Rudy takes Steve to Chu en Ginsberg, who tells him he must provide protection for Chu until the meeting of the Four, as the police have been following him since the episode with the girl in the bath.
At Ginsberg's he meets Petal and they go to her flat. There, an atomic slug is implanted in Gilbert by Ginsberg's foe, but is deactivated by a galactic intelligence which wished Gilbert to become a triple agent and help break the vice ring, working for:
1. Them
2. The slug implanter
3. Ginsberg
The plot:
2 and 3 want the world's plutonium and dilithium.
Rudy is a bionic slave.
Petal is a call girl.
Them's agent is Charles 'Photon-Drive' Foster.
Gilbert's code name is Gil Dupe.
Gilbert goes to meet 'Photon-Drive' and is attacked by Rudy. Foster deals with Rudy, but has his head blown off, after transforming Dupe into a Rudy lookalike.
Dupe is arrested (as Rudy) by the cops who have killed Foster and intend to pin the rap on him. Petal saves Dupe and reveals that Ginsberg is behind the whole thing - being schizoid - on one side half of the time and on the Galactic Organisation's the other half.
Ginsberg has had Rudy bumped off and got Dupe framed. Petal says she is an agent of the UN. At the UN building, Dupe gets pushed out of the 80th floor.
Gilbert wakes up to find out everything since the atomic slug bit was an LSD trip induced by the slug implanter, Dr. Huw Ah Yuw, head of Backfire Ltd., who had invented a super laxative and plans to take over the whole world. Ginsberg had found out and threatened exposure unless he is made an equal partner. Huw Ah Yuw wants Gilbert to discredit Ginsberg, so Gilbert is fed laxative in an attempt to loosen him up.
Enter Chief Superintendent Charlie Ragen, who had found the manuscript, which had left a string of murders behind it. Five or more mad authors had got together to produce the world's worst story and each was being murdered in cold blood and the plot changed to meet the murderer's own ends. Ragen has found a copy had been written in to the plot.
Gobbit Interlude The Fickle Finger (a cosmic intelligence?) was behind lots of things; trying to do away with the dangerous novel writers and turn the story away from the ultimate truth, implanting ideas in the writer's minds.
Was the FF imaginar y or real? Another writer thinks geology at N. London Poly could be the answer. Exit one writer from a bust brain.
End
Lord Flongord and Marie Carthorse consider the attempted sabotage of the Epic as an evil plot and call in Clifford Pilchard - who thinks it could be a plot by Count El Porno.
Pilchard goes to interview D.B. Taylor, head of N. London Poly Geology Department, but he has vanished. pilchard goes to Taylor's home and finds a dead body - Chu en Ginsberg.
Gilbert wakes up from having the shits. Rudy is now with Yuw and has bumped off Ginsberg, Pilchard being done for the job. Yuw decides to save Gilbert, and allows him to return to his flat. Petal wants to see Gilbert and he gets a call from Ragen warning of an imminent change in the plot.
