The Galaxy Builder Read Online Free Page B

their farms. Ain't nobody left in these here parts except us loyal
retainers; including the hit squad, about forty souls in all. So who's gonna
get to go and meet the vampire-god, except whatever guys happen to be on the
gig-list at the moment? Here's three of us, onney four to go to make up the
quota. We prolly got until daylight tomorrow."
     
                "Have you went nuts, Marv?" Omar
demanded without conviction. "You think a swell boss like Lord Trog would
send his faithful boys off to a horrible end, just to save his own neck?"
After a moment's thought he added, "Let's get outa here." He turned
to O'Leary, "Now's yer chanst, bo," he said, "to get on our good
side by working that nifty breakout you was telling about."
     
    -
     
                Lafayette heard sounds of fumbling in the dark.
Then, with a sharp scratch of flint on steel, a spark glowed, and a moment
later a candle-flame ignited, shedding a mellow glow on the stone walls. It
showed a mildewed gray here in the tower base, rather than the soft pink of the
outer structure; in its radiance, Marv and Omar squatted, heads together, a
pair of hairy troglodytes eyeing O'Leary with inscrutable expressions on their
rough-hewn features.
     
                "Let's sum up," O'Leary proposed
briskly. "I'm still in Artesia, although Lord Trog called it Aphasia—I'm
not somehow shifted off into another continuum like Melange, or Colby Corners;
but I've gotten myself shifted in time, three hundred years into the future,
and this pile of rubble is all that's left of Adoranne's beautiful pink palace.
I'll worry about 'how' later. And Daphne's here, too, probably hiding up in
Nicodaeus' old lab at the top of the Tower, poor kid. But wait a minute: If it
really is the palace, then the system of secret passages is still there,
inside the walls. So—just where am I now, in relation to the palace? Marv, show
me where this dungeon is in relation to the Tower." He smoothed the mud on
the rough stone floor to create a sketching surface. "Draw me a map,"
he urged the barbaric ex-guard.
     
                "Well, Al," Marv began reluctantly,
"I ain't much of a one fer drawrin' pitchers, but if this here"—he
made an X with a blunt forefinger—"is the Tower, the upper dungeon is over
here to the side, like this here ..." He added a rectangle adjacent to the
X.
     
                "On which side?" O'Leary demanded.
"Which way is north?"
     
                Marv hooked a thumb over his shoulder. "I
got a keen sense o' direction, Al, but so what? Inside this hole, the onney
direction innersts me is up."
     
                "I mean on the map," O'Leary explained
testily. "Now, if we're to the west, that's where the wine cellars used to
be. And if the lower dungeon is under the cellars, say, that would put us just
about in the unused storeroom where Goroble had his stolen equipment stashed;
and if that's so—" O'Leary rose unsteadily on legs which felt as if they
had been freshly molded of papier-mâché; he staggered, but righted himself and
went across the room to study the crudely mortared blocks of rough-hewn masonry
which comprised the partition. He identified the faint arrow he had scratched
on the stone so long ago, reached, pressed, and felt the apparently solid
masonry yield and swing inward, exposing a pitch-black passage beyond.
     
                "Come on, boys," he said, and without
waiting for a response, stepped through.
     
                At once, he was at home, and memories came
flooding back:-creeping through dark passages behind Yockabump as the court
jester led him for the first time through the system which gave covert access
to practically every room in the great pile; later, exploring alone and finding
the false king's hidden store of stolen high-technology gear; then, still
later, leading Princess Adoranne and Count Alain to the ballroom just in time
to cut short Quelius' bold attempt