Chapter VII: Part 7

"Now with that information," she went on, "and with the contents of your purse and with another little piece of information, which you possess, I shall presently go away. On Orado, a few hours later, Tranest's ambassador will have a quiet talk with some members of the Federation Council. And that will be all, really." She smiled. "No dramatic pursuit! No hue and cry! A few treaties will be considerably revised. And the whole hubbub about the plasmoids will be over." She nodded. "Because they can be made to work, you know. And very well!"

Doctor Veetonia hadn't looked away from Trigger while Lyad was speaking. He said now, "My congratulations, First Lady! But the girl has not been convinced in the least that she should cooperate. She may hope to be rescued before the information you want can be forced from her."

The Ermetyne sighed. "Oh, really now, Trigger!" she very nearly pouted. "Well, if I must explain about that to you, too, I shall."

She considered a moment.

"Did you see your facsimile?"

Trigger nodded. "Very briefly."

Lyad smiled. "How she and my other people passed in and out of that dome, and how it happened that your room guards were found unconscious and were very hurriedly taken to the medical department's contagious ward, makes an amusing little story. But it would be too long in the telling just now. Your facsimile is one of Tranest's finest actresses. She's been studying and practicing being you for months. She knows where to go and what to do in that dome to avoid contact with people who know you too intimately. If it seems that discovery is imminent, she needs only a minute by herself to turn into an entirely different personality. So hours might pass without anyone even suspecting you were gone.

"But on the other hand," Lyad admitted fairly, "your double might be caught immediately or within minutes. She would not be conscious then, and I doubt your fierce little Commissioner would go to the unethical limits of dead-braining a live woman. If he did, of course, he would learn nothing from her.

"Let's assume, nevertheless, that for one reason and another your friends suspect me immediately, and only me. At the time you were being taken from the dome, I was observed leaving the Grand Commerce Center. I'd shopped rather freely; a number of fairly large crates and so forth were loaded into my speedboat. And we were observed returning to the Aurora."

"Not bad," Trigger admitted. "Another facsimile, I suppose?"

"Of course." The Ermetyne glanced at a small jeweled wrist watch. "Now the Aurora, if my orders were being followed, and they were, dived approximately five minutes ago--unless somebody who might be your wrathful rescuers approached her before that time, in which case she dived then. In either case, the dive was seen by the Commissioner's watchers; and the proper conclusions sooner or later will be drawn from that."

"Supposing they dive after her and run her down?" Trigger said.

"They might! The Aurora is not an easy ship to run down in subspace; but they might. After some hours. It would be of no consequence at all, would it?" The amber eyes regarded Trigger with very little expression for a moment. "How many hours or minutes do you think you could hold out here, Trigger Argee, if it became necessary to put on real pressure?"

"I don't know," Trigger admitted. She moistened her lips.

"I could give you a rather close estimate, I think," the Ermetyne said. "But forgive me for bringing up that matter. It was an unnecessary discourtesy. Let's assume instead that the rather clever people with whom you've been working are quite clever enough to see through all these little maneuverings. Let's assume further that they are even able to conclude immediately where you and I must be at the moment.

"We are, as it happens, on the Griffin, which is Belchik Pluly's outsize yacht, and which is orbiting Manon at present. This room is on a sealed level of the yacht, where Belchik's private life normally goes on undisturbed. I persuaded him two days ago to clear out this section of it for my own use. There is only one portal entry to the level, and that entry is locked and heavily guarded at the moment. There are two portal exits. One of them opens into a special lock in which there is a small speedboat of mine, prepared to leave. It's a very fast boat. If there have been faster ones built in the Hub, I haven't heard of them yet. And it can dive directly from the lock."

She smiled at Trigger. "You have the picture now, haven't you? If your friends decide to board the Griffin, they'll be able to do it without too much argument. After all, we don't want to be blown up accidentally. But they'll have quite a time working their way into this level. If a boarding party is reported, we'll just all quietly go away together with no fuss or hurry. I guarantee that no one is going to trace or overtake that boat. You see?"

"Yes," Trigger said disconsolately, slumping back a little. Her right hand dropped to her lap. Well, she thought, last chance!

Doctor Veetonia frowned. "First--" he began.

Trigger slapped the porgee pouch. And the Denton's soundless blast slammed the talented investigator back and over in his chair.

"Gun," Trigger explained unnecessarily.

The Ermetyne's face had turned white with shock. She flicked a glance down at the man, then looked back at Trigger.

"There're guns on me too, I imagine," Trigger said. "But this one goes off very easily, First Lady! It would take hardly any jolt at all."

Lyad nodded slightly. "They're no fools! They won't risk shooting. Don't worry." Her voice was careful but quite even. A tough cookie, as the Commissioner had remarked.

"We won't bother about them at the moment," Trigger said. "Let's stand up together."

They stood up.

"We'll stay about five feet apart," Trigger went on. "I don't know if you're the gun-grabbing type."

The Ermetyne almost smiled. "I'm not!" she said.

"No point in taking chances," Trigger said. "Five feet." She gave Doctor Veetonia a quick glance. He did look very unpleasantly dead.

"We'll go over to that ComWeb in a moment," she told Lyad. "I imagine you wouldn't have left it on open circuit?"

Lyad shook her head. "Calls go through the ship's communication office."

"Your own people on duty there?"

"No. Pluly's."

"Will they take your orders?"

"Certainly!"

"Can they listen in?" Trigger asked.

