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up, right
palm down," he ordered curtly, while Frumpkin fiddled with his gun.
Lafayette complied warily, eyeing the gadget Belarius was holding. With a quick
movement Belarius draped the thing across O'Leary's hands. He felt icy metal
bands extrude, encircle his wrists, and tighten gently. There was a sensation
of questing tendrils growing rapidly downward, searching over his body. He
yelled once, tugged; there was no give in the complex shackle. When he tried to
take a step toward Frumpkin, he found his legs were equally immobilized.
"Hey!" he yelled again.
     
                Belarius and Frumpkin were busy over the
suitcase.
     
                "Look at that, Frumpy," Belarius said
grimly. Over Belarius' shoulder, Lafayette could barely glimpse a round glass
screen like a cathode-ray tube, set in the trunk lid, on which glowed in pink a
set of concentric arcs.
     
                "This," Frumpkin said hoarsely,
putting a well-groomed finger on a short segment of a curve looking squeezed
between longer arcs. "Is this ... our baseline here?"
     
                Instead of answering, Belarius turned to
O'Leary, stepping back to give him a clear view of the screen. He pointed.
     
                "You can see for yourself what you've
done," he grated. "You've trapped yourself in an abort. How you
imagined you'd escape to make good your plot is, I confess, obscure to
me."
     
                "Me, too," Lafayette said.
"What's an abort?"
     
                "As the term suggests, an abort is a
nonviable stem. As you see, this one ends in some seventy-two hours."
     
                "How do you mean, 'ends'?" Lafayette
asked. "All I see is some kind of radar screen."
     
                "Ends, terminates, discontinues, ceases to
exist," Frumpkin spoke up. "That's a simple enough concept. And if we
were still here then, we'd end with it. Accordingly, Belarius, I suggest we
phase-shift at once, just in case your calibration is off a hair's
breadth."
     
                "What about this fellow, then?"
Belarius inquired indifferently, indicating O'Leary. "Finish him off, and
so report?"
     
                "As you command, my lord," Frumpkin
replied in an oily tone, disassociating himself from the murder.
     
                "Why don't you just go home and leave me to
my own devices?" Lafayette suggested. "Nobody would know the
difference."
     
                "No?" Belarius came back coolly.
"You underestimate the subtlety of our Prime surveillance net. Nothing
escapes the notice of YAC-19."
     
                "Why bandy words with him, sir?"
Frumpkin put in. "If we should simply shunt him into a holding locus, he'd
keep until we could deal with him to best advantage. YAC-19 will want to
interrogate him."
     
                "True," Belarius conceded. "Set
up coordinates for the nearest holding locus, then—"
     
                "Wait," Lafayette cut in. "I can't leave this locus-Daphne's here, somewhere. And if I leave, I may never find
it again!"
     
                "The point is well taken," Belarius
said. "Not that your petty concerns are of any merit, but there is YAC-19's
policy to consider."
     
                "Who is this yak you keep talking
about?" Lafayette demanded. "Who's he to sit in judgment on a total
stranger, and one close to the throne of Artesia, by the way!"
     
                "YAC-19 is a computer," Belarius
stated grandly, "and Postulate One at Nuclear City, of course."
     
                "And our immediate supervisor,"
Frumpkin put in loftily.
     
                "Its policy is to hold phase violations to
a minimum," Belarius contributed. "To remove you from this your
native locus would occasion a mild phase displacement; ergo, you'll stay here."
     
                "It's not my native locus," Lafayette
protested. "At least, I don't