"If you're looking for Frumpkin, Daph, he just stepped out," O'Leary said harshly. "What's the matter? Why won't you look at me?" Lafayette caught a glimpse of a tear on her cheek as she turned away. Then the dimness deepened into full dark, and Lafayette was sitting up, muttering her name and shaking his head to clear it. An unshaved lout loomed before him and swung a hamlike fist. Thereafter, Trog's men quickly surrounded their diminutive chief, holding Squirrely, Roy, Casper, and Rugadoon at bay.
"I guess we'll do all the grabbing that's gonna be done around here," Trog yelled when order had been restored. He eyed O'Leary sourly where he lay on the grass, his head still spinning.
"Whatta you doin' loose, Al?" he inquired aggrievedly. "I tole Marv to lock you in the slammer."
"He did, milord, he did," Lafayette reassured the irate fellow. "But I got bored, so I left."
"And all the time you had a meet set up with this bunch of spoilsports," Trog accused.
"No, we just happened to meet here on the trail," Lafayette corrected.
"I don't believe in coincidences," Trog declared, looking around defiantly. His eye fixed on Roy. "How about it, Sprawnie, do you say you just happened to meet this character by accident?"
"Well," Roy said reluctantly. "Not entirely. You see, we were following a new Mark II tagalong, and it led us right to him."
"Ha!" Trog barked. "The way I remember the Mark 1, it had more bugs than a four-bit flop. Old Doc Pinchcraft goofed on that one!"
"Right," Roy agreed, "but the Mark II is a great improvement."
"You small-timers still scratching a living working for rubes like old Krupkin?" Trog inquired genially.
"Only as a sideline," Roy corrected. "We've recently entered into a wide-scope contract with a personage of vast importance, like they say, to handle state security. That's why we're here, actually—on a bum lay, it looks like. We were after the Number One Public Enemy of all times, and all we found was Slim here, which he's a nice kid," he added in a lower, more confidential tone. "Only he ain't got the brains to be Big Time."
"Don't tell me about the fabled Allegorus," Trog huffed. "I'm the one nailed him coming outa his tower, ain't I? So he belongs to me. You boys'll hafta find yourselfs another pigeon."
O'Leary was taking deep breaths to clear his head. He was only half-feigning semiconsciousness now, meanwhile listening to the dispute between the two diminutive men.
"... big shot around here!" Trog was declaring.
"I heard some fellow named Frodolkin had thrown you out of office," Roy countered.
"That crum-bum!" Trog snarled. "After I set things to rights again, I'll string him up by his heels and esplain the arrow of his ways to him with the cat-o'-nine-tails— two teams working in relays. He'll be worry he ever seen this place."
"Trog," Roy said in a more kindly tone, "do you ever regret the way you sold out Ajax and made off with classified materials?"
"Naw," Trog said firmly. "Anyways, I never made off with no secret stuff, nor no plans and specs neither."
"Then, how'd you get here, three octaves outside your own A-O zone?"
"It was screwy," Trog said. "I was onna trail, headin' for a big time in Port Miasma, and all of a sudden I run smack into a swamp where no swamp oughta be."
Lafayette's attention wandered, and he dropped off into a sound sleep. It seemed hours later when Sprawnroyal's hoarse voice at close range penetrated his lazy dreams of ease and comfort back home in Artesia:
"... you're too big to lug, Slim. So, come on, wake up now while we got a chanct, and let's check this out. This could be the break we been waiting for."
O'Leary opened his eyes and winced at the throb in his skull. He fingered a lump the size of a walnut above his ear. Slowly, he got to his feet. Trog, trussed from neck to ankles in stout new hemp rope, lay beside a small campfire. Around it Squirrely, Casper, and Rugadoon, bruised but cheerful, sat eating enthusiastically from small cans.
"I had a nice talk with old Trog, here," Roy told Lafayette comfortably. "I think maybe we gotta way outa this mess after all." He paused to hand Lafayette two of the small cans from his bulky backpack. "Better chow down now, Slim," he suggested. "Once we get moving, there won't be no time."
"What are you going to do?" Lafayette asked, dipping into a can of swamp-pheasant fricassee. "Good," he commented.
"Right; what we figger is a man on a tough field job needs class eats to keep up the old morale," Roy confided. "Now, you know how to triangulate, Slim, check out what parts of a locus match up with your baseline, and calibrate how far out you are, locus-wise, from where you was at when you begun."
"I've never done the calculations," Lafayette replied, "but I understand the principle. For example, we can figure Aphasia II is very close to Aphasia I, where Daphne's lost, on the basis of the similarities in the landscape, plus personnel. Trog, for example."
Roy shook his head. "Trog's a bad example, Slim. This here's the same Trog you run into before, not a analog. But you're right; you're still in the same A-range as where you lost Daphne at. But where's that at? Huh? How close are we to the Artesia range? That's a little tougher; we got to fall back on topography. Like, in Artesia, you got a desert, a dry lake bed, west o' town. Then in Melange, it's still a lake, and farther in the same direction, just in the next range, you got a bay, a arm o' the sea: that's Colby Corners and all, your old home town before you came to Artesia. So here we got a saltwater swamp. Looks like a little tectonic activity has pushed up a ridge and cut the bay off, and here it's partly drained. In Melange it's turned into a freshwater lake: The swamp never formed because the ridge wasn't that high there; so with the springs at the bottom, plus rainfall, you got a lake. In Artesia, it drained and there was a spillway open in the ridge, so it went dry and you got a desert. The swamp here puts us off on a tangent to our direct route back to the Artesia/Melange wide-range."
"How do we get back?" O'Leary cut in impatiently. "At least to Aphasia I, if not to Artesia?"
"There's things I can't tell you, Slim—security, you know," Roy said apologetically. "Your best bet is still the old psychical energies. Casper's got the emergency gear in his pack, which we ain't allowed to use it except in case of what they call a 'dire emergency'. But don't worry: If we hafta pull the chain, we'll get back to you ASAP, and whip you outa here. So why don't you just go ahead and give it a try? It'll be tricky, you being outside your primary range this time and all. But what the heck: Maybe you can do it. Good luck, and I'll see you back at Ajax which we'll hoist a few in memory o' this contretemps, which we'll have a good laugh when it's over."
"Yes, but what about Daphne?" Lafayette countered.
"One thing at a time, Slim." Roy fell silent, cocking his head. "On your feet, boys," he ordered quietly. "You can come too, Slim," he added. "Listen, they're tryna sneak up on us. Hear that?"
As a twig cracked loudly, the small foursome shouldered packs and disappeared into the surrounding underbrush. Lafayette picked up a club dropped during the brief battle with Trog's bodyguard and waited, watching the spot whence the sounds had emanated, as the twilight deepened.