Chapter VIII: Part 8

Lazing around in the waters of Plasmoid Creek for an hour or so every morning had turned out to be a helpful part of the process. On the flashing, all-out run to Luscious, subspace all the way, with the Commissioner and Quillan spelling each other around the clock at the controls, the transmitters clattering for attention every half hour, the ship's housekeeping had to be handled, and somebody besides Mantelish needed to keep a moderately beady eye on the Ermetyne, she hadn't even thought of acting on Pilch's suggestion.

But once they'd landed, there suddenly wasn't much to keep her busy, and she could shift priority to listening to herself think. It was one of those interim periods where everything was being prepared and nothing had got started. As a plasmoid planet, Luscious was pretty much of a bust. It was true that plasmoids were here. It was also true that until fairly recently plasmoids were being produced here.

By the simple method of looking where they were thickest, Selan's people even 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, some twenty-five inches high; a gray, mummylike thing, dead and half rotted inside. It was the first plasmoid--with the possible exception of whatever had flattened itself out on Quillan's gravity mine--known to have died. There had been very considerable excitement when it was first discovered, because the description made it sound very much as if they'd finally located 112-113.

They hadn't. This one--if Trigger had followed Mantelish correctly--could be regarded as a cheap imitation of 112. And its productions, compared with the working plastic life of Harvest Moon, appeared to be strictly on a kindergarten level: nuts and bolts and less than that. To Trigger, most of the ones that had been collected looked like assorted bugs and worms, though one at least was the size of a small pig.

"No form, no pattern," Mantelish rumbled. "Was the thing practicing? Did it attempt to construct an assistant and set it down here to test it? Well, now!" He went off again to incomprehensibilities, apparently no longer entirely dissatisfied. "Get me 112!" he bellowed. "Then this business will be solved! Meanwhile we now at least have plasmoid material 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 numbers of more or less pancake-sized subplasmoids.

* * * * *

This morning Trigger wasn't getting down to the best semidrowsy level at all readily. And it might very well be that Lyad-my-dear business. "You know," she had told the Commissioner thoughtfully the day before, "by the time we're done, Lyad will know more about plasmoids than anyone in the 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 of Tranest. 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 Federation citizen, 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 his work.

It didn't seem to be Lyad that was bothering. Trigger lay flat on her back in the shallow sand bar, arms behind her head, feeling the sun's warmth on her closed eyelids. She watched her thoughts drifting by slowly.

It just might be Quillan.

Ole Major Quillan. The rescuer in time of need. The not-catassin smasher. Quite a guy. The water murmured past her.

On the ride out here they'd run by one another now and then, going from job to job. After they'd arrived, Quillan was gone three quarters of the time, helping out in the hunt for the concealed Devagas fortress. It was still concealed; they hadn't yet picked up a trace.

But every so often he made it back to camp. And every so often when he was back in camp and didn't think she was looking, he'd be sitting there looking at her.

Trigger grinned happily. Ole Major Quillan--being bashful! Well now!

And that did it. She could feel herself relaxing, slipping down and away, drifting down through her mind ... farther ... deeper ... toward the tiny voice that spoke in such a strange language and still was becoming daily more comprehensible.

"Uh, say, Trigger!"

25

Trigger gasped. Her eyes flew open. She made a convulsive effort to vanish beneath the surface of the creek. Being flat on the sand as it was, that didn't work. So she stopped splashing about and made rapid covering-up motions here and there instead.

"You've got a nerve!" she snapped as her breath came back. "Beat it! Fast!"

Ole bashful Quillan, standing on the bank fifteen feet above her, looked hurt. He also looked.

"Look!" he said plaintively. "I just came over to make sure you were all right--wild animals around! I wasn't studying the color scheme."

"_Beat it! At once!_"

Quillan inhaled with apparent difficulty.

"Though now it's been mentioned," he went on, speaking rapidly and unevenly, "there _is_ all that brown and that sort of pink and that lovely white." He was getting more enthusiastic by the moment; Trigger became afraid he would fall off the bank and land in the creek beside her. "And the--ooh-ummh!--wet red hair and the freckles!" he rattled along, his eyes starting out of his head. "And the lovely--"

"Quillan!" she yelled. "Please!"

Quillan checked himself. "Uh!" he said. He drew a deep breath. The wild look faded. Sanity appeared to return. "Well, it's the truth about those wild animals! Some sort of large, uncouth critter was observed just now ducking into the forest at the upper end of the valley!"

Trigger darted a glance along the bank. Her clothes were forty feet away, just beside the water.

"I'm observing some sort of large, uncouth critter right here!" she said coldly. "What's worse, it's observing me. Turn around!"

Quillan sighed. "You're a hard woman, Argee," he said. But he turned. He was carrying a holstered gun, as a matter of fact; but he usually did that nowadays anyway. "This thing," he went on, "is supposed to have a head like a bat, three feet across. It flies."

"Very interesting," Trigger told him. She decided he wasn't going to turn around again. "So now I'll just get into my clothes, and then--"

It came quietly out of the trees around the upper bend of the creek sixty feet away. It had a head like a bat, and was blue on top and yellow below. Its flopping wing tips barely cleared the bank on either side. The three-foot mouth was wide open, showing very long thin white teeth. It came skimming swiftly over the surface of the water toward her.