"Not if we seal the set here."

Trigger nodded. "You'll do the talking," she said. "I'll give you Commissioner Tate's personal number. Tell them to dial it. The Precol transmitters pick up ComWeb circuits. Switch on the screen after the call is in; he'll want to see me. When he comes on, just tell him what's happened, where we are, what the layout is. He's to come over with a squad to get us. I won't say much, if anything. I'll just keep the gun on you. If there's any fumble, we both get it."

"There won't be any fumble, Trigger," Lyad said.

"All right. Let's set up the rest of it before we move. After the Commissioner signs off, he'll be up here in three minutes flat. Or less. How about this ship's officers--do they take your orders too?"

"With the obvious exception of yourself," Lyad said, "everyone on the Griffin takes my orders at the moment."

"Then just tell whoever's in charge of the yacht to let the squad in before there's any shooting. The Commissioner can get awfully short-tempered. Then get the guards away from that entry portal. That's for their own good."

The Ermetyne nodded. "Will do."

"All right. That covers it, I think."

They looked at each other for a moment.

"With the information you got from Balmordan," Trigger remarked, "you should still be able to make a very good dicker with the Council, First Lady. I understand they're very eager to get the plasmoid mess straightened out quietly."

Lyad lifted one shoulder in a brief shrug. "Perhaps," she said.

"Let's move!" said Trigger.

They walked toward the ComWeb rather edgily, not very fast, not very slow, Trigger four or five steps behind. There had been no sound from the walls and no other sign of what must be very considerable excitement nearby. Trigger's spine kept tingling. A needlebeam and a good marksman could pluck away the Denton and her hand along with it, without much real risk to Ermetyne. But probably even the smallest of risks was more than the Tranest people would be willing to take when the First Lady's person was involved.

Lyad reached the ComWeb and stopped. Trigger stopped too, five feet away. "Go ahead," she said quietly.

Lyad turned to face her. "Let me make one last--well, call it an appeal," she said. "Don't be an overethical fool, Trigger Argee! The arrangement I've planned will do no harm to anybody. Come in with me, and you can write your own ticket for the rest of your life."

"No ticket," Trigger said. She waggled the Denton slightly. "Go ahead! You can talk to the Council later."

Lyad shrugged resignedly, turned again and reached toward the ComWeb.

Trigger might have relaxed just a trifle at that moment. Or perhaps there was some other cue that Pilli could pick up. There came no sound from the ceiling canopy. What she caught was a sense of something moving above her. Then the great golden bulk landed with a terrifying lightness on the thick carpet between Lyad and herself.

The eyeless nightmare head wasn't three feet from her own.

The lights in the room went out.

Trigger flung herself backwards, rolled six feet to one side, stood up, backed away and stopped again.

22

The blackness in the room was complete. She spun the Denton to kill. There was silence around her and then a soft rustling at some distance. It might have been the cautious shuffle of a heavy foot over thick carpeting. It stopped again. Where was Lyad?

Her eyes shifted about, trying to pierce the darkness. Black-light, she thought. She said, "Lyad?"

"Yes?" Lyad's voice came easily in the dark. She might be standing about thirty feet away, at the far end of the room.

"Call your animal off," Trigger said quietly. "I don't want to kill it." She began moving in the direction from which Lyad had spoken.

"Pilli won't hurt you, Trigger," the Ermetyne said. "He's been sent in to disarm you, that's all. Throw your gun away and he won't even touch you." She laughed. "Don't bother shooting in my direction either! I'm not in the room any more."

Trigger stopped. Not because of what that hateful, laughing voice had said. But because in the dark about her a fresh, pungent smell was growing. The smell of ripe apples.

She moistened her lips. She whispered, "Pilli--keep away!" Eyeless, the dark would mean nothing to it. Seconds later, she heard the thing breathing.

She faced the sound. It stopped for a moment, then it came again. A slow animal breathing. It seemed to circle slowly to her left. After a little it stopped. Then it was coming toward her.

She said softly, almost pleadingly, "Pilli, stop! Go back, Pilli!"

Silence. Pilli's odor lay heavily all around. Trigger heard her blood drumming in her ears, and, for a second then, she imagined she could feel, like a tangible fog, the body warmth of the monster standing in the dark before her.

It wasn't imagination. Something like a smooth, heavy pad of rubber closed around her right wrist and tightened terribly.

The Denton went off, two, three, four times before she was jerked violently sideways, flung away, sent stumbling backward against some low piece of furniture and, sprawling, over it. The gun was lost.

As she scrambled dizzily to her feet, Pilli screamed. It was a thin, high, breathless sound like the screaming of a terrified human child. It stopped abruptly. And, as if that had been a signal, the room came full of light again.

Trigger blinked dazedly against the light. Virod stood before her, looking at her, a pair of opaque yellow goggles shoved up on his forehead. Black-light glasses. The golden-haired thing lay in a great shapeless huddle on the floor twenty feet to one side. She couldn't see her gun. But Virod held one, pointing at her.

Virod's other hand moved suddenly. Its palm caught the side of her face in a hefty slap. Trigger staggered dumbly sideways, got her balance and stood facing him again. She didn't even feel anger. Her cheek began to burn.

"Stop amusing yourself, Virod!" It was Lyad's voice. Trigger saw her then, standing in a small half-opened door across the room, where a wall hanging had been folded away.

"She appeared to be in shock, First Lady," Virod explained blandly.

"Is Pilli dead?"

