Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

PART 2: FINDING BRUNO

In the DeSoto, roaring down the highway, Sam went over their options.
There were three places to try. Possibly, after escaping with Bruno, Trixie had decided to take in a round of Gator Golf. Or maybe they decided to stock up at the World of Fish.
Sam decided against both of these, as they were pretty flimsy. He was going to the Largest Ball of Twine on Earth to try and find Shuv-Oohl, who could hopefully tell them where Bruno was.
You saw it from a long way off.
At first, if you were more interested in avoiding accidents than staring at the scenery, you'd catch a glimpse of a large rounded object in the distance, and dismiss it. Probably a mountain, or some low-lying cloud. But the spot gets bigger, and clearer, and becomes more obviously man-made. Finally, most people are reduced to half-speed as they putter by, mouths open as they gape at the spectacle of a single piece of twine, wound into a ball the size of a small hill.
That was the theory, at least. However, the builders of the Largest Ball of Twine on Earth had had a sudden loss of sense when purchasing land to put it on, with the result that you couldn't see the ball from any major highways or thoroughfares. Sam and Max had a devil of a time trying to even find the place, nestled somewhere inland in Minnesota. When they finally did, the gates were open and the car park was empty.
They got out. The place could have been abandoned, but the rotating restaurant atop the ball and the cable car running from a nearby platform to the top of the ball showed welcome signs of life. A small shack at the base of the ball looked likely to have someone inside, so they walked along the concrete pathway toward it. The ball dwarfed the shack, which clung to it like a barnacle, and as they got closer it started to loom, blotting out the whole sky.
Inside the tiny but well-made shack they found the usual tourist-pulling junk. A thin, old, academic-looking man sat on a stool by the door, knees together, ready to answer any queries they might have. With his crumpled suit, white hair and bifocals, he looked like he should be curating an inner-city museum, or holding tenure as an English Professor. If he ever put on farm clothes, however, this guy would be a perfect ring-in for American Gothic.
Sam and Max looked past him. The whole back wall of the building was nothing but the gently-curving, tightly bound girth of the Ball. "Words like 'big' and 'large' only begin to describe this thing," said Sam.
Max was unimpressed. "I think 'stupid' and 'inane' would be useful additions."
"Not to mention grotesque." Sam looked at a glass box housing a miniature version of the ball. "It's a one-two-hundred-thousandth scale model of the actual ball of twine," he said to Max.
"And it's only 1/200,000th as stupid as the real ball of twine," said Max.
Close to the scale model Sam found a shaving, proudly mounted, and from the very first foot of the ball. He read a mounted display detailing Fun Facts about the World's Largest Ball of Twine. "If laid out from end to end, the ball would stretch from here to Jupiter. Also, scientists theorise that by 2053 the sheer weight of the Ball will push the Earth out of his orbit, propelling our planet on a collision course with the sun!"
"Good thing my life expectancy is only six years," said Max.
"Way to take the short view, little buddy," said Sam. He was just about done with these mind-numbing facts, and was walking over to the guy on the stool when he saw the nearby window.
More specifically, what was falling out of the nearby window. Fish heads, fish skeletons and discarded scraps of fish were cascading from above in a constant stream.
"Now there's something you don't see every day," said Sam, looking out the window.
"What the hell are you talking about, Sam? We dump our fish heads out the window all the time."
"Yeah, but these are halibut," Sam pointed out.
He turned to the academic man. "Let me guess: your suit is made entirely out of twine."
The academic man shook his rugged, wrinkling face. "Actually, I'm the docent of this here museum," he said, in a low, completely un-riveting voice. "Now, what can I do for you?" He fixed a penetrating stare on Sam.
Docent - that was a new word for Sam. He filed it away. "How'd you get this job, anyway?" he asked.
The docent replied, in the same monotone, "I clawed my way to the top, trampling those foolish enough to get in my way." It might have been a joke, but this guy didn't seem to have even a rudimentary sense of humour.
"It's places like this that make me wish I were Canadian," said Sam.
"They've got one of these too," said the docent matter-of-factly, "but half of it's French."
Sam pointed over his shoulder at the ball. "This ball isn't really made from a continuous piece of twine, is it?"
"Ayup," assured the docent. "It's the longest piece of twine in the world, by ninety-two yards."
Enough with the semantics. Sam got down to business. "You haven't seen an eight-foot-tall woodland creature answering to the name of Bruno around here, have you?"
"Are you talking about Bruno the Bigfoot?" asked the docent.
They were on the right track. "Yeah."
The docent, however, was more interested in giving a history lesson. "He and a bunch of other bigfoots helped build the Ball of Twine back in '56! Why, the stories I could tell-"
"NOOOOOOOOO!" shouted Max urgently.
"I've heard enough stories for now," said Sam. "Have you seen Bruno recently?"
"I haven't seen Bruno in thirty or so years," said the docent. "Is he in trouble?"
"That depends on your definition," said Sam.
"I like to use the one involving spiny echidnae," said Max, rooting around somewhere under the displays.
Sam tried another tack. "Has Conroy Bumpus passed through here?"
"Who's that?" asked the docent, cautiously.
"He's a country-western singer gone berserk with power," explained Sam.
"I wouldn't know him if I saw him. I don't get out much," confessed the docent.
The path of the PI is strewn with dead-ends, thought Sam. He was still confused about one thing. "What's with all the fish guts flying past the window?"
"Those are leftovers from our last fish delivery," said the docent. "Our famous rotating restaurant has fresh fish flown in every day, from the World of Fish in Mosquitoville, Missouri."
That was the second time Sam had stumbled across the World of Fish. Something must be going on there. "That'll be all for now," said Sam. He and Max walked outside, and back along the path to the car park.
Max started toward the car, then realised Sam was heading in a different direction, toward the platform where the cable car stopped. Sam reached the top of the stairs, and got into the waiting cable car. Max followed him in, and soon they were moving forward and upward, the cable creaking under the weight of the car.
From above the Ball looked more like a geographical feature, and less impressive. The restaurant, as they drew closer, was built actually one level above the Ball of Twine. The platform below the restaurant rested on the ball, and held a landing platform, and a small wooden shack. The platform and the shack were separated from each other by a shaft, leading up into the restaurant. Soon the cable car stopped at the landing platform, and they got off.
An elevator in a glass tube was here, housed in the shaft, waiting to take them up to the restaurant. Sam and Max, however, were both looking downward, and to their right.
They were looking at a loose end of twine, which ran for over ninety yards, merging with the ball just below the platform, several metres from where they were. "That's one long loose end," said Max.
"It's a pity we can't reach it," said Sam. This was indeed the case; the loose end finished up under the opposite side of the deck, unreachable from here because the elevator was in the way. Sam, craning his head, could just see a table, and a mound of fish. He heard chopping noises. Obviously, some sort of food preparation area. "I've got a feeling we'll be needing a large piece of string on a case like this."
They stepped into the elevator and were whisked up to the restaurant.

The restaurant was empty, except for a grotty, greasy-jowled Indian man sitting in a booth, fiddling with tools.
There seemed to be something of a seafood flavour to the restaurant. Fishnets and oars hung from the ceiling. The leather-upholstered booths arranged around the outer circumference had fish logos embossed on the sides. At the counter, you could buy your very own fish to take home with you.
This might have had something to do with the family-targeted restaurant's recent run of bad fortune. When you're sitting by a curving pane of glass a hundred feet in the air, slowly revolving around the landscape and watching birds zoom past, fish is perhaps not the food that agrees best with the stomach.
Sam was most fascinated by the short but rotund repair man in the booth, who saw fit to wear a purple turban and glasses with his overalls and sweat-stained blue shirt. There was a box of tools on the table, and the repair man would take out a tool, place it on the table, stare at it very hard, raise his hands up and twiddle his fingers, a whirring sound would come from nowhere, and the tool would be bent almost in half. Then the tool went in the box, and out came another, the repair man working with detached enthusiasm.
Sam walked over. "Watcha doing?"
"Using my telekinetic powers to bend my tools," said the Indian, in an appropriately ethnic accent. He didn't bother to look at Sam.
"Why?"
Continued the Indian, wearily, "To help me fix the rotating mechanism on this fXXXing diner." He started work on another tool.
"How do you bend these tools, anyway?" asked Sam.
The Indian snorted. "You think I'm going to spill my fXXXin' secrets to you two mamalukes?"
"What are these malformed tools good for?" asked Sam.
"Lots of fXXXin' things!" said the Indian. "Like scratching those hard-to-reach places."
Max piped up. "Every place is hard for me to reach," he said cheerily.
"Would you like a free sample?" volunteered the Indian.
"Sure."
The Indian reached into the toolbox and withdrew a spanner, short and thin and bent ninety degrees. "Take this one."
"Thanks," said Sam. This guy might be a little loose with his language, but they seemed to have reached some kind of tentative understanding. How much he knew, however, remained to be seen. "Have you heard of Bruno the Bigfoot?" he asked.
"Who the fXXX is Bruno the Bigfoot?" said the Indian.
"Sam, he's speaking in tongues!"
Obviously not much. "Should I even bother asking you about Conroy Bumpus?" asked Sam.
"FXXX no."
"Well, bye," said Sam. He stuffed the spanner away in his box and took another look around the restaurant. No clues turned up, although he did find a binocular mounted up at the window, near the counter. The range, from up here, was impressive - in the interstate range. Perhaps even as far as Canada. However, the constant whirling of the restaurant and the lack of any close magnification made it something of an exercise in frustration.
They returned to the elevator. It was time to visit the World of Fish.