"Quiiii-LLAN!"

* * * * *

They walked back along the trail to camp. Trigger walked a few steps ahead, her back very straight. The worst of it had been the smug look on his face.

"Heel!" she observed. "Heel! Heel! Heel!"

"Now, Trigger," Quillan said calmly behind her. "After all, it was you who came flying up the bank and wrapped yourself around my neck. All wet, too."

"I was scared!" Trigger snarled. "Who wouldn't be? You certainly didn't hesitate an instant to take full advantage of the situation!"

"True," Quillan admitted. "I'd dropped the bat. There you were. Who'd hesitate? I'm not out of my mind."

She did two dance steps of pure rage and spun to face him. She put her hands on her hips. Quillan stopped warily.

"Your mind!" she said. "I'd hate to have one like it. What do you think I am? One of Belchik's houris?"

For a man his size, he was really extremely quick. Before she could move, he was there, one big arm wrapped about her shoulders, pinning her arms to her sides. "Easy, Trigger!" he said softly.

Well, others had tried to hold her like that when she didn't want to be held. A twist, a jerk, a heave--and over and down they went. Trigger braced herself quietly. If she was quick enough now---- She twisted, jerked, heaved. She stopped, discouraged. The situation hadn't altered appreciably.

She _had_ been afraid it wasn't going to work with Quillan.

"Let go!" she said furiously, aiming a fast heel at his instep. But the instep flicked aside. Her shoe dug into the turf of the path. The ape might even have an extra pair of eyes on his feet!

Then his free palm was cupped under her chin, tilting it carefully. His other eyes appeared above hers. Very close. Very dark.

"I'll bite!" Trigger whispered fiercely. "I'll bi--mmph!

"Mmmph--grrmm!

"Grr-mm-mhm.... Hm-m-m ... mhm!"

* * * * *

They walked on along the trail, hand in hand. They came up over the last little rise. Trigger looked down on the camp. She frowned.

"Pretty dull!" she observed.

"Eh?" Quillan asked, startled.

"Not that, ape!" she said. She squeezed his hand. "Your morals aren't good, but dull it wasn't. I meant generally. We're just sitting here now waiting. Nothing seems to be happening."

It was true, at least on the surface. There were a great number of ships and men around and near Luscious, but they weren't in view. They were ready to jump in any direction, at any moment, but they had nothing to jump at yet. The Commissioner's transmitters hadn't signaled more than two or three times in the last two days. Even the short communicators remained mostly silent.

"Cheer up, Doll!" Quillan said. "Something's bound to break pretty soon."

That evening, a Devagas ship came zooming in on Luscious.

They were prepared for it, of course. That somebody came round from time to time to look over the local plasmoid crop was only to be expected. As the ship surfaced in atmosphere on the other side of the planet, four one-man Scout fighters flashed in on it from four points of the horizon, radiation screens up. They tacked holding beams on it and braced themselves. A Federation destroyer appeared in the air above it.

The Devagas ship couldn't escape. So it blew itself up.

They were prepared for that, too. The Devagas pilot was being dead-brained three minutes later. He didn't know a significant thing except the exact coordinates of an armed, subterranean Devagas dome, three days' run away.

The Scout ships that had been hunting for the dome went howling in toward it from every direction. The more massive naval vessels of the Federation followed behind. There was no hurry for the heavies. The captured Devagas ship's attempt to beam a warning to its base had been smothered without effort. The Scouts were getting in fast enough to block escape attempts.

"And now we split forces," the Commissioner said. He was the only one, Trigger thought, who didn't seem too enormously excited by it all. "Quillan, you and your group get going! They can use you there a whole lot better than we can here."

For just a second, Quillan looked like a man being dragged violently in two directions. He didn't look at Trigger. He asked, "Think it's wise to leave you people unguarded?"

"Quillan," said Commissioner Tate, "that's the first time in my life anybody has suggested I need guarding."

"Sorry sir," said Quillan.

"You mean," Trigger said, "we're not going? We're just staying here?"

"You've got an appointment, remember?" the Commissioner said.

Quillan and company were gone within the hour. Mantelish, Holati Tate, Lyad and Trigger stayed at camp.

Luscious looked very lonely.

* * * * *

"It isn't just the king plasmoid they're hoping to catch there," the Commissioner told Trigger. "And I wouldn't care, frankly, if the thing stayed lost the next few thousand years. But we had a very odd report last week. The Federation's undercover boys have been scanning the Devagas worlds and Tranest very closely of late, naturally. The report is that there isn't the slightest evidence that a single one of the top members of the Devagas hierarchy has been on any of their worlds in the past two months."

"Oh," she said. "They think they're out here? In that dome?"

"That's what's suspected."

"But why?"

He scratched his chin. "If anyone knows, they haven't told me. It's probably nothing nice."

Trigger pondered. "You'd think they'd use facsimiles," she said. "Like Lyad."

