24
Quillan took over the ship controls, and the Commissioner and Triggerwent with the recorder into the little office back of the transmittercabinet, to slam out some fast reports to the Hub and other points. Lyadwas apologizing profoundly to Mantelish as they left the lounge. Theprofessor was huffing back at her, rather mildly.
A little while later, Lyad, showing indications of restrained surprise,was helping Trigger prepare dinner. They took it into the lounge.Quillan remained at the controls while the others started eating.Trigger fixed up a tray and brought it to him.
"Thanks for the rescue, Major!" she said.
He grinned up at her. "It was a pleasure."
Trigger glanced back at the little group in the lounge. "Think she wasfibbing a bit?"
"Sure. Mainly she'd decided in advance how much to tell and how muchnot. She thinks fast in action though! No slips. What she told of whatshe knows makes a solid story, and with angles we can check on fast. Soit's bound to have plenty of information in it. It'll do for themoment."
"She's already started buttering up Mantelish," said Trigger.
"She'll do that," Quillan said. "By the time we reach Luscious, the profprobably might as well be back in the trances. The Commissioner intendsto give her a little rope, I think."
"How close is Luscious to that area she showed?"
Quillan flicked on their course screen and superimposed the map Lyad hadmarked. "Red dot's well inside," he pointed out. "That bit was probablyquite solid info." He looked up at her. "Did it bother you much to hearthe Devagas have dropped the grab idea and are out to do you in?"
Trigger shook her head. "Not really," she said. "Wouldn't make muchdifference one way or the other, would it?"
"Very little." He patted her hand. "Well, they're not going to get you,doll--one way _or_ the other!"
Trigger smiled. "I believe you," she said. "Thanks." She looked backinto the lounge again. Just at present she did have a feeling ofrelaxed, unconcerned security. It probably wasn't going to last, though.She glanced at Quillan.
"Those computers of yours," she said. "What did they have to say aboutthat not-catassin you squashed?"
"The crazy things claim now it was a plasmoid," Quillan said, "Revoltingnotion! But it makes some sense for once. Checks with some of the thingsLyad just told us, too. Do you remember that Vethi sponge Balmordan wascarrying?"
"Yes."
"It didn't come off the ship with him. He checked it out as having dieden route."
"That is a revolting notion!" Trigger said after a moment. "Well, atleast we've got detectors now."
But the feeling of security had faded somewhat again.
Before dinner was half over, the long-range transmitters abruptly cameto life. For the next thirty minutes or so, messages rattled inincessantly, as assorted Headquarters here and there reacted to theErmetyne's report. The Commissioner sat in the little office and sortedover the incoming information. Trigger stayed at the transmitters,feeding it to him as it arrived. None of it affected them directly--theywere already headed for the point in space a great many other peoplewould now start heading for very soon.
Then business dropped off again almost as suddenly as it had picked up.A half dozen low priority items straggled in, in as many minutes. Thetransmitters purred idly. Then the person-to-person buzzer sounded.
Trigger punched the screen button. A voice pronounced the ship's dialnumber.
"Acknowledging," Trigger said. "Who is it?"
"Orado ComWeb Center," said the voice. "Stand by for contact withFederation Councilman Roadgear."
Trigger whacked the panic button. Roadgear was a NAME! "Standing by,"she said.
Commissioner Tate came in through the door and slipped into the chairshe'd already vacated. Trigger took another seat a few feet away. Shefelt a little nervous, but she'd always wanted to see a high-powereddiplomat in action.
The screen lit up. She recognized Roadgear from his pics. Tall,fine-looking man of the silvered sideburns type. He was in an armchairin a very plush office.
"Congratulations, Commissioner!" he said, smiling. "I believe you'reaware by now that your latest report has set many wheels spinningrapidly!"
"I rather expected it would," the Commissioner admitted. He also smiled.
They pitched it back and forth a few times, very chummy. Roadgear didn'tappear to be involved in any specific way with the operations which soonwould center about Luscious. Trigger began to wonder what he was after.
