At last the Professor emerged from the dense tangle of the jungle. On the other side of a small clearing was the vine-veiled entrance of a cave. "Aha!" he cried. "I knew my exceptional expertise in pathfinding would help me locate this cave!" He gave a sly chuckle as he looked back the way he had come. "Even I would never have dreamed how simple it would be to trick those fools! Now to meet my mysterious interlocutor and escape this island once and for all!"

"You have indeed found salvation, Professor Hinkley!" The vines parted as a stage curtain and out swept Boris Balinkoff like a Las Vegas entertainer. "You followed my directions perfectly! Welcome to my laboratory away from home!"

The Professor stared. "Good Heavens! Boris Balinkoff, the mad scientist! You are my would-be rescuer?"

Balinkoff's face fell. "As I told that fool Gilligan – scientist, yes! Mad, no!" A manic giggle escaped him before he quieted. "A scholar like youself, Professor. A picker up of shells upon a great, unknown shore."

The Professor's eyebrow and upper lip curled upwards in unison. "Oh, good grief. I should have recognized that ridiculous comic operetta accent of yours when I first heard it in my hut!"

Balinkoff's mouth fell open, but no sound came out. The Professor carried right on.

"Well, what kind of shells are you dabbling in this time, Balinkoff? More rings that make people stumble about with blank looks on their faces and collect hoards of coconuts? Cabinets that make men mince about and women speak in baritones? No doubt you've invented a new and improved whoopee cushion and snake-in-the-peanut jar!"

For a moment Balinkoff's eyes bulged to nearly twice their size. He clenched his fingers and bared his teeth before he controlled himself with a great effort. "Why, you - you disappoint me, Professor! A man with as great a mind as yours - a scoffer like all the others! You do not even know what you owe to my newest invention! I have freed you from the tyranny of conscience, from the shackles of convention! With my Jekyll and Hyde ray, I have transformed you into the man you were meant to be: a man fit to work at my side!"

The Professor sniffed. "At your side? I assure you, Balinkoff, I've no time for such nonsense. I have a very rigorous schedule to follow as it is."

Balinkoff blinked. "Here?"

"Of course! Why, I haven't even begun my three hours of cataloguing the island's flora and fauna today."

"Cataloguing the island's..." Balinkoff's heavy eyebrows mirrored the island's pointed peaks. "Whatever for? How many kinds of bananas can there be on this ridiculous spit of sand?"

"Not to mention the myriad of inventions I have in development: useful inventions, not the jokeshop novelties you insist upon producing."

Balinkoff momentarily forgot his purpose as his great eyes threatened to pop out of his head. "Jokeshop novelties? And what of your coconut landmines? You assume every army in the world will have a ready supply of coconuts – even if they are stationed at the North Pole?"

"All the more brilliant! Who would suspect coconuts at the North Pole?" The Professor fished a black object the size of a small button from his breast pocket. "And this! Who would suspect this tiny transmitter! Just attach it to a man's coat, and you can follow him everywhere!"

"Of course! Until he takes off his coat! Or stumbles upon your unlikely cocktail of poison mushrooms and berries!"

"But how did you know about those?" The Professor's expression suddenly changed from surprised to scornful. "Oh. Naturally. If you're able to send crude broadcasts, then no doubt you have some elementary method of receiving as well. To what have you resorted this time? Using primitive listening devices in our huts and under our dining table like a spy in a dime novel?"

This time Balinkoff refused to rise to the bait. "You will find you have cause to thank me for them, Professor! Your friends very much disapprove of your new philosophy of science. They are conspiring to put a stop to your experiments and "cure" your newfound intellectual freedom!"

The Professor snorted. "Don't be ridiculous. Those simpletons would never have the capability."

"Perhaps not: but they might inadvertently stumble upon the truth. The Skipper and Gilligan are even now looking for the source of your...transformation, but fortunately two of my assistants are watching them."

"Stumble is the operative word," sneered the Professor. "The Skipper and Gilligan are such incompetent buffoons they couldn't navigate in a bathtub, let alone an ocean. They could have sunk the Titanic without the help of the iceberg!" The Professor suddenly gasped and shuddered in pain. "No! No! Not their fault! Good...men! My closest...friends!" After a few moments he stood straight again, shaking his head. "Good Heavens. What is the matter with me? These fits are getting worse!"

