The driver didn't reply, but the car's renewed surge of power pushed Trigger down hard on the seat. She couldn't see much more than a shifting piece of the skyline through the front view plate. Their own car seemed to be rising at a tremendous rate. They were probably, she thought, already above the main traffic arteries over Ceyce. "Now, Miss Argee," the man sitting beside her said, "I'd like to reassure you a little first."

  "Go ahead and reassure me," Trigger said unsteadily.

  "You're in no slightest danger from us," he said. "We're your friends."

  "Nice friends!" remarked Trigger.

  "I'll explain it all in a couple of minutes. There may be some fairly dangerous characters on our tail at the moment, and if they start to catch up—"

  "Which they seem to be doing," the driver interrupted. "Hang on for a few fast turns when we hit the next cloud bank."

  "We'll probably shake them there," the other man explained to Trigger. "In case we don't though, I'll need both hands free to handle the guns."

  "So?" she asked.

  "So I'd like to slip a set of cuffs on you for just a few minutes. I've been informed you're a fairly tricky lady, and we don't want you to do anything thoughtless. You won't have them on very long. All right?"

  Trigger bit her lip. It wasn't all right, and she didn't feel at all reassured so far.

  "Go ahead," she said.

  He let go of her left arm, presumably to reach for the handcuffs. She twisted around on him and went into fast action.

  She was fairly proficient at the practice of unarmed mayhem. The trouble was that the big ape she was trying the stuff on seemed at least as adept and with twice her muscle. She lost a precious instant finding out that the Denton was no longer in her robe pocket. After that she never got back the initiative. It didn't help either that the car suddenly seemed to be trying to fly in three directions at once.

  All in all, about forty seconds passed before she was plumped back on the seat, her hands behind her again, linked at the wrists by the smooth plastic cords of the cuffs. The ape stood behind the driver, his hands resting on the back of the seat. He wasn't, Trigger observed bitterly, even breathing hard. The view plate was full of the cottony whiteness of a cloud heart. They seemed to be dropping again.

  One more violent swerve and they came flashing out into wet gray cloud-shadow and on into brilliant sunlight.

  A few seconds passed. Then the ape remarked, "Looks like you lost them, chum."

  "Right," said the driver. "Almost at the river now. I'll turn north there and drop down."

  "Right," said the ape. "Get us that far and we'll be out of trouble."

  A few minutes passed in silence. Presently Trigger sensed they were slowing and losing altitude. Then a line of trees flashed by in the view plate. "Nice flying!" the ape said. He punched the driver approvingly in the shoulder and turned back to Trigger.

  They looked at each other for a few seconds. He was tall, dark-eyed, very deeply tanned, with thick sloping shoulders. He probably wasn't more than five or six years older than she was. He was studying her curiously, and his eyes were remarkably steady. Something stirred in her for a moment, a small chill of fear. Something passed through her thoughts, a vague odd impression, like a half aroused memory, of huge, cold, dangerous things far away. It was gone before she could grasp it more clearly. She frowned.

  The ape smiled. It wasn't, Trigger saw, an entirely unpleasant face. "Sorry the party got rough," he said. "Will you give parole if I take those cuffs off and tell you what this is about?"

  She studied him again. "Better tell me first," she said shortly.

  "All right. We're taking you to Commissioner Tate. We'll be there in about an hour. He'll tell you himself why he wanted to see you."

  Trigger's eyes narrowed for an instant. Secretly she felt very much relieved. Holati Tate, at any rate, wouldn't let anything really unpleasant happen to her—and she would find out at last what had been going on.

  "You've got an odd way of taking people places," she observed.

  He laughed. "The grabber party wasn't scheduled. You'd indicated you wanted to speak to the Commissioner. We were sent to the Colonial School to pick you up and escort you to him. When we found out you'd disappeared, we had to do some fast improvising. Not my business to tell you the reasons for that."

  Trigger said hesitantly, "Those people who were chasing this car—"

  "What about them?" he asked thoughtfully.

  "Were they after me?"

  "Well," he said, "they weren't after me. Better let the Commissioner tell you about that, too. Now—how about parole?"

