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The aliens wanted Corey to hand those last two Silly Putters over for examination, but Corey wouldn't. It became an issue. In the end, the aliens got their way, and Corey's vizzy phone got broken. That's why there haven't been any more calls."

"The rath and the Jubjub bird!" exclaimed Willy. "Yes! They're immune because they have cubic damping! We have to go to Corey's isopod and get that algorithm.

I can't remember the exact details, but I can find them out by looking at the rath and the Jubjub bird. And then maybe we can use cubic damping to make all the moldies safe from the Stairway To Heaven."

"Frankly I'd be a little leery of going in there with those aliens," said Gurdle-7. "Until we have more information. But I could take you as far as Corey's air lock."

"Gurdle-7 is a filthy coward!" hollered one of the angry Nest moldies.

"We should bomb the Rhizome isopod!" yelled another.

"Calm down and wait till I go up there and see what the situation is," said Willy.

"I think the Stairway To Heaven is a flesher trick to kill all the moldies!" said the green cactuslike moldie, waving its spiny arms. "Gurdle-7 is a traitor!"

"I'll kill him if no one else will!" yelled the red crab moldie. "I'm going to get Gurdle-7 right now!"

"Let's not get carried away," said some moldie voice of reason.

"Kill Willy Taze!" hollered another.

"Give them a chance to look at the isopod!" said others.

"Kill Terri Percesepe too! She came here inside Quuz! It's all her fault!" shouted the cactus moldie.

"Destroy the Stairway To Heaven!" said one and then five and then a host of others, falling into a chant. "Bomb the lab! Bomb the lab! Bomb the lab!" "Local network mode," said Willy, and all the Nest moldie presences disappeared from Terri's uvvy—all except Gurdle-7, Je

Looking through the wall into the cave, Terri saw the four moldies race out of the lab. And then she saw them circle around to the front of the pink-house.

Gurdle-7 and Je

Now Willy opened the i

"Hello there, Terri Percesepe," said Gurdle-7 as he bowed down by Willy's side and split his back open. The opening of his tissues changed his reek from intense to unbelievable. "Perhaps you don't know this, but without your husband Tre's contribution, the success of my Gurdle Decryption process would have taken much longer. We are grateful."

"Maybe we're grateful," said carrot-shaped Je

"Don't be superficial, Je

"This is the most important day in the whole history of the world."

"I just hope we live through it!"

And then they went out through the air lock and back onto the floor of the Nest.

The red moldie with claws like a crab came ru

"Hold tight, Terri, we're going airborne," said Je

Terri sighed in relief and looked downward. The sight of the Nest floor was mesmerizing. It felt almost as if they were gnats inside a giant old-fashioned computer box, with the floor a great motherboard covered with winding lines and square-chunked chips. Looking toward where they'd come from, Terri realized that the pursuing moldies had turned back in order to trash Willy's dome and Gurdle-7's lab. There was a small bright grouping of moldie dots down there and now there was a sudden flash as a bomb destroyed all of the lab's equipment.

"That's seven lives' work!" screeched Gurdle-7 over the uvvy. "Let's go back and punish them! They've destroyed all my S-cubes! All of my records were in there.

And our backup of Wendy Mooney! Those ignorant chauvinistic fools! They're no better than fleshers!"

"You do have all the Stairway To Heaven knowledge stored in your own body, don't you?" asked Willy.

"Yes, but that's the only complete copy. If something were to happen to me…"

"Silence," urged Frangipane. "Who knows who is listening?"

They rose farther, with Ormolu and Frangipane having to shoot at several other moldies who came darting out at them from the narrowing Nest walls. Up above them Terri could see the blazing light prism through the crater hole. And then they sailed up through the crater hole and around the prism. The boundless open space of the Moon's surface sprang out around them, silvery and gray.

"Willy," said Terri, her voice shaking despite herself. "I still want to uvvy my husband. How do I place the call?"

"Push the button," said Willy, his icon distractedly fashioning a virtual button and displaying it in front of Terri. Terri pushed the button right away, and after a little bit Tre's face appeared.

"Tre!" cried Terri. Like radio waves, uvvy signals were electromagnetic waves that travel at the speed of light, and even light takes over a second to make a one-way trip between Earth and Moon. An agonizing two and a half seconds elapsed while Terri's info traveled down to Earth and Tre's info traveled back.

"Terri! Are you okay? Where are you?"

"I'm inside a moldie who just flew out of the moldies' Nest, Tre. We're going to the dome of a man named Corey Rhizome." Another long pause. Terri noticed that Willy and the four moldies were eavesdropping.

"Oh, darling." Tre was sobbing. "I heard about Blaster crashing into the spaceport and I thought—"

"I surfed my way through it," said Terri, her own tears starting to flow. "It was terrible. And things still aren't too glassy." They'd risen up to nearly a mile above the Moon now, the four moldies flying in formation.

"1 love you, Terri," said Tre's dear voice.

"I love you too. Give the children a big kiss from me." Another two-and-a-half-second wait.

"I will. But tell me more about what happened, Terri. The only news we're able to get about it is dooky kilp from freelance newsies in Einstein. Why did Blaster crash? And what happened to all the moldies at the spaceport?"

"Willy Taze and a moldie called Gurdle-7 invented a kind of program that changes the dimensions of imipolex or something. And that makes the moldies get possessed by like alien personality waves. Gurdle-7 said you helped them, but how?" Now Gurdle-7, Je

"My God!" came Tre's reply. "They must have used my N-dimensional Perplexing Poultry design! Someone or something called Je