27
The Devagas, said Lyad, while not too happy with their ally'sincreasingly independent attitude, were more anxious than ever to seethe alliance progress to the working stage. As an indication of itspotential usefulness, the monster had provided them with a variety ofworking plasmoid robots, built to their own specifications.
"What kind of specifications?" Trigger inquired.
Lyad hadn't learned in detail, but some of the robots appeared to havedemonstrated rather alarming possibilities. Those possibilities,however, were precisely what intrigued the hierarchy most.
Mantelish smacked his lips thoughtfully and shook his head. "Not good!"he said. "Not at all good! I'm beginning to think--" He paused amoment. "Go on, Lyad."
The hierarchy was now giving renewed consideration to a curious requestthe plasmoid had made almost as soon as Balmordan became capable ofunderstanding it. The request had been to find and destroy plasmoid113-A.
The Ermetyne's amber eyes switched to Trigger. "Shall I?" she asked.
Trigger nodded.
And a specific human being. The Devagas already had established thatthis human being must be Trigger Argee.
"_What?_" Mantelish's thick white eyebrows shot up. "113-A we canunderstand--it is afraid of being in some way brought back undercontrol. But why Trigger?"
"Because," Lyad said carefully, "112 was aware that 113-A intended tocondition Trigger into being its interpreter."
Professor Mantelish's jaw dropped. He swung his head toward Trigger. "Isthat true?"
She nodded. "It's true, all right. We've been working on it, but wehaven't got too far along. Tell you later. Go ahead, Lyad."
The Devagas, naturally, hadn't acted on the king plasmoid's naivesuggestion. Whatever it feared was more than likely to be very useful tothem. Instead they made preparations to bring both 113-A and TriggerArgee into their possession. They would then have a new, strongbargaining point in their dealings with their dubious partner. But theydiscovered promptly that neither Trigger nor 113-A were at all easy tocome by.
Balmordan now suggested a modification of tactics. The hierarchy hadseen to it that a number of interpreters were available for 112;Balmordan in consequence had lost much of his early importance and wasanxious to regain it. His proposal was that all efforts should bedirected at obtaining 113-A. Once it was obtained, he himself wouldvolunteer to become its first interpreter. Trigger Argee, because of theinformation she might reveal to others, should be destroyed--a farsimpler operation than attempting to take her alive.
This was agreed to; and Balmordan was authorized to carry out bothoperations.
Mantelish had begun shaking his head again. "No!" he said suddenly andloudly. He looked at Lyad, then at Trigger. "Trigger!" he said.
"Yes?" said Trigger.
"Take that deceitful woman to her cabin," Mantelish ordered. "Lock herup. I have something to say to the Commissioner."
Trigger arose. "All right," she said. "Come on, Lyad."
The two of them left the lounge. Mantelish stood up and went over to theCommissioner. He grasped the Commissioner's jacket lapels.
"Holati, old friend!" he began emotionally.
"What is it, old friend?" the Commissioner inquired.
"What I have to say," Mantelish rumbled, "will shock you. Profoundly."
"No!" exclaimed the Commissioner.
"Yes," said Mantelish. "That plasmoid 112--it has, of course, an almostinestimable potential value to civilization."
"Of course," the Commissioner agreed.
"But it also," said Mantelish, "represents a quite intolerable threat tocivilization."
"Mantelish!" cried the Commissioner.
"It does. You don't comprehend these matters as I do. Holati, thatplasmoid must be destroyed! Secretly, if possible. And by us!"
"Mantelish!" gasped the Commissioner. "You can't be serious!"
"I am."
"Well," said Commissioner Tate, "sit down. I'm open to suggestions."Space-armor drill hadn't been featured much in the Colonial School'scrowded curriculum. But the Commissioner broke out one of the ship's twoheavy-duty suits; and when Trigger wasn't at the controls, eating,sleeping, or taking care of the ship's housekeeping with Lyad andMantelish, she drilled.
She wasn't at the controls too often. When she was, they had to surfaceand proceed in normal space. But Lyad, not too surprisingly, turned outto be a qualified subspace pilot. Even less surprisingly, she alreadyhad made a careful study of the ship's controls. After a few hours ofinstruction, she went on shift with the Commissioner along the lessrugged stretches. In this area, none of the stretches were smooth.
When not on duty, Lyad lay on her bunk and brooded.
Mantelish tried to be useful.
Repulsive might have been brooding too. He didn't make himselfnoticeable.
Time passed. The stretches got rougher. The last ten hours, theCommissioner didn't stir out of the control seat. Lyad had been lockedin her cabin again as the critical period approached. In normal space,the substation should have been in clear detector range by now. Here,the detectors gave occasional blurry, uncertain indications thatsomewhere in the swirling energies about them might be something moresolidly material. It was like creeping through jungle thickets towardsthe point where a dangerous quarry lurked.
They eased down on the coordinate points. They came sliding out betweentwo monstrous twisters. The detectors leaped to life.
"Ship!" said the Commissioner. He swore. "Frigate class," he said aninstant later. He turned his head toward Trigger. "Get Lyad! They're incommunication range. We'll let her communicate."
Trigger, heart hammering, ran to get Lyad. The Commissioner had theshort-range communicator on when they came hurrying back to the controlroom together.
