The Galaxy Builder Read Online Free

be suffering from amnesia, and Daphne couldn't have been
caught in the collapse of the great building.
     
                "Still," he said aloud, "that's
where she was last seen —or almost seen: it was pretty hazy. So that's where
I've got to start."
     
                "Nix, Bub," Trog came to his feet, an
unwashed gnome less than five feet tall, wrapped in foul-smelling half-cured
hides; but he had the arms of a weight lifter and oversize, scarred-knuckle
fists, which he thrust under O'Leary's nose. "One more step and I'll
summon the boys, which dey'll trow yuz inna lion pit."
     
                "Nope, lower dungeon, remember?"
Lafayette said, and delivered a sharp kick to the boss's left kneecap.
"Anyway, I don't have time to be bum-rapped right now," he added as
he pushed past Lord Trog, now hopping on one leg and holding the other knee in
both hands. O'Leary ran across the expanse of rubble-littered weeds past the
last of the trees. He had reached the cracked and tilted slabs of the former
terrace when a boulder struck him on the side of the head and sent him spinning
down into a coal-black fog.
     
                He was back in the gray room, back in the same
dumb dream, he saw, except that the angry fellow had calmed down and was
sitting across the table from him, speaking reasonably—or almost so:
     
                "... cut you in for a full share; I'm not
greedy. Don't be a spoilsport." A serving-wench came up and put a full
tankard before the fellow; as she turned away O'Leary realized it was Daphne, a
drab cloth tied around her once-lustrous dark hair in place of the
diamond-studded coronet. He jumped up, knocking over the table on the man in
gray, who yelled and leaped clear. His limbs strangely heavy, Lafayette tried
to clamber over the fallen table, but it seemed to grow and elaborate under
him. Daphne was gone.
     
                It seemed to Lafayette that he had been climbing
for a very long time, an exhausting ascent of a vertical wall, in total
darkness. He paused to catch his breath, wincing at the ache in his head, and
tried again to remember just where it was he was going—and whence he had come.
But the problem was too complex; with a groan, he gave it up and reached up for
a new handhold on the cold, wet wall against which he clung like an exhausted
fly. He dug in his fingertips for a better purchase; they merely slipped
painfully; then his other hand, groping upward, encountered something different
from the unyielding texture of the stone wall. Cloth, it felt like, and under
it, tough stringy flesh, which recoiled at his touch.
     
                "Come on, pal, gimme a break, OK?" an
aggrieved voice which O'Leary had heard before broke the stillness. "How's
about you just relax now, and leave me do the same."
     
                "Marv," O'Leary said aloud and,
remembering his precarious position clinging to the wall, made a wild grab and
secured a firm grip on a spongy mass of whiskers.
     
                "Cripes!" Marv's voice yelled.
"Come on, lay off the rough stuff, which me and Omar handled you wit' kid
gloves all the way, right?"
     
                "Pray accept my apologies, gentlemen,"
Lafayette said. "I have no intention of savaging you. Actually, I came
along simply to assist you in escaping the unjust punishment visited on you by
your ungrateful master."
     
                "Yeah, after all we done for him, "
Omar agreed. "Right, Marv? The kid's got something there. We din't do
nothing but follow orders, and—by the way, kid, how do you figure on springing
us outa here?"
     
                During the exchange, Lafayette had gradually
become aware that, rather than crawling up a rough, damp stone wall, he had
been creeping across a rough, damp stone floor. He relaxed gratefully and
worked on getting his pulse and respiration back down into a range more
characteristic of a patient with