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"And the rest of us?" "You deserve something nice. With little evidence that the fabric of space-time would be irreparably rent, and this only on my say-so, few would have had the courage to take up my cause." "So? What do we get?" Phlegm's tone was accusing, uncalled for, in Simon's opinion. "You get a peek whenever your little hearts desire," said Princess Ackaetia. "Time hangs heavy when one is trapped inside a kaleidoscope." "Once a scout always a scout. I just wanted a little recognition--you know, like a merit badge. Let's get to it. Everyone agree?" said Phlegm. "Sorry I got here late." "Tardiness is a prerogative of royalty and I shall view this as a compliment to my exalted status. Your persistent hand-washing, however, smacks of lèse-majesté. Apology accepted." A few hundred kaleidoscopes in and they found it. "This is the one," said the scope virgin. "How do you know?" asked Harry. "Q.E.D. I'm not in it. Yet." "We've done it? Saved the known universe, then?" asked Simon. "I hope you have found it to be a not overly strenuous undertaking." "But that's it? It's over?" "It is. Now, help stuff me into this thing. Any volunteers?" To a man, Phlegm Ward included, Troop 136, Katahdin Council, Willipaq, Maine stepped forward. Passing the Princess Ackaetia back through the trans-dimensional rift was more like greased pig wrestling than assisting a distressed damsel aboard a passing palfrey. Finally her dorsal hump slipped past the aperture. "Whew!" said the Princess. "Bye now." Simon shook his kaleidoscope. Broken glass rattled. "She's gone." He looked again. At the far end of the tube a naked glorious woman parted a curtain painted with fluffy Tiepolo clouds against a sky bluer than blue. She turned to wave. Harry Pease grabbed an armload of kaleidoscopes and peered through each in turn. "Hey, the naked lady is still in the tube. All the tubes." He set the kaleidoscopes down and went to check in the mirror. They had left a series of large concentric black rings around his eye. * * * Harry and Simon returned to their separate houses and their separate wives and hearths. Simon resolved never to tell Bonnie about this. A trans-dimensional refugee saved from an intolerable marriage would be a good enough story, he reasoned. Bonnie was an incurable romantic. Like wearing aloha shirts outside the house and rubbernecking high school girls, who had begun looking good again after he turned seventy, a naked woman in each and every of one thousand two-hundred and thirty-eight Boy Scout kaleidoscopes was a thing best not spoken of.
Happy for their private silences and carrying the empty peach
basket, Harry and Simon drove home alone, together. Troop 136
would wear their black circles with the pride of a full sash of
merit badges. And Simon would blame his increasingly slippery
memory on the direct hit from Prince Philo Gulesi's neutron cannon.
*******END*******
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