"Yes. I have her gun. He got it from her." Virod slapped a pocket of his jacket, and some part of Trigger's mind noted the gesture and suddenly came awake.

"So I saw. Well--too bad about Pilli. But it was necessary. Bring her here then. And be reasonably gentle." Lyad still sounded unruffled. "And put that gun in a different pocket, fool, or she'll take it away from you."

She looked at Trigger impersonally as Virod brought her to the little door, his left hand clamped on her arm just above the elbow.

She said, "Too bad you killed my expert, Trigger! We'll have to use a chemical approach now. Flam and Virod are quite good at that, but there will be some pain. Not too much, because I'll be watching them. But it will be rather undignified, I'm afraid. And it will take a great deal longer."

Tanned, tall, sinuous Flam stood in the small room beyond the door. Trigger saw a long, low, plastic-covered table, clamps and glittering gadgetry. That would have been where cold-fish Balmordan hadn't been able to make it against his mind-blocks finally. There was still one thing she could do. The yacht was orbiting.

"That sort of thing won't be at all necessary!" she said shakily. Her voice shook with great ease, as if it had been practicing it all along.

"No?" Lyad said.

"You've won," Trigger said resignedly. "I'll play along now. I'll show you how to open that handbag, to start with."

Lyad nodded. "How do you open it?"

"You have to press it in the right places. Have them bring it here. I'll show you."

Lyad laughed. "You're a little too eager. And much too docile, Trigger! Considering what's in that handbag, it's not at all likely it will detonate if we brightly hand it to you and let you start pressing. But something or other of a very undesirable nature would certainly happen! Flam--"

The tall redhead nodded and smiled. She went over to a wall cabinet, unlocked it and took out Repulsive's container.

Lyad said, "Put it on that shelf for the moment. Then bring me Virod's gun, and hers."

"I'm afraid you'll have to go up on that table now, Trigger," she said. "If you've really decided to cooperate, it won't be too bad. And, by and by, you'll start telling us very exactly what should be done with that handbag. And a few other things."

She might have caught Trigger's expression then. She added drily, "I was informed a few nights ago that you're quite an artist in rough-and-tumble tactics. So are Virod and Flam. So if you want to give Virod an opportunity to amuse himself a little, go right ahead!"

At that point, the graceful thing undoubtedly would have been to just smile and get up on the table. Trigger discovered she couldn't do it. She gave them a fast, silent, vicious tussle, mouth clenched, breathing hard through her nose. It was quite insanely useless. They weren't letting her get anywhere near Lyad. After Virod had amused himself a little, he picked her up and plunked her down on the table. A minute later, she was stretched out on it, face down, wrists and ankles secured with padded clamps to its surface.

Flam took a small knife and neatly slit the back of the Precol uniform open along the line of her spine. She folded the cloth away. Then Trigger felt the thin icy touches of some vanilla-smelling spray walk up her, ending at the base of her skull.

It wasn't so very painful; Lyad had told the truth about that. But presently it became extremely undignified. Then her thoughts were speeding up and slowing down and swirling around in an odd, confusing fashion. And at last her voice began to say things she didn't want it to say.

After this, there might have been a pause. She seemed to be floating up out of a small pool of sleep when Lyad's voice said somewhere, with cold fury in it: "There's _nothing_ inside?"

A whole little series of memory-pictures popped up suddenly then, like a chain of firecrackers somebody had set off. They formed themselves into a pattern; and there the pattern was in Trigger's mind. She looked at it. Her eyes flew open in surprise. She began to laugh weakly.

Light footsteps came quickly over to her. "Where is that plasmoid, Trigger?"

The Ermetyne was in a fine, towering rage. She'd better say something.

"Ask the Commissioner," she said, mumbling a little.

"It's wearing off, First Lady," said Flam. "Shall I?"

Trigger's thoughts went eddying away for a moment, and she didn't hear Lyad's reply. But then the vanilla smell was there again, and the thin icy touches. This time, they stopped abruptly, halfway.

And then there was a very odd stillness all around Trigger. As if everybody and everything had stopped moving together.

A deep, savage voice said, "I hope there'll be no trouble, folks. I just want her a lot worse than you do."

Trigger frowned in puzzlement. Next came an angry roar, some thumping sounds, a sudden crack.

"Oops!" the deep voice said happily. "A little too hard, I'm afraid!"

Why, of course, Trigger thought. She opened her eyes and twisted her head around.

"Still awake, Trigger?" Quillan asked from the door of the room. He looked pleasantly surprised. There was a very large bellmouthed gun in his hand.

That was an odd-looking little group in the doorway, Trigger felt. On his knees before Quillan was a fat, elderly man, blinking dazedly at her. He wore a brilliantly purple bath towel knotted about his loins and nothing else. It was a moment before she recognized Belchik Pluly. Old Belchy! And on the floor before Belchy, motionless as if in devout prostration, Virod lay on his face. Dead, no doubt. He shouldn't have got gay with Quillan.

"Yes," Trigger said then, remembering Quillan's question. "I've got a very fast snap-back--but they fed me a fresh load of dope just a moment ago."

"So I saw," said Quillan. His glance shifted beyond Trigger.

"Lyad," he said, almost gently.

"Yes, Quillan?" Lyad's voice came from the other side of Trigger. Trigger turned her head toward it. Lyad and Flam both stood at the far side of the room. Their expressions were unhappy.

"I don't like at all," Quillan said, "what's been going on here. Not one bit! Which is why Big Boy got the neck broken finally. Can the rest of us take a hint?"

