HE SAW THEM. He was sure of it. Four small pink elephants walking without apparent care along the track at the Opéra station of the Paris Métro. On the opposite track from him, the one with the exit to La Défense. He stood on the platform for Direction Maisons-Alfort.

He turned to Redbud, beside him. “Did you see that?”

“What?”

“The elephants, dude, the pink elephants. Four of them. Over there. On the track going the other way.” He pointed. Redbud looked.

“I see six, buddy, you’d better check your eyesight.”

He’d wondered where Redbud got his nickname. Redbud liked the bud, no question about that, but unlike many of their friends he didn’t let it screw up his life totally.

And his hair was red.

He punched Redbud’s shoulder. “Don’t kid me, pal. There were four.”

“Maybe you didn’t see the two in the front a little ways. Here, come with me.” Redbud took Ben’s shoulder and grabbed his arm and jumped down to the tracks closest to them. From the tunnel, Ben could hear a train coming.

“Shit, guy, you’re going to kill us!”

“Nah, it’s not a real train. Watch.” With that Redbud turned to face what Ben thought was an oncoming train. To his surprise, the “train” was a large black tuxedo cat. It gave a perfect imitation of a subway train as it emerged from the tunnel.

“OK, let’s keep going,” Redbud said. They crossed to the other tracks and turned to follow the elephants. Ben could see only three of them now as they entered the tunnel. Redbud pulled him along.

“Come on, guy, we need to catch them before they reach the Intergalactic Switch.”

“What the hell is the Intergalactic Switch?”

“Exactly what it sounds like, Ben. You can transfer there for anywhere in the galaxy.”

Ben began to think Redbud had sampled the bud a little too generously today, but he kept on going. He’d had some too, and there was really nothing else to do at the moment.

“Hustle, dude,” said Redbud. “They’re just up around the next corner. We gotta get a move on.”

They trotted along. Ben could hear a train, a real one this time, he thought, pulling into the Opéra station behind them. The brakes sounded harsh. He didn’t think it was a large cat this time.

Up ahead, around the curve, Ben saw a glow. It was much brighter than your average Métro station lighting. The last elephant disappeared as the station came into full view. When he looked again he saw them enter a lift and press what appeared to be a complicated series of buttons, and the lift rose and disappeared. Another one took its place.

“Redbud, what the hell is this place, anyway?”

“I told you. It’s a Galactic Transfer Station hooked into the Maisons-Alfort line of the Paris Métro. They used to have it right at the end of the Opéra station platform we were just at, but it moved last year. Too many crowds when the shows ended. Too many people ending up in galaxies far far away.” He smirked and snorted. “Far far away, get it?”

“Ha ha, very funny,” Ben replied. “Where are we going, anyway?”

“Nowhere, actually, unless you really want to catch up with those pink elephants.”

“It was kind of cool to see them in the Opéra station,” Ben said. “I mean, who sees elephants of any color, pink, green, blue, you know, in a Métro station?”

Redbud laughed. “I do, let me tell you. I saw a bunch of leopards last week.”

“So, what is this, anyway,” Ben asked. “Zoo week on the Paris Métro?”

“Apparently so,” Redbud answered. Ben thought he’d probably been hitting the bud a little too often.

He turned to inspect the Intergalactic whatever-it-was. There was a map on the side of the entrance. It didn’t make any sense to him. “Where did the elephants go,” he mused. The machine heard him. A quiet pleasant female voice answered, “Look at the chart and find the bright star. That’s where they went.”

He looked and found it. “Can I go there, too?” he asked.

“Yes. Do you have a ticket?” The voice was a little more firm this time.

“No.”

“Then you’ll have to buy one. Step over to the ticket booth.”

When Ben looked around he saw a booth he hadn’t noticed before. Inside, a raccoon larger than any he’d ever seen sat on a high stool eating a hamburger. He approached.

“I’d like a ticket to where the elephants went, please,” he said.

The raccoon scratched itself and took a bite of its hamburger and looked off into the middle distance. Ben was about to repeat his request when the animal looked directly at him.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“The answer is classified, mac. That means it’s none of your business.” The raccoon finished off the hamburger.

“Except that where they went is on that map, sir.” Ben pointed to the glowing star beside them.

“I don’t care,” said the raccoon.

Ben turned around. “Hey, Redbud. Can you believe this? This raccoon won’t sell me a ticket to where the elephants went.”

Redbud ambled over. “Offer him a bribe.”

Ben looked at Redbud. “What do raccoons want?”

“What don’t they want?” Redbud answered.

Ben faced the raccoon and pulled out a tired-looking peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He offered it to the raccoon. “Here, have a sandwich.”

The raccoon looked it over carefully. “Got another one like this?”

Ben looked in his bag and found a second sandwich he hadn’t known was there. “Sure, here you go.” He handed the second sandwich to the animal.

The raccoon accepted it and put it in a cooler beside his stool. He punched a series of keys on the panel in front of him and pulled a six-foot sectioned paper as it emerged from a printer behind him.

“Here’s your ticket, pal.” He handed over the folded sheet. “Don’t lose it and whatever you do, don’t separate the sections.”

“Why?” Ben asked. “What will happen if I separate the sections?”

“World War III, you idiot,” the raccoon replied.

It seemed pretty unlikely to Ben that a six-foot ticket to somewhere else in the universe where six pink elephants had gone would cause a war, but he decided to play it safe.

There was a rumbling from the Opéra Métro station. Just as he turned a train came past. This one had lions in one car, small ones, and cats in another. Big cats. This was getting really weird, but Ben decided he wouldn’t worry about it.

So Ben stood there with this six-foot ticket folded into squares about the size of toilet paper. Redbud looked as though he could barely contain himself.

“You really think that raccoon sold you a ticket?” Redbud said.

“Sure, why not?”

“For one thing, how many times have you seen a raccoon in a ticket booth eating a hamburger? Or a raccoon in the Paris Métro—which is in France, you may recall—eating a hamburger and speaking perfect idiomatic English?” He burst out laughing. “Not likely, bro. Not likely.”