She was now at the south end of the isle. Where would Nada and Naldo be? Then she spied them in the sea. They were swimming in their natural forms, laughing as they used their tails to splash water on each other.

"Nada!" Electra called.

Nada's head whipped around. " 'Lectra! What are you doing down here?"

"Oh, Nada, please, it means my life! Tell me how to signal the stork."

Nada and her brother were forging to the shore. They hit the beach and slithered up to Electra, their serpent bodies moving in perfect parallel. "But, 'Lectra," Nada protested. "The Adult Conspiracy—"

"But I'm married now! And I have to do it! Please—"

"Tell her," Naldo told his sister, and slithered back to the ocean.

Nada had respect for her brother, and of course he was the one who had suggested this two-marriage course. So Nada told her.

"You mean that's all there is to it?" Electra asked, amazed and somewhat disappointed.

"Not much of a secret, is it!" Nada said. "You must promise not to tell any children, because if they ever found out how little there is to know, they would laugh the adults right out of the picture."

"I can see that," Electra agreed. Then she hugged Nada, and set off up the beach. Now at last she knew how to do it. Now she could save her life and free Dolph for tomorrow. Her feelings remained oddly mixed.

Back at the bedroom, she found Dolph waiting anxiously. "I was afraid something had happened to you," he said.

"No, it's perfectly safe here, now," she said. "Remember, this is the Isle of View."

"Isle of View too," he said, laughing.

She whammed him with a pillow.

He grabbed her and kissed her.

They got into another hugging and tickling fight. It was great fun. But finally they had to get down to business.

"We have to embrace each other very closely," Electra said. "But there's a catch." "We've been hugging," he said. "I don't mind that. What's the catch?"

"No clothing."

"You mean—?"

"No undershirt. No shorts for you. No panties for me." That was the awful thing about it. Without the fabulous pink panties she would lose what remained of her attractiveness.

But he seemed to handle this unfortunate aspect pretty well. "How do we know when the signal goes out?"

"We see the ellipsis."

"The what?"

"It looks like three dots. It always marks the signal to the stork. Nada told me."

"So we just keep hugging until we see dots?" he asked, having trouble with this notion.

"That's it."

"It seems too simple to work."

"It's magic." What was the point in admitting that she hardly believed it either? It had to work.

"Oh. Yes. Well, we'd better do it."

They took off their underclothing and hugged. "This close?" Dolph asked.

"Closer."

He squeezed her so that her ribs hurt. "This close?"

"That's hard, not close," she gasped.