"Oh, they did," he said. "They did. That's one of the reasons for being pretty sure they're gone. They're nowhere near as expert at that facsimile business as the Tranest characters. A little study of the recordings showed the facs were just that."

Trigger pondered again. "Did they find anything on Tranest?"

"Yes. One combat-strength squadron of those souped-up frigates of the Aurora class they're allowed by treaty can't be accounted for."

Trigger cupped her chin in her hands and looked at him. "Is that why we've stayed on Luscious, Holati--the four of us?"

"It's one reason. That Repulsive thing of yours is another."

"What about him?"

"I have a pretty strong feeling," he said, "that while they'll probably find the hierarchy in that Devagas dome, they won't find the 112-113 item there."

"So Lyad still is gambling," Trigger said. "And we're gambling we'll get more out of her next play than she does." She hesitated. "Holati--"

"Yes?"

"When did you decide it would be better if nobody ever got to see that king plasmoid again?"

Holati Tate said, "About the time I saw the reconstruct of that yellow monster of Balmordan's. Frankly, Trigger, there was a good deal of discussion of possibilities along that line before we decided to announce the discovery of Harvest Moon. If we could have just kept it hidden away for a couple of centuries--until there was considerably more good sense around the Hub--we probably would have done it. But somebody was bound to run across it sometime. And the stuff did look as if it might be extremely valuable. So we took the chance."

"And now you'd like to untake it?"

"If it's still possible. Half the Fed Council probably would like to see it happen. But they don't even dare think along those lines. There could be a blowup that would throw Hub politics back into the kind of snarl they haven't been in for a hundred years. If anything is done, it will have to look as if it had been something nobody could have helped. And that still might be bad enough."

"I suppose so. Holati--"

"Yes?"

She shook her head. "Nothing. Or if it is, I'll ask you later." She stood up. "I think I'll go have my swim."

She still went loafing in Plasmoid Creek in the mornings. The bat had been identified as an innocent victim of appearances, a very mild-mannered beast dedicated to the pursuit and engulfment of huge mothlike bugs which hung around watercourses. Luscious still looked like the safest of all possible worlds for any creature as vigorous as a human being. But she kept the Denton near now, just in case.

She stretched out again in the sun-warmed water, selected a smooth rock to rest her head on, wriggled into the sand a little so the current wouldn't shift her, and closed her eyes. She lay still, breathing slowly. Contact was coming more easily and quickly every morning. But the information which had begun to filter through in the last few days wasn't at all calculated to make one happy.

She was afraid now she was going to die in this thing. She had almost let it slip out to Holati, which wouldn't have helped in the least. She'd have to watch that in future.

Repulsive hadn't exactly said she would die. He'd said, "Maybe." Repulsive was scared too. Scared badly.

Trigger lay quiet, her thoughts, her attention drifting softly inward and down. Creek water rippled against her cheek.

It was all because that one clock moved so slowly. That was the thing that couldn't be changed. Ever.

26

Three mornings later, the emergency signal called her back to camp on the double.

Trigger ran over the developments of the past days in her mind as she trotted along the path, getting dressed more or less on the way. The Devagas dome was solidly invested by now, its transmitters blanked out. It hadn't tried to communicate with its attackers. On their part, the Fed ships weren't pushing the attack. They were holding the point, waiting for the big, slow wrecking boats to arrive, which would very gently and delicately start uncovering and opening the dome, taking it apart, piece by piece. The hierarchy could surrender themselves and whatever they were hiding in there at any point in the process. They didn't have a chance. Nobody and nothing had escaped. The Scouts had swatted down a few Devagas vessels on the way in; but those had been headed toward the dome, not away from it.

Perhaps the Psychology Service ship had arrived, several days ahead of time.

The other three weren't in camp, but the lock to the Commissioner's ship stood open. Trigger went in and found them gathered up front. The Commissioner had swung the transmitter cabinet aside and was back there, prowling among the power leads.

"What's wrong?" Trigger asked.

"Transmitters went out," he said. "Don't know why yet. Grab some tools and help me check."

She slipped on her work gloves, grabbed some tools and joined him. Lyad and Mantelish watched them silently.

They found the first spots of the fungus a few minutes later.

"Fungus!" Mantelish said, startled. He began to rumble in his pockets. "My microscope--"

"I have it." Lyad handed it to him. She looked at him with concern. "You don't think--"

"It seems possible. We did come in here last night, remember? And we came straight from the lab."

"But we had been decontaminated," Lyad said puzzledly.

"Don't try to walk in here, Professor!" Trigger warned as he lumbered forward. "We might have to de-electrocute you. The Commissioner will scrape off a sample and hand it out. This stuff--if it's what you think it might be--is poisonous?"

"Quite harmless to life, my dear," said the professor, bending over the patch of greenish-gray scum the Commissioner had reached out to him. "But ruinous in delicate instruments! That's why we're so careful."

Holati Tate glanced at Trigger. "Better look in the black box, Trig," he said.

She nodded and wormed herself farther into the innards of the transmitters. A minute later she announced, "Full of it! And that's the one part we can't repair or replace, of course. Is it your beast, Professor?"

"It seems to be," Mantelish said unhappily. "But we have, at least, a solvent which will remove it from the equipment."

