We were still there. All those people were still there. The smoldering joint was still in my right hand. There didn’t seem to be any way to get rid of the damned thing. If I dropped it, people would notice. If I just put it down on the top of my harpsichord, oh so very casually, it would be aggressively visible for miles around. I didn’t have any pockets loose enough to get into in the scant free time “Songwind” allowed my right hand. So I took the standard, traditional out — something I’d never had occasion to do before — and, with a gesture faster than snake tongues, I popped the joint into my mouth.

It was still burning. So was I, but I didn’t dare show it. I extinguished the joint with saliva and undertook to swallow it, while the first verse reprise rolled past without my hearing it.

It seems that cigarettes aren’t all that easy to swallow, not even little skinny marijuana cigarettes. It wouldn’t go down whole, wouldn’t dream of it, so I soaked it and chewed at it and broke it up fine. But a mouthful of loose pot isn’t a snap to swallow, either. The stuff has — or this stuff had — the texture of rough sand, gritty and hard, with tiny sharp edges. No amount of saliva soaking seemed to soften it perceptibly, and my throat was reluctant to have anything to do with it, but by the time we’d finished “Songwind,” I’d managed to get the stuff down and was able, aside from a convulsive racking cough, to breathe freely once again.

And then I saw Gary the incredible Frog getting ready to light yet another joint! He picked the damnedest times to be affluent.

“Gary,” I said gently, “please put that away.”

“Had enough?”

He was ready to say more, but I didn’t let him. “I never have enough,” I said, still gently, “but put that thing away just the same.”

He stared at me as though I’d lost my entire mind, and made no move to put away the joint. By then he was the only person there who hadn’t noticed what was happening. The silence of horror had frozen every tongue but his.

“If you don’t want no more, that’s cool,” he gibbered, affronted, “but I want some more, if you don’t mind.”

I remained gentle. “Look around,” I invited. He did, reluctantly. He looked around twice, in fact. At last it began, slowly, to dawn on him. His jaw dropped with an audible click.

“Now then,” still very gently, “put that goddamn thing away before I shove my boot down your stupid throat. Understand?”

He panicked, of course, but he put the joint away. I didn’t think his panic hurt us much. Gary the Frog’s the kind of creep whose panics go unnoticed.

Then everybody started breathing. “Wow!” they all said, and went on talking. It sounded like lunchtime at your local junior high. I scurried to the front of the bus to relate the gory incident to Mike.

I needn’t have bothered. He was having gory incidents of his own.

“AND WHAT do you call this thing, now?” The Man was standing tall and grim beside Mike’s seat: an extravagantly Irish cop just dying to arrest himself a whole truckload of Us. (I’ve never really adjusted to policemen.)

“Right now?” Michael was being a wiseass, naturally. He liked to get away with things. Any things.

“Oh, Michael, I cautioned softly.

The cop gave me a disapproving glance. The two cops waiting on the steps gave me disapproving glances. The two or three cops waiting outside made it unanimous. Cops make me nervous.

The rest of the tribe hadn’t noticed our uniformed visitors yet, which was a blessing of sorts. They were all clustered about Gary the Frog, telling him in redundant detail exactly how uncool he was. Just a waste of redundant detail, that’s all, but a harmless enough pastime for the nonce.

“What do yez call this thing?” The Man rumbled.

“You mean the bus?”

“Oh, it’s a bus, is it? You got a license to operate a bus?”

“License?” Mike hesitated. “But we just call it a bus, officer. I mean, it isn’t a real bus; it’s more like a very big station wagon, if you get what I mean. That is…” He ran down. The policeman was unmoved.

The cops on the steps were committing the contents of Michael’s wallet to memory, which must have been interesting for them, not to mention educational. Mike’s wallet was always well stocked with oddball ID — a National Association of Warlocks, Conjurers, and Wizards membership card, for instance.

The outside cops were risking windburn for a look at the Tripsmobile’s underside. Their hats went flying in our portable gale, and well-brought-up, clean-cut, healthy, patriotic little kids caught them and brought them proudly back to be blown away again.

And the Irish cop inside had a larger-than-life-size expectant look that turned my central nervous system to silly putty. I became unhappily aware of a strong scent of pot smoke in the air.

“Doomed,” I consoled myself. “Twice doomed. Gary the goddamm Frog is holding, and Laszlo and the lobsters are already waiting by the reservoir. So we’re busted and we’re dead. Groovy. Nothing else can possibly go wrong.” I was being grateful for small comforts.

“Ah, Officer,” Mike politely hinted, “could you tell me what we’ve done, please?”

“Done what?”

“I mean, why did you stop us? What’ve we done wrong?”

I could’ve mentioned a thing or two, but I left it up to The Man.

“Got ’is license there?” The Man asked The Men on the steps. One of them, the youngish spade, shook his head bewilderedly and passed The Man a bulging handful of paper.

“What’s all this crap?”

“Them’s his license, Sergeant.”

“All of ’em?”

“Yes, sir. Every one.”

“Hmmm.” The sergeant didn’t like it, but he accepted the wad of papers and started memorizing them. After each license, he granted Mike a glower of appalling sincerity.

“State of Hawaii operator’s license.”

“That’s right, Officer. I used to live…”

“Delaware chauffeur’s license?”

“You see, I had this job and…”

“Arizona private pilot’s license, expired.”

“That was when I…”

“Two New Hampshire motorcycle licenses?”

“I thought I lost…”

“What the hell is this?”

“Oh, that’s my Russian driver’s license. I was…”

“Russian, eh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hmmm.”

It struck me that Michael was cooking our goose with driver’s licenses. The Man, frowning bitterly, seemed to agree.

“U.S. Army driver’s license, Indiana learner’s permit, Wisconsin helicopter pilot’s license… You move around a lot, don’t you boy.”

“Yes, sir, but I…”

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph! What’s this? A New York ground-effect vehicle operator’s license? Mother of God! And what in the name of God is a Ground-Effect Vehicle?”

“This is. Look…” Mike got up and led The Man outside for a short lecture on the ground effect. The remaining cops obviously expected me to make a break for it, but they were ready. I was something less than comfortable.

By now the rest of our brave little band was well aware of the men in blue. Gary the unspeakable Frog was gratifyingly pale, and the others were talking in half-whispers and avoiding rapid movements. The outside cops were clearing the crowd away, but the traffic didn’t appear to be moving yet.

I noticed all this through a thick gray smog of quick, inevitable doom.

But Mike’s lecture didn’t really last forever, and when they came back in The Man was saying, “I still think I oughtta run the lot of yez in,” which might be called encouraging, perhaps.

His argument for running the lot of us in was that our attendant hurricane was a clear and present traffic hazard. Michael, far more confident since his lecture, conceded this possibility, but pointed out that the bus was a duly licensed ground effect vehicle, and claimed that the wind, being integral to the vehicle, was obviously implicit in the license and sanctioned by the issuance thereof. Michael has his moments.