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"Oh, I'm sorry," Kay's mum replied quickly. "We didn't realise."

"No, no." The monster waved a tentacle. "Why should you apologise? There is no human staff here. We're all monsters." It bowed on its legs. "And what are your requirements?"

Kay's mum and dad glanced at each other. "We wanted, uh," Kay's dad began with uncharacteristic hesitation, "for our son –"

"Say no more." The star monster looked Kay over again with its many brown eyes. "We have a department specialising in children's monsters. If you'll follow me –"

They followed it through the far door and into another huge room with stairs going up and down and strips of the floor moving sideways. It all looked very confusing and very fun to Kay, who didn't understand why his parents were acting so nervous. The star monster guided them to a staircase which began moving as soon as they got on it. It rose and fell and twisted round other staircases, and Kay enjoyed every moment.

At last they came out on to another floor. It was so huge that it seemed to go on forever. Kay saw rows and rows of monsters, all sitting behind glass walls, which dwindled into the distance. There were another mum and dad and boy in the distance, walking towards them. Then he blinked and realised that the mum and dad and little boy were his parents and he, and that the room wasn't quite as big as it looked. It was just that the walls were all made of mirrors.

The star monster looked at Kay again, by the simple expedient of bending a few of its tentacles over backwards as it led the way. "How old is the young gentleman?" it asked. "About six, I presume. Ah, yes, I think you should look at this one."

The monster it pointed to seemed like a mass of iridescent bubbles which reached almost to the ceiling. It glistened and twitched and swayed gently about, and made faintly musical noises. Kay loathed it on sight.

"Guaranteed completely safe and harmless, and it's decorative and low-maintenance," the star monster said.

"Oh, how pretty!" his mum said, clutching her hands together under her chin. "What does it eat?"

"How much is it?" Kay's dad added quickly, before the start monster could reply.

The star monster poked at a screen on the glass. It turned white and numbers floated across it. The star monster peered at them and mentioned a figure. Kay's parents both turned as white as the screen, and Kay breathed a sigh of relief.

"I could show you something a little, um, more economical," the star monster suggested.

"Oh yes," Kay's parents said together. "Something much more economical."

The star monster seemed to be thinking. "All right," it said. "I believe I have the very thing." It rolled off purposefully, and they had to walk so fast to keep up that Kay hardly had the time to look at all the strange and fascinating monsters on either side.

"Here we are." The star monster pointed at a creature which looked something like a translucent purplish slug. It extruded gelatinous eyes and moved them back and forth. "It's not only harmless and educational, it's completely impregnable to all damage. You can stab it and burn it, and nothing will happen." It began listing other things about the monster, but Kay wasn't listening.

His attention was drawn to the monster in the next enclosure. At first it seemed just as though a heap of old ropes and canvas was lying there, a mess of flap and tangle. But as he came closer part of the flap rose, and a pair of eyes appeared.

They were interesting eyes, large, round and brown, and they looked at him with the same sense of wonder as he was looking at them. One of the flaps rose and fell, and he heard a faint squeaking noise.

"What's that?" he asked. This was something he had been specifically ordered not to do. But the monster was so interesting that he couldn't resist. "What's that in this box?"

"Oh, that?" the star monster barely bothered to look. "That's nothing much. We aren't really expecting to sell it. It isn't really good for anything."

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