The Galaxy Builder Read Online Free Page A

a positive prognosis.
     
                "There's the way we come in," Marv
suggested without enthusiasm, "only I for one can't jump no forty feet
straight up and hover long enough to undo a tricky latch onna trap door before
I start back down."
     
                "Before we go," Lafayette said,
"suppose you gentlemen fill me in on some details, such as what happened
to the palace and all the people in it, especially Daphne? Are you sure you
didn't grab her just before you waylaid me? And who is this Trog fellow,
anyway?"
     
                "Geeze, kid, we musta conked ya a little
hard at that; sounds like you don't know nothing."
     
                "Precisely," O'Leary agreed.
"Start with Daphne. Did she escape up the stairs, or what?"
     
                "If she done," Omar said gloomily,
"it's curtains for sure for the poor broad, which you said she was a
looker, right, Al?"
     
                "Why do you fellows keep calling me
'Al'?" O'Leary demanded.
     
                "Meaning no disrespect, Yer Honor,"
Omar said hastily.
     
                "Just meant to be friendly-like," Marv
added reassuringly. " 'Allegorus' is too long fer a name, anyways. No
offense," he added.
     
                "Suppose I assure you, once and for
all," O'Leary said, "and for the last time: I'm not this Allegorus
person."
     
                "Ya must be, Al," Marv said
persuasively. "Otherwise how could you of aced old Trog inta letting ya in
here to help us out?"
     
                "Oh, I know a few tricks, I'll admit,"
Lafayette acknowledged. "Who is Trog, and where'd he come from?
Does he have anything to do with the palace being in ruins?"
     
                "Slow down, Al," Omar suggested.
"You're getting ahead of us. Trog is just Trog, which Frodolkin hisself
put him onna job guarding the Tower, they say."
     
                "Which brings us to the question of who is
Frodolkin?" Lafayette persisted.
     
                "He's a shot which he's so big, nobody
don't ever get to see him. He stays out at his fort, a few leagues west o'
here, wit' a big army of, like, henchmen and cronies and guys like that,"
Marv contributed.
     
                "What happened to the palace?" O'Leary
demanded. "Was it destroyed by this Frodolkin?"
     
                "Naw, nothin' like that," Omar
replied. "I mean, according to tribal legend and all, this here bunch o'
busted rock useta be some kind o' palace, like, maybe three hunnert years ago;
then it fell into roon, like they say, all but the Dread Tower, and you got
that sealed off pretty good, Al. Now you tell me one: What's so hot about that
crummy Tower, ya wanna stay in it alia time, huh?"
     
                "Yeah," Marv echoed. "What ya got
in there, anyways?"
     
                "Nothing much," Lafayette conceded.
"It's just that apparently Daphne's in there. Three hundred years, did you
say? That's ridiculous! It was perfectly all right less than an hour ago."
     
                "Now," Marv said, "let's get back
to how you're going to spring Omar and I. And we better get moving, which I got
a idear His Lordship has got something on his mind, like that message he got
from Frodolkin."
     
                "What message?" Omar demanded. "I
never heard nothing about no message."
     
                "You know," Marv replied glumly.
"The usual: about the sacrifice to the vampire-god and all. Like every
year. Only this time ..."
     
                "Yeah, what, this time?" Omar
persisted. "I guess we'll hafta round up some o' the local churls and
villeins and ship 'em over, like always. So what?"
     
                "So, Master Wise Guy, if you'd care to
refresh yer membry, ya might recall we ain't seen none o' the local clods fer
some time now, what wit' the tide of battle, like, surging back and forth
acrost