"You think I'm crazy?" Clocker retorted. "They'd have kept me packed away and I'd never get a crack at telling anybody." "Don't let it trouble you," said Doc. "Some vestiges of delusion can be expected to persist for a while, but you'll get rid of them. I have faith in your ability to distinguish between the real and unreal." "But it all _happened_! If you guys don't believe me, who will? And you've _got_ to so I can get Zelda back!" "Of course, of course," said Doc hastily. "We'll discuss it further some other time. Right now I really must start putting my medical column together for the paper." "What about you, Handy Sam?" Clocker challenged. Handy Sam, with one foot up on the table and a pencil between his toes, was doodling self-consciously on a paper napkin. "We all get these ideas, Clocker. I used to dream about having arms and I'd wake up still thinking so, till I didn't know if I did or didn't. But like Doc says, then you figure out what's real and it don't mix you up any more." "All right," Clocker said belligerently to Oil Pocket. "You think my story's batty, too?" "Can savvy evil spirits, good spirits," Oil Pocket replied with stolid tact. "Injun spirits, though, not white ones." "But I keep telling you they ain't spirits. They ain't even human. They're from some world way across the Universe--" Oil Pocket shook his head. "Can savvy Injun spirits, Clocker. No spirits, no savvy." "Look, you see the mess we're all in, don't you?" Clocker appealed to the whole group. "Do you mean to tell me you can't feel we're getting set to blow the joint? Wouldn't you want to stop it?" "If we could, my boy, gladly," Doc said. "However, there's not much that any individual or group of individuals can do." "But how in hell does anything get started? With one guy, two guys--before you know it, you got a crowd, a political party, a country--" "What about the other countries, though?" asked Buttonhole. "So we're sold on your story in America, let's say. What do we do--let the rest of the world walk in and take us over?" "We educate them," Clocker explained despairingly. "We start it here and it spreads to there. It doesn't have to be everybody. Mr. Calhoun said I just have to convince a few people and that'll show them it can be done and then I get Zelda back." Doc stood up and glanced around the table. "I believe I speak for all of us, Clocker, when I state that we shall do all within our power to aid you." "Like telling other people?" Clocker asked eagerly. "Well, that's going pretty--" "Forget it, then. Go write your column. I'll see you chumps around--around ten miles up, shaped like a mushroom." He stamped out, so angry that he untypically let the others settle his bill. * * * * *