The girl looked suspicious. “Do you know him personally? I mean, are you a friend of his, or something?”

“No, I’m not. But that picture writing he’s looking at is something my friends and I have to see.”

“Well, I’m sorry. You’ll have to come back in the morning.”

Harry gave the girl his deepest, most sincere expression, the expression he reserved for elderly lady clients who threatened to cross his palm with insufficient silver.

“You have to believe me,” he said, “this is the most important thing in my whole life. I’ve been searching for ten years to see picture writing like this. Across Alaska. Down through Arizona. Everywhere. Ten years of hardship and struggle. And you’re telling me to come back in the morning?”

The girl frowned at him, sympathetic but confused. “Well, I guess you could take a quick look,” she told him. “But you’d have to pay the regular admission.”

“I’ll do it,” said Harry. “And I’ll pay for my friends, too.”

“Friends?” she queried, but he was already peeling off six dollars.

Once the girl had reluctantly handed over three tickets, Harry walked quickly back to the pickup and rapped on the window. Neil and Singing Rock had been listening to the radio news, and they hushed him for a moment. Then, when the news was over, Singing Rock said, “They tried to get to the bus with half-a-dozen specially trained men. As far as they can tell, all six of them were struck down and killed. They’re just lying in the road.”

Neil said, “It sounds hopeless. How the hell can we fight against something as powerful as that?”

“I think I’ve got a clue,” said Harry. “There’s a Professor Thoren working up here, translating some Indian picture writing they found on a petrified tree about two years ago. Apparently it was all in the papers when they discovered it, but I don’t remember reading it myself. Mind you—that was before I met Misquamacus. I wasn’t much interested in Indians then.”

“But Misquamacus said the writing was still hidden,” said Neil.

“What did he know?” asked Harry. “I don’t suppose they get the San Francisco Examiner in the great outside. And this petrified forest was only discovered around 1860, after his last reincarnation.”

“How do you know that?” asked Singing Rock.

Harry turned and pointed. “It’s painted on a sign right up on that tree over there. I thought Indians were supposed to have sharp eyes.”

Singing Rock grunted in amusement. Then he climbed out of the pickup, and the three of them walked through the turnstile, under the shade of an ancient oak, into the park itself.