The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 03

by Anthology

  "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.

  "Cigarette?" the Commissioner's overmuscled henchman inquired amiably.

  Trigger glanced at him from the side. Not amiably. "No, thanks."

  "No hard feelings, are there?" He looked surprised.

  "Yes," she said evenly. "There are."

  "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."

  * * * * *

  "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." He 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.

  "Have to fill you in on some of the background first, Trigger girl," he'd said, when she was brought to his 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. Then the door closed and the two of them were alone.

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

  Trigger, unmollified, pointed out that the methods he'd used not to worry her hardly had been soothing.

  "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. Anyway we can drop most of the mystery act tonight."

  Trigger shook her head. "It isn't being dropped very fast!" she observed.

  "I told you I couldn't tell it backwards," the Commissioner said patiently. "All right if we start filling in the background now?"

  "I guess we'd better," she admitted.

  "Fine," said Commissioner Tate. He got to his feet. "Then let's go join Mantelish."

  "Why the professor?"

  "He could help a lot with the explaining. If he's in the mood. Anyway 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. Then the Commissioner locked the doors and introduced her to the professor's pet.

  "It's labelled 113-A," he said now. "Even the professor isn't certain he could distinguish between the two. Right, Mantelish?"

  "That is true," said Mantelish, "at present." He was a very big, rather fat but healthy-looking old man with a thick thatch o
f white hair and a ruddy face. "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.

  "It goes back to the time," the Commissioner said, "when Mantelish and Fayle and Azol were conducting the first League investigation of the plasmoids on Harvest Moon. You recall the situation?"

  "If you mean their attempts to get the things to show some signs of life, I do, naturally."

  "One of them got lively enough for poor old Azol, didn't it?" Professor Mantelish rumbled from his armchair.

  Trigger grimaced. Doctor Azol's fate might be one of the things that had given her a negative attitude towards plasmoids. With Mantelish and Doctor Gess Fayle, Azol had been the third of the three big U-League boys in charge of the initial investigation on Harvest Moon. As she remembered it, it was Azol who discovered that Plasmoids occasionally could be induced to absorb food. Almost any kind of food, it turned out, so long as it contained a sufficient quantity of protein. What had happened to Azol looked like a particularly unfortunate result of the discovery. It was assumed an untimely coronary had been the reason he had fallen helplessly into the feeding trough of one of the largest plasmoids. By the time he was found, all of him from the knees on up already had been absorbed.

  "I meant your efforts to get them to work," she said.

  Commissioner Tate looked at Mantelish. "You tell her about that part of it," he suggested.

  Mantelish shook his head. "I'd get too technical," he said resignedly. "I always do. At least they say so. You tell her."

  But Holati Tate's eyes 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.

  6

  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 finger tip to the less lively 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.

  He gave Trigger a grin. She gave him a tentative smile in return. The Commissioner had introduced him: Heslet Quillan--Major Heslet Quillan, of the Subspace Engineers. For a Subspace Engineer, Trigger had thought skeptically, he was a pretty good grabber. But there was a qualified truce in the room. It would last, at least, until Holati finished his explaining. There was no really good reason not to include Major Quillan in it.

  "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.

  One of the things, Holati Tate said, which had not become public knowledge so far was that Professor Mantelish actually succeeded in getting some of the plasmoids on the Old Galactic base back into operation. One pl
asmoid in particular.

  The reason the achievement hadn't been announced was that for nearly six weeks no one except the three men directly involved in the experiments had known about them. And during that time other things occurred which made subsequent publicity seem very inadvisable.

  Mantelish scowled. "We made up a report to the League the day of the initial discovery," he informed Trigger. "It was a complete and detailed report!"

  "True," Holati said, "but the report the U-League got didn't happen to be the one Professor Mantelish helped make up. We'll go into that later. The plasmoid the professor was experimenting with was the 112-113 unit."

  He shifted his gaze to Mantelish. "Still want me to tell it?"

  "Yes, yes!" Mantelish said impatiently. "You will oversimplify grossly, of course, but it should do for the moment. At a more leisurely time I shall be glad to give Trigger an accurate description of the processes."

  Trigger smiled at him. "Thank you, Professor!" She took her second sip of the Puya. Not bad.

  "Well, Mantelish was dosing this plasmoid with mild electrical stimulations," Holati went on. "He noticed suddenly that as he did it other plasmoids in that section of Harvest Moon were indicating signs of activity. So he called in Doctor Fayle and Doctor Azol."

  The three scientists discovered quickly that stimulation of the 112 part of the unit was in fact producing random patterns of plasmoid motion throughout the entire base, while an electrical prod at 113 brought everything to an abrupt stop again. After a few hours of this, 112 suddenly extruded a section of its material, which detached itself and moved off slowly under its own power through half the station, trailed with great excitement by Mantelish and Azol. It stopped at a point where another plasmoid had been removed for laboratory investigations, climbed up and settled down in the place left vacant by its predecessor. It then reshaped itself into a copy of the predecessor, and remained where it was. Obviously a replacement.

  There was dignified scientific jubilation among the three. This was precisely the kind of information the U-League--and everybody else--had been hoping to obtain. 112-113 tentatively could be assumed to be a kind of monitor of the station's activities. It could be induced to go into action and to activate the other plasmoids. With further observation and refinement of method, its action undoubtedly could be shifted from the random to the purposeful. Finally, and most importantly, it had shown itself capable of producing a different form of plasmoid life to fulfill a specific requirement.