The crimson witch

have to take you in.”
        “Kaliglia too?”
        “Who's that?”
        “The dragon.”
        “Yeah. Him most of all.”
        It might be fun, Jake decided, to play along with all this for awhile. He did not look at authority with quite as much loathing as did his New Left friends on campus. He had some respect, but mostly he was possessed with a humorous tolerance of them. It appealed to this sense of humor to lead them on for awhile, at least until he could get in touch with Wilson Abrams, the man whom he had put in charge of Turnet Munitions, and get the entire thing straightened out.
        “No harm will come to him?” Jake asked.
        “None. Not if he's tame like you say.”
        “Your men look awfully jumpy. I'm afraid their guns just might go off accidentally.”
        “I'll order them not to shoot,” the officer said, puffing out his chest and squaring his jaw to show who was in command of this operation in the first place.
        “Okay,” Jake said, “but I think we'll have a little insurance first.”
        “Insurance?”
        “I want three of your men to ride Kaliglia back to police headquarters.”
        “Wha-”
        “Otherwise we don't go. If there are three of your men on him, that will dissuade anyone from shooting him. He could roll over and crush them if anyone got trigger happy.”
        The officer swallowed hard. He turned to the men who had been listening attentively, their weapons still drawn. “Holster your guns!” he shouted. They did so reluctantly. “Jackson, Barringer, Cleaver, front!” Three officers, all young, rushed up and saluted. “You'll ride the dinosaur back to headquarters,” the officer said.
        “But-” one of the rookies started to protest.
        “Or I'll have your badges and your skins!” the officer roared. “Now move your asses!”
        They followed Jake, apprehensively, back up the hill to where Kaliglia stood with the six children on his back. “You can let them down,” Jake said to the dragon.
        Kaliglia nodded and kneeled. The children climbed off, disappointed that the ride wasn't going to last even longer than it had. The police formed a line and, hesitantly, clambered up the flank of the beast and straddled his neck and horned ridge. They clasped each other like the children had and looked as if they would be sick any moment.
        “You follow the police cars,” Jake said. “We'll be in one of them.”
        “Is this all right?” Kaliglia asked.
        The police blanched, and one nearly fell off.
        “It's fine. They're just taking us in because they don't know what else to do with us. When we get there, I'll call Wilson Abrams and he'll straighten everything out for us.”
        “Let's go, then,” Kaliglia said.
        “Oh, God,” one of the policemen said. “Oh, God, oh God, oh God.” They all took it up then, moaning low in their throats, their faces white, holding on to each other so tightly that they must have been breaking ribs.
        “What a bunch of fraidy cats,” Kaliglia snorted.
        Jake and Cheryn got in the second police car, and Kaliglia, carrying the three officers, waddled up behind. The other four cars pulled around to the rear of the dragon. The first car started its siren, and the procession pulled through the playground and out into the streets, leaving the children behind on the hill.

Chapter Seventeen: MORE FUZZ
        
        At police headquarters, Kaliglia was led through an alleyway where his sides brushed both building walls, and placed in a large parking lot behind the stationhouse with eight cops left to watch over him. The three riding him scrambled down and hurried away to a safe distance.
        “We'll be right inside this building,” Jake said. “It shouldn't take too long. When I get Abrams, I'll have him fly right out here-wherever 'here' is-and get us out of this mess. If you need us, just bellow.”
        “Right,” Kaliglia said. He wasn't afraid of the guns. He didn't really know what they were for.
        Jake and Cheryn were led into the station to the front desk where a white-haired officer was pacing back and forth, occasionally looking out the window at the bulk of Kaliglia standing at the far end of the parking lot. “Are these them?” he almost shouted when Jake and Cheryn came in.
        “This is them,” the officer from the park said.
        “Book them at once!” the old cop said to the desk