"Certainly," the Ermetyne said.

"So the Flam girl quits ogling those guns on the shelf and stays put, or they'll amputate a leg. First Lady, you come up to the table and get Trigger unclamped."

Trigger realized her eyes had fallen shut again. She left them that way for a moment. There was motion near her, and the wrist clamps came off in turn. Lyad moved down to her feet.

"The fancy-looking gun is Trigger's?" Quillan inquired.

"Yes," said Lyad.

"Is that what happened to Pilli and the other gent out there?"

"Yes."

"Imagine!" said Quillan thoughtfully. "Uh--got something to seal up the clothes?"

"Yes," Lyad said. "Bring it here, Flam."

"Toss it, Flam!" cautioned Quillan. "Remember the leg."

Lyad's hands did things to the clothes at her back. Then they went away.

"You can sit up now, Trigger!" Quillan's voice informed her loudly. "Sort of slide down easy off the table and see if you can stand."

Trigger opened her eyes, twisted about, slid her legs over the edge of the table, came down on her feet, stood.

"I want my gun and the handbag," she announced. She saw them again then, on the shelf, walked over and picked up the plasmoid container. She looked inside, snapped it shut and slung the strap over her shoulder. She picked up the Denton, looked at its setting, spun it and turned.

"First Lady--" she said.

Lyad went white around the lips. Quillan made some kind of startled sound. Trigger shot.

Flam ran at her then, screaming, arms waving, eyes wild and green like an animal's. Trigger half turned and shot again.

She looked at Quillan. "Just stunned," she explained. She waited.

Quillan let his breath out slowly. "Glad to hear it!" He glanced down at Pluly. "Purse was open," he remarked significantly.

"Uh-huh," Trigger agreed.

"How's the doohinkus?"

She laughed. "Safe and sound! Believe me."

"Good," he said. He still looked somewhat puzzled. "Put the eye on Belchy for a few seconds then. We're taking Lyad along. I'll have to carry her now."

"Right," Trigger said. She felt rather jaunty at the moment. She put the eye on Belchik. Belchik moaned.

They started out of the little room, Pluly in the van, clutching his towel. The Ermetyne, dangling loosely over Quillan's left shoulder, looked fairly gruesomely dead. "You walk this side of me, Trigger," Quillan said. "Still all right?"

She nodded. "Yes." Actually she wasn't quite. It was mainly a problem with her thoughts, which showed a tendency to move along in odd little leaps and bounds, with short stops in between, as if something were trying to freeze them up. But if it was going to be like the first time, she should last till they got to wherever they were going.

Halfway across the room, she saw the golden thing like a huge furry sack on the carpet and shivered. "Poor Pilli!" she said.

"Alas!" Quillan said politely. "I gather you didn't just stun Pilli?"

She shook her head. "Couldn't," she said. "Too big. Too fast."

"How about the other one?"

"Oh, him. Stunned. He's an investigator. They thought he was dead, though. That's what scared Lyad and Flam."

"Yeah," Quillan said thoughtfully. "It would."

Another section of wall hanging had folded aside, and a wide door stood open behind it. They went through the door and turned into a mirrored passageway, Pluly still tottering rapidly ahead. "Might keep that gun ready, Trigger," Quillan warned. "We just could get jumped here. Don't think so, though. They'd have to get past the Commissioner."

"Oh, he's here, too?"

She didn't hear what Quillan answered, because things faded out around then. When they faded in again, the passageway with the mirrors had disappeared, and they were coming to the top of a short flight of low, wide stairs and into a very beautiful room. This room was high and long, not very wide. In the center was a small square swimming pool, and against the walls on either side was a long row of tall square crystal pillars through which strange lights undulated slowly. Trigger glanced curiously at the nearest pillar. She stopped short.

"Galaxy!" she said, startled.

Quillan reached back and grabbed her arm with his gun hand. "Keep moving, girl! That's just how Belchik keeps his harem grouped around him when he's working. Not too bad an idea--it does cut down the chatter. This is his office."

"Office!" Then she saw the large business desk with prosaic standard equipment which stood on the carpet on the other side of the pool. They moved rapidly past the pool, Quillan still hauling at her arm. Trigger kept staring at the pillars they passed. Long-limbed, supple and languid, they floated in their crystal cages, in tinted, shifting lights, eyes closed, hair drifting about their faces.

"Awesome, isn't it?" Quillan's voice said.

"Yes," said Trigger. "Awesome. One in each--he is a pig! They look drowned."

"He is and they aren't," said Quillan. "Very lively girls when he lets them out. Now around this turn and ... oops!"

Pluly had reached the turn at the end of the row of pillars, moaned again and fallen forwards.

"Fainted!" Quillan said. "Well, we don't need him any more. Watch your step, Trigger--dead one just behind Pluly."

Trigger stretched her stride and cleared the dead one behind Pluly neatly. There were three more dead ones lying inside the entrance to the next big room. She went past them, feeling rather dreamy. The sight of a squat, black subtub parked squarely on the thick purple carpeting ahead of her, with its canopy up, didn't strike her as unusual. Then she saw that the man leaning against the canopy, a gun in one hand, was Commissioner Tate. She smiled.

She waved her hand at him as they came up. "Hi, Holati!"

"Hi, yourself," said the Commissioner. He asked Quillan, "How's she doing?"

"Not bad," Quillan said. "A bit ta-ta at the moment. Double dose of ceridim, by the smell of it. Had a little trouble here, I see."