Trigger came sliding out from under the transmitters, the detached black box under one arm. "Better use it then before the stuff gets to the rest of the ship. It won't help the black box." She shook it. It tinkled. "Shot!" she said. "There went another quarter million of your credits, Commissioner."

Mantelish and Lyad headed for the lock to get the solvent. Trigger slipped off her work gloves and turned to follow them. "Might be a while before I'm back," she said.

The Commissioner started to say something, then nodded and climbed back into the transmitters. After a few minutes, Mantelish came puffing in with sprayers and cans of solvent. "It's at least fortunate you tried to put out a call just now," he said. "It might have done incalculable damage."

"Doubt it," said Holati. "A few more instruments might have gone. Like the communicators. The main equipment is fungus-proof. How do you attach this thing?"

Mantelish showed him.

The Commissioner thanked him. He directed a fine spray of the solvent into the black box and watched the fungus melt. "Happen to notice where Trigger and Lyad went?" he asked.

"Eh?" said Mantelish. He reflected. "I saw them walking down toward camp talking together as I came in," he called. "Should I go get them?"

"Don't bother," Holati said. "They'll be back."

They came walking back into the ship around half an hour later. Both faces looked rather white and strained.

"Lyad has something she wants to tell you, Holati," Trigger said. "Where's Mantelish?"

"In his lab. Taking a nap, I believe."

"That's good. We don't want him here for this. Go ahead, Lyad. Just the important stuff. You can give us the details after we've left."

Three hours later, the ship was well away from Luscious, traveling subspace, traveling fast. Trigger walked up into the control section.

"Mantelish is still asleep," she said. They'd fed the professor a doped drink to get him aboard without detailed explanation and argument about how much of the lab should be loaded on the ship first. "Shall I get Lyad out of her cabin for the rest of the story or wait till he wakes up?"

"Better wait," said the Commissioner. "He'll come out of it in about an hour, and he might as well hear it with us. Looks like navigating's going to be a little rough for a spell anyway."

Trigger nodded and sat down in the control next to his. After a while he glanced over at her.

"How did you get her to talk?" he asked.

"We went back into the woods a bit. I tied her over a stump and broke two sticks across the first seat of Tranest. Got the idea from Mihul sort of," Trigger added vaguely. "When I picked up a third stick, Lyad got awfully anxious to keep things at just a fast conversational level. We kept it there."

"Hm," said the Commissioner. "You don't feel she did any lying this time?"

"I doubt it. I tapped her one now and then, just to make sure she didn't slow down enough to do much thinking. Besides I'd got the whole business down on a pocket recorder, and Lyad knew it. If she makes one more goof till this deal is over, the recording gets released to the Hub's news viewer outfits, yowls and all. She'd sooner lose Tranest than risk having that happen. She'll be good."

"Yeah, probably," he said thoughtfully. "About that substation--would you feel more comfortable if we went after the bunch round the Devagas dome first and got us an escort for the trip?"

"Sure," Trigger said. "But that would just about kill any chances of doing anything personally, wouldn't it?"

"I'm afraid so. Scout Intelligence will go along pretty far with me. But they couldn't go that far. We might be able to contact Quillan individually though. He's a topnotch man in a fighter."

"It doesn't seem to me," Trigger said, "that we ought to run any risk of being spotted till we know exactly what this thing is like."

"Well," said the Commissioner, "I'm with you there. We shouldn't."

"What about Mantelish and Lyad? You can't let them know either."

The Commissioner motioned with his head. "The rest cubicle back of the cabins. If we see a chance to do anything, we'll pop them both into Rest. I can dream up something to make that look plausible afterwards, I think."

Trigger was silent a moment. Lyad had told them she'd dispatched the Aurora to stand guard over a subspace station where the missing king plasmoid presently was housed, until both she and the combat squadron from Tranest could arrive there. The exact location of that station had been the most valuable of the bits of information she had extracted so painstakingly from Balmordan. The coordinates were centered on the Commissioner's course screen at the moment.

"How about that Tranest squadron?" Trigger asked. "Think Lyad might have risked a lie, and they could get out here in time to interfere?"

"No," said the Commissioner. "She had to have some idea of where to send them before starting them out of the Hub. They'll be doing fine if they make it to the substation in another two weeks. Now the Aurora--if they started for Luscious right after Lyad called them last night, at best they can't get there any sooner than we can get to the substation. I figure that at four days. If they turn right around then, and start back--"

Trigger laughed. "You can bet on that!" she said. The Commissioner had used his ship's guns to brand the substation's coordinates in twenty-mile figures into a mountain plateau above Plasmoid Creek. They'd left much more detailed information in camp, but there was a chance it would be overlooked in too hurried a search.

"Then they'll show up at the substation again four or five days behind us," the Commissioner said. "So they're no problem. But our own outfit's fastest ships can cut across from the Devagas dome in less than three days after their search party messages from Luscious to tell them why we've stopped transmitting and where we've gone. Or the Psychology ship might get to Luscious before the search party does and start transmitting about the coordinates."

"In any case," said Trigger, "it's our own boys who are likely to be the problem."