From its name, Sam was expecting some kind of fish market, or even fish theme park, some huge place on hectares and hectares of land where you could ride electric eel rides, buy some carp, go fly-fishing - in short, a place with everything fishy under the sun.
The World of Fish was actually just a spot on the Missouri, where a car park and bait store had been helpfully provided. A couple of fibreglass-and-plaster fish statues, one as large as a dinosaur, looked more hideous than exciting.
The World of Fish was crappy. It was also thinly populated. There was just one person in the river, a thin bespectacled guy in waders standing just off shore. Behind him was a net full of large, writhing fish. The bait store was empty, although there were a couple of buckets of fish under the counter.
Sam took one. "It's a bucket of fish," he said to Max.
"Actually," corrected Max, "it's a slimy bucket of fish. I wonder if this will in any way shape our thoughts on today's lunch?"
Sam ignored him and put it in the car. No sense in passing up free fish.
"I hear a distant rumbling," said Max, as Sam shut the door.
"You should have thought of that before you left," said Sam. But he heard it too.
It was coming from the eastern sky. At first a speck, it grew rapidly closer until they both saw the yellow helicopter, flying low toward the World of Fish. As it neared, it slowed, until it was finally hovering above the pile of fish. The guy in the water had not reacted - had not even turned around.
A hook was lowered from the helicopter. It grasped the net and jerked it up. Some fish fell out, but the majority were lifted up into the air as the hook was winched back. Then the helicopter swung around and flew back the way it came. Strangely, where the net had been, was another net. There must be a whole layer of them.
The fisherman reeled in another catch. He tossed it over the shoulder, into the new and empty net. He looked depressed, and Sam hadn't even seen his face yet.
He went to talk to the guy in the waders. For some reason, as soon as the guy spoke Sam thought immediately of Woody Allen. That, or someone from New York with a mild headcold.
"Something fishy's going on," said Sam, by way of introduction.
"Congratulations," said the fisherman sardonically. "You're the two-hundredth person today who's said that."
"So, what's happening?"
"What's happening?" repeated the fisherman, unbelievingly. "I'll tell you what's happening. I'm risking pneumonia standing in this creek, that's what's happening!" He reeled in another fish.
"What's the deal with that helicopter?"
"That helicopter is the bane of my existence," said the fisherman. "Every time I catch enough fish to fill a net, the helicopter swoops down and carries the fish to Ball of Twine diner, in Central Dis, Minnesota."
"How sad," said Sam.
"I know. It's like being stuck in a Norman Mailer novel."
Sam looked into the muddy, but swift-flowing river. "So, how're they biting?" he asked conversationally.
"Oh, they're biting pretty well," said the fisherman. "In the last hour they've bitten an arm, two fingers, and my nose. If they bite any better, I'll need reconstructive surgery."
"You must really love fish," said Sam.
"Actually, I'm allergic to them," said the fisherman.
"Then why do you work here?"
The fisherman sneezed. "Because I'm more allergic to poverty."
Talking to this guy was like running blindfolded through a schoolyard - you smacked into a brick wall whichever way you went. Sam brought out the big questions. "What do you know about bigfoots?"
"My great aunt Lois married a bigfoot," said the fisherman. "He used to shed all over Grandma Phyllis' upholstery."
"Have you seen Conroy Bumpus?"
"No," said the fisherman. "I try not to listen to country music. When I do, I usually have an uncontrollable desire to drink a lot of beer and do illegal things to farm animals."
"You too?" said Max.
Sam gave up, and walked along the shore toward a large fibreglass fish, mounted above the water by a steel pipe. Staring into the wide-open mouth of the fish, Sam got an idea. It was an idea that would net a large profit, but at the time all Sam was thinking of was pissing off the fisherman guy.
He got down on his knees, and with the spanner from the repairman loosened the nuts on the pipe. He stared into the fish's gaping maw, then climbed into its gut. Like he thought, it was hollow - plenty of room, although you did have to curl up a bit.
"Hey Max, c'mere," he said as soon as he'd found his feet. "I've got a plan."
"Geronimo!" shouted Max, leaping into the fish. Naturally he struck Sam, and so a bout of tussling ensued, which knocked the fish right off its perch and into the river. Downstream it floated, toward the fisherman.
The fisherman looked right, and nearly lost his glasses as his eyes burst out, astonished. His mouth fell open.
From the mouth of the fish Sam and Max watched his reaction. "One must admire the skill with which the wily ubertrout stalks its prey," said Sam in his best documentary narration tone.
"This is one of the ten most liberating experiences of my life, Sam," said Max.
"Holy mackerel!" stuttered the fisherman, unaware of Sam or Max's presence in the fish.
"I'm a trout, stupid," said Max.
"Er, holy trout!" amended the fisherman. The trout now floated close to his fishing pole, and Max tried to reach out and grab the line. "I always thought you were made out of plaster!"
Max eventually took the line. He pulled it into the fish, securing the hook over a fibreglass tooth, then tugged hard. The fisherman was dragged forward and nearly lost his balance. He breathed hard then tugged back.
Sam watched, fascinated. Who would win the tug-of-war?
Max hardly seemed to be straining. The fisherman, on the other hand, took huge gulps of air, blowing his chest out to twice the size, before heaving back on his pole. It seemed to be evenly balanced.
The fisherman took in three deep breaths. From somewhere he found new strength. He yanked the pole back, jerking the fibreglass trout clean into the air. It sailed in a neat parabola, smacking down in the net.
The fisherman wasn't so lucky. The force of his final exertion had flipped him over, and now he floated face down in the river. Slowly his body drifted away.
Sam and Max were still inside the fish, dry and unhurt. "Now what do we do, Sam?"
Sam thought. "I'm thinking." Several seconds passed. Then, "What's that noise?"
A faint rumbling came from outside. "It sounds like you do when you've eaten too much Thai food, Sam."
The noise got louder, quite quickly, and Sam remembered.
The helicopter swooped down, and dragged them into the sky.

They flew northward, in their precarious but stable perch. To the Ball of Twine, where the helicopter banked upward to the restaurant, and dropped them on a large wooden bench, part of the chef's outdoor fish preparation area. They had found their way to the part of the deck they couldn't access earlier.
The chef was waiting here, standing ready with a knife in his hand. He looked at the fish, then at the knife.
Far too small. The chef trotted inside, to get the heavy duty knife. When the coast was clear, Sam and Max got out, Max leaping, Sam more sedately climbing down.
Almost instantly, Sam knew where he was. "I told you I had a plan," he said. He looked over the deck, down at the loose end. It was a lot more accessible from here. "Hey Max, I've got another plan," he said.
"I think I liked you better when you were clueless," said Max.
"Shut up and climb over the rail."
Max climbed over the rail. His feet held by Sam, Max was just able to reach the loose end. He bit it free. The twine fell, slithering downward like a snake, and quickly disappeared behind the curvature of the ball. Sam yanked Max back up. "See, that wasn't so bad..."
The kitchen doorway opened. Out came the chef, holding a two-foot-long, 2lb knife with a cutting pressure of eight hundred pounds per inch, and several prominent bloodstains. "What are you two doing out here?" he demanded.
Sam and Max looked at each other. "Any more bright ideas?" asked Max.
"Let's start crying like babies," suggested Sam.
Sam waved his arms about and jumped over the edge. Max followed. They half-bounced, half-slid, half-fell (yes, I know that makes three halves) their way down.
Along with the rope, they landed in the pile of putrid fish, a perfect (if a little off-smelling) cushion. "Galileo was wrong," said Max.
Sam got up and brushed himself down. "I don't think we were in a vacuum, Max." He coiled up the rope, then looked toward the carpark.
"Hey, how are we going to get our car back?" said Max.
"Wait for it," said Sam. Soon, thanks to the helicopter, the DeSoto fell from above, landing flush in the cark park. They started walking toward it. Where to now?

Gator Golf. What a strange, twisted idea. Sam didn't know if he was looking at an empty tourist attraction or a piece of performance art.
The grounds of the Gator Golf emporium were almost completely submerged in swamp. Wooden platforms connected the holes, which were little more than driving ranges thanks to the water. Dotted willy-nilly, half covered in muddy water, were various plaster statues and exhibits that might have come from the mini golf park Sam was expecting. A leering monkey head, covered in fur; a windmill straight from a Dutch tourism pamphlet, grinning skulls. All sat there in the water, stained by rising damp. And of course, you couldn't help but notice the real live alligators lazing around, lying in the water and sleeping in the rushes.
About the only area of dry ground in the place led from the carpark to the admissions desk and golfing shop. Along this Sam and Max now walked, toward the proprietor who sat behind the desk. He had really gone overboard with the alligator theme. The desk, and the dark area behind it, were all fashioned to look like the gaping maw of a hungry alligator. They passed a huge fibreglass statue, four metres high, of an alligator in full golfing attire and teeing off. The ontological confusion was getting to Sam.
At least the proprietor wasn't wearing an alligator suit. There was a different connection, even more interesting. He was a large, reclining man, wearing a wide-brimmed hat, green golfing singlet and deep suntan. He spat tobacco periodically on the ground, and his arms and face were covered in stitches, bandaids and cuts.
Sam greeted him. "I find your combination of golfing and alligators almost Daliesque in its dissonance," he said.
"Ditto," agreed the proprietor, in his deep-fried country voice. "Wish it had been my idea. The fact is, this place used to be a miniature golf course. Then, back in '89, the swamp flooded the whole shootin' match, windmills and all. Next thing I knew, I had a half-submerged miniature golf course crawling with ten foot alligators."
"I hate it when that happens," sympathised Sam.
"Tell me about it. So I turned the course into a driving range."
A creative solution, thought Sam. "Hmmm," he said. "I've got an inexplicable urge to buy some suitcases."
"Don't even joke about it, city boy."
"This must be a popular teen hangout," said Sam.
"It was," corrected the proprietor. He sounded a little despondent. "Then there was that trouble with the Jenkins kid... court made me destroy my best gator over that." He sobbed, still mourning the loss of his gator, then brightened up a little. "Well, what can I do for you?"
"So," said Sam casually, "what kind of handicap does your average bigfoot have?"
"Bigfoots!?," said the proprietor, upset. "Don't get me started about bigfoots! I used to have a bigfoot! He was my star attraction!"
"I'm beginning to sense a theme here, Sam," said Max.
The proprietor was getting worked up. "I kept him fed and sheltered, and how does he repay me?"
"In tens and twenties?" asked Max.
"No, he ran away."
"Did he have help?" asked Sam.
"Well, someone must have given him that there oxy-acetylene torch to cut through his protective anklewear."
Sam filed the information away. Someone was running around the country freeing bigfoots - why? Then he caught up with the last part of that sentence.
"'Protective anklewear'?" echoed Sam.
"Okay, shackles," admitted the proprietor. He sat back and spat a wad of tobacco to his right.
"What do you think of Conroy Bumpus?" asked Sam.
The proprietor perked up again. "Conroy Bumpus? He's my idol! I've named all my kids and pets after him! I've built a beer can shrine to him in the garage! I live for the day when I can meet him in person! Why do you ask?"
"Uh, no reason," said Sam. He looked around. There, by the first wooden walkway, was a sign, cut in the shape of a bigfoot, that read 'Dunk The Beast'. In a wire basket by the sign was something Sam couldn't work out. He was reminded of those punching gloves on the end of a metal framework, that leapt forward when the framework was stretched. This looked like that kind of metal framework, all folded up. What it was doing here, Sam had no idea.
He picked it out and showed it to the proprietor. "Do you know what this thing is?" he asked.
"That used to be my golf ball retriever," said the proprietor. "Then one of the gators bit the end clean off it. Until I get my new one, I have to get the golf balls out manually."
"Isn't that dangerous?" asked Sam.
The proprietor held up one pudgy, bandaged hand. "Take a look." He brought it back down. "You can take it if you want," he said.
For no reason he could figure, Sam did want it. He tossed in the DeSoto, then walked along the walkway to the driving ranges. He wanted a closer look at that dunking booth.
Max was lagging behind. "Max! Let's go," said Sam.