"A little," the Commissioner acknowledged. "They went for their guns."

"Very uninformed gentlemen," said Quillan. He let Lyad's limp form slide off his shoulder, and bent forward to lower her into the subtub's back seat. Trigger had been waiting for a chance to get into the conversation.

"Just who," she demanded now, frowning, "is a bit ta-ta at the moment?"

"You," said Quillan. "You're doped, remember? You'll ride up front with the Commissioner. Here." He picked her up, plasmoid purse and all, and set her down on the front seat. Holati Tate, she discovered then, was already inside. Quillan swung down into the seat behind her. The canopy snapped shut above.

The Commissioner shifted the tub's controls. In the screens, the room outside vanished. A darkness went rushing downwards past them.

A thought suddenly popped to mind again, and Trigger burst into tears. The Commissioner glanced over at her.

"What's the matter, Trigger girl?"

"I'm so s-sorry I killed Pilli. He s-screamed."

Then her mind froze up with a jolt, and thinking stopped completely. Quillan reached over the back of the seat and eased her over on her side.

"Got to her finally!" he said. He sat down again. He brooded a moment. "She shouldn't get so disturbed about that Pilli thing," he remarked then. "It couldn't have lived anyway."

"Eh?" the Commissioner said absently, watching the screens. "Why not?"

"Its brains," Quillan explained, "were too far apart."

The Commissioner blinked. "It's getting to you too, son!" he said.

23

Trigger came out of the ceridim trance hours before Lyad awoke from the stunner blast she'd absorbed. The Commissioner was sitting in a chair beside her bunk, napping.

She looked around a moment, feeling very comfortable and secure. This was her personal cabin on Commissioner Tate's ship, the one he referred to as the Big Job, modeled after the long-range patrol ships of the Space Scouts. It wasn't actually very big, but six or seven people could go traveling around in it very comfortably. At the moment it appeared to be howling through subspace at its hellish rate again, going somewhere.

Well, that could keep.

Trigger reached out and poked the Commissioner's knee. "Hey, Holati!" she whispered. "Wake up."

His eyes opened. He looked at her and smiled. "Back again, eh?" he said.

Trigger motioned at the door. "Close it," she whispered. "Got something to tell you."

"Talk away," he said. "Quillan's piloting, the First Lady's out cold, and Mantelish got dive-sick and I doped him. Nobody else on board."

Trigger lay back and looked at him. "This is going to sound pretty odd!" she warned him. Then she told him what Repulsive had done and what he was trying to do.

The Commissioner looked badly shaken.

"You sure of that, Trigger?"

"Sure, I'm sure."

"Trying to talk to you?"

"That's it."

He blinked at her. "I looked in the bag, and the thing was gone."

"Lyad knows it was gone," Trigger said. "So in case she gets a chance to blab to someone, we'll say you had it."

He nodded and stood up. "You stay here," he said. "Prescription for the kind of treatment you've had is a day of bed rest."

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going to go talk to that Psychology ship," he said. "And just let 'em try to stall me this time!"

He went off up the passage toward the transmitter cabinet in the forward part of the ship. Some minutes passed. Then Trigger suddenly heard Commissioner Tate's voice raised in great wrath. She listened. It appeared the Psychology Service had got off on the wrong foot by advising him once more to stay calm.

He came back presently and sat down beside the bunk, still a little red in the face. "They're going to follow us," he said. "If they hadn't, I would have turned back and gunned our way on board that lopsided disgrace of theirs."

"Follow us? Where?"

He grunted. "A place called Luscious. We'll be there in under a week. It'll take them about three. But they're starting immediately."

Trigger blinked. "Looks like the plasmoids have made it to the head of the problem list!"

"I wouldn't be surprised," said the Commissioner. "I was put through to that Pilch after a while. She said to remind you to listen to your thinking whenever you can get around to it. Know what she meant?"

"I'm not sure I do," Trigger said hesitantly. "But she's mentioned it. I'll give it a whirl. Why are we going to Luscious?"

"Selan's Fleet found plasmoids on it. It's in the Vishni area."

"What kind of plasmoids?"

He shrugged. "They don't amount to much, from what I heard. Small stuff. But definitely plasmoid. It looks like somebody might have done some experimenting there for a while. And not long ago."

"Did they find the big one?"

"Not yet. No trace of any people on Luscious either." He chewed his lip thoughtfully for a moment. "About an hour after we picked you and Lyad up," he said, "we had a Council Order transmitted to the ship. Told us to swing off course a bit and rendezvous with a fast courier boat of theirs."

"What for?"

"The order said the courier was to take Lyad on board and head for the Hub with her. Some diplomatic business." He scratched his chin. "It also instructed us to treat the First Lady of Tranest with the courtesy due to her station meanwhile."

"Brother!" Trigger said, outraged.

"Just too bad I couldn't read that message," said Holati Tate. "Some gravitic disturbance! Rendezvous point's hours behind us. They'll never catch up."

"Ho-ho!" said Trigger. "But that's being pretty insubordinate, Holati!"

"It was till just now," he said. "I mentioned that we had Lyad on board to that Pilch person. She said she'd speak to the Council. We're to hang on to Lyad and when Pilch gets to Luscious she'll interview her."

Trigger grinned. "Now that," she remarked, "gives me a feeling of great satisfaction, somehow. When Pilch gets her little mitts on someone, there isn't much left out."