  She nodded. "Till you turn me over to the Commissioner."

  "Fair enough," he said. "You're his problem then." He took a small flat piece of metal out of a pocket and reached back of her with it. He didn't seem to do more than touch the cuffs, but she felt the slick coils loosen and drop away.

  Trigger rubbed her wrists, "Where's my gun?" she asked.

  "I've got it. I'll give it to the Commissioner."

  "How did you people find me so fast?"

  "Police keep bank entrances under twenty-four hour visual survey. We had someone watching their screens. You were spotted going in." He sat down companionably beside her. "I'd introduce myself, but I don't know if that would fit in with the Commissioner's plans."

  Trigger shrugged. It still was quite possible, she decided, that her own plans weren't completely spoiled. Holati and his friends didn't necessarily know about that vault account. If they did know she'd had one and had closed it out, they could make a pretty good guess at what she'd done with the money. But if she just kept quiet, there might be an opportunity to get back to Ceyce and the Dawn City by tomorrow evening.

  "No hard feelings, are there?" the Commissioner's over-muscled henchman inquired amiably.

  Trigger glanced at him from the side. Not amiably. "Yes," she said evenly. "There are."

  He looked surprised. "Maybe," the driver suggested from the front, "what Miss Argee could do with is a shot of Puya. Flask's in my coat pocket. Left side."

  "There's an idea," remarked Trigger's companion. He looked at her. "It's very good Puya."

  "So choke on it," Trigger told him gently. She settled back into the corner of the seat and closed her eyes. "You can wake me up when we get to the Commissioner."

  6

  When Trigger was brought to Commissioner Tate's little private office and inquired with some heat what the devil was up, the tall grabber hadn't come into the office with her. He asked the Commissioner from the door whether he should get Professor Mantelish to the conference room, and the Commissioner nodded. The door closed and the two of them were alone.

  Commissioner Tate was a mild-looking little man, well along in years, sparse and spruce in his Precol uniform. The small gray eyes in the sun-darkened, leathery face weren't really mild, if you considered them more closely, or if you knew the Commissioner.

  "I know it's looked odd," the Commissioner admitted, "but the circumstances have been very odd. Still are. And I didn't want to worry you any more than I had to."

  "Really? The methods you've used not to worry me have hardly been soothing," said Trigger, unmollified.

  "I know that, too," said the Commissioner. "But if I'd told you everything immediately, you would have had reason enough to be worried for the past two months, rather than just for a day or so. The situation has improved now, very considerably. In fact, in another few days you shouldn't have any more reason to worry at all." He smiled briefly. "At least, no more than the rest of us."

  Trigger felt a bit dry-lipped suddenly. "I do at present?" she asked.

  "You did till today. There's been some pretty heavy heat on you, Trigger girl. We're switching most of it off tonight. For good, I think."

  "You mean some heat will be left?"

  "In a way," he said. "But that should be cleared up too in the next three or four days." Commissioner Tate got to his feet. "Then let's go join Mantelish."

  "Why the professor?"

  "He's got a kind of pet I'd like you to look at."

  "A pet!" cried Trigger. She shook her head again and stood up resignedly. "Lead on, Commissioner!"

  * * *

  They joined Mantelish and his plasmoid weirdie in what looked like the dining room of what had looked like an old-fashioned hunting lodge when the aircar came diving down on it between two ice-sheeted mountain peaks. Trigger wasn't sure in just what section of the main continent they were; but there were only two or three alternatives—it was high in the mountains, and night came a lot faster here than it did around Ceyce.

  She greeted Mantelish and sat down at the table. He was a very big, rather fat but healthy-looking old man with a thick thatch of white hair and a ruddy face.

  Then the Commissioner locked the doors and introduced her to the professor's pet.

  "In some way," Holati Tate said, "this little item here seems to be at the core of the whole plasmoid problem. Know what it is?"

  Trigger looked at the little item with some revulsion. Dark green, marbled with pink streakings, it lay on the table between them, rather like a plump leech a foot and a half long. It was motionless except that the end nearest her shifted in a short arc from side to side, as if the thing suffered from a very slow twitch.

