Free [Kelvin 03] - Chimaera's Copper (with Robert E. Margroff) by Piers Anthony Page B

stupids been? A chimaera could eat your golden dragons and silver serpents for breakfast! Most probably have!"

    John Knight gazed at the stranger. "You've encountered them? Other frames?"

    "Certainly. You think other worlds don't have transporters?" There was something mechanical and metallic about the stranger's voice. Maybe it was merely its arrogance.

    Kelvin watched his father's face. For someone who imagined his own world as far more advanced than others, it was a shock. Kelvin felt a little of the shock himself, and he hadn't his father's illusions.

    Kian tiptoed to the door. He listened for a moment, then walked back. "It's gone. I don't think it's listening."

    "So we can speak freely now, huh?" The redhead laughed as contemptuously and falsely as could be imagined.

    Kelvin found himself looking from stranger to father to half brother. This was a totally incredible situation, even by adventuring standards. Trapped in a chimaera's dungeon with a know-it-all stranger from a different world! That armor had the appearance of glass or plastic, though Kelvin knew of these invisible substances only from his father's description.

    "We've never been here before," Kelvin said. "In our frame the chimaera is thought to be only legend."

    "You're here by accident?" the man inquired sneeringly.

    "Why else?" John Knight demanded, stung by the stranger's manner. "Why else would anyone come here?"

    "For the chimaera, of course. Just for the sting of it." Again that incredible, irritating metallic laugh, as though deep inside himself the stranger pushed a button. He seemed at times to be almost as inhuman as the monster.

    John's mouth tightened. If the stranger kept irritating him, there would be trouble. No one made fun of John Knight.

    "We're all on the same horse," Kelvin said quickly. It was an expression he'd learned from his mother, his father having a similar expression about boats. "We might as well get to know one another. I'm Kelvin Knight Hackleberry. This is my father, John Knight. This is my half brother, Kian Knight. Father came to our frame by accident, and together we came to this frame by accident. We were hoping to arrive in a world like ours but with silver serpents instead of golden dragons."

    "Real novices, huh? Call me Stapular. I'm a hunter. I'm here by design. I'm the last of my party that's left."

    "The others in your party, they were--"

    "Destroyed, of course. Damned locals' fault. They interfered, or we'd have gotten it."

    Kelvin felt more and more helpless. Just how had he gotten to be the mouth for his party? Yet of the three of them he felt he was best qualified. Stapular was the most irritating person he had encountered, next to his father-in- law, and he wasn't certain his father or half brother could endure that long.

    "You mean a superior, frame-jumping party came here to find a chimaera, and was captured by lowly froogears?" Kian voiced the question before Kelvin thought of it. Kelvin had to suppress a smirk; his half brother did have a certain talent for implied sneering, when he chose to exercise it. It was a legacy from his heartless mother, Zoanna. Stapular responded to the rudeness as rude people often do. "You want your nose flattened, roundear?"

    "He just wants information," Kelvin said quickly. "We all do."

    "Do, huh?" Stapular's mouth snapped shut as if he intended to keep all the information he had.

    "And exchange. Though there's little we can tell you that will help."

    "Nothing I can tell you that will help either." Stapular seemed satisfied.

    "We were captured by froogears. That fruit they rolled into our chamber--"

    "You fell for that, huh? Hah!"

    "Yes," Kelvin said evenly. Was this oaf trying to bait them? "We are, I guess you'd have to say, unseasoned in frame travel. We didn't know this world existed, and as I've mentioned, we thought chimaeras a myth."

    "Mythstake, wasn't it?"

    Kelvin tried not to grind his teeth. Whether Stapular's superior attitude, his