Balinkoff nodded. "How fortunate that I now have the means to alleviate them! Come, Professor. I have something better to show you than elementary bombs and bugs. Perhaps only seeing a work of true genius shall convince you!"

With a sweep of his arm Balinkoff parted the vines and turned to enter the cave. The Professor, who was still fingering his tiny tracking transmitter, gave it a whimsical flick towards the mad scientist's retreating back. With a slightly mischievous grin the Professor watched the transmitter disappear into the folds of Balinkoff's swirling opera cloak before the vines swung back into place.

The Professor followed him into the cave a moment later. At once the darkness of the interior eclipsed the brilliant sunlight, leaving the orange flickers of torches to provide a wan contrast. Balinkoff swept his arm towards his computer. "Behold, Professor! The marvel of our age! I cannot tell you how many trips it took in secret to bring these components here!"

The Professor made his "think mole" face. "Is this as far as technology has come in Eastern Europe? Why, in the U.S. we have toasters more sophisticated than this!"

Balinkoff stamped his foot. "You have not even seen what it does yet!"

"If your past exploits are any indication, I daresay the most practical use for this conglomeration of blinking lights would be as an entrance facade for a Funhouse."

Balinkoff drew his cape around himself as if it were a shield. "You see, and yet you do not believe! Very well, Professor. I shall convince you." He made a move towards some switches, when suddenly a breathy voice purred over the loudspeaker.

"I don't know what I ever saw in the Professor anyhow," intoned that smooth infusion of honey and ginger. "I'll tell you who's the most attractive man I ever saw: Dr. Boris Balinkoff."

Balinkoff froze, staring open-mouthed at the speaker, before he lit up as brightly as the computer. "Why – that is Miss Grant!"

The Professor was even more flabbergasted than Balinkoff. "What did she just say? Has she taken leave of her senses - mental as well as physical?"

"Those dreamy eyes and that chiselled jaw...that handsome physique...right out of a classic Hollywood romance! Mmmm, he just makes a girl tingle all over!"

Balinkoff beamed. His grin stretched like the Cheshire cat's as he straightened his vest and stroked his beard. "That beautiful actress! I had no idea!"

"And you don't know what a man with brains does to me," Ginger's sultry voice continued. "I love a man who can take control, no matter what the situation. Makes a girl feel so safe and protected. Makes her feel like she can trust him. Makes her feel like she could just...let go!"

"Yes, yes, by all means, Miss Grant!" cried Balinkoff.

"And best of all: he appreciates my mind too. I've never had a man appreciate me for that before."

Balinkoff looked puzzled for a moment. "I did not realize that I—but I suppose I must have. Miss Grant surely has a...very good-looking mind!"

The Professor blinked. "I'm not so certain she has any mind anymore!"

Suddenly a new voice came over the speaker. "Dr. Balinkoff has brains, all right. I've never met a man who knows so much! Golly, I wish I'd had a chance to have a teacher like him!"

"And now pretty little Miss Summers!" exclaimed Balinkoff. "Your little...how do you say it...girl-in-the-house-beside-yours!"

"And he's such a hard worker! Up at the crack of dawn, and keeps at it 'til late at night, until he makes sure the job's done. That's the kind of spirit my ancestors had when they settled the prairies. He's got the real pioneer spirit! The kind that makes you proud to be an American!"

Balinkoff adjusted his tie. "Of course."

The Professor shook his head, baffled. "But you're not even from—"

"The man's a hard worker indeed! And an innovator, by Jove! Franklin, Edison, why even Da Vinci pale before Dr. Boris Balinkoff!"

"Mr. Howell!" exclaimed Balinkoff. "The great captain of industry!"

"Franklin, Edison and Da Vinci?" echoed the Professor. "More like Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey!"

"Hush! Quiet, Professor!" Balinkoff leaned in towards the speaker. "Go on, Mr. Howell!"