"A few of us are rather curious to know," Roadgear said, "why you didn'tacknowledge the last Council Order sent you."
Trigger didn't quite start nervously.
"When was this?" asked the Commissioner.
Roadgear smiled softly and told him.
"Got a record here of some scrambled item that arrived about then," theCommissioner said. "Very good of you to call me about it, Councilman.What was the order content?"
"It's dated now, as it happens," Roadgear said. "Actually I'm callingabout another matter. The First Lady of Tranest appears to have beenvery obliging about informing you of some of her recent activities."
The Commissioner nodded. "Yes, very obliging."
"And in so short a time after her, ah, detainment. You must have beenvery persuasive?"
"Well," Holati Tate said, "no more than usually."
"Yes," said Councilman Roadgear. "Now there's been some slight concernexpressed by some members of the Council--well, let's say they'd justlike to be reassured that the amenities one observes in dealing with ahead of state actually are being observed in this case. I'm sure theyare, of course."
The Commissioner was silent a moment. "I was informed a while ago," hesaid, "that full responsibility for this Head of State has been assignedto my group. Is that correct?"
The Councilman reddened very slightly. "Quite," he said. "The officialCouncil Order should reach you in a day or so."
"Well, then," said the Commissioner, "I'll assure you and you can assurethe Councilmen who were feeling concerned that the amenities are beingobserved. Then everybody can relax again. Is that all right?"
"No, not quite," Roadgear said annoyedly. "In fact, the Councilmenwould very much prefer it, Commissioner, if I were given an opportunityto speak to the First Lady directly to reassure myself on the point."
"Well," Commissioner Tate said, "she can't come to the transmittersright now. She's washing the dishes."
The Councilman reddened very considerably this time. He stared at theCommissioner a moment longer. Then he said in a very soft voice, "Oh,the hell with it!" He added, "Good luck, Commissioner--you're going toneed it some time."
The screen went blank.
* * * * *
The scouts of Selan's Independent Fleet, who had first looked thisplanet over and decided to call it Luscious, had selected a name,Trigger thought, which probably would stick. Because that was what itwas, at least in the area where they were camping.
She rolled over from her side to her face and gave herself a push awayfrom the rock she'd been regarding contemplatively for the past fewminutes. Feet first, she went drifting out into a somewhat deepersection of Plasmoid Creek.
None of it was very deep. There were pools here and there, in thestretch of the creek she usually came to, where she could stand on hertoes in the warm clear water and, arms stretched straight up, barelytickle the surface with her finger tips. But along most of the stretchthe bigger rocks weren't even submerged.
She came sliding over the sand to another rock, turned on her back andleaned up against the rock, blinking at sun reflections along the water.Camp was a couple of hundred yards down the valley, its sounds cut offby a rise of the ground. The Commissioner's ship was there, plus a halfdozen tents, plus a sizable I-Fleet unit with lab facilities whichSelan's outfit had loaned Mantelish for the duration. There were somefifteen, twenty people in all about the camp at the moment. They knewshe was loafing around in the water up here and wouldn't disturb her.
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Strictly speaking, of course, she wasn't loafing. She was learning howto listen to herself think. She didn't feel she was getting the knack ofit too quickly; but it was coming. The best way seemed to be to let gomentally as much as possible; to wait without impatience, really tomore-or-less listen quietly within yourself, as if you were lookingaround in some strange forest, letting whatever wanted to come to viewcome, and fade again, as something else rose to view instead. The maindifficulty was with the business of relaxing mentally, which wasn't atall her natural method of approaching a problem.
But when she could do it, information of a kind that was beginning tolook very interesting was likely to come filtering into her awareness.Whatever was at work deep in her mind--and she could give a pretty fairguess at what it was now--seemed as weak and slow as the PsychologyService people had indicated. The traces of its work were usually faintand vague. But gradually the traces were forming into some very definitepictures.