"That the Aurora?" he asked.
Lyad glanced at the outline in the detectors. "It is!" Her face wentwhite.
"Talk to 'em," he ordered. "Know their call number?"
"Of course," Lyad sat down at the communicator. Her hands shook for amoment, then steadied. "What am I to say?"
"Just find out what's happened, to start with. Why they're still here.Then we'll improvise. Get them to come to the screen if you can."
Lyad's fingers flew over the tabs. The communicator signaled contact.
Lyad said evenly, "Come in, Aurora! This is the Ermetyne."
There was a pause, a rather unaccountably long pause, Trigger thought.Then a voice said, "Yes, First Lady?"
Lyad's eyes widened for an instant. "Come in on visual, Captain!" Therewas the snap of command in the words.
Again a pause. Then suddenly the communicator was looking into theAurora's control room. A brown-bearded, rather lumpy-faced man inuniform sat before the other screen. There were other uniformed menbehind him. Trigger heard the Ermetyne's breath suck in and turned towatch Lyad's face.
"Why haven't you carried out your instructions, Captain?" The voice wasstill even.
"There was a difficulty with the engines, First Lady."
Lyad nodded. "Very well. Stand by for new instructions."
She switched off the communicator. She twisted around toward theCommissioner. "Get us out of here!" she said, chalk-faced. "_Fast!_Those aren't my men."
Flame bellowed about them in subspace. The Commissioner's hand slapped abutton. The flame vanished and stars shone all around. The engineshurled them forward. Twelve seconds later, they angled and dived again.Subspace reappeared.
"Guess you were right!" the Commissioner said. He idled the engines andscratched his chin. "But what were they?"
* * * * *
"Everything about it was wrong!" Lyad was saying presently, her facestill white. "Their faces, in particular, were deformed!" She looked atTrigger. "You saw it?"
Trigger nodded. She suspected she was on the white-faced side herself."The captain," she said. "I didn't look at the others. It looked as ifhis cheeks and forehead were pushed out of shape!"
There was a short sile
nce. "Well," said the Commissioner, "seems likethat plasmoid has been doing some more experimenting. Question is, howdid it get to them?"
They didn't find any answers to that. Lyad insisted the Aurora had beengiven specific orders to avoid the immediate vicinity of the substation.Its only purpose there was to observe and report on anything that seemedto be going on in the area. She couldn't imagine her crew disobeying theorders.
"That mind-level control business," Trigger said finally. "Maybe _it_found a way of going out to _them_."
She could see by their faces that the idea had occurred, and that theydidn't like it. Well, neither did she.
They pitched a few more ideas around. None of them seemed helpful.
"Unless we just want to hightail it," the Commissioner said finally,"about the only thing we can do is go back and slug it out with thefrigate first. We can't risk snooping around the station while she'sthere and likely to start pounding on our backs any second."
Mantelish looked startled. "Holati," he cautioned, "That's a warship!"
"Mantelish," the Commissioner said, a trifle coldly, "what you've beenriding in isn't a canoe." He glanced at Lyad. "I suppose you'd feelhappier if you weren't locked up in your cabin during the ruckus?"
Lyad gave him a strained smile. "Commissioner," she said, "You're soright!"
"Then keep your seat," he said. "We'll start prowling."
They prowled. It took an hour to recontact the Aurora, presumablybecause the Aurora was also prowling for them. Suddenly the detectorscame alive.
The ship's guns went off at once. Then subspace went careening crazilypast in the screens. Trigger looked at the screens for a few seconds,gulped and started studying the floor.
Whatever the plasmoid had done to the frigate's crew, they appeared tohave lost none of their ability to give battle. It was a very briskaffair. But neither had the onetime Squadron Commander Tate lost much ofhis talent along those lines. The frigate had many more guns but nobetter range. And he had the faster ship. Four minutes after the firstshots were exchanged, the Aurora blew up.
The ripped hunk of the Aurora's hull which the Commissioner presentlybrought into the lock appeared to have had three approximatelyquarter-inch holes driven at a slant through it, which subsequently hadbeen plugged again. The plugging material was plasmoid in character.
"There were two holes in another piece," the Commissioner said, verythoughtfully. "If that's the average, she was punched in a few thousandspots. Let's go have a better look."
He and Mantelish maneuvered the gravity crane carrying the holed slab ofsteel-alloy into the ship's workshop. Lyad was locked back into hercabin, and Trigger went on guard in the control room and looked outwistfully at the stars of normal space.
Half an hour later, the two men came up the passage and joined her. Theyappeared preoccupied.
"It's an unpleasant picture, Trigger girl," the Commissioner said."Those holes look sort of chewed through. Whatever did the chewing wasalso apparently capable of sealing up the portion behind it as it wentalong. What it did to the men when it got inside we don't know.Mantelish feels we might compare it roughly to the effects of ordinarygerm invasion. It doesn't really matter. It fixed them."
"Mighty large germs!" Trigger said. "Why didn't their meteor reflectorsstop them?"
"If the ship was hove to and these things just drifted in gradually--"
"Oh, I see. That wouldn't activate the reflectors. Then, if we keepmoving ourselves--"
"That," said the Commissioner, "was what I had in mind."