At the end of the walkway, standing at the main driving range, were two different figures. Behind them, in the swamp, were a submerged dragon, monkey's head, skull, windmill, and the now-empty Dunking Booth, with a circular target for experienced golfers. Around them, nestled in the long grass, were the gators.
Conroy Bumpus and Lee-Harvey were not having much luck. Lee-Harvey had just brought the bad news to Conroy, having quizzed the proprietor.
"And the proprietor has no idea what happened to his bigfoot?" asked Conroy.
"That's what he said, Mr Bumpus," said Lee-Harvey obediently.
"You know, Lee-Harvey," mused Conroy, "I'm beginning to think that vast, unseen forces are aligned against my quest for a bigfoot."
Lee-Harvey nodded solemnly. "Ditto."
"Ditto?" Conroy sighed. Then, perhaps feeling the air pressure on his back, Conroy turned and stood beside Lee-Harvey. Here were those two idiots they bumped into at the Carnival.
Sam and Max.
"Hey, lookit!" said Max. "It's those two... um, what was that word, Sam?"
"Misanthropes?" suggested Sam. He took a golf club from the rack - this could get nasty.
"Yeah!" said Max enthusiastically. "Misanthropes! What are you, anyway, the president of the Hair Club for Short People?"
Conroy's expression, hidden behind his smoky sunglasses, was unreadable. Lee-Harvey did the talking. "This is Mr. Conroy Bumpus, famed country/western star. I'd suggest you show him some respect."
"Yeah?" said Max. "Well he looks like a lounge lizard to me. And I'll bet his scalp itches from that bad rug."
"Maybe you should watch yerself, little furball," said Conroy icily.
Max leaned forward. "Yeah, well I've got hair on my fuzzy little butt than you do on that hollow country head of yours!"
"Okay," said Conroy. "I've had enough. Nobody makes fun of my hair!" He clicked his fingers. Beside him, Lee-Harvey sprang into a fighting position, snarling.
Sam and Max looked each other. They too sprang forward, emulating Lee-Harvey.
As three they rushed forward. The fight was on.
Conroy stayed back. He had no intention of getting involved. He walked casually around the edge of the snarling, rolling mass, and picked up a golf club. He turned and watched the fight.
Lee-Harvey was doing splendidly. Sam now lay flat on the walkway, eyes shut and tongue hanging out. Lee-Harvey held Max up in the air, in his two huge hands. Max writhed around with psychotic energy, like a cat attacking a boulder. "Hold still, you flea-bitten polecat!" said Lee-Harvey. He mashed Max into a small compact ball, then put him down on the walkway. "Here ya go, boss," he said to Conroy.
Conroy stepped forward. Holding the golf club steadily, he swung.
Max sailed through the air, flailing about desperately. He came back to earth in the shallow pool of the dunking booth. Water splashed up and over the sides of the booth, the top halves of which were perspex so as to afford a good view of the dunking.
Conroy and Lee-Harvey watched, satisfied. Then they left.

It was only five minutes later that Sam got up - he'd actually faked the unconscious bit. "What a jerk," he said. "It's a nice five iron, though." He missed his gun - pity they'd left them at the cleaners.
"Nice alligators," called Max from the distant dunking booth. "Do you like roaches?" There didn't seem to be any immediate way of getting him out. The booth rested on a shallow mound of dirt, completely surrounded by the alligator infested water. Sam didn't need his instincts to tell him it was alligator infested - he could see at least five, drifting lazily, almost imperceptibly, in the space between the walkway and the dunking booth.
Sam went back to the car and got out the fish bucket. The fish was slimy and had gone off, and the car stank. Rancid fish in tow, Sam went back to the driving range. He took a fish and tossed into the water by his feet. The nearest alligator roused itself, darting forward across the water. The alligator stopped, and its jaws came down in a splash of water and mud. It sat there, slowly digesting.
Sam tossed another fish, further out into the water. Another alligator came and took it. Sam threw another fish, even further, and it was likewise eaten up.
He was making a path across the water to the dunking booth. The booth was slightly more than a fish's throw away, so Sam used the golf club to whack the last few into place. Some splashed down right on line, some didn't. It was a long process of trial and error, but fortunately he had a lot of fish.
Eventually the fish were all gone, and the alligators lay in a line from the walkway to the dunking booth. Max had finally twigged as to what was going on. "Hey... you've made a path across the driving range," he said.
With unaccustomed agility, Sam leapt from alligator to alligator. They took his weight stiffly. His fleet feet jumped onto a small rise of mud, onto a half-submerged sea snake, back onto an alligator, and finally onto the slightly squishy ground around the dunking booth.
"Jesus," said Max. "That certainly took long enough."
"Shut up, Max. I hate that game."
"Is that because you're a lousy golfer?" asked Max. Being stuck in a dunking booth had not done much for his temperament.
"You're an irritable bunny today, aren't you?" said Sam.
"Yeah?" said Max. "Well why don't you try sitting in this smelly booth while I beat the hell out of helpless fish!"
"Maybe I should just leave you there," suggested Sam. Max was starting to piss him off.
"Did I mention what a lousy golfer you were?" said Max.
That was it. Sam moved forward and hammered the dunking booth target with a curled fist. Max fell, disappearing from view, and up came a large splash of water. Max followed it, dripping. He shook his head dry. "Wheeeee!" he said.
Sam felt better for having done that. He climbed up the side of the dunking booth, to a small door set in the perspex. Max wasn't waiting around, and started bashing at the door. It bulged outward with each thump. Finally the hinges gave way, just as Sam had reached the door. The door flew outward, knocking Sam over the edge. Sam fell six feet, landing on his back in the muddy earth. Max leapt nimbly down and waited at the front of the booth. Soon, Sam joined him.
"Hey, Sam!" said Max.
"Hey, what?"
"I found another sample of sasquatch fur and mange in the booth." His voice grew melancholy. "While I spent my young life waiting, just sitting there, in that horrible booth, waiting..."
"Jesus, Max, get over it!" said Sam.
"Okay," agreed Max sprightly. "Here, you carry it."
Sam took the bleached, blonde bigfoot hair and squashed it into his box. "I'd better. I'm not sure where you'd put it."
"That's none of your business, Sam," said Max.
Sam looked once more at the booth. The recent crashing around seemed to have dislodged a lock, because now a doorway, at ground level, stood ajar. Sam pulled it open. The tiny dark space inside was smelly, and nearly empty. All the shelves were bare, except for a small glass globe.
Outside, Sam got a better look at it. It was a sno globe, labelled as being from the Mystery Vortex in scenic Gullwump, Washington.
"Lemme see!" said Max.
"Take a look." Inside the hemispherical dome of glass was a tiny diorama of looming conifers, brooms, foreboding caves, and a floating outhouse. No snow. This might have been because the bottom of the globe was uncorked.
"Too bad it's empty, or we could shake it," said Max.
"Like this?" Sam shook the globe. The outhouse seemed to rattle, and there was a rumble at the edge of hearing, a rumble that seemed to loosen the foundations of the world, a rumble that foreboded the end of civilisation - but nothing else happened.
"Yeah." Max turned the globe over. "What's that writing on the bottom?"
Faintly scrawled in blue pen were the words, "To Elmo the Bigfoot, Keep on Truckin'. Shuv-Oohl the Mole Man."
"Hey, maybe Shuv-Oohl's at the mystery vortex!" said Max, Mensa graduate. "Let's go there before I'm distracted by something."
Sam put away the globe, then he and Max leapt back to the walkway, jumping from alligator to alligator, the reptiles having virtually kept still the last few minutes. Then, it was back to the DeSoto.
Washington beckoned.