"Yes. I'd say we _should_ have two days, give or take a few hours, after we get to the station to see if we can do anything useful and get it done. Of course, somebody might come wandering into Luscious right now and start wondering about those coordinate figures, or drop in at our camp and discover we're gone. But that's not very likely, after all."

"Couldn't be helped anyway," Trigger said.

"No. If we knock ourselves out on this job, somebody besides Lyad's Tranest squadron and the Devagas has to know just where the station is." He shook his head. "That Lyad! I figured she'd know how to run the transmitters, so I gave her the chance. But I never imagined she'd be a good enough engineer to get inside them and mess them up without killing herself."

"Lyad has her points," Trigger said. "Too bad she grew up a rat. You had a playback attachment stuck in there then?"

"Naturally."

"Full of the fungus, I suppose?"

"Full of it," said the Commissioner. "Well, Lyad still lost on that maneuver. Much less comfortably than she might have, too."

"I think she'd agree with you there," Trigger said.

Lyad's first assignment after Professor Mantelish came out of the dope was to snap him back into trance and explain to him how he had once more been put under hypno control and used for her felonious ends by the First Lady of Tranest. They let him work off his rage while he was still under partial control. Then the Ermetyne woke him up.

He stared at her coldly.

"You are a deceitful woman, Lyad Ermetyne!" he declared. "I don't wish to see you about my labs again! At any time. Under any pretext. Is that understood?"

"Yes, Professor," Lyad said. "And I'm sorry that I believed it necessary to--"

Mantelish snorted. "Sorry! Necessary! Just to be certain it doesn't happen again, I shall make up a batch of antihypno pills. If I can remember the prescription."

"I happen," the Ermetyne ventured, "to know a very good prescription for the purpose, Professor. If you will permit me!"

Mantelish stood up. "I'll accept no prescriptions from you!" he said icily. He looked at Trigger as he turned to walk out of the cabin. "Or drinks from you either, Trigger Argee!" he growled. "Who in the great spiraling galaxy is there left to trust!"

"Sorry, Professor," Trigger said meekly.

In half an hour or so, he calmed down enough to join the others in the lounge, to get the final story on Gess Fayle and the missing king plasmoid from the Ermetyne.

Doctor Gess Fayle, Lyad reported, had died very shortly after leaving the Manon System. And with him had died every man on board the U-League's transport ship. It might be simplest, she went on, to relate the first series of events from the plasmoid's point of view.

"Point of view?" Professor Mantelish interrupted. "The plasmoid has awareness then?"

"Oh, yes. That one does."

"Self-awareness?"

"Definitely."

"Oho! But then--"

"Professor," Trigger interrupted politely in turn, "may I get you a drink?"

He glared at her, growled, then grinned. "I'll shut up," he said. Lyad went on.

Doctor Fayle had resumed experimentation with the 112-113 unit almost as soon as he was alone with it; and one of the first things he did was to detach the small 113 section from the main one. The point Doctor Fayle hadn't adequately considered when he took this step was that 113's function appeared to be that of a restraining, limiting or counteracting device on its vastly larger partner. The Old Galactics obviously had been aware of dangerous potentialities in their more advanced creations, and had used this means of regulating them. That the method was reliable was indicated by the fact that, in the thirty thousand years since the Old Galactics had vanished, plasmoid 112 had remained restricted to the operations required for the maintenance of Harvest Moon.

But it hadn't liked being restricted.

And it had been very much aware of the possibilities offered by the new life-forms which lately had intruded on Harvest Moon.

The instant it found itself free, it attempted to take control of the human minds in its environment.

"Mind-level control?" Mantelish exclaimed, looking startled. "Not unheard-of, of course. And we'd been considering.... But of _human_ minds?"

Lyad nodded. "It can contact human minds," she said, "though, perhaps rather fortunately, it can project that particular field effect only within a quite limited radius. A little less, the Devagas found later, than five miles."

Mantelish shook his head, frowning. He turned toward the Commissioner. "Holati," he said emphatically, "I believe that thing could be dangerous!"

For a moment, they all looked at him. Then the Commissioner cleared his throat. "It's a possibility, Mantelish," he admitted. "We will give it thought later."

"What," Trigger asked Lyad, "killed the people on the ship?"

"The attempt to control them," Lyad said. Doctor Fayle apparently had died as he was leaving the laboratory with the 113 unit. The other men died wherever they were. The ship, running subspace and pilotless, plowed headlong into the next gravitic twister and broke up.

A Devagas ship's detectors picked up the wreckage three days later. Balmordan was on board the Devagas ship and in charge.

The Devagas, at that time, were at least as plasmoid-hungry as anybody else, and knew they were not likely to see their hunger gratified for several decades. The wreck of a U-League ship in the Manon area decidedly was worth investigating.

If the big plasmoid hadn't been capable of learning from its mistakes, the Devagas investigating party also would have died. Since it could and did learn, they lived. The searchers discovered human remains and the crushed remnants of the 113 unit in a collapsed section of the ship. Then they discovered the big plasmoid--alive in subspace, undamaged and very conscious of the difficulties it now faced.

