JAY-JAY AND THE PEKING MONSTER

Marine Sergeant Moose Majeski, ""grizzled combat veteran of three wars,"" wants produce from the California health food farm Jay-Jay runs with Aunt Hattie, so he can sell it to hungry Camp Pennington recruits on survival maneuvers. Dr. Chen, representing the People's Republic in a search for the missing remains of Peking Man, wants the bones Jay-Jay has found on the Marine camp grounds while making a midnight delivery. So do a couple of hoodlums called Smith and Jones--who might be Chen's henchmen, running-dog lackeys of Taiwan, or self-serving Marines. Developer P. Martin Huff wants the farm for a subdivision, and won't stop at arson in his determination to get it. Then there is a long-haired, naked Creep who lurks about the farm at night; no one knows what he wants. But Jay-Jay soon learns that the primitive, non-English-speaking Creep is on his side, against whoever else might be lurking, snooping for bones, or setting the field on fire. Is Creep the last of the Zumas? Neighbor Carla Zink has another idea. For though a Marine bulldozer has inadvertently made hash of what may have been Peking Man, Aunt Hattie had already ground up one skeleton in her secret formula-fertilized electro-culture experiment. Aided by a fortuitous lighting bolt, Aunt Hattie has cloned a five-hundred-thousand-year-old fossil! But there's nothing electrifying about the story, for all the far-fetched frenzy.