A few days later (it took a few days to get from Florida to Washington, even at the speed Sam and Max drove), just as the sun was eclipsed by a dark moon, they pulled in at the Mystery Vortex.
Somehow Sam got the impression that total eclipses of the sun were pretty common around here.
"Sam, this place is making my head ping," complained Max.
"That's probably just the metal plate in your head," reassured Sam.
"Bing!" said Max.
They had found themselves in front of a yawning cave mouth, a black hole in a mound of rock. Around them loomed tall conifers. Everything was lit with a sickly orange glow, which seemed to come directly from the sky, an angry red-and-orange patchwork of clouds and gas.
In short, the land around them was the inspiration for the sno globe diorama. A chair, a broom and a bucket floated erratically nearby, in a patch of ground roped off from visitors. "Who knows what makes these inanimate objects dance their infernal jitterbug?" wondered Sam.
"I do, I do!" said Max. "I think they're controlled by a series of really big magnets under the Earth's crust!"
"Yeah, well you're an ignorant dolt, Max," said Sam.
And here, hovering directly above the cave mouth, was the outhouse, its moon-cut door flapping open.
"Good Lord!" choked Max."It's a possessed outhouse!"
"This kind of thing wouldn't happen if they had indoor plumbing," said Sam, shaking his head. They passed under it, to the mouth of the cave. Closer up, it looked a lot more regular. A sign above said MYSTERY VORTEX. A nearby tap, held by a statue of a reclining boy, dripped water - upward. It splashed against an overhang and ran up into the pumpkin sky.
They walked inside.

Soon, the corridor widened, and aieru oieru aeoiu roiu ckljaeo cnkoaein fioaq ioaop ionn, bgglw.
Sorry, just thought I'd have a go at illustrating the kind of insane dislocation from reality most people experience when they enter the grounds of the Mystery Vortex.
Superficially, they were in a corridor, a garishly coloured corridor, which curved left toward an open doorway flanked by purple curtains. Doors, of all sizes and colours, branched off left and right from the corridor. But the devil is in the details; so many things had gone wrong in here that cataloguing them would be an exercise in futility, or a one way trip to Madhouse Lane.
Perspective. That was where the root of the problem lay. Perspective had packed up its bags and gone on to the Caribbean holiday, here. The multicoloured doors along either side of the corridor ranged in height from eight feet to eight inches. Impossible geometric figures floated uncertainly in the air. The floor pattern was complicated enough to give M.C. Escher headaches. A moebius staircase merged into the left hand wall, going nowhere. And as Sam and Max walked inside the corridor, it got worse. The hallway itself shimmered, growing and shrinking as they walked through it. One moment they were normal size, another, they could fit through the smallest door. Actually, it wasn't the corridor that changed size - Sam and Max themselves were being elongated and shrunk by unguessable forces. Cruel forces, too, for whenever they came to a doorway they were either too large to fit through, or too small to reach the doorhandle.
Plenty else was wrong too, like the garish colour scheme, the quacking noises that came from nowhere, the pool of water one inch thick which floated a foot above the ground like a watery magic carpet, a Daliesque melted clock flopping on the windowsill of a window that looked outside even though there was nothing behind it but plaster and rock, a floating eight ball (the kind that predicted the future), and a grand piano that was playing itself (badly).
Strange the place might be, but as Sam and Max walked along they couldn't help but comment on their surroundings. The eight ball, for instance, caught Sam's eye. "Hey, eight-ball!" he called out to it. "Will Max and me be together forever?"
"That's touching, Sam," said Max, "but ask it something important, like when's our next meal?"
Sam spoke up again. "Will we ever finish this furshlugginer quest?" he asked the mystical ball.
A voice came from somewhere within its black surface - an angelic, echoing voice that sounded somewhat like Doug the Mole Man. OUTLOOK NOT SO GOOD, it intoned.
Sam turned away from the eight ball and came to the piano. Max caught the look in his eyes. "Don't play it again, Sam," he advised.
"Of all the Daliesque tourist traps in the world, we had to walk into this one," said Sam. He left the piano.
Through the chaos they walked, toward the far end of the corridor. There, two red curtains were drawn back to reveal a small, dim space. It took a while, what with the shrinking and enlarging, but finally they were there, and at their normal size.
They had come to the main attraction - the Mystery Vortex. Actually, there used to be two main attractions. But a melted block of ice, under a sign 'BIGFOOT', with a tape labelled CLOSED draped over it, pretty much told the story. Nearby, a woman stood behind the Museum Gift Shop, which from inspection seemed to be well stocked with postcards. A few small, meaningless displays were mounted in a semicircle on the polished floorboards, which brought back to mind the Ball of Twine Museum's pathetic displays (the stench of failure was in the air). And in the corner nearest to them was the Mystery Vortex itself, a shining glass booth open at the front, but otherwise empty.
It would have seemed the paragon of normality to Sam and Max after the corridor outside, except for one thing: they were upside down.
The floor was the ceiling. The hair of the gum chewing woman fell down (up?) in long unwashed strands. Water ran off the still-melting block of ice, and fell up to the black floor, or is that ceiling? Anyway, a large puddle had gathered there. Sam found himself getting very disoriented.
Max was worse off. "Yipes!" he said, almost instantly.
"Gravity's gone on holiday and lost its luggage," commented Sam.
"That's not all I'm about to lose," said Max sickly. "I think I'm gonna throw up."
"Throw down," Sam corrected.
"Whatever."
Sam, as usual, was looking further ahead. And there, in front of the melting block of ice (the name underneath/above it was Bert, which Sam thought a pretty strange name for a bigfoot), was a patch of mangy sasquatch hair.
Sam walked forward and picked it up, followed by Max. "It's another tuft of sasquatch mange and hair," he said to Max.
"My rabbity senses tell me that this is not Bruno's hair and mange," said Max, "...or maybe I'm in love."
The fur and mange must have belonged to the sasquatch formerly of the Mystery Vortex. Sam put it away in his box, with the other two tufts.
Then he turned to the woman behind the counter, who was watching them with vague curiosity. The bubble of gum burst in her mouth, and she started chewing up another one.
Sam wasn't sure what to say - what was the etiquette in such a curious place? "?Stoofgib tuoba wonk ouy od tahw?" he tried.
"I'm upside down, cutie, not dyslexic," said the woman. There was more than a touch of country twang in her voice.
"Oh," said Sam. He still didn't know what to say to her - the disorientation in here had twisted his tongue. "Do you know why you're upside down?" he finally asked.
"No," she said, "but hum a few bars and I'll fake it."
"Kill her now, Sam," said Max flatly.
Sam waved him away. "I feel like my sense of reality has just exploded," he said to the woman. It felt exceedingly strange to be conducting a conversation like this, standing upside down.
"Try cutting down on cholesterol," suggested the woman.
"Don't you get tired of hanging around here?"
The woman had long ago grown accustomed to her job. "I'm fine, as long as I keep denying the urge to fall... or jump," she said.
Sam had remembered what he meant to ask. "I'm looking for a bigfoot," he said.
"You too?" asked the woman. "Fact is, I used to have a bigfoot. Then one day I stepped out to have my spine recompressed, and when I got back, he was gone!"
"Spine recompression... cool," said Max approvingly.
"Is there anything you can tell us about the bigfoot that might help us?" asked Sam.
"Not off the bottom of my head, no," said the woman.
Sam tried another area. "Do you know who Conroy Bumpus is?"
"Yes, and he was here looking for a bigfoot! Then he got sick and had to leave."
"This place seems to have that effect on people," said Max.
Sam fumbled around in his coat. Out came his paw, and in it was the sno globe. "Do you sell any sno globes like this one?" he asked.
She looked at it critically ."We used to, but not anymore."
"Why not?"
"Because they were having an inexplicably bad affect on the Vortex," said the woman. "With every new sno globe we made, the Vortex just got weaker, and weaker..."
"The same thing happens when I watch sitcoms," said Max.
"So we decided to discontinue the sno globes for financial reasons," finished the woman.
"I guess this means you don't have any sno globe stoppers," said Sam.
"You got it."
Sam had one final question. "Does the name Shuv-Oohl mean anything to you?"
The woman barely hesitated. "Never heard it in my life."
"Thanks," said Sam. He looked at the Mystery Vortex. "What does this do?" he asked.
"That special booth is filled with the Magical, Mystical, Mysteries of the Universe," said the woman gnomically.
"Say that one three times really fast," said Max.
"Can we try the Vortex?" asked Sam.
"Step right in," invited the woman.
The hatch was open. Sam and Max stepped through, into the glass booth. The woman flicked a switch, and the hatch swung shut.
Sam and Max stood there patiently, waiting for something to happen.
Soon, something did. The air around them started to turn blue, and this colour showed swirling, circular patterns. Sam and Max, however, could feel nothing. The colours grew deeper and darker until they couldn't see anything but the whirling around them. It was like being in the centre of a tornado - a soundless tornado. The patterns made their heads ache.
The tornado sped up. Tiny bolts of electric discharge peppered its surface. Then, suddenly, everything stopped. The blue evaporated out of the air, and all was clear again.
The hatch opened. Sam and Max walked out. "What pretty colours," said Sam. He and Max walked back out into the corridor.
No Shuv-Oohl, then. But Sam wasn't just about to quit. There were all these unopened doors here, for instance, and Sam had a hunch Shuv-Oohl might be behind one of them.
That wasn't all. On a small sloping pedestal of wood, was mounted a shiny blue mirror, oval in shape and about six feet high. Sam had pretty much ignored it on the way in, but looking at it now, he saw it was the least self-consciously weird item in the whole place. And out of place, by extension.
Sam came to the mirror, and climbed the pedestal. He stood face to face with the mirror, but its surface remained cloudy. Sam reached forward and touched the mirror.
His fingers penetrated the surface. It was water. The blue of the mirror was the blue of a pristine lake. Around his fingers were slowly spreading ripples of water. Sam withdrew his wet paw, and watched the mirror.
The ripples reached the metal rim of the mirror, and rebounded back, picking up height. In the centre they all joined together in a peaked circle about the size of Sam's head. In this circle the water suddenly extruded itself forward, a wavering blue globule bobbing up and down, only inches from Sam's impassive face. The water hung steadily there for a moment, then arranged itself into an exact replica of Sam's head, still bobbing up and down.
Sam stared at this liquid statue for a while, then poked it in the eyes. It collapsed back into the mirror, which was still. "Now that's a mirror," said Sam.
He grabbed the rim of the mirror, and stepped through. Max bounded up and jumped through behind him. The ripples disappeared, and the water was still.