  "One of the plasmoids obviously," she said. "A jumpy one." She blinked at it. "Looks like that 113. Is it?"

  She glanced around. Commissioner Tate and Professor Mantelish, who sat in an armchair off to her right, were staring at her, eyebrows up, apparently surprised about something. "What's the matter?" she asked.

  "We're just wondering," said Holati, "how you happen to remember 113, in particular, out of the thousands of plasmoids on Harvest Moon."

  "Oh. One of the Junior Scientists on your Project mentioned the 112-113 unit. That brought it to mind. Is this 113?"

  "No," said Holati Tate. "But it appears to be a duplicate of it. It's labeled 113-A. Even the professor isn't certain he could distinguish between the two. Right, Mantelish?"

  "That is true," said Mantelish, "at present. Without a physical comparison—" He shrugged.

  "What's so important about the critter?" Trigger asked, eyeing the leech again. One good thing about it, she thought—it wasn't equipped to eye her back.

  "The plasmoid you mentioned earlier, Unit 112-113, has been stolen," the Commissioner said. "We don't—" But Holati Tate's attention had shifted suddenly to the table. "Hey, now!" he said in a low voice.

  Trigger followed his gaze. After a moment she made a soft, sucking sound of alarmed distaste.

  "Ugh!" she remarked. "It's moving!"

  "So it is," Holati said.

  "Towards me!" said Trigger. "I think—"

  "Don't get startled. Mantelish!"

  Mantelish already was coming up slowly behind Trigger's chair. "Don't move!" he cautioned her.

  "Why not?" said Trigger.

  "Hush, my dear." Mantelish laid a large, heavy hand on each of her shoulders and bore down slightly. "It's sensitive! This is very interesting. Very."

  Perhaps it was. She kept watching the plasmoid. It had thinned out somewhat and was gliding very slowly but very steadily across the table. Definitely in her direction.

  "Ho-ho!" said Mantelish in a thunderous murmur. "Perhaps it likes you, Trigger! Ho-ho!" He seemed immensely pleased.

  "Well," Trigger said helplessly, "I don't like it!" She wriggled slightly under Mantelish's hands. "And I'd sooner get out of this chair!"

  "Don't be childish, Trigger," said the professor annoyedly. "You're behaving as if it were, in some manner, offensive."

  "It is," she said.

  "Hush, my dear," Mantelish said absently, putting on a little more pressure. Trigger hushed resignedly. They watched. In about a minute, the gliding thing reached the edge of the table. Trigger gathered herself to duck out from under Mantelish's hands and go flying out of the chair if it looked as if the plasmoid was about to drop into her lap.

  But it stopped. For a few seconds it lay motionless. Then it gradually raised its front end and began waving it gently back and forth in the air. At her, Trigger suspected.

  "Yipes!" she said, horrified.

  The front end sank back. The plasmoid lay still again. After a minute it was still lying still.

  "Show's over for the moment, I guess," said the Commissioner.

  "I'm afraid so," said Professor Mantelish. His big hands went away from Trigger's aching shoulders. "You startled it, Trigger!" he boomed at her accusingly.

  7

  The point of it, Holati Tate explained, was that this had been more activity than 113-A normally displayed over a period of a week. And 113-A was easily the most active plasmoid of them all nowadays.

  "It is, of course, possible," Mantelish said, arousing from deep thought, "that it was attracted by your body odor."

  "Thank you, Mantelish!" said Trigger.

  "You're welcome, my dear." Mantelish had pulled his chair up to the table; he hitched himself forward in it. "We shall now," he announced, "try a little experiment. Pick it up, Trigger."

  She stared at him. "Pick it up? No, Mantelish. We shall now try some other little experiment."

  Mantelish furrowed his Jovian brows. Holati gave her a small smile across the table. "Just touch it with the tip of a finger," he suggested. "You can do that much for the professor, can't you?"

  "Barely," Trigger told him grimly. But she reached out and put a cautious fingertip to the less lively far end of 113-A. After a moment she said, "Hey!" She moved the finger lightly along the thing's surface. It had a velvety, smooth, warm feeling, rather like a kitten. "You know," she said surprised, "it feels sort of nice! It just looks disgusting—"

  "Disgusting!" Mantelish boomed, offended again.