It had already initiated its first attempt to solve the difficulties. It was incapable of outward motion and could not change its own structure, but it was no longer alone. It had constructed a small work-plasmoid with visual and manipulating organs, as indifferent to exposure to subspace as its designer. When the boarding party encountered the twain, the working plasmoid apparently was attempting to perform some operation on the frozen and shriveled brain of one of the human cadavers.

Balmordan was a scientist of no mean stature among the Devagas. He did not understand immediately what he saw, but he realized the probable importance of understanding it. He had the plasmoids and their lifeless human research object transferred to the Devagas ship and settled down to observe what they did.

Released, the working plasmoid went back immediately to its task. It completed it. Then Balmordan and, presumably, the plasmoids waited. Nothing happened.

Finally, Balmordan investigated the dead brain. Installed in it he found what appeared to be near-microscopic energy receivers of plasmoid material. There was nothing to indicate what type of energy they were to--or could--receive.

Devagas scientists, when they happened to be of the hierarchy, always had enjoyed one great advantage over most of their colleagues in the Federation. They had no difficulty in obtaining human volunteers to act as subjects for experimental work. Balmordan appointed three of his least valuable crew members as volunteers for the plasmoid's experiments.

The first of the three died almost immediately. The plasmoid, it turned out, lacked understanding of, among other things, the use and need of anesthetics. Balmordan accordingly assisted obligingly in the second operation. He was delighted when it became apparent that his assistance was being willingly and comprehendingly accepted. This subject did not die immediately. But he did not regain consciousness after the plasmoid devices had been installed; and some hours later he did die, in convulsions.

Number Three was more fortunate. He regained consciousness. He complained of headaches and, after he had slept, of nightmares. The next day he went into shock for a period of several hours. When he came out of it, he reported tremblingly that the big plasmoid was talking to him, though he could not understand what it said.

There were two more test operations, both successful. In all three cases, the headaches and nightmares stopped in about a week. The first subject in the series was beginning to understand the plasmoid. Balmordan listened to his reports. He had his three surviving volunteers given very extensive physical and psychological tests. They seemed to be in fine condition.

Balmordan now had the operation performed on himself. When he woke up, he disposed of his three predecessors. Then he devoted his full attention to learning what the plasmoid was trying to say. In about three weeks it became clear....

The plasmoid had established contact with human beings because it needed their help. It needed a base like Harvest Moon from which to operate and on which to provide for its requirements. It did not have the understanding to permit it to construct such a base.

So it made the Devagas a proposition. It would work for them, somewhat as it had worked for the Old Galactics, if--unlike the Old Galactics--they would work for it.

Balmordan, newly become a person of foremost importance, transmitted the offer to the hierarchy in the Hub. With no hesitation it was accepted, but Balmordan was warned not to bring his monster into the Hub area. If it was discovered on a Devagas world, the hierarchy would be faced with the choice between another war with the Federation and submission to more severely restrictive Federation controls. It didn't care for either alternative; it had lost three wars with the Federated worlds in the past and each time had been reduced in strength.

They contacted Vishni's Independent Fleet. Vishni's area was not too far from Balmordan's ship position, and the Devagas had had previous dealings with him and his men. This time they hired the I-Fleet to become the plasmoid's temporary caretaker. Within a few weeks it was parked on Luscious, where it devoted itself to the minor creative experimentation which presently was to puzzle Professor Mantelish.

The Devagas meanwhile toiled prodigiously to complete the constructions which were to be a central feature in the new alliance. On a base very far removed from the Hub, on a base securely anchored and concealed among the gravitic swirlings and shiftings of a subspace turbulence area, virtually indetectable, the monster could make a very valuable partner. If it was discovered, the partnership could be disowned. So could the fact that they had constructed the substation for it--in itself a grave breach of Federation treaties.

They built the substation. They built the armed subterranean observer's dome three days' travel away from it. The plasmoid was installed in its new quarters. It then requested the use of the Vishni Fleet people for further experimentation.

The hierarchy was glad to grant the request. It would have had to get rid of those too well informed hirelings in any case.

Having received its experimental material, the plasmoid requested the Devagas to stay away from the substation for a while.

27

The Devagas, said Lyad, while not too happy with their ally's increasingly independent attitude, were more anxious than ever to see the alliance progress to the working stage. As an indication of its potential usefulness, the monster had provided them with a variety of working 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 have demonstrated 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 a moment. "Go on, Lyad."

The hierarchy was now giving renewed consideration to a curious request the plasmoid had made almost as soon as Balmordan became capable of understanding it. The request had been to find and destroy plasmoid 113-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 that this human being must be Trigger Argee.

"_What?_" Mantelish's thick white eyebrows shot up. "113-A we can understand--it is afraid of being in some way brought back under control. But why Trigger?"

"Because," Lyad said carefully, "112 was aware that 113-A intended to condition Trigger into being its interpreter."

Professor Mantelish's jaw dropped. He swung his head toward Trigger. "Is that true?"

She nodded. "It's true, all right. We've been working on it, but we haven't got too far along. Tell you later. Go ahead, Lyad."