"Yes, sir, by George! When we return to the mainland, I'd like to set that fellow up. Research laboratories all over the world, cutting edge facilities, highly trained staff. Why, the things that man could create! I'd pay him any salary he demanded, and every possible fringe benefit under the sun! I'd make him a partner! A man like him only comes along once in a lifetime!"

Balinkoff was now beaming so much that he lit up the whole cave. "You know, Professor, I may have underestimated your friends!"

"I may have overestimated them!" exclaimed the Professor. "Ginger, Mary Ann, Mr. Howell...normally far better judges of character, fools though they may be! What on Earth can have happened to them?"

"Oh, Thurston," came Mrs. Howell's voice, "You simply must entice him! By all means, pay him his heart's desire! Make him a gift of anything you please, as long as I can be certain to have a man like Dr. Boris Balinkoff to grace my dinner parties and salons! I'll be the envy of Society!"

"Mrs. Howell! The international hostess and patroness of the arts! To be her honoured guest at her lavish functions!" said Balinkoff.

"Perhaps her next social engagement is a sideshow," muttered the Professor.

Mrs. Howell continued. "He has the natural grace and sophistication of the old European nobility. The same courtesy and chivalry. The ability to converse with practised ease about art, music, literature, philosophy: a true Renaissance man!"

"I'd say more like Neolithic Man," quipped the Professor.

"Professor!" Balinkoff shook his head with dignity. "Jealousy is a terrible thing."

"Ah," sighed Mr. Howell, "I'm afraid, ladies, that we are simply building castles in the sky. He is gone from us forever."

"No!" cried the three ladies in voices of despair.

"Alas, yes," said Mr. Howell. "Take him all for all, he was a man. We shall not look upon his like again."

"Oh, good Heavens! If I hear any more of this I believe my cerebral neurons will implode!" The Professor reached over and snapped off the speaker. "What witchery have you performed on them, Balinkoff? Created a ray that inhibits all but basic brain functions?"

Balinkoff drew back, stung. "I have done nothing to them, Professor. What you heard was their genuine appreciation of my talents."

"What I heard was a greater load of rubbish than the Cleveland city dump!"

"You simply cannot accept the existence of a rival genius." Balinkoff drew himself up to his not very impressive height. "I feel pity for you. 'Such men are never at heart's ease while they behold a greater than themselves.'" He paused for dramatic effect. "As William Shakespeare said in Hamlet!"

"Julius Caesar."

Balinkoff bristled. "If I say it is Hamlet, it is Hamlet! You insufferable know-it-all!"

"I do not believe there is room in this cave for the three of us!"

"The three of us?"

"You, myself, and your wildly inflated ego!"

"There is hardly room on this entire island for an ego the size of yours!" yelled Balinkoff. "How is it you have not been rescued yet? The airplane pilots must see your colossally swollen head from 30,000 feet!"

"Then perhaps you may desire another partner," the Professor said coldly. "I shall complete my work on my experiments myself!"

"Then go!" screamed Balinkoff. "Go and test them on your friends! I am astonished that you have any!"

"Test them on my—" Suddenly the Professor's eyes dilated wildly and he clutched at his head, nearly tearing out his hair. "My friends! My good, dear friends! I will not give in to this! I will not!" For a few moments he writhed as in a terrible, all-out struggle, until at last he gave an inarticulate cry and slumped to the ground.

Balinkoff drew back in surprise, his hand to his lips. "Professor? Professor?" He crouched down, carefully examining the unconscious man for vital signs. At last he sat back and sighed with relief. "So...he is well. But this cannot be allowed to continue!" The mad scientist grasped the lapels of his vest and straightened them, as though straightening his own thoughts. "How foolish of me! I nearly allowed my formidable temper to overcome my excellent judgement! Of course my experiment has not gone wrong: it is the Professor's memory of his friends that causes him to antagonise me! Whether through jealousy or loyalty, their influence will continue to poison him against me! My amnesia effect will be none too soon!" He glanced up at his humming computer. "But once we leave this island, those other fools must never find this machine!"

Rising, Balinkoff took the pillow from his camp cot and tucked it beneath the Professor's head. "Rest there, my still-to-be partner. Shortly after you awaken, I will give you a second dose of my ray, with its new side effect. Then at last, you will belong only to me!"