"I had that impression. Meanwhile, we'll put the Ermetyne through a routine questioning ourselves when she gets over being groggy. Courtesy will be on the moderate side. She'll probably spill part of what she knows, especially if you sit there and hand her the beady stare from time to time."

"That," Trigger assured him, "will be hardly an effort at all!"

"I can imagine. You're pretty sure that thing will show up again?"

Trigger nodded. "Just leave the handbag with me."

"All right." He stood up. "I've got a hot lunch prepared for you. I'll bring the bag along. Then you can tell me what happened after they grabbed you."

"How did you find out I was gone?" Trigger asked.

"Your fac," he said. "The girl was darn good actually. I talked to you--her--on office transmitter once and didn't spot a sour note. Mostly she just kept out of everybody's way. Very slick at it! We would have got her fairly fast because we were preparing for take-off to Luscious by then. But she spilled it herself."

"How?"

"I located her finally again, on transmitter screen. There was no one on her side to impress. She took a sniff of porgee."

Trigger laughed delightedly. "Good old porgee pouch! It beat them twice. But how did you know where I was?"

"No problem there. We knew Lyad had strings on Pluly. Quillan knew about that sealed level on Pluly's yacht and got Pluly to invite him over to admire the harem right after the Dawn City arrived. While he was admiring, he was also recording floor patterns for a subtub jump. That gimmick's pretty much of a spilled secret now, but on a swap for you and Lyad it was worth it. We came aboard five minutes after we'd nabbed your fac."

"The Ermetyne figured you'd go chasing after the Aurora," Trigger said.

"Well," the Commissioner said tolerantly, "the Ermetyne's pretty young. The Aurora was a bit obvious."

"How come Quillan didn't start wondering when I didn't show up in Mantelish's lab with Repulsive?"

"So that's what he was for!" Holati said. He rubbed the side of his jaw. "I was curious about that angle! That wasn't Quillan. That was Quillan's fac."

"In Mantelish's lab?" Trigger said, startled.

"Sure. That's how they all got in. In those specimen crates Mantelish has been lugging into the dome the past couple of days. It looks like the prof's been hypnotized up to his ears for months."

The last five hours of her day of recuperative rest Trigger spent asleep, her cabin door locked and the plasmoid purse open on the bunk beside her. Holati had come by just before to report that the Ermetyne was now awake but very groggy, apparently more than a little shocked, and not yet quite able to believe she was still alive. He'd dose her with this and that, and interrogations would be postponed until everybody was on their feet.

When Trigger woke up from her five hour nap, the purse was shut. She opened it and looked inside. Repulsive was down there, quietly curled up.

"Smart little bugger, aren't you?" she said, not entirely with approval. Then she reached in and gave him a pat. She locked the purse, got dressed and went up to the front of the ship, carrying Repulsive along.

All four of the others were up in the lounge area which included the partitioned control section. The partition had been slid into the wall and the Commissioner, who was at the controls at the moment, had swung his seat half around toward the lounge.

He glanced at the plasmoid purse as Trigger came in, grinned and gave her a small wink.

"Come in and sit down," he said. "We've been waiting for you."

Trigger sat down and looked at them. Something apparently had been going on. Quillan's tanned face was thoughtful, perhaps a trifle amused. Mantelish looked very red and angry. His shock of white hair was wildly rumpled. The Ermetyne appeared a bit wilted.

"What's been going on?" Trigger asked.

It was the wrong question. Mantelish took a deep breath and began bellowing like a wounded thunder-ork. Trigger listened, with some admiration. It was one of the best jobs of well-verbalized huffing she'd heard, even from the professor. He ran down in less than five minutes, though--apparently he'd already let off considerable steam.

Lyad had dehypnotized him, at the Commissioner's suggestion. It had been a lengthy job, requiring a couple of hours, but it was a complete one. Which was understandable, since it was the First Lady herself, Trigger gathered gradually from the noise, who had put Mantelish under the influence, back in his own garden on Maccadon, and within two weeks after his first return from Harvest Moon.

It was again Lyad who had given Mantelish his call to bemused duty via a transmitted verbal cue on her arrival in Manon, and instructed him to get lost from his League guards for a few hours in Manon's swamps. There she had met and conferred with him and pumped him of all he could tell her. As the final outrage, she had instructed him to lug her crated cohorts, preserved like Pluly's harem ladies, into the Precol dome--to care for them tenderly there and at the proper cued moment to release them for action--all under the illusion that they were priceless biological specimens!

Mantelish wasn't in the least appeased by the fact that--again at the Commissioner's suggestion--Lyad had installed one minor new hypno-command which, she said, would clear up permanently his tendency toward attacks of dive sickness. But he just ran down finally and sat there, glowering at the Ermetyne now and then.

"Well," the Commissioner remarked, "this might be as good a time as any to ask a few questions. Got your little quizzer with you, Quillan?"

Quillan nodded. Lyad looked at both of them in turn and then, briefly and for the first time, glanced in Trigger's direction.

It wasn't exactly an appealing glance. It might have been a questioning one. And Trigger discovered suddenly that she felt just a little sympathy for Lyad. Lyad had lost out on a very big gamble. And, each in his own way, there were three very formidable males among whom she was sitting. None of them was friendly; two were oversized, and the undersized one had a fairly bloodchilling record for anyone on the wrong side of law and order. Trigger decided to forget about beady stares for the moment.

"Cheer up, Lyad!" she said. "Nobody's going to hurt you. Just give 'em the answers!"

