After a Sifillis hour or so most of the band of creepy gaunt symphoros rolled back into the forest, leaving only four of their number to guard the hill. This quartet didn’t wear diapers, their torsos ended abruptly under their belly buttons. The ghouls rolled around and around faster and faster and then crashed into each other violently while screaming and then pretended to be dead on the ground; but neither Montana nor Cockadoody were fooled by this trick, so they remained in security among the boulders and paid no attention to their so-called cunning enemies. Some of the rocks were fleshy and gammon-colored, laced with bulging purple veins, while others were hard and jagged and white.

  Finally the cockadoodoo, fluttering over the mound, exclaimed: "Why, here's a trail!"

  So Montana and Elvira Daisy Shingles at once clambered to where Cockadoody stood, and there, sure enough, was a smooth path cut between the stones. It seemed to wind around the mound from top to bottom, like a cork-screw, twisting here and there between the boulders but always remaining level and easy to walk upon.

  Mono walked up the path, and followed it until she came to the very top of the hill, where a solitary round white rock stood that was bigger than any of the others surrounding it. The path came to an end just beside this great pale stone, and for a moment it puzzled the girls to know why the path had been made at all.

  "Well, I guess this is a dead end, Cocka," said Montana.

  "But... crack!" exclaimed Cockadoody.

  "What?"

  "There’s a crack! In the rock! It looks something like a door, doesn't it?"

  "Why, this isn’t rock, it’s bone! Hang on, isn't this a key-hole, Cocka?" pointing to a round, deep hole at one side of the door.

  "Aye-ya," said the cocky cockadoodoo.

  "I think we figured out where to stick the bone key!"

  "Try it and see!" said the Cockadoodoo.

  So Montana searched in the pockets of her dingy, torn jumpsuit and found the bone key they had found on the beach. And when she had put it into the hole of the rock, and turned it, a sudden sharp snap was heard; then, with a solemn creak that made the shivers run down Vira’s back, the face of the enormous bone fell outward, like a door on hinges, and revealed a small dark chamber just inside.

  "Good gracious!" cried Montana, shrinking back as far as the narrow path would let her.

  For standing within the narrow chamber of rock was a smallish orange and black robot made out of Mukusian plastic. He had ridged black tubes for arms and legs. His black hands were shaped like wooden spoons, with four orange nubs for fingers, and his feet- which were half as big as his torso- looked like two big upside-down funnels. His orange head- which was the same size as his torso- had eyebrows of a slightly lighter color orange than the rest of him above bulging white, pupil-less eyes.

  Montana stepped inside the little room to get a back view of the plastic man, and Vira cautiously approached it to give it a sniff. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness Montana saw there was a compartment in the back of the android’s head that had come open. The tween loved to tinker with machinery and soon deduced that some wires in the android’s microcircuit brain had come loose. She reconnected them and they sparked dangerously in her face.

  "Good morning! Good morning! Good morning, Montana Shingles and Elvira Daisy Shingles and brown cockadoodoo!"

  "Good morning," Mono and Cocka answered, politely. Vira yipped friendily. Coming around to the front of the robot Montana saw that animated black pupils had appeared darting within his eyeballs.

  "Thanks for fixing me brains! If my wires get fudged up and I freeze where I am. Please don’t tell any of my enemies about this inconvenient vulnerability."

  "How did you know our names?" asked Montana.

  "My father, Cydroidobot the Robotic Emperor of Mukus Quadrant, has programmed into my memory banks all of his adventures with you and Vira."

  “YIP!” said Vira at the sound of her name.

  “I do not know of this cockadoodoo though.”

  “The names Cocka, or Cockadoody the Cocky Cockfightin’ Cockadoodoo for long. Pleased to meet you, handsome.”

  “You’re Cydroidobot’s son?” exclaimed Montana. “That’s great!" The molybdenum man Cydroidobot was one of the best friends she had made during her first trip to Bonertania last summer and the one who had started her on this current misadventure in the first place. "Do you know where he is? Do you know where we are? And how did you get locked up inside this big bone mountain?"

  "We’re in the country of Farshtunkener, on the southwestern shores of Pus Continent. My dad got me a summer job working as an intern for King Farshtunkener. It was awful. King F went totally psycho and beat all of his handmaidens and butlers with petrified poosticks until they died. The king had a lovely kween and ten children- five boys and five girls- but in a manic fit he sold them to the Fartmeister, King of the Fart Ghouls, to be slaves."

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  "That’s so messed up!" exclaimed Montana.

  "Not cool," said Cockadoody.

  "Yip!" agreed Vira.

  "After that he got worse. I was the only being left in his castle and he threw me in this cave and locked the bone door. Before he knocked me out he said he was going to throw himself into the foamy yellow sea and drown himself, but I don’t know if he pulled it off."

  "Well, that’s a wonderful story," said Montana sarcastically.

  "Depressing if you ask me," said Cockadoody.

  "Rowrrr," agreed Vira.

  "Where did you get the key to unlock this door?" asked Cydroidobot’s son.

  "I found it on the shore," she answered. "I guess old King Farshtunkener dropped it on is way to drown himself."

