"Spill it, you witch!" Morton barked at her, spraying saliva in her face. His beefy fingers dug painfully into her arm. "Who are you, and how did you pull that stunt back there, with the tar and the slots? Tell me, you thieving slut."In your dreams," Isabel replied. She spit directly into his fuming, beet-red face, and he pulled the trigger at trie very split second that she- -woke up back at the motel room, the deafening boom of Morton's gun still ringing in her ears. She sat up in bed, shaking and soaked in sweat, provoking gasps from both Max and Alex, who hurried to her side instantly. "Iz! Are you okay?" they asked almost simultaneously.

She nodded woozily, too breathless to speak right away. Tremors shook her from head to toe, and her own blood pounded in her ears, making her dizzy. "Just give me a minute," she murmured finally, as she struggled to readjust to reality. Exhaustion, both emotional and physical, washed over her body, which felt as though it had actually run for its life across the length of the imaginary casino. Despite the air-conditioning, the room felt unbearably hot and stuffy, so she peeled off her heavy sweater. That's a little better, she thought, although the short-sleeved silk blouse underneath felt soiled and sticky with sweat.

Glancing at the clock radio by the bed, she was startled to see that less than thirty minutes had passed since she had first lowered her head onto the cheap motel pillow. Is that all? she marveled; it felt as if she had been stalking Joe Morton for half the night.

"What happened?" Max asked insistently, kneeling beside the bed next to her, his dark, serious eyes searching her face for clues to what had transpired during her exploratory dreamwalk. "What did you see?"Isabel started to answer, but her mouth was as dry as the desert. "A glass of water, please," she croaked pitifully, mas- saging her throat, "with maybe a couple drops of Tabasco in it?"Alex sprang at once to secure her tonic. "I'm on it!" he announced eagerly, while Max stayed to watch over Isabel, waiting tensely until Alex returned from the bathroom with a glass of clear water faintly tinged with red. Isabel reached gratefully for the cup, but was startled when Alex reacted with shock and surprise. "Isabel!" he blurted, eyes wide with dismay. "Your arm!"She followed his own horrified gaze to where five ugly purple bruises defaced the toned white flesh of her upper arm, exactly where Joe Mortons brutal fingers had squeezed her arm so mercilessly. "Oh, that," she said archly, regarding the telltale bruises with icy disdain. "Nothing to worry about. Just a little souvenir from our friend with the gun, not to mention anger-management issues."Here, let me fix that," Max offered. His fingertips brushed over her arm, removing the bruises by healing the injured tissues beneath her skin.

"Thanks," Isabel murmured. She sipped the Tabasco-flavored tap water, which soothed her throat and helped steady her nerves. Slowly, haltingly, she told her brother and her (sort of) boyfriend everything that she had experienced while exploring Morton's memorably nasty dreamscape, while also trying to interpret the dream's occasionally surreal symbolism. She didn't understand everything she'd seen and felt in the dank alley and lurid casino, but a few things seemed obvious.

"Whatever he's got in that briefcase," she said with utter certainty, "it has something to do with the Crash." In her memory, the soaring UFO once again dived into the unforgiving Earth, and she started to choke up. Another gulp of cool water was required before she could deliver one more piece of bad news. "And that's not all, Max," she said, swallowing hard because she knew that her brother wasn't going to like what she was about to tell him. "Morton bows. He knows about Liz!"

Joy, we couldn't look more hungover, Maria thought, than if we'd actually spent all of last night drinking.

Breakfast was the morning buffet at the Denny's next to the Days Inn. Except for Liz, who was still recuperating in her motel room, and Max, whose turn it was to keep watch over Morton's temporary residence at the Motel 6, the rest of the vacationing teens were refueling with various combinations of coffee, orange juice, scrambled eggs, bacon, fruit, and breakfast pastries. An aspiring vegetarian, with occasional lapses, Maria had eschewed animal products in favor of toast, cantaloupe, grapefruit, and a plate full of melon balls, but her healthier diet failed to spare her from the subdued, enervated atmosphere at the table. Worn out by all their intensive snooping the night before, nobody was talking much, aside from Alex, who kept making sporadic attempts to get a smile or a laugh out of Isabel, who still seemed to be recovering, emotionally, from her nocturnal trek through Joe Mortons psyche.

"So how was the food at that imaginary casino last night?" Alex asked her with forced levity. He dipped a rather soggy piece of toast into some scarify homogenous-looking scrambled eggs. "Better than this, I hope."I don't know, Alex," Isabel replied humorlessly. She stared distantly at her plate, absently soaking a chocolate donut in a pool of Tabasco sauce. "I didn't eat anything."Oh," he said, obviously hoping to generate a bit more conversation momentum than that. An awkward silence followed, making Maria wince inside, until Alex adopted another tack. "How are you doing, Iz?" he asked solicitously, his guileless green eyes beseeching her to open up to him about whatever was troubling her.

That, clearly, wasn't going to happen. "I'm fine, Alex. Really." A touch of exasperation entered her dull monotone, and Isabel got up from the circular wooden table at which they were all sitting. Til be right back," she said, excusing herself as she headed for the ladies' room.

Alex watched her depart with a stricken expression, and Maria decided to take advantage of Isabel's absence to offer her friend some much-needed advice. "You're trying too hard, Alex," she informed him in a low voice, leaning over the table toward the wiry young man. "Just give her a little space, okay, before you really piss her off."But I'm just trying to help," Alex protested. Frustration was written all over his adolescent face. "I hate seeing her all broody and depressed like this."I know," Maria sympathized. This was none of her business, of course, but she couldn't just sit by while Alex let his good intentions lead him astray where his dream girl was concerned. She'd seen this vicious circle play out before, and not just between Alex and Isabel: Person A won't leave Person B alone, forcing B to withdraw, which just makes A redouble his or her efforts to overcome B's de fense, thus driving B even further away, and so on. "Look,"she said compassionately, "I don't pretend to understand all the intricacies of your relationship with Queen Amidala, but I do know that you can't force somebody to be happy] or to open up emotionally, and they'll probably just resent: you if you try.", Had she managed to get through to him? Maria wanted to think so. Maybe she couldn't cure Liz of her debilitating! post-traumatic whatsit, but that didn't mean she still! couldn't play a positive role in her friends' lives. She con-' sidered offering Alex a bracing whiff of rosemary or Cyprus, but then recalled that, along with every other guy she'd ever known, Alex probably considered aromatherapy irredeemably girly. Their loss, she thought, sighing inwardly.

"I guess you're right," Alex said glumly after a couple of minutes. Obviously, leaving Isabel alone right now was the last thing he wanted to do, but he appeared to have taken Maria's advice seriously. He threw up his hands in frustra tion. "It's just so hard, you know." "Tell me about it," Maria said, considering the lacoiw alien rebel sitting directly to her right. Michael had maintained a discreet silence during her heartfelt romantic strategy session with Alex, sulkily attacking his bacon and eggs instead. Was that because he was simply disinterested in such mundane, mushy matters, she pondered, or was his own bizarre sister/lover relationship with Isabel sufficiently complicated that he felt uncomfortable discussing her with Alex? Or maybe, she admitted to herself, he's still ticked-qff at me for forcing him to come along on this fun-filled road trip in the first place.