Sam and Max, meanwhile, were in a ragged fissure deep underground. It sloped downward before them, to three enormous red horseshoe magnets. Beside these were three dimly-perceived levers.
"Wow, the Mystery Vortex is controlled by giant magnets buried under the Earth's crust," said Sam.
"I'm strangely saddened by our callous shattering of a cherished American myth," said Max.
"Get over it."
"Okay."
Sam and Max walked down the slope to the magnets. All three levers were in the OFF position, and moreover each was painted a different colour. One was red, one yellow, one dark blue. It was the colours that gave Sam a good idea.
He cranked the red lever into the ON position. Instantly their surroundings were bathed in deep red light. In this hellish glare Sam and Max walked back up the slope, to the rectangle of white light that was their portal back into the Mystery Vortex.
Back in the corridor, Sam located the red door and walked toward it. Sure enough, standing before the handle, the magnets had him at exactly the right size. They opened the door and walked through.
"Look at all the cheese!" exclaimed Max.
"I didn't think they could do that," said Sam wonderingly. They made a hasty retreat.
So Shuv-Oohl wasn't in there. Periodically returning to the magnets, they tried the blue door ("Sure is crinkly in here," "Crinkly, but boring"), and the orange door ("Stop turning your head inside out, Max," "I can't. Let's leave"), and the yellow door ("It's a forest of shoe trees!" "I'm afraid, Sam. Let's get out of here"), and the green door ("Aiiee! I'm becoming a ball of intellect!" "Let's hightail it out of here before we lose our corporeal bodies forever!"), and had no luck.
The purple door, however - walking through it Sam and Max came to a tiny, but friendly room. It was the room of someone who hadn't been out much lately but still kept a fierce, if anachronistic, interest in the world around him. To wit - the walls were plastered with newspaper articles from tabloids around the country. Everywhere there was a free space, there wasn't one - a newspaper article had been pasted over the top.
The owner of these articles and, indeed, this room, was running along in a huge metal wheel fastened to the wall, reminiscent of those plastic treadwheels mice are supposed to run around in and enjoy immensely. The treadwheel rotated; the man / the mouse didn't, running steadily along its base.
The rodent analogy went further than that, because this man had a touch of the rodent about him. Actually, he looked like a health-conscious, older version of Doug, with the same bald head, and a wiggy green moustache which hid his mouth. He was dressed minimally, in a purple polo shirt and dotted orange boxers.
"Who are you?" he said, virtually as they entered. He didn't stop running, however: staring straight ahead at the whirling circle of metal in front of him, his bare feet padding on the curved surface; he was in the zone. His voice, meanwhile, was that of an older Doug, one who had spent a fair while of his youth saying words like 'Groovy' and 'Right on, man'. Now it was in tune with the global interconnectedness of all things.
"I'm Sam," said Sam. "He's Max. We bust punks."
"And we're overachievers," added Max.
"That's cool, man," said Shuv-Oohl. He kept running, not even turning his head.
Max suddenly saw something on the wall. "Hey, Sam, look!" It was a canister of clear, refreshing water, possibly bottled from a mountain stream in the Swiss Alps, and almost full. Max came forward eagerly and licked the outlet. When he was done, he looked oddly disappointed. "Well, this bottled water is a real letdown," he said.
Shuv-Oohl continued. "I'm Shuv-Oohl. What do you want with me?" he asked.
"I don't know," said Sam. "Have you got any beef snacks for my lil' buddy?"
"Sorry, man," said Shuv-Oohl. "I'm a vegetarian."
"Gleep!" said Max. His shocked eyes went very wide.
Now look what you've done," admonished Sam. "You've gone and scared Max."
Shuv-Oohl didn't sound too concerned one way or the other. "Whoa, bummer. Maybe you should just say what's on your mind and leave."
"We need your help," said Sam.
"Help is my middle name... or maybe it's Starchild." said Shuv-Oohl.
"What do you know about Bruno?" asked Sam.
As soon as he said the name Shuv-Oohl pulled the wheel to a halt, braking it with his feet. For the first time, he turned to stare straight at them. His eyes, magnified by his fishbowl glasses, were black and intent. "Bruno the Bigfoot?" asked Shuv-Oohl.
"Why do people keep asking that question?" said Max impatiently.
"Bruno and I go way back," said Shuv-Oohl, his voice heavy with nostalgia. "I've always felt a special kinship with bigfoots."
"I feel the same way about pointy sticks," said Max.
"Shhhh," said Sam.
Shuv-Oohl's eyes stared into faraway places. "I haven't thought about Bruno for years... Allow me a moment to karmically link myself to him."
"If you must," said Sam.
"Hold on, I'm getting something..." Shuv-Oohl's beige skin suddenly cycled through a rainbow of psychedelic colours. "I see Frog Rock, between the Inexplicable Valley of Lights and the Enchanted Argyle Forest," he said, his skin flashing like an epileptic chameleon. "Wait, man!" he suddenly blurted. "Bruno's in trouble! It's, like, several voices screaming out in terror... and then suddenly silenced."
Shuv-Oohl's skin stopped changing colour. "Sorry guys, but I can't get a clear psychic image of Bruno. The sad truth is that I haven't been able to concentrate very well since I lost my mood ring in the biggest ball of twine in the world. If you find it for me, maybe I can help you."
"Aw, c'mon, tell us about bigfoots," said Sam.
Shuv-Oohl was reluctant. "By telling you that Frog Rock is between the Inexplicable Valley of Lights and the Enchanted Argyle Forest I may already have said too much. My lips are sealed."
"How can we tell under that moustache?" said Max.
"Could you repeat that bit about the mood ring?" asked Sam.
"OK, man. I lost it in the biggest ball of twine in the world."
"I think he's trying to tell us something, Sam."
"Doug says 'Hi'," said Sam.
"That karmic waste of space?" said Shuv-Oohl derisively. "I bet he still spends his days zoned out in front of the TV watching crummy reruns."
"Yeah, but now he's got cable," said Max.
"What's with all the newspaper clippings?"
"I'm collecting evidence of bizarre paranormal phenomena, man," said Shuv-Oohl.
"Like the inexplicable staying power of professional wrestling?"
"Right on, man. It's my belief that all the mysterious goings-on in the world - UFOs, striped toothpaste, Dan Quayle etc - are all connected by a worldwide web of interdependency."
"I had that once," said Sam. "But then my parents kicked me out of the house and told me to find a job. Do you really think you'll find the answer to life's mysteries in the tabloids?"
"Hey man, don't be hassling me with your negative vibes."
Sam looked around. "Well, I guess that's all for now," he said.
Shuv-Oohl started running on the wheel again. "Make yourselves at home," he suggested. So Sam did. He looked at all the newspaper articles, and their garish headlines (`Is Elvis a Bigfoot?` `Conroy Bumpus's Amazing Diet!` `The Astonishing Exclusive Details of Insect Lad's Honeymoon Tragedy!` `Widower, 98, Weds Self` `Severed Head Explodes, Destroys Bus!` `Aliens Moon Hubble Telescope, Photos Inside!` `Plague of Katydids Terrorises Xmas Shoppers!` `Real-Life Baby Huey, 2, Crushes Mom, 24!`) Nothing was of interest here, so he and Max walked out.

