"What's the charge, Sarge?" Lafayette asked, immediately regretting his choice of words.
"This ain't no joke, slowpoke," the sergeant returned.
"Look," O'Leary essayed desperately, "this is some kind of ridiculous mistake. I was just out for an evening constitutional, and—"
"This here whole area east of the mine is off limits to all personnel, dopey," the noncom cut him off. "If you din't see it on the tube, you shoulda read the signs—and that bob-warr you cut mighta give you a hint, too." The sergeant undipped a microphone from his belt and muttered into it. The copter moved off.
"I didn't see any barbed wire, and I don't watch the tube, " Lafayette countered in the abrupt silence.
"Tell it to the judge, Moe," the cop said wearily as he fetched his cuffs around from his hip-pocket region. "Just don't try nothing. So far all we got on you is a small federal rap for aggravated trespass." He beckoned, and Lafayette stepped forward and extended his wrists, which were at once encircled with cold steel which closed with a decisive click. The cop spun O'Leary and prodded him.
"Right back this way, pal, and we'll give you a nice ride in the whirlybird."
Lafayette started off obediently, then shied at a sudden sound from the brush as a dimly visible Marv burst from cover to barrel into the cop, knocking him down. Marv caught the pistol and aimed it at the fallen policeman's head.
"I'll hold this sucker, Al, while you beat it," Marv grunted. "I never seen a rod like this one before, but I can tell which end of it the bad news comes out of."
"Marv, wait," Lafayette yelled, "don't spoil things! We're marooned in the middle of a swamp, and this is our way out, so just give the sergeant back his gun he dropped and let's go quietly." He extended a hand to assist Dubose to his feet, muttering and slapping at the mud on the uniform.
"Al, wait!" Marv keened. "You don't mean to go off with this here magician which he come in a dragon! It might come down and eat all of us!"
"Don't be silly, Marv," O'Leary said. "It's just a helicopter."
"Don't care what you call it, I seen it sitting right there in thin air, with that eye shining down. It seen us, all right—and here it comes back!"
O'Leary hooked Marv's ankle with his toe as the latter turned to bolt back into the swamp. Marv hit with an elaborate splash as the copter's rotor beat the air directly above with a deafening whap! whap!
"Lemme go!" Marv screamed. "I can hear it flappin' its wings! It's gonna strike any second!" He leaped up convulsively as the ladder struck the mulch a foot from his head. Dubose hauled him to his feet.
"Up," he snapped. "I'll leave yer hands free till we're inside." He released O'Leary's hands as well, ordering both men up the ladder. Lafayette rubbed his cold-stiffened hands briskly to restore circulation.
Marv complied, moaning. O'Leary followed, mounting up into the warm glow from the open canopy while an ice-cold tornado beat down at them, causing the flexible metal-link ladder to buck and sway until the weight of Sergeant Dubose at the bottom stabilized it.
A fat-faced cop in the pilot's seat eyed the new arrivals over his shoulder, a dubious expression on his meaty features.
"What you two bums think yer gonna complish in the Little Dismal this time o' night?" he inquired without interest. "Anyways, the comet hit a good five mile west of where we're at now."
"What comet?" Lafayette asked. "We didn't know about any comet; we were just out for a stroll."
"Sure, and I'm waiting for a elevator," the pilot returned cynically. "What comet, eh? How many comets you think hit here to Colby County lately?"
"Colby County?" Lafayette echoed. "Oh, no!"
"Don't go knocking the county," the cop commanded. "Finest little county in this end o' the state."
"How far are we from Colby Corners?" Lafayette asked.
"Oh, you mean the ghost town. Where you fellows from, anyways? Reckon even a tourist oughta know where the Corners is at. 'Bout six mile north," he concluded. "Closed anyway, this time o' night."
"What do you mean, 'ghost town'?" Lafayette demanded. "The last time I saw it, it was a thriving community, with a high-school team rated third in the state."
"You must be older'n you look, young feller," the cop commented as Dubose arrived and settled himself, unlimbering his cuffs.
"Hey, Al," Marv said weakly as the copter lifted suddenly, banking off steeply in a climbing turn. "Now! Nows the time to do one o' your swell tricks."
"Quiet, you!" Dubose barked; and to Lafayette, "Any tricks, Bub, and I'm gonna hafta start rememberin'."
It was almost dawn. Warm and dry in a cosy cell at County Jail, Lafayette and Marv sat disconsolately on their Spartan bunks, watching the pinkening of the rectangle of sky defined by the small high barred window.
"Don't worry, Marv," Lafayette said encouragingly to his cellmate, whose expression suggested that he was on death row at Sing Sing, rather than in a provincial drunk-tank. Marv moaned.
"I dunno if General Frodolkin even could bust me outa this dump," he said, "even if he knew these magicians had one of his best boys locked up here."
"We're not in Aphasia any longer," Lafayette told his cellmate. "And that's good in a way; I mean, I'm responsible. I was trying to shift us back to Artesia, and my mind wandered; I got to thinking about the old days when I happened to slip back to Colby Corners and wound up in jail. Now I'm back there again, and bum-rapped again. Sorry to get you mixed up in this, Marv, but we'll get out somehow. Let's consider the situation."
"The situation, wise guy," said a heavy voice over the other side of the barred door, "is you dummies don't never seem to learn nothing."
Lafayette looked up to see a strange face peering in at him. Or, corrected himself, a face not precisely strange, but only half-familiar.
"Belarius!" Lafayette cried, coming to his feet. The face at the door recoiled as O'Leary approached.
"Where's Frumpkin, your old sidekick?" O'Leary demanded. "I've got an idea he's holding Daphne somewhere against her will—at least I hope it's against her will!"
The newcomer, who Lafayette realized wasn't Belarius at all, but merely a look-alike, this one half-shaved and with acne scars, paused in his retreat to look distastefully at O'Leary.
"Look," Lafayette said desperately, "I know we haven't always gotten along, but let's let bygones be bygones; get us out of here."
"I don't know whom you think I am," the Belarius-like stranger replied coldly. "But let me set you straight: I'm Sheriff George B. Tode, and I run a clean administration, and it's about time you chiselers learnt that."
"Not 'whom', Lafayette said severely. "After the verb 'to be' the nominative case is used: 'I don't know who you think I am'," he quoted.
"I know durn well whom you are," the sheriff came back. "You're the latest in the series of Light-Fingered Looies Jukes has been sending in here to try and get a piece o' the comet, so's to embarrass me."
"To try to get a piece of the comet," O'Leary corrected. "What comet?"
"First and only one to hit here in Colby County," the cop said. "Don't play dumber'n what you already are."
"You can leave my IQ out of this, you half-witted flatfoot!" O'Leary retorted hotly.
"Nix, Al," Marv hissed. "You were gonna get this feller to get us out o' here, remember?" Then he addressed the sheriff: "Ya gotta excuse my pal," he explained. "He's got problems, you know, upstairs." Marv tapped his unkempt head to make his meaning clear. "But he ain't a bad guy, except when he turns inta a bird or something. Then he can get mean. But if you was to just kind of let us outa this here dungeon, you could get on his good side, and he might fix you up with a solid gold bathtub or like that."
"You tryna bribe me, sucker?" Sheriff Tode demanded. He looked both ways and pressed his face closer to the bars. "Did you say 'bathtub'?"