugh or to throw up."

"A little of both might help you," he said. "Well, I promised I wouldn't try to argue you out of it if you decided to take him in preference to me. Which, by the way, he seemed one hundred percent sure would happen."

"You sell me; you worry a while until I make up my mind," she said.

"Sure. I'll do that," he replied. He rose and sauntered down the aisle and looked out the back of the bus. After a while he came back and sat down again with Anana.

In a low voice, he said, "There's a big black Lincoln Continental, I believe, behind us. I recognized one of the men in it. I saw him through the binoculars when I looked down from the cave."

"How could they have found us?" she said. Her voice was steady but her body was rigid.

"Maybe they didn't," he said. "It might be just a coincidence. They may have no idea they're so close to us. And then, again..."

It did not seem at all likely. But how had they caught up with them? Had they been posted along the road and seen them go by in the bus? Or did Orc have such a widespread organization that someone on the bus had reported to him?

He dismissed this last thought as sheer paranoia. Only time would show whether or not it was coincidence.

So far, the men in the car had not seemed interested in the bus. They were having a vigorous dispute. Three of them were dark and between forty and fifty-five years old. The fourth was a young man with blond hair cut in a Julius Caesar style. Kickaha studied them until he had branded their features on his mind. Then he returned to the seat near the front.

After a while, the traffic speeded up. The bus sped by grim industrial sections and the back ends of run-down buildings. The grayish green-tinged smog did not thicken, but its corrosive action became worse. Anana said, "Do your people live in this all the time? They must be very tough!"

"You know as much as I do about it," he said.

Baum suddenly rose from his seat beside Moo-Moo and said to the driver, "Jim, when you get near Civic Center, pull off and look for a hamburger stand. I'm hungry."

The others protested. They could eat at the hotel when they got there. It would only take about a half hour more. What was his hurry?

"I'm hungry!" he shouted. He looked wide-eyed at them and stomped his foot hard. "I'm hungry! I don't want to wait any longer! Besides, if we got to fight our way through the usual mob of teeny-boppers, we may be held up for some time! Let's eat now!"

The others shrugged. Evidently they had seen him act this way before. He looked as if he were going to scream and stamp through the floor, like in a tantrum, if he did not get his way.