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“Listen, mister, I happen to belong to the Handlemen’s Guild—”

“Don’t stop! Don’t stop!”

Victor surfaced. The whispering faded, to be replaced by the distant boom of the breakers. The real world was back, hot and sharp, the sun pinned to the sky like a medal awarded for being a great day.

The girl took a deep breath.

“I’m, gosh, I’m terribly sorry,” babbled Victor, backing away. “I really don’t know what happened—”

Dibbler jumped up and down.

“That’s it, that’s it!” he yelled. “How soon can you have it ready?”

“Well, like I said, I got to feed the imps and muck ’em out—”

“Right, right—it’ll give me time to get some posters drawn,” said Dibbler.

“I’ve already had some done,” said Silverfish coldly.

“I bet you have, I bet you have,” said Dibbler, excitedly. “I bet you have. I bet they say things like ‘You mighte like to see a Quite Interestinge Moving Picture’!”

“What’s wrong with it?” Silverfish demanded. “It’s a bloody sight better than hot sausage!”

“I told you, when you sell sausages you don’t just hang around waiting for people to want sausage, you go out there and make them hungry. And you put mustard on ’em. And that’s what your lad there has done.”

He clapped one hand on Silverfish’s shoulder, and waved the other expansively.

“Can’t you see it?” he said. He hesitated. Strange ideas were pouring into his head faster than he could think them. He felt dizzy with excitement and possibilities.

“Sword of Passione,” he said. “That’s what we’ll call it. Not name it after some daft old bugger who’s probably not even alive anymore. Sword of Passione. Yeah. A Tumultuous Saga of—of Desire an’ Raw, Raw, Raw wossname in the Primal Heat of a Tortured Continent! Romance! Glamour! In three Searing Reels! Thrill to the Death Fight with Ravening Monsters! Scream as a thousand elephants—”

“It’s only one reel,” muttered Silverfish testily.

“Shoot some more this afternoon!” crowed Dibbler, his eyes revolving. “You just need more fights and monsters!”

“And there’s certainly no elephants,” snapped Silverfish.

Rock put up a craggy arm.

“Yes?” demanded Silverfish.

“If you’ve got some gray paint an’ stuff to make the ears out of, I’m sure me an’ Morry could—”

“No one’s ever done a three-reeler,” said Gaffer reflectively. “Could be really tricky. I mean, it’d be nearly ten minutes long.” He looked thoughtful. “I suppose if I was to make the spools bigger—”

Silverfish knew he was cornered.

“Now look here,” he began.

Victor stared down at the girl. Everyone else was ignoring them.

“Er,” he said, “I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced?”

“You didn’t seem to let that stop you,” she said.

“I wouldn’t normally do something like that. I must have been…ill. Or something.”

“Oh, good. And that makes me feel a lot better, does it?”

“Shall we sit in the shade? It’s very hot out here.”

“Your eyes went all…smouldery.”

“Did they?”

“They looked really odd.”

“I felt really odd.”

“I know. It’s this place. It gets to you. D’you know,” she said, sitting down on the sand, “there’s all kind of rules for the imps and things, they mustn’t be worn out, what kind of food they get, stuff like that. No one cares about us, though. Even the trolls get better treatment.”

“It’s the way they go around being seven foot tall and weighing 1,000 pounds all the time, I expect,” said Victor.

“My name’s Theda Withel, but my friends call me Ginger,” she said.

“My name’s Victor Tugelbend. Er. But my friends call me Victor,” said Victor.

“This is your first click, is it?”

“How can you tell?”

“You looked as though you were enjoying it.”

“Well, it’s better than working, isn’t it?”

“You wait until you’ve been in it as long as I have,” she said bitterly.

“How long’s that?”

“Nearly since the start. Five weeks.”

“Gosh. It’s all happened so fast.”

“It’s the best thing that’s ever happened,” said Ginger flatly.

“I suppose so…er, are we allowed to go and eat?” said Victor.

“No. They’ll be shouting for us again any minute,” said Ginger.

Victor nodded. He had, on the whole,