She got another glance. Not a grateful one, exactly. Not an ungrateful one either. Temporary support had been acknowledged.

"Commissioner Tate has informed me," the Ermetyne said, "that this group does not recognize the principle of diplomatic immunity in my case. Under the circumstances I must accept that. And so I shall answer any questions I can." She looked at the pocket quizzer Quillan was checking over unhurriedly. "But such verification instruments are of no use in questioning me."

"Why not?" Quillan asked idly.

"I've been conditioned against them, of course," Lyad said. "I'm an Ermetyne of Tranest. By the time I was twelve years old, that toy of yours couldn't have registered a reaction from me that I didn't want it to show."

Quillan slipped the toy back in his pocket.

"True enough, First Lady," he said. "And that's one small strike in your favor. We thought you might try to gimmick the gadget. Now we'll just pitch you some questions. A recorder's on. Don't stall on the answers."

And he and the Commissioner started flipping out questions. The Ermetyne flipped back the answers. So far as Trigger could tell, there wasn't any stalling. Or any time for it.

Azol: Doctor Azol had been her boy from the start. He was now on Tranest. The main item in his report to her had been the significance of the 112-113 plasmoid unit. He'd also reported that Trigger Argee had become unconscious on Harvest Moon. They'd considered the possibility that somebody was controlling Trigger Argee, or attempting to control her, because of her connections with the plasmoid operations.

Gess Fayle: Lyad had been looking for Doctor Fayle as earnestly as everyone else after his disappearance. She had not been able to buy him. So far as she knew, nobody had been able to buy him. Doctor Fayle had appeared to intend to work for himself. He was at present well outside the Hub's area of space. He still had 112-113 with him. Yes, she could become more specific about the location--with the help of star maps.

"Let's get them out," said Commissioner Tate.

They got them out. The Ermetyne presently circled a largish section of the Vishni Fleet's area. The questions began again.

113-A: Professor Mantelish had told her of his experiments with this plasmoid--

There was an interruption here while Mantelish huffed reflexively. But it was very brief. The professor wanted to learn more about the First Lady's depravities himself.

--and its various possible associations with the main unit. But by the time this information became available to her, 113-A had been placed under heavy guard. Professor Mantelish had made one attempt to smuggle it out to her.

Huff-huff!

--but had been unable to walk past the guards with it. Tranest agents had made several unsuccessful attempts to pick up the plasmoid. She knew that another group had made similarly unsuccessful attempts. The Devagas. She did not yet know the specific nature of 113-A's importance. But it was important.

Trigger: Trigger Argee might be able to tell them why Trigger was important. Doctor Fayle certainly could. So could the top ranks of the Devagas hierarchy. Lyad, at the moment, could not. She did know that Trigger Argee's importance was associated directly with that of plasmoid 113-A. This information had been obtained from a Devagas operator, now dead. Not Balmordan. The operator had been in charge of the attempted pickup on Evalee. The much more elaborate affair at the Colonial School had been a Tranest job. A Devagas group had made attempts to interfere with it, but had been disposed of.

Pluly: Lyad had strings on Belchik. He was afraid of the Devagas but somewhat more terrified of her. His fear of the Devagas was due to the fact that he and an associate had provided the hierarchy with a very large quantity of contraband materials. The nature of the materials indicated the Devagas were constructing a major fortified outpost on a world either airless or with poisonous atmosphere. Pluly's associate had since been murdered. Pluly believed he was next in line to be silenced.

Balmordan: Balmordan had been a rather high-ranking Devagas Intelligence agent. Lyad had heard of him only recently. He had been in charge of the attempts to obtain 113-A. Lyad had convinced him that she would make a very dangerous competitor in the Manon area. She also had made information regarding her activities there available to him. So Balmordan and a select group of his gunmen had attended Pluly's party on Pluly's yacht. They had been allowed to force their way into the sealed level and were there caught in a black-light trap. The gunmen had been killed. Balmordan had been questioned.

The questioning revealed that the Devagas had found Doctor Fayle and the 112-113 unit, almost immediately after Fayle's disappearance. They had succeeded in creating some working plasmoids. To go into satisfactory operation, they still needed 113-A. Balmordan had not known why. But they no longer needed Trigger Argee. Trigger Argee was now to be destroyed at the earliest opportunity. Again Balmordan had not known why. Fayle and his unit were in the fortress dome the Devagas had been building. It was in the area Lyad had indicated. It was supposed to be very thoroughly concealed. Balmordan might or might not have known its exact coordinates. His investigators made the inevitable slip finally and triggered a violent mind-block reaction. Balmordan had died. Dead-braining him had produced no further relevant information.

The little drumfire of questions ended abruptly. Trigger glanced at her watch. It had been going on for only fifteen minutes, but she felt somewhat dizzy by now. The Ermetyne just looked a little more wilted.

After a minute, Commissioner Tate inquired politely whether there was any further information the First Lady could think of to give them at this time.

She shook her head. No.

Only Professor Mantelish believed her.

But the interrogation was over, apparently.

24

Quillan took over the ship controls, and the Commissioner and Trigger went with the recorder into the little office back of the transmitter cabinet, to slam out some fast reports to the Hub and other points. Lyad was apologizing profoundly to Mantelish as they left the lounge. The professor 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 was fibbing a bit?"

"Sure. Mainly she'd decided in advance how much to tell and how much not. She thinks fast in action though! No slips. What she told of what she knows makes a solid story, and with angles we can check on fast. So it's bound to have plenty of information in it. It'll do for the moment."

