Oh, no! The golem just couldn't resist hurling a good insult. Grundy had battled Fracto before, and they had a long-standing feud. Now the cloud would try even harder!

Indeed Fracto did. Bubblelike excrescences formed on his surface, indicating the fury of his turbulence.

"Keep at it, toad-face!" Grundy called encouragingly. "You going to wet on somebody next?"

"Don't aggravate him!" Chex gasped as she tried desperately to climb out of reach.

"Aw, it's better to work him up," Grundy said. "Then he loses what little wit he has and is even easier to outsmart."

Fracto evidently heard that, because he sent out such a gust of sleet-speckled wind that Chex almost did a somersault.

"Is that your best shot, smog-rear?" Grundy demanded. "What made you think you could blow up anything more than a teakettle? Better go back for training—or training pants!"

"Grundy, I wish you wouldn't—" Chex started. But she was cut off by the cloud's furious blast of snow. For a moment she was blinded and wasn't sure which way was up.

Then her head emerged from it, and she discovered that she was higher than before. "It lifted us!" she exclaimed.

"That's the idea," Grundy said. "Might as well use Fracto's energy instead of yours." Then, to the cloud: "Is that what you call a squall? Even a dumb anvil head can do better than that!"

But Fracto was finally catching on. Instead of blowing again, he simply concentrated on building up his mass, higher and higher. The air was not thin, but Chex still couldn't get over the storm.

"What a view!" Grundy exclaimed.

Chex looked down. The panoply of Xanth lay beneath them, just like one of her dam's maps. Chem Centaur's magic talent was map projection, and she had explored most of Xanth in the course of perfecting her maps. Now the long coastal outline showed clearly, except where Fracto's grotesque burgeoning mass blotted it out and the nebulous region to the north where it was possible to cross into Mundania. Not that any sensible person would want to do a thing like that. The sea extended out, featureless except for the bits of cloud floating above it. Part of the great Gap Chasm showed, and it did resemble cleavage, just as the ghost writer had noted. The overall scene was beautiful. She should have done this before, just to enjoy the view. But of course she had remained mostly landbound, because Che couldn't yet fly. What an experience awaited him, when his wings formed well enough for the heights!

"I guess we'll have to stop at the moon," Grundy said, sounding not too regretful. "Well, I've always wanted to visit the big cheese."

Chex had had no intention of visiting the moon—not without Cheiron! But she seemed to be stuck for it. She was getting dangerously fatigued and had to rest; she doubted she could even get down to the ground without Fracto blowing her into the sea. So she angled to the side and flew straight toward it. Fortunately she was now higher than the moon, so the effort of reaching it was not great.