The Devagas, naturally, hadn't acted on the king plasmoid's naive suggestion. Whatever it feared was more than likely to be very useful to them. Instead they made preparations to bring both 113-A and Trigger Argee into their possession. They would then have a new, strong bargaining point in their dealings with their dubious partner. But they discovered promptly that neither Trigger nor 113-A were at all easy to come by.

Balmordan now suggested a modification of tactics. The hierarchy had seen to it that a number of interpreters were available for 112; Balmordan in consequence had lost much of his early importance and was anxious to regain it. His proposal was that all efforts should be directed at obtaining 113-A. Once it was obtained, he himself would volunteer to become its first interpreter. Trigger Argee, because of the information she might reveal to others, should be destroyed--a far simpler operation than attempting to take her alive.

This was agreed to; and Balmordan was authorized to carry out both operations.

Mantelish had begun shaking his head again. "No!" he said suddenly and loudly. He looked at Lyad, then at Trigger. "Trigger!" he said.

"Yes?" said Trigger.

"Take that deceitful woman to her cabin," Mantelish ordered. "Lock her up. 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 the Commissioner. 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 almost inestimable potential value to civilization."

"Of course," the Commissioner agreed.

"But it also," said Mantelish, "represents a quite intolerable threat to civilization."

"Mantelish!" cried the Commissioner.

"It does. You don't comprehend these matters as I do. Holati, that plasmoid 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's crowded curriculum. But the Commissioner broke out one of the ship's two heavy-duty suits; and when Trigger wasn't at the controls, eating, sleeping, or taking care of the ship's housekeeping with Lyad and Mantelish, she drilled.

She wasn't at the controls too often. When she was, they had to surface and proceed in normal space. But Lyad, not too surprisingly, turned out to be a qualified subspace pilot. Even less surprisingly, she already had made a careful study of the ship's controls. After a few hours of instruction, she went on shift with the Commissioner along the less rugged 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 himself noticeable.

Time passed. The stretches got rougher. The last ten hours, the Commissioner didn't stir out of the control seat. Lyad had been locked in 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 that somewhere in the swirling energies about them might be something more solidly material. It was like creeping through jungle thickets towards the point where a dangerous quarry lurked.

They eased down on the coordinate points. They came sliding out between two monstrous twisters. The detectors leaped to life.

"Ship!" said the Commissioner. He swore. "Frigate class," he said an instant later. He turned his head toward Trigger. "Get Lyad! They're in communication range. We'll let her communicate."

Trigger, heart hammering, ran to get Lyad. The Commissioner had the short-range communicator on when they came hurrying back to the control room together.

"That the Aurora?" he asked.

Lyad glanced at the outline in the detectors. "It is!" Her face went white.

"Talk to 'em," he ordered. "Know their call number?"

"Of course," Lyad sat down at the communicator. Her hands shook for a moment, 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!" There was the snap of command in the words.

Again a pause. Then suddenly the communicator was looking into the Aurora's control room. A brown-bearded, rather lumpy-faced man in uniform sat before the other screen. There were other uniformed men behind him. Trigger heard the Ermetyne's breath suck in and turned to watch Lyad's face.

"Why haven't you carried out your instructions, Captain?" The voice was still 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 the Commissioner. "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 a button. The flame vanished and stars shone all around. The engines hurled them forward. Twelve seconds later, they angled and dived again. Subspace reappeared.

"Guess you were right!" the Commissioner said. He idled the engines and scratched his chin. "But what were they?"

* * * * *

"Everything about it was wrong!" Lyad was saying presently, her face still white. "Their faces, in particular, were deformed!" She looked at Trigger. "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 if his cheeks and forehead were pushed out of shape!"

There was a short silence. "Well," said the Commissioner, "seems like that plasmoid has been doing some more experimenting. Question is, how did it get to them?"

They didn't find any answers to that. Lyad insisted the Aurora had been given specific orders to avoid the immediate vicinity of the substation. Its only purpose there was to observe and report on anything that seemed to be going on in the area. She couldn't imagine her crew disobeying the orders.

"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 they didn'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 the frigate first. We can't risk snooping around the station while she's there 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 been riding in isn't a canoe." He glanced at Lyad. "I suppose you'd feel happier if you weren't locked up in your cabin during the ruckus?"

Lyad gave him a strained smile. "Commissioner," she said, "You're so right!"

"Then keep your seat," he said. "We'll start prowling."

They prowled. It took an hour to recontact the Aurora, presumably because the Aurora was also prowling for them. Suddenly the detectors came alive.

The ship's guns went off at once. Then subspace went careening crazily past 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 to have lost none of their ability to give battle. It was a very brisk affair. But neither had the onetime Squadron Commander Tate lost much of his talent along those lines. The frigate had many more guns but no better range. And he had the faster ship. Four minutes after the first shots were exchanged, the Aurora blew up.

The ripped hunk of the Aurora's hull which the Commissioner presently brought into the lock appeared to have had three approximately quarter-inch holes driven at a slant through it, which subsequently had been plugged again. The plugging material was plasmoid in character.

"There were two holes in another piece," the Commissioner said, very thoughtfully. "If that's the average, she was punched in a few thousand spots. Let's go have a better look."