And they drove back to the Ball of Twine. The car park was still empty, fish guts were still falling from the sky, and the dour docent guy was still sitting on a stool in the corner of the Ball of Twine Museum.
"How much are they paying you, anyway?" Sam asked him.
"I'm a volunteer," said the docent. "But they let me sleep here, and I get all the twine I can eat. So, how can I help you?"
Sam wanted to know a few things. "What would you do if someone cut off, say, ninety four yards of the Ball?" he asked casually.
"We'd shoot 'em, skin 'em, and sell 'em as jerky treats," said the docent.
"Isn't it a little environmentally unsound, dumping all those excess fish guts on the ground?"
"Maybe," said the docent. "Who cares?"
"Hey, good point. Is there anything else you can tell us about Bruno?"
The docent shook his head. "I can't think of a thing that'll take less than forty minutes to cover."
"Then forget it," said Sam. "I need my information in bite-sized packets."
He was here because retrieving a tiny mood ring from a decades-old ball of twine this big would be close to impossible - but Sam had a plan.
It all went back to the severed hand. Back at the Carnival, Sam had taken the jar containing the severed hand of Jesse James, while the attention of the Kushmans was distracted by Max. The lid had refused all his attempts to open it, so he gave it to Max, who smashed the jar open, allowing Sam to take the leathery hand.
Fairly useless, it seemed, until Sam had the golf ball retriever. Sam shoved the hand firmly onto the broken end of the golf ball retriever, and now you had something that could grab - or at least touch - something from a fair way away.
Now Sam took out the hand-augmented retriever. He stepped forward to the surface of the Ball and shoved out the retriever, pushing it to its fullest extension. In the gaps between the string the hand was pushed through, reaching deep into the heart of the Ball.
The hand of Jesse Jackson passed forward into a region of the ball sticky with gunk - diamonds, pizza, unexploded ordinance, skulls - of which Sam could see none. He thus had no idea that the hand had come within inches of touching the mood ring, snagged on a loop of twine. If it had touched, it wouldn't have mattered - the mood ring was fairly tightly held.
Sam pulled out the golf ball retriever. "Well, that was useless," he said.
"Yeah, sort of like those tax forms we keep finding in our mailbox," agreed Max.
"I haven't seen so much twine since that night in Tokyo in '67," said Sam. He had a rummage through his box. There was something in there he didn't remember - a horseshoe magnet from the World of Fish. Whatever, it suddenly seemed to have a very pertinent application. Sam put the magnet in Jesse's hand, and shoved the retriever back into the ball.
Deep inside, the magnetic attraction of the horseshoe was enough to jerk the mood ring from its resting place. Sam pulled the retriever back, and stuck to the horseshoe magnet was the mood ring.
"That was wholesome," said Sam, taking the mood ring.
"Not to mention physically improbable," said Max. They walked outside. Sam didn't want to leave just yet. Instead of heading to the DeSoto, they took the cable car to the Rotating Restaurant.
Up in here, the place was still as empty as ever, as messy as ever, and the Indian repairman was still at work. It was to the mounted binoculars that Sam went, however. He wanted to spy out Frog Rock.
Sam remembered the problem's he'd had with the binoculars last time he looked - lack of magnification, and the constant whirling of the restaurant. He intended to fix both of these. For the first, he took the fishbowl lens from the Carnival and fitted it over the eyepiece. For the second, there was an open panel near the elevator booth. Sam reached in and pulled out the two largest wires. He jammed them into the rear of the binocular's casing. The current lifted Sam off his feet, covering his body with a shimmering, crackling layer of electric blue. Sam got the connections home, and the electrical display stopped. Faint trails of steam rose up from his clothes. "Now I can control the speed and direction of the restaurant via these mounted binoculars," he announced to Max.
"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard!" said Max.
Sam reached out a paw and touched Max on the arm. Static electricity, chemical electricity, whatever it was - a bright blue spark jumped onto Max, causing the fur on his skin to stand up in shivering clumps. Max was lifted into the air, falling back a short distance. He stood there, frozen, then shook himself down. "Ah, maybe not," he said.
Sam bent down and looked through the eyepiece. They were rotating right, and Sam saw a succession of wonders... Mount Badrich, the World's Largest Stump, the Eternal Plain of Acid Rain. Between each was a small, nondescript rock, which might be about forty yards across at close quarters.
The binoculars passed the Inexplicable Valley of Lights. With the speed control, he slowed the rotation down. Some time later, he saw the Enchanted Argyle forest. Sam stopped everything and went back, at the slowest speed possible. Soon, in front of a patch of bare hills, he saw a rock, as nondescript as the rest. "Hmmm... it's a rock," said Sam. "And it's between the two places Shuv-Oohl said it was between. It must be Frog Rock!"

Some time later, they were back at the Mystery Vortex.
Lesser detectives might have gone straight to Frog Rock. But Sam and Max knew better. Witness evidence was more reliable - and more interesting to collect - than forensics. If anything had happened at Frog Rock, a) it had happened a while ago, and b) the evidence wasn't about to go anywhere. If they talked to Shuv-Oohl, however, they might at least know what to look for.
So, they were back. "You're back," said Shuv-Oohl, running on his treadmill, as Sam and Max re-entered his dwelling.
"And we're bigger than a breadbox," said Sam.
"Three breadboxes, even."
"What do you want now?"
Sam came forward, holding out the mood ring. "Is this your ring?" he asked.
Shuv-Oohl stopped running, and took the ring from his paw. "Cool, man," he said. "Have you found Frog Rock yet?"
"Yes, but I don't see how that's going to get me any closer to Bruno," said Sam.
"Finding Frog Rock's only the beginning, man!" said Shuv-Oohl. "Once you're at Frog Rock, you'll need some samples."
"Samples?"
"Yeah, man. Bigfoot samples. You know, fur, and stuff. Three of them. Smear 'em all over Frog Rock."
"Put the fur on the rock," said Sam. "Got it. Let's go, Max."
"WAIT!" said Shuv-Oohl urgently. Sam and Max, at the door, turned around. "You'll also need some mystic mole man powder," Shuv-Oohl explained.
Sam kept a poker face. "You must be joking."
"No joke, man. Here, I'll get you some." Shuv-Oohl hopped off the treadwheel, and opened a large wooden chest. He took out a fabric bag, its opening fastened by a small length of string. "Here you go. Sprinkle this mystic mole man powder over the fur when you've smeared it all over Frog Rock."
Sam took the bag. "What'll happen then?"
Shuv-Oohl's skin began to flash all colours. "Something wonderful," he intoned ominously.
"Thanks. Let's go, Max."

Frog Rock was found easily enough by Sam and Max - they just got in the general area and followed the signposts. The signposts led them along a narrow dirt track to a desolate, grassy area, and in amongst the rolling hills of this desolate, grassy area, the dirt track fetched up at a flat rock about five metres across.
"This doesn't look like a frog at all," said Sam.
"My innocence has been shattered by this blatant tourist trap," said Max. "I want my money back."
"We didn't pay anything," Sam reminded him.
"Well, somebody better give me some money!"
Sam looked at the rock. No sign of anything, certainly no sign of struggle. And there was no one living within miles of this place. If there had been any nefarious activity around here, nobody would have noticed.
It was sasquatch hair time. One by one Sam removed the sample from his bag, and smeared it carefully over the rock. The hairs were damp and soggy, and more than once Sam had to shake his paws clean.
"That's gross, Sam," said Max.
Soon, all the bigfoot fur was clinging to the rock. From his box, Sam brought out the mystical mole-man powder Shuv-Oohl gave him. He upended the pouch, and out spilled a sparkling golden dust. It hit the bigfoot fur and melted into invisibility.
"Well?" said Max. Nothing was happening.
"Wait for it," suggested Sam.
Moments later the sky began to dim. Not because clouds were gathering, but simply because the spectrum of the sky deepened, going from light blue through violet to midnight black. The stars were visible above as scattered white points.
"Sure gets dark quickly around here," said Max.
"I don't think this is a natural occurrence, Max," said Sam. "In fact, I think we're witnessing a celestial convergence of some sort."
"Do you think it'll make that rock look more like a frog?"
Into the vacant night sky something came, whizzing above. It approached with astonishing speed, whirling, casting a light on the ground like a drunk holding a torch. Its shape was that of a saucer, and it was flying. They could draw the obvious conclusion.
The flying saucer slowed down, and halted above Frog Rock, still casting down a yellow light. It was about twelve feet in diameter, just large enough for a single occupant. A hatch on the top of the saucer was thrown up and the occupant stuck his bald head out.
Strangely, he looked a lot like a space-age Shuv-Oohl.
The alien spoke, in a yammering, unintelligible speech. "Erk, yib yib, Doug! Yib yib, erk, yib, Shuv-Oohl yib!!" it said. Sam and Max remained unmoved by this (possible) universal expression of peace and harmony. The alien retreated into the saucer, shutting the hatch behind him, and the saucer zoomed off faster than ever. The stars themselves were picked up and dragged in its wake. Like iron filings in a magnetic field, they rearranged themselves in a new order.
Written the length and breadth of the sky were three, simple words. GO TO BUMPUSVILLE, in shimmering white letters.
"This means something, Sam," said Max.

Bumpusville was not a city, not a town, not a suburb. People did not live there - well, normal people didn't. Bumpusville was a theme park, perhaps. It reminded Sam of Graceland (which was nearby), although infinitely more sad.
Some time ago, after selling a truckload of records, Conroy Bumpus had bought this palatial two-story mansion, admiring its ostentatious white lines and well-kept lawns. Part of it became his home - the rest was tarted up into a Conroy Bumpus museum. Visitors could walk past Conroy's gold and platinum records, listen to Conroy explain the history of the place (in a pre-recorded message), admire Conroy's collection of formative influences and his eclectic taste in collectibles. The car park was enlarged, and a coach section added. Conroy hired a couple of gardeners and really jazzed up the front yard. Sometimes he even put on floor shows.
Sam and Max stood at the DeSoto a moment, looking into the front yard, at the hedges clipped into Conroy Bumpus heads, the huge sign above reading BUMPUSVILLE and with Conroy's smiling, sunglassed mug on it, and a Conroy Bumpus statue installed as a water fountain. "It's a Conroy world after all," said Sam.
"If I ever get this rich and famous, I want you to shoot me, Sam."
"It'll be a pleasure."
They walked into the front yard, coming along a paved stone path to a wooden well. "It's a wishing well," said Sam.
"I wish I had absolute power to decide who lives, and who dies," said Max.
"I think we'd need a bigger well." Sam lingered a moment, then went to the front door.

