The captain moaned and Stephen was quickly at his side. "Perhaps he senses that you have come," Juditha said, hopefully, as she brushed escaped blonde tendrils back from Jack's brow.

Just then, a wild, whooping yell filled the jungle air as Hando...

***************************************************

....swooped across the clearing, his grip on the long vine somewhat tenuous due to the four female silverback gorillas who had fastened themselves adoringly about his person. BertiVet watched. "Yes," she thought, "I had suspected his appeal to those of more beastial natures." It explained much of Ando's obsession with the Melbourner. It truly did. How at home the lad seemed here as he grasped the next, always perfectly-placed vine, and swung off through the jungle canopy, whooping gleefully, his female fans still clutching him closely.

"Hmmmm?" thought Joimus, narrowing her eyes. "I thought he was supposed to rescue Nash."

Stephen's head jerked around towards the Pittsburgher. "Nash? Is Nash in trouble? Does he need Charles?" he asked worriedly.

Joimus turned him back toward the captain. "I think Jack has more need of Stephen at the moment," she explained. "Besides, I can speak to Bud and Terry about Nash."

Stephen was so torn. How very hard it was at times like this to be the best friend of two separate characters.

Joimus walked over to where Terry and Bud were talking. Terry was still a bit pale from the hammering he had taken earlier in the day, but managed a slight smile in greeting as Joimus approached. Joimus thought it better not to mention the unindentation process he had endured, so she launched right into an explanation of Nash's gorillaish plight. Terry was used to gorilla warfare...even when it was spelled guerrilla...a particularly clever and barbarous species...and immediately began smearing mud across his face in artful swirls. Bud was a city boy...but the back alleyways of LA were often, he had found, quite jungle-like. Joimus smiled at the duo, knowing she could trust them to locate and rescue the missing mathematician.

Stephen bent over Jack, lifing one eyelid, but as there was only a commercial for cornflakes playing, let it close, the long lashes settling softly back onto the pale cheek. "How is he?" Juditha asked, concerned by the doctor's expression.

"Not good...not good at all," Stephen said, shaking his head sadly.

The cornflakes were a bad sign. The stupor was more pronounced

than he had thought at first.

"But...but..."Juditha stuttered, "he only had one small lick of the raspberry/squid juice from off his finger. How could it have such dire consequences as THIS?"

Stephen continued with his Palauan tale. "It is like poison ivy, Juditha. Once you have had it, you are more susceptible to it the next time. And whilst we were stranded on Palau in volume 37, and the tribes were battling so ferociously all about us...well, you know Jack. He flung himself full into the fray, heedless of life and scuffmarks, and before I could stop him had grabbed a cricket bat from a fallen tribesman, and smashed a squid that was flying directly at the face of the Queen."

Juditha gasped. "Oh, YES! Jack WOULD do that!"

Stephen nodded as he spoke again. "It was a particularly large, purple squid." He closed his eyes as he spoke, reliving the terrible, fateful moment on page 123 of volume 37. How clearly, even to this day, he could hear the awful, dreadful *SPLORP* made by the contact of the flying squid with a well-swung cricket bat. How vividly he could recall the way the squid disintegrated into a million squishy particles, spreading through the Palauan sky about the captain's startled face, glistening like whipped grape jello, then falling in what seemed like slow motion onto Jack, his mouth open from exertion and surprise. A tear trickled slowly down the surgeon's left cheek as he recalled how, for one split second, his eyes had locked with those of his friend's, then the juicy squid particles were absorbed into Jack's vulnerable anterior taste buds.

"What HAPPENED?" Juditha asked, her breath coming in short gasping sounds.

Stephen buried his face in his hands, his shoulders heaving. HOW could he tell sweet, innocent Juditha what had happened? How...how...HOW??? The effects of a first exposure to Palauan squid juice were completely different from the second...much more horrible...not sending one into a deep stupor like now...but causing the poor captain instantly to believe he was...Captain Jack. Only not THE Captain Jack of the Royal Navy...but Captain Jack Goldfinch...er..Robin... no...SPARROW! That was it! He had run off into the jungle, using the charcoal from a burnt twig to line his eyes thickly in black. He had wrapped striped boxer shorts about his head, woven beads into his hair and beard, and taken up the trade of piracy for several years.