  The Commissioner held up a hand. "Just a moment," he said. He'd picked up some signal Trigger hadn't noticed, for he went over to the wall now and touched something there. A release button apparently. The door to the room opened. Trigger's grabber came in. The door closed behind him. He was carrying a tray with a squat brown flask and four rather small glasses on it.

  The Commissioner introduced him: Heslet Quillan—Major Heslet Quillan, of the Subspace Engineers. For a Subspace Engineer, Trigger thought skeptically, he was a pretty good grabber. But there was a qualified truce in the room. There was no really good reason not to include Major Quillan in it. He gave Trigger a grin. She gave him a tentative smile in return.

  "Ah, Puya!" Professor Mantelish exclaimed, advancing on the tray as Quillan set it on the table. Mantelish seemed to have forgotten about plasmoid experiments for the moment, and Trigger didn't intend to remind him. She drew her hand back quietly from 113-A. The professor unstoppered the flask. "You'll have some, Trigger, I'm sure? The only really good thing the benighted world of Rumli ever produced."

  "My great-grandmother," Trigger remarked, "was a Rumlian." She watched him fill the four glasses with a thin purple liquid. "I've never tried it; but yes, thanks."

  Quillan put one of the glasses in front of her.

  "And we shall drink," Mantelish suggested, with a suave flourish of his Puya, "to your great-grandmother!"

  "We shall also," suggested Major Quillan, pulling a chair up to the table for himself, "advise Trigger to take a very small sip on her first go at the stuff."

  Nobody had invited him to sit down. But nobody was objecting either. Well, that fitted, Trigger thought.

  She sipped. It was tart and hot. Very hot. She set the glass back on the table, inhaled with difficulty, exhaled quiveringly. Tears gathered in her eyes.

  "Very good!" she husked.

  "Very good," the Commissioner agreed. He put down his empty glass and smacked his lips lightly. "And now," he said briskly, "let's get on with this conference."

  Trigger glanced around the room while Quillan refilled three glasses. The small live coal she had swallowed was melting away; a warm glow began to spread through her. It did look like the dining room of a hunting lodge. The woodwork was dark, old-looking, worn with much polishing. Horned heads of various formidable Maccadon life-forms adorned the walls.

  But it was open season now on a different kind of game. Three men had walked briskly past them when Quillan brought her in by the front door. They hadn't even looked at her. There were sounds now and then from some of the other rooms, and that general feeling of a considerable number of people around—of being at an operating headquarters of some sort, which hummed with quiet activity.

  Holati glanced at Quillan. "Someone at the door. We'll hold it while you see what they want."

  The burly character who had appeared at the door said diffidently that Professor Mantelish had wanted to be present while his lab equipment was stowed aboard. If the professor didn't mind, things were about that far along.

  Mantelish excused himself and went off with the messenger. The door closed. Quillan came back to his chair.

  "We're moving the outfit later tonight," the Commissioner explained. "Mantelish is coming along—plus around eight tons of his lab equipment. Plus his six special U-League guards."

  "Oh?" Trigger picked up the Puya glass. She looked into it. It was empty. "Moving where?" she asked.

  "Manon," said the Commissioner. "Tell you about that later."

  Every last muscle in Trigger's body seemed to go limp simultaneously. She settled back slightly in the chair, surprised by the force of the reaction. She hadn't realized by half how keyed up she was! She sighed a small sigh. Then she smiled at Quillan.

  "Major," she said, "how about a tiny little refill on that Puya—about half?"

  Quillan took care of the tiny little refill.

  Commissioner Tate said, "By the way, Quillan does have a degree in subspace engineering and gets assigned to the Engineers now and then. But his real job's Space Scout Intelligence."

  Trigger nodded. "I'd almost guessed it!" She gave Quillan another smile. She nearly gave 113-A a smile.

  "And now," said the Commissioner, "we'll talk more freely. We tell Mantelish just as little as we can. To tell you the truth, Trigger, the professor is a terrible handicap on an operation like this. I understand he was a great friend of your father's."

 

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