They wear to venture to the Golden Frog: Elayne Mite, Florence Wood, Bonnie Hasslit, Peter Doos, Billy Dunne, and with an air of jelly maryland, they dispatched with hearselike Chatterly to gallup Herm into the furry.

They found him brooding with his strange machines, dials and fibligets and gears and phonoplutzes and gonorrhoids.

"Come quibbling, Herman dear," said Bonnie Hasslit, who foxily eyetwinkled with her hips flourished and her chest a-dingle, "for we moisten our trouts in the Golden Frog tonight with our pleasant conflagration."

"Yes, do engender our grope this evilly," said Peter. "Our follicles in the Elastic Band do fiddle with their instruments. For drink does corpuscular to the decimate and salivatory the inordinate."

But Herman, he fixed his ratchet immobile and dismissed them with his headoff past. "No, no, good amenities," and he scratched his nautical, "for amiss continue this tinkering octopus and brood for time is a spooly thread."

Billy was anthill, while his mushrooms merely had their mounts spread slightly, smelling curious or like Elayne, whose knees were such orange groves a-blossom.

"Herman, why so much of this brooding? Have you no Philip of yet, or are you playing some sort of game you will allow our kibbutz?

Pete, you could tell, was partying ornithology, for his tailfeathers were bedecked in Rhine stains and bird undies.

Herman, he parried with feather extrusions, nodding, "Ah really musk airily on," and shook his rattle, "but thanks for the incarceration."

So they crewed, and clopped for the door sweating flies. But the nifty Elayne hung for a moment, and incited, "Maybe some other time soon, Herman dear," before she Wrigleyed off.

Which skirmished Herman's he-man globins, pair of Easter eggs, in his chair. Yet, as they inseminated into the nice, he soon returned to his brooding.

Oh, that is what Herman did, and in did it him. Always a brooder was he, and he did brood a boot, brooding over myths and phallus seas, events and leg pulls, over the dread and cleavage. He brooded past and present, future and fact and foible and aspirin beneath and benzedrine. Far and wide did he brood, and in his veins did the brooding floor show, and tinker with his brooding. His brooding wither knot and Danish, earthworm and clove, methodical and woodlouse. Oh, that night over his books and papers, and with his odd brooding machinery did tinker, until his islets become as red dress and heavy as bowling bulls. He tinkered and brooded, for he had always known that one daze he'd have his Gaul.

And weren't they surprised, his friends, when they retrenched from their debacles at the bar? As they found but smoldering rum nuts, and bits of odd machinery, amidst the fishy ashes and puckered gearythings, and only a bit of clothing scarred here and abouts. And a little sad, too, they were tarnished. For Herman had brooded himself a bomb, and he blew it.