Inside was the kind of museum that comes about through a combination of bad content and poor funding.
A passage, marked out by rolls of carpet and red tassels, led forward before splitting in two. Around them were the Conroy displays. Sam and Max stopped at the first, a flat woodcut of a smiling Conroy holding a guitar. A speaker poorly concealed in his chest piped up, prompted by equipment sensing the presence of visitors.
"Howdy, pardners!" said Conroy in his cheery way. The words were Western, but the accent was definitely English. "Ah'm Conroy Bumpus, and welcome to Bumpusville! Feel free to wander the mansion, but for Pete's sake, don't touch anything!"
Sam and Max walked away, coming to a wall covered end to end in gold and platinum records. In the middle of all these, diametrically opposite the front wall, was a large and striking portrait of a more moody Conroy Bumpus, in a orange leather jacket heavily shoulderpadded, his arms crossed, a faintly dangerous expression on his face. "Cripes," Sam was moved to say. "Hey Max, take a look at this." This painting was like a car wreck - he couldn't stop looking at it.
Max took a look. "It's titled, 'Me, Myself, and I'."
"Hey, you learned how to read!"
Around the painting were all the records. Sam looked at each in turn. Here was a gold record for Conroy's breakthrough hit: "Two-Fisted, Beer-Drinkin', Gun-Totin', Hard-Lovin', Fast-Drivin', Country-Western Liverpudlian." There was the platinum record Bumpus got for "Let's Drink Beer and Shoot Things." The gold record for Bumpus' "Heaven's Just Like Texas, Except That There's No Taxes." Conroy's first 8-track tape: "Flushed Down the Toilet of Love." A gold record for Conroy's runaway hit: "Broken-Hearted Roadkill on the Highway of Romance." The platinum record Conroy got for his all-time hit: "Smile When You Say That, You Rock-N-Rollin' Wimp." A gold record for "Daddy's Two-Steppin' In His Two Foot Grave." It was hard to believe that he sold a million of "Tobacco Spit Blues," but it was there too.
None of the titles were familiar to Sam. Soon he got tired of looking at all the records. They followed the visitor passageway to the next room.
In here, mainly along a deep aisle, were Conroy's collectibles, the droppings of a life fabricating greatness. A large glass display box held a tacky, wind-up guitar. Conroy's first (and last) guitar. "It says here that he practiced diligently for 2 weeks," read Sam, "then gave it up and hired a backup band."
"That story warms the cockles of my heart," said Max.
"So do car crashes."
Next to the guitar was a display cabinet, filled to the brim with trophies. "Cripes, look at all the trophies," said Sam.
"I think this Bumpus goon is overcompensating for his lack of stature, Sam," said Max sagely. "And besides, I've got a lot more trophies than he does."
"Gee, I didn't know that Bumpus won the Vince Lombardi trophy in 1968," said Sam, looking down at the trophies. Underneath the display case was a large, elderly-looking chest. Sam read the small inscription to Max. "Genuine Imitation American Style Chest. Not intended for any kind of use. A great addition for your Genuine Imitation American Collection."
"Home shopping."
"Definitely."
The opposite wall of the aisle was chock full with paintings. Paintings, that is, of trophies. If he hadn't got it, he'd imitated it.
After that, Sam and Max went opposite ways. Sam walked down to the end of the aisle, his eyes caught by a portrait on the wall. Max returned to the passage, where an open doorway led deeper into the mansion. Clustered around the doorway were animal heads of all kinds, stuffed and mounted on trophies.
Sam spoke up. "It's a portrait of John Muir," he said, looking at the painting. John Muir, famed naturalist.
Max interrupted. "Say, Sam, just who is John Muir?"
"Who's John Muir?!"
The incredulous voice was not Sam's. It had come from a stuffed raccoon, sticking its jolly head out of a barrel on the right side of the doorway. Max stared at it. Its lips moved in an eerily lifelike way. "Hey, guys, this dope doesn't know who John Muir is!" continued the raccoon.
"You gotta be kidding!" This was the head of a deer, stuffed and mounted on the left side of the doorway and now unusually animated.
"Whatta maroon," said the stuffed pelican head above the raccoon.
"Whatta nimcowpoop!" This slow, bass-heavy voice belonged to the huge buffalo head mounted proudly above the door frame.
Max stood there, then turned urgently to Sam. "Sam, the dead animal heads are talking to me!"
Sam turned around. "Where?"
"Up there!" Max pointed, but all the animals had fallen silent.
Sam waited. "Well?"
"But-"
"You really shouldn't tell fibs about dead animals, Max," said Sam.
"But-"
"Stop bugging me. I'm admiring this portrait of John Muir."
"BUT WHO'S JOHN MUIR?!" said Max plaintively.
The raccoon, now that Sam was no longer paying attention, spoke up again. "Do you really want to know?"
"If you'll stop talking, sure," agreed Max.
"Okay. Hit it, boys!"
Tinny, jolly music came from nowhere. Taking the lead one by one, the animals led Max through the verse of a happy tune.
"There once was a man named John Muir," began the deer.
"A naturalist noble and pure," continued the buffalo.
"His love for all beasties," sang the pelican chirply. Above Max, a huge flashing EDUTAINMENT sign had come in.
"The most and the leasties-" that was the raccoon again.
"Has never been equalled ...uh..." The buffalo stumbled on the rhyme. The pelican came to the rescue.
"Fer sure!"
They all fell silent. The sign went away. The music stopped. Max breathed a sigh of relief. They were safe, for now.
Sam wasn't done admiring this portrait of John Muir - it was easily the best thing in this place. So he pulled it off the wall and stuffed it in the box. Joining Max at the doorway, they walked into the next room.

They had the luck to arrive just as Conroy Bumpus was about to begin another of his country-and-western singing performances. A special room had been built in the Bumpus mansion, just for this kind of thing. Most of the floor was bare wooden floorboards - that was for the audience. At the front of the room was a slightly raised green baize stage, over which curtains could be drawn. This stage extended out into the floor at the middle, allowing Conroy to be both within the seething crowd and six inches up.
There was no crowd - nobody at all had come. There was, however, Conroy Bumpus, standing at the front of the stage, a microphone stand before him. He swayed from side to side, keeping alert and ready for the song. Behind him, at the level of the curtains, stood Bruno the Bigfoot and Trixie the Giraffe Necked Girl. Bruno held a banjo; Trixie, a tambourine. Their eyes were wide and their mouths sad. Despite there being no visible signs of restrainment, they stayed exactly where they were. And more of the stuffed animal heads - dozens of them lined every available spot on the front and side walls. A lot of them very exotic.
Nobody seemed to have notice Sam and Max's entrance. Even as they came in, however, the sound system concealed in the corners kicked into life. A loud, hyperbolic announcer shouted, "BUMPUSVILLE IS PROUD TO PRESENT THE MASTER OF MELODY, THE KING OF COUNTRY, MR. ENTERTAINMENT, CONROOOOOY BUMPUS!!!"
"I hate floor shows," said Sam. They stayed at the doorway.
Music - slow, steady music - was pumped into the room. It didn't come from Trixie or Bruno, who pretty much stayed still where they were. Conroy, however, kicked into action. He plucked the microphone from its stand and started to croon:

I remember my childhood in Brighton
When dear old Dad would bounce me on his knee
He'd say 'Son, there ain't nothin' as excitin'
As exposing beasts to inhumanity'
That's... why... I...

The music suddenly picked up tempo, and it was now very loud in here. Electric prods, concealed behind the curtain either side of Bruno and Trixie, switched on, jabbing them with painful jolts of electricity. Trixie started hammering her tambourine; Bruno strummed away madly on his banjo. And Conroy, his voice rising, became very animated. His body thrummed like a livewire as he got to the chorus.

Happy to be King of the Creatures
I'm proud to be the Lord of the Odd
I love collecting things with grotesque features
It makes me feel like some Chaldean God.

The backing tape went through a drum solo. Conroy returned the microphone to its stand then turned, facing his backing band. His arm fell slowly with the beat. As the drum solo came to its close, Conroy whirled around, pulling the microphone free with one smooth motion.

Oh, I trapped my first tiger before I could speak
Killed me a bear when I was three!
And now with this Bigfoot and giraffe-necked freak
I finally have a full menagerie
Hit it boys!

Now a chorus of voices came through the backing tape. And, through some miracle of animatronics, every single stuffed animal head moved its lips with the word. Sped on by more electric bolts, Trixie and Bruno played as energetically as ever.

Thats... why... he's...
Proud being feared by the fauna
Jazzed just being Czar of the Bizarre
None of us can leave though we all wanna

Now it was just Conroy, crooning softly.

Oh it is tough to be a country western star...
Ohhhhhh, yeeeaaaahhhhhh.....