"She's already started buttering up Mantelish," said Trigger.

"She'll do that," Quillan said. "By the time we reach Luscious, the prof probably might as well be back in the trances. The Commissioner intends to 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 had marked. "Red dot's well inside," he pointed out. "That bit was probably quite solid info." He looked up at her. "Did it bother you much to hear the Devagas have dropped the grab idea and are out to do you in?"

Trigger shook her head. "Not really," she said. "Wouldn't make much difference 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 back into the lounge again. Just at present she did have a feeling of relaxed, 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 about that not-catassin you squashed?"

"The crazy things claim now it was a plasmoid," Quillan said, "Revolting notion! But it makes some sense for once. Checks with some of the things Lyad just told us, too. Do you remember that Vethi sponge Balmordan was carrying?"

"Yes."

"It didn't come off the ship with him. He checked it out as having died en route."

"That is a revolting notion!" Trigger said after a moment. "Well, at least we've got detectors now."

But the feeling of security had faded somewhat again.

Before dinner was half over, the long-range transmitters abruptly came to life. For the next thirty minutes or so, messages rattled in incessantly, as assorted Headquarters here and there reacted to the Ermetyne's report. The Commissioner sat in the little office and sorted over the incoming information. Trigger stayed at the transmitters, feeding it to him as it arrived. None of it affected them directly--they were already headed for the point in space a great many other people would 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. The transmitters purred idly. Then the person-to-person buzzer sounded.

Trigger punched the screen button. A voice pronounced the ship's dial number.

"Acknowledging," Trigger said. "Who is it?"

"Orado ComWeb Center," said the voice. "Stand by for contact with Federation 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 chair she'd already vacated. Trigger took another seat a few feet away. She felt a little nervous, but she'd always wanted to see a high-powered diplomat 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 armchair in a very plush office.

"Congratulations, Commissioner!" he said, smiling. "I believe you're aware by now that your latest report has set many wheels spinning rapidly!"

"I rather expected it would," the Commissioner admitted. He also smiled.

They pitched it back and forth a few times, very chummy. Roadgear didn't appear to be involved in any specific way with the operations which soon would 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't acknowledge 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," the Commissioner 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 calling about another matter. The First Lady of Tranest appears to have been very 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 been very persuasive?"

"Well," Holati Tate said, "no more than usually."

"Yes," said Councilman Roadgear. "Now there's been some slight concern expressed by some members of the Council--well, let's say they'd just like to be reassured that the amenities one observes in dealing with a head of state actually are being observed in this case. I'm sure they are, of course."

The Commissioner was silent a moment. "I was informed a while ago," he said, "that full responsibility for this Head of State has been assigned to my group. Is that correct?"

The Councilman reddened very slightly. "Quite," he said. "The official Council Order should reach you in a day or so."

"Well, then," said the Commissioner, "I'll assure you and you can assure the Councilmen who were feeling concerned that the amenities are being observed. Then everybody can relax again. Is that all right?"

"No, not quite," Roadgear said annoyedly. "In fact, the Councilmen would very much prefer it, Commissioner, if I were given an opportunity to speak to the First Lady directly to reassure myself on the point."

"Well," Commissioner Tate said, "she can't come to the transmitters right now. She's washing the dishes."

The Councilman reddened very considerably this time. He stared at the Commissioner a moment longer. Then he said in a very soft voice, "Oh, the hell with it!" He added, "Good luck, Commissioner--you're going to need it some time."

The screen went blank.

* * * * *

The scouts of Selan's Independent Fleet, who had first looked this planet over and decided to call it Luscious, had selected a name, Trigger thought, which probably would stick. Because that was what it was, at least in the area where they were camping.

She rolled over from her side to her face and gave herself a push away from the rock she'd been regarding contemplatively for the past few minutes. Feet first, she went drifting out into a somewhat deeper section of Plasmoid Creek.

None of it was very deep. There were pools here and there, in the stretch of the creek she usually came to, where she could stand on her toes in the warm clear water and, arms stretched straight up, barely tickle the surface with her finger tips. But along most of the stretch the bigger rocks weren't even submerged.

She came sliding over the sand to another rock, turned on her back and leaned up against the rock, blinking at sun reflections along the water. Camp was a couple of hundred yards down the valley, its sounds cut off by a rise of the ground. The Commissioner's ship was there, plus a half dozen tents, plus a sizable I-Fleet unit with lab facilities which Selan's outfit had loaned Mantelish for the duration. There were some fifteen, twenty people in all about the camp at the moment. They knew she was loafing around in the water up here and wouldn't disturb her.

Strictly speaking, of course, she wasn't loafing. She was learning how to listen to herself think. She didn't feel she was getting the knack of it too quickly; but it was coming. The best way seemed to be to let go mentally as much as possible; to wait without impatience, really to more-or-less listen quietly within yourself, as if you were looking around in some strange forest, letting whatever wanted to come to view come, and fade again, as something else rose to view instead. The main difficulty was with the business of relaxing mentally, which wasn't at all her natural method of approaching a problem.

But when she could do it, information of a kind that was beginning to look very interesting was likely to come filtering into her awareness. Whatever was at work deep in her mind--and she could give a pretty fair guess at what it was now--seemed as weak and slow as the Psychology Service people had indicated. The traces of its work were usually faint and vague. But gradually the traces were forming into some very definite pictures.