He and Mantelish maneuvered the gravity crane carrying the holed slab of steel-alloy into the ship's workshop. Lyad was locked back into her cabin, and Trigger went on guard in the control room and looked out wistfully at the stars of normal space.

Half an hour later, the two men came up the passage and joined her. They appeared preoccupied.

"It's an unpleasant picture, Trigger girl," the Commissioner said. "Those holes look sort of chewed through. Whatever did the chewing was also apparently capable of sealing up the portion behind it as it went along. 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 ordinary germ invasion. It doesn't really matter. It fixed them."

"Mighty large germs!" Trigger said. "Why didn't their meteor reflectors stop 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 keep moving ourselves--"

"That," said the Commissioner, "was what I had in mind."

28

Trigger couldn't keep from staring at the subspace station. It was unbelievable.

One could still tell that the human construction gangs had put up a standard type of armored station down there. A very big, very massive one, but normally shaped, nearly spherical. One could tell it only by the fact that at the gun pits the original material still showed through. Everywhere else it had vanished under great black masses of material which the plasmoids had added to the station's structure.

All over that black, lumpy, lavalike surface the plasmoids crawled, walked, soared and wriggled. There were thousands of them, perhaps hundreds of different types. It looked like a wet, black, rotten stump swarming with life inside and out.

Neither she nor the two men had made much mention of its appearance. All you could say was that it was horrible.

The plasmoids they could see ignored the ship. They also gave no noticeable attention to the eight space flares the Commissioner had set in a rough cube about the station. But for the first two hours after their arrival, the ship's meteor reflectors remained active. An occasional tap at first, then an almost continuous pecking, finally a twenty-minute drumfire that filled the reflector screens with madly dancing clouds of tiny sparks. Suddenly it ended. Either the king plasmoid had exhausted its supply of that particular weapon or it preferred to conserve what it had left.

"Might test their guns," the Commissioner muttered. He looked very unhappy, Trigger thought.

He circled off, put on speed, came back and flicked the ship past the station's flank. He drew bursts from two pits with a promptness which confirmed what already had been almost a certainty--that the gun installations operated automatically. They seemed remarkably feeble weapons for a station of that size. The Devagas apparently had had sense enough not to give the plasmoid every advantage.

The Commissioner plunked a test shot next into one of the black protuberances. A small fiery crater appeared. It darkened quickly again. Out of the biggest opening, down near what would have been the foot of the stump if it had been a stump, something, long, red and wormlike wriggled rapidly. It flowed up over the structure's surface to the damaged point and thrust the tip of its front end into the crater. Black material began to flow from the tip. The plasmoid moved its front end back and forth across the damaged area. Others of the same kind came out and joined it. The crater began to fill out.

They hauled away a little and surfaced. Normal space looked clean, beautiful, homelike, calmly shining. None of them except Lyad had slept for over twenty hours. "What do you think?" the Commissioner asked.

They discussed what they had seen in subdued voices. Nobody had a plan. They agreed that one thing they could be sure of was that the Vishni Fleet people and any other human beings who might have been on the station when it was turned over to the king plasmoid were no longer alive. Unless, of course, something had been done to them much more drastic than had happened to the Aurora's crew. The ship had passed by the biggest opening, like a low wide black mouth, close enough to make out that it extended far back into the original station's interior. The station was open and airless as Harvest Moon had been before the humans got there.

"Some of those things down there," the Commissioner said, "had attachments that would crack any suit wide open. A lot of them are big, and a lot of them are fast. Once we were inside, we'd have no maneuverability to speak of. If the termites didn't get to us before we got inside. Suits won't do it here." He was a gambler, and a gambler doesn't buck impossible odds.

"What could you do with the guns?" Trigger asked.

"Not too much. They're not meant to take down a fortress. Scratching around on the surface with them would just mark the thing up. We can widen that opening by quite a bit, and once it's widened, I can flip in the bomb. But it would be just blind luck if we nailed the one we're after that way. With a dozen bombs we could break up the station. But we don't have them."

They nodded thoughtfully.

"The worst part of that," he went on, "is that it would be completely obvious. The Council's right when it worries about fumbles here. Tranest and the Devagas know the thing is in there. If the Federation can't produce it, both those outfits have the Council over a barrel. Or we could be setting the Hub up for fifty years of fighting among the member worlds, sometime in the next few hours."

Mantelish and Trigger nodded again. More thoughtfully.

"Nevertheless--" Mantelish began suddenly. He checked himself.

"Well, you're right," the Commissioner said. "That stuff down there just can't be turned loose, that's all! The thing's still only experimenting. We don't know what it's going to wind up with. So I guess we'll be trying the guns and the bomb finally, and then see what else we can do.... Now look, we've got--what is it?--nine or ten hours left. The first of the boys are pretty sure to come helling in around then. Or maybe something's happened we don't know about, and they'll be here in thirty minutes. We can't tell. But I'm in favor of knocking off now and just grabbing a couple of hours' sleep. Then we'll get our brains together again. Maybe by then somebody has come up with something like an idea. What do you say?"

"Where," Mantelish said, "is the ship going to be while we're sleeping?"