"Much good it will do you!" Frumpkin barked. "So far, I've stayed my hand, out of sheer altruism; but now I'm at the end of my patience."
"Gosh," Roy said in mock awe. "What do you do when you run out of patience, you silly-looking maniac?"
At this insolence, Frumpkin literally began to foam at the mouth. Red-faced and with spit dribbling from his chin, he shook both fists and yelled.
"I dismiss you all back to the nothingness from which, after all, you were never really evoked!" He turned to a boxy apparatus beside him which until now Lafayette had not noticed. It was the same unit, he thought, that Frumpkin and Belarius V had had with them at O'Leary's first meeting with them.
"Don't let him use that gadget, Roy," O'Leary urged as he himself strove mightily, but without success, to make a move to intercept the furious fellow.
"No sweat, Slim," Roy said easily. "He's about to find out Ajax equipment won't work when it's directed against Ajax personnel—a little sort of safety device we install in all our stuff."
Then Marv was between Frumpkin and his infernal device. "Back off, brainless," Marv said roughly, pushing Frumpkin aside. "You heard what the little runt said."
"He's bluffing!" Frumpkin yelled, and lunged again.
"Maybe," Marv replied, "and maybe not." He turned his attention to Sprawnroyal.
"How about it, pal? Anything to it?" he inquired genially, thrusting Frumpkin aside to take a position beside the control console of the boxy apparatus. He glanced at the dials there.
"According to this readout," he said tonelessly, "this here whole set-up is going to go insubstantial in about ten seconds. So long, fellows. And Sir Lafayette, I knew all along you weren't Allegorus. Hang loose." With a wave, Marv turned and walked away into deep shadow.
Roy was frowning quizzically up at O'Leary. "Slim, how well you know this Marv?"
"Pretty well," O'Leary replied. "At first, he was just my jailer, then we got to be fellow-sufferers, and we stuck together pretty well. You remember when we met in the woods in Aphasia I, he stood by loyally. He helped me out a couple of times, and somehow he seemed to be able to stick to me even when I had a wild ride in half-phase when I was totally lost. Once I caught him siccing the crowd on me, but he had an explanation: he was cornered, and it was the only way to save his own neck. Anyway, the mob didn't know me, so no harm was done."
"Unless maybe he was fingering you for someone," Roy suggested. "I don't like his sticking to you so close, Slim. How'd he do it? That would take all the Ajax equipment Frumpy here had, and then some."
"—like that last time," Lafayette continued thinking aloud. "He was washed away by the big wave, just like I was, and we fetched up on the same mud-flat."
"Slim, I checked out this Aphasia III," Roy said. "Funny, according to all readings the boys took on it, it's right outside space-time. Sort of scraps left over when reality itself, as we know it, was derealized."
"Why listen to this sawed-off intellectual?" Marv queried in an indifferent tone, as he came out of the shadows. "What we got to do now—we got to get outa here, before Frumpkin's boys arrive to finish the job."
"Any ideas how we should do that, Marv?" O'Leary asked, equally coolly.
"Sure, Al, just focus the old PEs," Marv recommended promptly.
"Wait a minute. Slim," Roy put in. "We better think about this. I don't know if you know it, but every time you pull that trick, you put out a signal that gives anybody that's interested a handle on you they can use any way they like—which is how old Frumpy here has been tailing you, I bet."
"Right," O'Leary confirmed. "He admitted it, even bragged about it—and he said the next time I do it, he'll be able to home in on the pattern and finish me off—and the whole pseudo-volume of probability I've ever occupied."
"Haw. ProIIy could do it, too, Slim," Roy mused.
"All he'd hafta do is put a vitality tap on the anomaly flux and drain off all the entropic energy. That'd be the end of Artesia and all the nearby loci out to prolly a hundred parameters. Too risky, Slim. We need some kind of tangle-field to work behind. Lemme think."
"I just happened to think, Marv," O'Leary said. "Ever since I met you, you've been urging me to focus my Psychical Energies. I don't know how you so much as knew I knew how. Now it seems you might have had an angle of your own."
"Who, me?" Marv inquired in a raised-eyebrows tone. "Hey, Al, this is your old pal, Marv, remember? How about the old days, back when we were lodged in durance vile together and all, hah?"
"You waste your final breaths, poor fools," Frumpkin spoke up with renewed vigor. "All your petty problems will be solved very soon now, with no effort whatever on your part. Look about you."
"Holy Moishe," Roy muttered. O'Leary looked around and saw featureless gray walls which now were closing them in on all sides. It was as if they were at the center of an immense bubble of concrete. Frumpkin snickered. Marv growled.
"While you nattered of trivialities," Frumpkin said contentedly, "I busied myself by draining the vacuole of all energies; and thus, of course, I cut it off from all possible communication with the Greater Universe—except, naturally, for my own lifeline."
"You think you can get away with this?" Marv demanded, taking a threatening step toward Frumpkin, who waved him away casually.
"You know better than to contest me now, my dear fellow," he said. "At any move inimical to my best interests, the diameter of our little universe will shrink; and you will at all costs preserve the integrity of my lifeline, since it is your sole possible link with outside."
"Maybe so," Sprawnroyal grunted. "But we can make it mighty uncomfortable for you in the meantime. Slim, take his arms; Marv, you get on his head. I'll go for his legs." So saying, he launched himself, tackling the self-styled Lord of All, toppling him as O'Leary moved in and grabbed his arms. Marv flopped down across the fallen dictator's upper quarters. Beneath, Frumpkin kicked and flailed, uttering muffled cries.
"Just hang on to him a second, fellows," Roy suggested as he got to his stubby legs and dusted himself off. Marv rolled over Frumpkin's face.
"You won't get away with this," Frumpkin predicted, coldly furious now as he sat up, tugging in vain against O'Leary's grip while blood ran from his nose.
"Maybe not," Roy came back eagerly, "but it will be fun trying—for us, not you." He put his gnarled forearm in the angle of Frumpkin's elbow, and with his right arm forced the fallen man's wrist and forearm upward. Frumpkin rolled his eyes and yelled.
"Smarts some, don't it?" Roy remarked as he released the taller man's arm. "Want me to try the other arm?"
Frumpkin's reply was an inarticulate yell as he renewed his thrashing efforts to escape O'Leary's grip. Marv bent over and took a firm grip on a lock of Frumpkin's thin, well-oiled hair, and yanked gently.
"You can't really spare this, Frumpy," he said gently. "But it won't really matter much: you'll be bald soon anyway." With a sudden jerk, he pulled the tuft of hair out by its roots and held it before Frumpkin's wild eyes.
"Stop!" the tormented Frumpkin croaked as O'Leary manipulated his skinny arms behind his back. "All right, I confess I've no stomach for torture! I'll let you go—but only on your solemn promise to do nothing furthur to interfere with my great Plan!"
"You're in no spot to talk deal," Roy pointed out casually as he dug a knuckle into the muscle at the angle of Frumpkin's jaw, eliciting a roar of pain.