Lazing around in the waters of Plasmoid Creek for an hour or so everymorning had turned out to be a helpful part of the process. On theflashing, all-out run to Luscious, subspace all the way, with theCommissioner and Quillan spelling each other around the clock at thecontrols, the transmitters clattering for attention every half hour, theship's housekeeping had to be handled, and somebody besides Mantelishneeded to keep a moderately beady eye on the Ermetyne, she hadn't eventhought of acting on Pilch's suggestion.
But once they'd landed, there suddenly wasn't much to keep her busy, andshe could shift priority to listening to herself think. It was one ofthose interim periods where everything was being prepared and nothinghad got started. As a plasmoid planet, Luscious was pretty much of abust. It was true that plasmoids were here. It was also true that untilfairly recently plasmoids were being produced here.
By the simple method of looking where they were thickest, Selan's peopleeven had located the plasmoid which had been producing the others,several days before Mantelish arrived to confirm their find. This one,by the plasmoid standards of Luscious, was a regular monster, sometwenty-five inches high; a gray, mummylike thing, dead and half rottedinside. It was the first plasmoid--with the possible exception ofwhatever had flattened itself out on Quillan's gravity mine--known tohave died. There had been very considerable excitement when it was firstdiscovered, because the description made it sound very much as if they'dfinally located 112-113.
They hadn't. This one--if Trigger had followed Mantelishcorrectly--could be regarded as a cheap imitation of 112. And itsproductions, compared with the working plastic life of Harvest Moon,appeared to be strictly on a kindergarten level: nuts and bolts and lessthan that. To Trigger, most of the ones that had been collected lookedlike assorted bugs and worms, though one at least was the size of asmall pig.
"No form, no pattern," Mantelish rumbled. "Was the thing practicing? Didit attempt to construct an assistant and set it down here to test it?Well, now!" He went off again to incomprehensibilities, apparently nolonger entirely dissatisfied. "Get me 112!" he bellowed. "Then thisbusiness will be solved! Meanwhile we now at least have plasmoidmaterial to waste. We can experiment boldly! Come, Lyad, my dear."
And Lyad followed him into the lab unit, where they went to work again,dissecting, burning, stimulating, inoculating and so forth great numbersof more or less pancake-sized subplasmoids.
* * * * *
This morning Trigger wasn't getting down to the best semidrowsy level atall readily. And it might very well be that Lyad-my-dear business. "Youknow," she had told the Commissioner thoughtfully the day before, "bythe time we're done, Lyad will know more about plasmoids than anyone inthe Hub except Mantelish!"
He didn't look concerned. "Won't matter much. By the time we're done,she and the rest of the Ermetynes will have had to cough up control ofTranest. They've broken treaty with this business."
"Oh," Trigger said. "Does Lyad know that?"
"Sure. She also knows she's getting off easy. If she were a Federationcitizen, she'd be up for compulsory rehabilitation right now."
"She'll try something if she gets half a chance!" Trigger warned.
"She sure will!" the Commissioner said absently. He went on with hiswork.
It didn't seem to be Lyad that was bothering. Trigger lay flat on herback in the shallow sand bar, arms behind her head, feeling the sun'swarmth on her closed eyelids. She watched her thoughts drifting byslowly.
It just might be Quillan.
Ole Major Quillan. The rescuer in time of need. The not-catassinsmasher. Quite a guy. The water murmured past her.
On the ride out here they'd run by one another now and then, going fromjob to job. After they'd arrived, Quillan was gone three quarters of thetime, helping out in the hunt for the concealed Devagas fortress. It wasstill concealed; they hadn't yet picked up a trace.
But every so often he made it back to camp. And every so often when hewas back in camp and didn't think she was looking, he'd be sitting therelooking at her.
Trigger grinned happily. Ole Major Quillan--being bashful! Well now!
And that did it. She could feel herself relaxing, slipping down andaway, drifting down through her mind ... farther ... deeper ... towardthe tiny voice that spoke in such a strange language and still wasbecoming daily more comprehensible.
"Uh, say, Trigger!"