Folks may think that Depp fellow is up for various awards this season, but little do they know it was actually Aubrey under the influence of squid juice that did all the deeds. He thought back over the long and arduous process of tracking his friend across the seven seas, following the trail of bones, pearls, and even chocolate from time to time. And, most gosh-awful of all, he recalled how, at long last, he had found Jack just as he was about to ask Julia Roberts to marry him. Stephen had known there was, indeed, not a moment to lose...had dived into her red velvet boudoir, tackled the captain about his knees, and hauled him off to Betty Ford to detox.

"Detox?" repeated Juditha, eagerly latching onto the word. "Can he be detoxed in the same manner again?"

Stephen's face fell. After he picked it up, he replied with a deep sigh, full of regret, "No. That only works for the first exposure. The second requires something of a much more arcane nature."

Juditha's eyes were obviously asking, "What?"

Stephen straightened, turned, and walked a few feet away before he whispered, "I have no idea."

Juditha was stunned. "You...you mean...this storyline is going to...go...on?"

"Probably," he said softly, adding, "One fears."

Juditha buried her face in the captain's chest, not minding the imprints left by his embossed golden buttons, and sobbed. "Oh, Jack, Jack, Jack! WHEN will you open your seagreen eyes and gaze into mine again without any sign of cornflakes!"

Yes, indeed, the plot was most tragic. Though not quite so tragic as Hando's personal storyline which found him perched atop a large, spiny aloe plant whilst 300 jealous female silverbacks battled for possession of his person.

Or even Nash's, where he had been left stranded and alone atop a 97 foot tree...well, alone except for the two dozen pygmy matheaters that were scaling it. Or Bud's and Terry's, who had fallen into the snares placed by the female warrior tribe of bicepworshippers and were, even now, dangling upsidedown over the swamp of molten slime. Characterloss seemed imminent! Ack!

Just then, the ground near the giant aloe plant rumbled and began to bulge upwards as though something strange...and large...were about to emerge. The gorillas backed away, gazing in fear as the soil separated and began to crackle and glow as a loud humming noise rose from within the earth. The whole clearing in front of the aloe plant fell away into nothingness as even the usually unperturbable Hando's eyes widened. He leaned over the edge of the aloe, peering down into a vast tube of blackness with swirling edges. A far distant cry grew ever more close. It sounded familiar to him somehow.

"Yeeeeeeeeee.....HAAAAAAAA"And with a swish and a swoop, Ando slid upwards out of the void, crashing into his lap. Splattered as she was head to toe with badminton drippings, she was, nevertheless,

lovely in his eyes.

"ANDO!" he cried, joyously wrapping his arms about her. "I thought you were my dear digestively departed darling!"

"Never," she intoned, "underestimate the wanton willpower of a wayward Welshwoman."

He could not stop kissing her cheeks, her eyes, her ears, her hair, her yak particles. "How did you GET here? We are hundreds of miles from the dune!" And, so, Ando explained how in epis, a sand worm is not just a sand worm, but a sand worm HOLE. "Of course!" smiled Hando. "How silly of me not to have known that."

"I was surprised at first myself," the Londoner admitted, "but when I began to see mileage signs for the Neutral Zone, I suspected there was more to the worm than the yak goo meeting my eye."

Hando's brow knit in puzzlement. "The Neutral Zone lies between northern Sudan and central Uganda?"

"Only when you travel the route via wormhole, my darling. Only then."

Hando did not care. Not only had the 300 female silverbacks scattered into the jungle, but he had his Ando back! Life was sweet!

Stephen was worried. Jack's breathing seemed more labored. He lifted an eyelid, fearing the dreaded cornflake commercial would still be playing. "Oh, NO!" he gasped, his knees going all weak.