  "Well, now that that’s cleared up," said Cocka, "What are we going to do next?"

  "The first thing to be done," answered Mono, "is to find a way for us to escape from these rocks. The symphoros are down below, you know, and threaten to kill us."

  "There is no reason to be afraid of those symphoromaniacs," said Cydroidobot's son in his slightly tinny voice. He sounded kind of like someone speaking directly into a desk fan.

  "Why not?" she asked.

  "Well, they are nothing to get hung about. They try to make folks believe that they are very terrible, but as a matter of fact they’re defenseless to anyone who tries to fight back. If I had a machete or poostick or machine gun they would roll away as soon as they saw me." The smallish orange and black robot with bulging eyes started to hum.

  Montana decided to eat her brunch. Cockadoody was already pecking away at the cracks in the fleshier rocks, to find something to eat, so Montana sat down and opened the Yellow Yeti lunch box.

  Inside she found a small thermos that was full of very refreshing jackpeach juice. Within the box were also two slices of cold iguana tongue in jackass gravy, some scabbage salad, four slices of breaded alien feces with balnut butter, a small zipperfly pie, and nine raisins. Montana gave Vira some of the tongue, feces, and pie. Neither one of them ate the raisins.

  "Do the lunch box trees belong to the symphoros?" the tween asked Cydroidobot's son, while engaged in eating her meal.

  "Of course not," he answered. "They belong to the royal Farshtunkener family, only of course there is no royal family at the moment because he sold his family into slavery and then assumedly killed himself. So there is no one to rule the Farshtunkener Kingdom, that I can think of. Perhaps it is because of this the symphoros claim the lunch box trees for themselves. But they belong to the Farshtunkeners, that’s why there’s a big Farshtunkener icon on the bottom of every box."

  Montana turned the lunch box over, and at once discovered the Farshtunkener icon upon it, as Cydroidobot's son had said.

  "Are the symphoros the only folks living in Farshtunkener?" inquired the girl.

  "Nah, they only live in a small area in the back of the woods, by the porta potties. They’ve always been a big bony pain in the bum-bum. When visiting the beach the Farshtunkeners used to carry a bull whip with them to keep the jerk-faces in line."

  "I have so many questions about this continent- Are a country, county, state, province, empire, municipality, and kingdom the same thing? Why does being the emperor of Schmegma City automatically make you the tremorroid of all of the country of Bonertania? What’s the difference between a Queen and a Kween?" Mono asked. "I’m unclear on how this government works."

  "No one is clear on how the government works," said the robot, “not even the government.” Montana packed the rest of the food back into the lunch box, so as not to be wasteful of good things, and the brown cockadoodoo-shaped yokai and brown and white puppy-dog-shaped yokai picked up all of the scattered crumbs.

  "Well, I guess the only thing to do is head for Farshtunkener Castle where we’ll all be more comfortable," said the smallish android.

  "All right," answered Montana, picking up Vira. "I'm ready!"

  They walked slowly down the path between the rocks, Cydroidobot's son going first, Montana following him carrying Vira and the lunch box, and Cockadoody the Cocky Cockfightin’ Cockadoodoo trotting along last of all.

  At the foot of the path the plastic man leaned down and tossed aside with ease the large skinstones that cumbered the way. Then he turned to Mono and said:

  "Let me carry that lunch box."

  She placed it in his right hand at once, and the plastic nub fingers closed firmly over the stout handle.

  Then the little procession marched out upon the level sands.

  As soon as the four pretending-to-be-dead symphoros who were guarding the mound saw them, they righted themselves and began to wildly honk piercing honks and rolled swiftly toward the little group on their skateboards, as if to capture them or bar their way. Vira began yipping wildly.

  When the foremost symphoro had approached near enough, Cydroidobot's son swung the lunch box and struck it a sharp blow over its head with the queer weapon. Perhaps it did not hurt very much, but it made a great noise, and the symphoro uttered a howl and tumbled over upon its side. The next minute it got its skateboard upright and rolled away as fast as it could go, honking with fear at the same time.

  "I told you they were harmless," began Cydroidobot's son; but before he could say more another symphoro was upon them. This time the robot did a flying kick right into the creature’s face. Crack! went its jaw.

  Cockadoody was a cockfighter by trade and had to get in on the action, flying up in a creatures’ face and clawing at their eyes. The blinded being rolled away squealing like a spanked pig. The other two symphoros turned to roll away as quickly as their wheels would whirl, the android threw the lunchbox and hit one in the back of the head on its way out.

  The brown cockadoodoo gave a cackle of delight, and flying to a perch upon Cydroidobot's son's head, she said:

  "Bravely done, my plastic friend! and wisely thought of, too."

  "Thank you! Now we are free from those ugly creatures."

  But just then a huge band of symphoros rolled from the forest, and relying upon their numbers to conquer, they advanced fiercely upon our friends. Montana squeezed Vira in her arms and held her tight, Cockadoody quickly hid behind Montana, and the plastic boy picked up the dented lunchbox. Then the horde of rancid symphoros were upon them.