His voice trailed away. A perfect performance, only marginally spoilt when his toupee slipped on the final note. Conroy quickly jammed it back. "Thank yew! Thank yew!" he said. He leapt off the stage, and walked to the far wall. With a click of his fingers, a hidden panel in the wall lifted up, and Conroy walked through. It fell back.
Shouted the announcer, "YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE: CONROY BUMPUS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING."
Sam and Max came forward a short way into the room. There was Bruno, and Trixie, the veritable holy grail of their mission. Sam stepped forward again, when suddenly red lights flashed, and an alarm klaxon blared out noisily. Seconds later, Lee-Harvey appeared in the doorway behind them. "What in the name of Jethro Clampett is goin' on in here?" he said. Sam and Max were picked up, beaten around a little, and tossed out the front door.
"And stay out!" said Lee-Harvey.
Sam and Max picked themselves up and dusted themselves down. Undaunted, they went back inside the mansion. This time, they chose a different way through the visitor areas, finally coming to two doors in a little-used area. They chose one at random.
It led to a manor room, the kind where well-bred gentlemen and women would sit on fine leather chairs and sip tea, occasionally taking a leather-bound volume from the tall bookcases.
There were a few minor changes. The tall windows with their heavy golden curtains looked pretty unchanged, but on the right wall a circular space had been hollowed out. There, the floor was metal plating, ringed in by a screen and illuminated by fluoro green light. Complicated machinery hung above this empty space, along with what looked like a headset.
Sam and Max took all this in, but they were most interested in the figure of Lee-Harvey, sitting on a couch reading a book. Lee-Harvey was still wearing his black pants, a mean-ass black and blue jacket, and didn't seem especially interested in them.
Sam spoke up. "Don't I know you?"
"I don't know," said Lee-Harvey. "Were you ever in the Pensacola Camp for Problem Children?"
"No."
"Well, that's where I've spent most of the last ten years, so I don't see
how we could've met."
He didn't seem to remember them. Sam aimed to change that. "Hey, you're the cheap thug who helped Bumpus five iron my little buddy! If my guns weren't at the cleaners you'd be Swiss cheese, bub!"
Lee-Harvey looked up. "Look, it's nothing personal, I was just following orders."
"Besides, I sort of enjoyed it," said Max.
There was an uncomfortable silence.
Max broke it. "I feel a nigh-uncontrollable urge to stick bolts in your neck and shout 'IT'S ALIVE! IT'S ALIVE!'"
"'Nigh'?"
"Can I help you two?" Lee-Harvey finally got around to asking.
"You know," advised Sam. "I think you'd scare away fewer tourists if you added a little color to your wardrobe."
"Right," agreed Max. "The whole 'angel of death' look is out."
"Huh? What?"
"Forget it," said Sam. "Whatcha reading?"
"Dialenics, by Elrod Hubbel. It's changing my life." It had certainly absorbed his interest - Lee-Harvey had looked up at them perhaps twice.
"So," said Sam casually, "what's this Conroy Bumpus yahoo really like?"
"Has he got any deep, dark secrets we can exploit for monetary gain?" said Max eagerly.
"Hey, don't be castin' no aspirations towards Mr. Bumpus! He busted me out of the youth camp, gave me this high-payin' $4.75 an hour job, taught me how to speak Swahili, found a baboon's heart for my sister's transplant operation, and he sings real purty, too."
"Sure you won't give us any dirt on your boss?"
"Don't ask me again, Jojo."
Lee-Harvey was showing a distressing degree of loyalty. "You sure are one dedicated employee," said Sam.
"Yup, that's me, detonated."
"How can you stand to work for someone who persecutes harmless beasts like Bruno the Bigfoot?" asked Sam.
Lee-Harvey thought. "Uh, on my feet?"
"He's got you there, Sam."
Sam pressed on. "Don't you have any misgivings about hunting harmless freaks like Trixie?"
"I did, but then I took a couple of aspirins."
"So, what's all this virtual reality equipment for?" asked Sam.
"The way I understands it," said Lee-Harvey slowly, "Mr. Bumpus uses a sophisticated virtual reality scenario to interface with the mansion's security system."
"The devil you say."
"Yup. Sometimes Mr. Bumpus lets me use the equipment,and I pretend I'm over a hundred feet tall, and everyone else is like ants, and I just squish and squish and squish and-"
"We get the picture," said Sam hastily. He walked into the area under the security equipment and pulled down the headset.
"Hey!" shouted Lee-Harvey, suddenly animated. "Visitors aren't allowed to use Mr. Bumpus' state-of-the-art virtual reality equipment. Scram!"
Sam and Max left.

The second door opened onto Conroy's bedroom, a smallish, drab place enlived by only one thing - a huge Monster Truck Conroy used as a bed. The top of the truck was at least twelve feet above the floor, so a converted escalator was attached to the side of the truck.
"Wow! It's Monster Truck weekend!" said Max, as soon as he saw the behemoth.
"Happening every Sunday!" agreed Sam, well versed with the advertisements.
"Sunday!"
"Okay, I'm over the shock now," said Sam.
"I'm not. But I'm sure my gentle naivete will survive."
Running around along the floor on its single, squeaky wheel, was a Macrohard Maintenance Droid. These were built for basically one function: to clean things. The designers hadn't wasted time on designing something cute and anthropomorphic - it was basically an inverted, metal teardrop. A thin, metal arm came out of its casing, and attached to it was a rudimentary feather duster. The droid ran along the floor, dusting every surface in reach. It finished the walls, and ran past Sam and Max and out the door.
Sam walked in, and got to the top of the truck with the escalator. It was pretty cosy up here, stacked in eiderdowns, with a shelf of books just out of reach at the foot of the bed. Sam started toward the pillows, then stopped. One was smeared with a sickly green substance - Miracle Hair Growth Tonic.
He looked at the small bookcase instead. One book was especially thick - the large letters on the spine proclaimed it to be an Official Macrohard Maintenance Droid Manual. If Sam had the slightest inclination to strain himself, I could probably reach it. However, he was sure he could drag this out into a longer yet more satisfying experience.
So Sam reached into his box and took out the golf ball retriever. He removed the magnet, then stood poised, retriever in hand, ready to strike.
Max, almost directly below on the floor, looked up. "Watcha doing?"
"Hang back, buddy, and observe my magic." Sam extended the golf ball retriever. The shrunken hand grabbed the spine of the manual. Sam pulled it out from the bookcase. It hung there a moment in empty space, then the hand lost its grip.
The heavy, thick manual plummeted, striking Max directly in the face. Max collapsed to the floor, the manual stuck to his face and open at the middle. Sam descended the escalator, crossed to Max, and started reading.

Fifteen hours later...
Sam turned the final page of the manual, picked it up and put it in his box.
Max got up, rested and perky. "Find out everything you need to know?"
"Maybe. I got a little lost in the troubleshooting section, though." Sam left the room, followed by Max. He was looking for the Macrohard Maintenance Droid.
He found it in the front foyer area, dusting the walls around the platinum records. Sam approached it. "Now that I've read that ponderous manual, I can move the robot around like this..." Pressing certain areas of the robot's casing, muttering "Follow me, you Spielbergian robot," under his breath, he got it to move into the centre of the passageway.
"I'm impressed," said Max.
"That's nothing. Watch this."
Sam pressed a button. A tiny hatch opened in the side of the robot. Out came a beam of white light, angled down at the floor. Standing in this beam of light was a tiny holographic figure, a young woman in flowing white robes and wearing earphones made of ... hair?
"Help me Sam and Max, you're my only hope!" she pleaded, in a tinny voice. The words, and her actions, looped continuously.
"That was gratuitous," said Max.
"Sorry." Sam turned the hologram off. "This might be more useful..." He thumped the top of the robot, hard. A metal drawer shot out of the robot. In it a pulsating, pink brain, from which ran wires of different colours, floated in a green nutrient bath. Above this was an LED display, a map of the mansion. Some rooms were coloured brightly, some dark.
Sam knew what was going on. This was a map of the areas the droid was set to clean. By messing around with the wires, and changing the connections, he was able to add another room to the cleaning pattern - the soundstage.
Sam pushed the drawer shut. The droid bounced around on the spot, agitated. "I don't think the cute little robot wants to follow its new programming, Sam," said Max.
"I don't recall giving it a cute little choice."
The droid finally digested its orders. It ran away from them, heading at speed toward the soundstage. "There he goes," said Sam.
"I'm ripe with anticipation," said Max drily.
"I thought I smelled something."
Along the passageway sped the droid. It passed through the soundstage door and ran right through the electric eye at floor level, part of the mansion's security system. Klaxons blared and lights flashed.
Lee-Harvey, minding the security interface, looked up. "What the-?" He ran out, along the passageway and past Sam and Max.
"How Pavlovian," said Sam, watching him go.
"And you should know!"
They went the opposite way to Lee-Harvey, heading for the security system. Sam stepped into the metal circle, and pulled down the headset.
Instantly, he was in a grainy world of horrible angles and clashing colours. He stood in a patch of angular dirt, enclosed all around by a wall green-and-blue rocks, or crystals. The sky was deep pink. Somewhere, in the distance, was a purple castle, separated from the rest of the virtual reality world by a thin moat.
"This is virtual reality?" said Sam. "I may be sick."
He stepped forward, the polygonal world updating jerkily. On the ground before him was a stone, and in the stone was a flat golden sword. Sam reached down with his virtual hands and grabbed the virtual hilt of the virtual sword. After much heaving, it came out. Sword in hand, Sam moved forward. He was headed toward a deep dark hole in the rocks, a cave of possible ill-intent.
As he came near, a roar issued from the cave. Out came a huge polygon dragon, walking very unrealistically. Sam jabbed at it with the sword, then, in a huge vertical stroke, cut it in two. The dragon fell apart and vanished, leaving a blubbering, beating dragon's heart. Sam reached into the quivering heart, and pulled out a key.
He removed the headset. "Well?" said Max.
"I am the Key Master," said Sam, putting the key in his pocket.
"Does that come with a dental plan?"
Lee-Harvey appeared at the doorway. Sam and Max stood there innocently. "What are you two doing here?"
"Leaving," said Sam. They walked out.

About a minute later, they were back in Conroy's soundstage. Being careful not to walk into the room. Sam turned to a metal box by the door. It had a keyhole, and the security key fit perfectly.
Sam turned the key. The electric eye shut down. The machinery either side of Bruno and Trixie powered down, with an audible hum. Sam stood up and watched them.
Bruno and Trixie had realised they were no longer captives. Her eyes shining, Trixie tossed away the tambourine. Bruno took the banjo and punched a hole through it with his doughty fist. He grabbed the yellow hat off his head, and crushed it. Then he lifted his arms, and with a single flex of those mighty muscles tore his yellow vest to shreds. Trixie watched on, admiringly.
She turned back to Sam and Max. "Gee, thanks," said Trixie effusively.
Bruno reached over and shook Sam's hand. Bruno had a grip that could bend iron. It was all Sam could do to avoid having his shoulder dislocated.
"Well, back to the circus with you," said Max once the handshake was over.
Sam turned to him. "I'm feeling a little morally conflicted about taking Bruno back to the circus."
"I'm not. Let's go, you big lug."
Trixie was shocked. "Stay away from him, you malefactor!" she said sharply.
"I'm not a malefactor - I'm a ligamore."
Bruno did not look like he was going to co-operate. "Look, I'm not going back to the circus, and I'm late for a party," he said. His was a deep, daffy voice, that indicated a low IQ.
"Oh yeah, the bigfoot party," said Sam. "Where is it?"
Bruno told him. "It's at Evelyn Morrison's Savage Jungle Inn, in picturesque Half Life, Nevada. Bigfoots-"
"-and their dates-" added Trixie.
"Only!" Bruno and Trixie disappeared into the backstage area, presumably knowing their own way out of the mansion. Sam and Max stood there a moment. Then they headed for the DeSoto.

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