"Cornflakes, Stephen?" asked Juditha, anxious that perhaps freeze-dried strawberries might have been added, dreading what that might mean.

The doctor had taken out his handkerchief and was mopping his brow.

"Oh, Juditha...he's gotten worse."

"Worse! How can you tell? What did you see?" She was nearly frantic.

Stephen could hardly speak. "It...it...was...the Weather Channel," he murmured, his shoulders slumping in despair. "A cold front was moving towards the Northeast and there was....there was....fog...in Philadelphia."

"NO!" gasped Juditha. "Stephen! You must DO something to save him before Boston ices completely over and the school systems close!"

The surgeon clenched his teeth, angry tears welling in his eyes. "I don't know what TO do!" he shouted. This was not something he could suture or saw off.

"Is there no help....anywhere?" Juditha moaned piteously, the tragedy of the storyline nearly at its apex.

Meanwhile, Joimus and Maximus were down by the riverside, wading in the warm shallows, catching fish in their hands. A particularly large fish, its fin sticking up out of the water, circled Joimus' legs. She leapt upon it, grasping its gills, and heaved it up onto the bank just as BertiVet was passing by. "My goodness gracious!" BertiVet exclaimed, "It's a snapping yellow-scaled UrpUrp! I thought they were long extinct." She should have known that nothing is ever totally extinct...not in epis.

"Wasn't that the fish in the two carvings we saw back in

Egypt?"

"Yes," chortled Jo excitedly. "It is my BIG FISH!"

Maximus, always one to get to the heart of the matter...or the woman...commented wisely, "Perhaps we should check out its mouth."

"Its mouth?" asked BertiVet, "Why its mouth?"

"You may recall," the General continued, "that in the high cave, the BIGGER FISH had something carved in its mouth."

Berti's eyes widened. "You're right, General! Mayhap we shall find out at last what that WAS!" She could hardly believe that a loose end of the storyline was actually about to be dealt with.

Maximus knelt next to the BIG FISH, prying its large mouth open with the flat of his gladius. He reached his left hand in to feel around, gave a sharp cry of pain and pulled it back, his thumb missing.

Joimus' hand flew to her mouth in shock...then he laughed and

unfolded the appendage.
 

BertiVet's eyes narrowed. "I did not know of your sense of....humor.....General," she commented.

"I had little chance to use it...not in Germania...nor Zucchabar...

nor even in Rome. But...well...an epi in Uganda is altogether different... now, isn't it?" he chuckled lightly as he tipped his head down, then back up again, displaying a glorious grin. BertiVet looked quickly around, startled by a sudden loud thumping sound. But it was only Joimus' heart.

Nash looked down from his precarious perch atop the high limb. The pygmy matheaters were getting closer. "CHARLES!" he shouted to

the Ugandan sky. "Where ARE you, Charles?"

The African breeze carried the desperate cry over the jungle canopy, wafting it down to where Stephen stood, tears still welling in his eyes. He raised his head to listen. NASH! Oh, no! Nash really, really, really needed Charles! Before her horrified eyes, Juditha saw the doctor start to waver, to fade. "No you DON'T!" she shrieked, flinging herself upon him and clutching his legs. "You are NOT leaving Jack!"

Bud and Terry had hung upsidedown over the swamp of molten slime for so long that their faces were beginning to turn a bit purple. Gathering all his remaining strength, though still not up to full power yet from...well...you know....Terry tried to swing his body closer to the enormously tall termite mound at the edge of the swamp. Sweat dripped off his face, plop, plop, plopping into the molten slime below him, where it made little hissing sounds followed by small puffs of green smoke. The vine that ensnared his ankles began to stretch. His head dangled now just inches above the burbling green. Several pairs of multi-faceted eyeballs watched him from just beneath its surface. Dinner was about to be served.

Maximus was finally able to pry the UrpUrp's jaws far enough apart to look inside. He, Joimus, and BertiVet were all on their knees, peering into the BIG FISH. Joimus and BertiVet turned and stared at one another, saying in unison, "It CAN'T be!"