a spent fox
and pull my hole in after me? A plague of such cowardice! Who suggests
it? Introversion's no mere last-ditch device. Unless ordered, supervised
and sanctioned, it means the end. And what if I'd Introverted ere we got
Kaby's call for succor, hey?"

* * * * *

His warrior maid nodded with harsh approval and he noticed it and shook
his free hand at her and scolded her, "Not that I say yea to your mad
plan for that Devil's casket, you half-clad lackwit. And yet to
jettison.... Oh, ye gods, ye gods--" he wiped his hand across his
face--"grant me a minute in which I may think!"

Thinking time wasn't an item even on the strictly limited list at the
moment, although Sevensee, squatting dourly on his hairy haunches where
Maud had left him, threw in a dead-pan "Thas tellin em, Gov."

Then Doc at the bar stood up tall as Abe Lincoln in his top hat and
shawl and 19th Century duds and raised an unwavering arm for silence and
said something that sounded like: "Introversh, inversh, glovsh," and
then his enunciation switched to better than perfect as he continued, "I
know to an absolute certainty what we must do."

It showed me how rabbity we were that the Place got quiet as a church
while we all stopped whatever we were doing and waited breathless for a
poor drunk to tell us how to save ourselves.

He said something like, "Inversh ... bosh ..." and held our eyes for a
moment longer. Then the light went out of his and he slobbered out a
"_Nichevo_" and slid an arm far along the bar for a bottle and started
to pour it down his throat without stopping sliding.

Before he completed his collapse to the floor, in the split second while
our attention was still focused on the bar, Bruce vaulted up on top of
it, so fast it was almost like he'd popped up from nowhere, though I'd
seen him start from behind the piano.

"I've a question. Has anyone here triggered that bomb?" he said in a
voice that was very clear and just loud enough. "So it can't go off," he
went on after just the right pause, his easy grin and brisk manner
putting more heart into me all the time. "What's more, if it were to be
triggered, we'd still have half an hour. I believe you said it had that
long a fuse?"

He stabbed a finger at Kaby. She nodded.

"Right," he said. "It'd have to be that long for whoever plants it in
the Parthian camp to get away. There's another safety margin.

"Second question. Is there a locksmith i