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coming:give Todd plenty of elbow room. Understand?
More or less. I ll bear it in mind.
Good. I m going to kill the engine now. All set?
Sure.
The engine sputtered air and died. Sean opened the door of the truck and got
out. Danny followed him. It was very quiet, with crickets underlining the
silence. There were thousands of stars.
How come they came back here after the fight with the Pinks? Danny
whispered.
You don t have to whisper yet. Anyhow they knowI m coming at least. As for
the Pinks, they re of the opinion that they won the fight and cleaned the
place out. They have eight or ten dupes to show for it, and some very firm
opinions as to what happened which they don t suspect are not their own.
Did you
No, I didn t. The PRS is out here now, Danny. They ve been following your
every move for days, ever since they first encountered you. When you
teleported yourself out of the garret here they nearly had hysterics. They
took over at once, blanketed the cops to prevent their arriving at your
apartment for at least an hour, and sent some of the smaller fry to get Todd
and bring him here. The Pinks were given a little mental manhandling and sent
home. I don t know what happened to the boss gambler; I suppose he got away,
since he s still valuable to them despite his serious underestimation of you;
anyhow he no longer counts, because the PRS is now handling things directly.
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Danny whistled. They re big medicine when they exert themselves, he said.
Yes, they are. They aren t sure you re alive, but they re baiting the trap
with Todd just in case you are they expect you to think that the gamblers are
still out here and giving the old man a going-over, and they expect you to try
to get him out.
They d be right, but for you.
Sean stepped off the road, crossed the culvert, and clambered a fence into a
field of timothy, beckoning to Danny. I m blanketing you at the moment, and I
hope they ll think I m alone. If they try to bluff me we ll have just that
much more time in which to work. I think they will.
Danny felt a faint glow of warmth in his shirt pocket and fumbled in it for
the resonator. The little metal egg was the source of the heat. The
resonator s heating up, he reported.
Stand still.
After a moment Sean said How is it now?
I think it s cooling off. Yes. it is,
Better put it in neutral. Evidently they ve put out an impedance field. We
don t want to burn it out. You ll need it.
Danny sprang the case open and found the control buttons in the starlight. He
returned them to neutral with the screwdriver Sean had given him, feeling the
manifold horizons of the serial universe closing in about him. It was a
curiously unpleasant feeling, although only a week ago the confinement of his
mind to a single frame would have seemed normal to him.
That s good, Sean said. That blankets you twice as efficiently as I can at
this range, and it avoids the risk of their catching me at it.
I don t like it, Danny complained.
I don t blame you. But it shouldn t be necessary long.
Abruptly Danny saw the house, long, low and lightless against the spangled
sky, with a smudge of forest behind it. He discovered it so suddenly that it
seemed almost to have sprung at him out of the Milky Way.
I ll go right on in, Sean murmured. I m going to stage a big confrontation
scene and get them to tell me where they have Todd. That s the secret of
dealing with Sir Lewis; apply plenty of bluster. You give me a start, and then
sneak up under that window that s just to the right of the chimney you ll see
it as you get closer. Don t worry about being caught. They have a complete
clairvoyant lookout covering this area, so they won t bother using the eyes
God gave them and with the resonator in neutral, no ESP sense can spot you.
His teeth flashed in the radiant night. It s funny I can see you, but I m so
used to estanning people that I can hardly believe you re there myself. You re
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