The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 03

by Anthology

  Trigger glanced over the diagrammed route ahead. Evalee.... Garth. A tiny green spark in the far remoteness of space beyond them represented Manon's sun.

  Eleven days or so. With the money to afford a rest cubicle, the time could be cut to a subjective three or four hours.

  But it would have been foolish anyway to sleep through the one trip on a Hub luxury liner she was ever likely to take in her life.

  She set the cabinet to a review of the Dawn City's passenger facilities, and was informed that everything would remain at the disposal of waking passengers throughout all dives. She glanced over bars, fashion shows, dining and gaming rooms. The Cascade Plunge, from the looks of it, would have been something for Mihul.... "Our Large Staff of Traveler's Companions"--just what she needed. The Solido Auditorium "... and the Inferno--our Sensations Unlimited Hall." A dulcet voice informed her regretfully that Federation Law did not permit the transmission of full SU effects to individual cabins. It did, however, permit a few sample glimpses. Trigger took her glimpses, sniffed austerely, switched back to the fashions.

  There had been a neat little black suit on display there. While she didn't intend to start roaming about the ship until it dived and the majority of her fellow travelers were immersed in their rest cubicles, she probably still would be somewhat conspicuous in her Automatic Sales dress on a boat like the Dawn City. That little black suit hadn't looked at all expensive--

  "Twelve hundred forty-two Federation credits?" she repeated evenly a minute later. "I see!"

  Came to roughly eight hundred fifty Maccadon crowns, was what she saw.

  "May we model it in your suite, madam?" the store manager inquired.

  "No, thanks," Trigger told her. "Just looking them over a bit." She switched off, frowned absently at a panel labeled "Your Selection of Personalized Illusion Arrangements," shook her head, snapped the cabinet shut and stood up. It looked like she had a choice between being conspicuous and staying in her cabin and playing around with things like the creation of illusion scenes.

  And she was really a little old for that kind of entertainment.

  She opened the door to the narrow passageway outside the cabin and glanced tentatively along it. It was very quiet here. One of the reasons this was the cheapest cabin they'd had available presumably was that it lay outside the main passenger areas. To the right the corridor opened on a larger hall which ran past a few hundred yards of storerooms before it came to a stairway. At the head of the stairway, one came out eventually on one of the passenger levels. To the left the corridor ended at the door of what seemed to be the only other cabin in this section.

  Trigger looked back toward the other cabin.

  "Oh," she said. "Well ... hello."

  The other cabin door stood open. A rather odd-looking little person sat in a low armchair immediately inside it. She had lifted a thin, green-sleeved arm in a greeting or beckoning gesture as Trigger turned.

  She repeated the gesture now. "Come here, girl!" she called amiably in a quavery old-woman voice.

  Well, it couldn't do any harm. Trigger put on her polite smile and walked down the hall toward the open door. A quite tiny old woman it was, with a head either shaved or naturally bald, dressed in a kind of dark-green pajamas. Long glassy earrings of the same color pulled down the lobes of her small ears. The oddness of the face was due mainly to the fact that she wore a great deal of make-up, and that the make-up was a matching green.

  She twisted her head to the left as Trigger came up, and chirped something. Another woman appeared behind the door, almost a duplicate of the first, except that this one had gone all out for pink. Tiny things. They both beamed up at her.

  Trigger beamed back. She stopped just outside the door.

  "Greetings," said the pink one.

  "Greetings," Trigger replied, wondering what world they came from. The style wasn't exactly like anything she'd seen before.

  "We," the green lady informed her with a not unkindly touch of condescension, "are with the Askab of Elfkund."

  "Oh!" said Trigger in the tone of one who is impressed. Elfkund hadn't rung any bells.

  "And with whom are you, girl?" the pink one inquired.

  "Well," Trigger said, "I'm not actually with anybody."

  The smiles faded abruptly. They glanced at each other, then looked back at Trigger. Rather severely, it seemed.

  "Did you mean," the green one asked carefully, "that you are not a retainer?"

  Trigger nodded. "I'm from Maccadon," she explained. "The name is Birna Drellgannoth."

  "Maccadon," the pink one repeated. "You are a commoner then, young Birna?"

  "Of course she is!" The green one looked offended. "Maccadon!" She got out of her chair with remarkable spryness and moved to the door. "It's quite drafty," she said, looking pointedly past Trigger. The door closed on Trigger's face. A second later, she heard the lock snap shut. A moment after that, the don't-disturb sign appeared.

  Well, she thought, wandering back to her cabin, it didn't look as if she were going to be bothered with excessively friendly neighbors on this trip.

  She had a bath and then discovered a mechanical stylist in a recess beside the bathroom mirror. She swung the gadget out into the room, set it for a dye removal operation and sat down beneath it. A redhead again a minute or so later, she switched the machine to Orado styles and left it to make up its electronic mind as to what would be the most suitable creation under the circumstances.

  The stylist hovered above her for over a minute, muttering and clucking as it conducted an apparently disapproving survey of the job. Then it went swiftly and silently to work. When it shut itself off, Trigger checked the results in the mirror.

  She wasn't too pleased. An upswept arrangement which brought out the bone structure of her face rather well but didn't do much else for her. Possibly the stylist had included the Automatic Sales dress in its computations.

  Well, it would have to do for her first tour of the ship.

  11

  The bedside ComWeb warned her politely that it was now ten minutes to dive point. Waking passengers who experienced subspace distress in any form could obtain immediate assistance by a call on any ComWeb. If they preferred, they could have their cabins kept under the continuous visual supervision of their personal steward or stewardess.

  The Dawn City's passenger areas still looked rather well populated when Trigger arrived. But some of the passengers were showing signs of regretting their decision to stay awake. Presently she became aware of a faint queasiness herself.

  It wasn't bad--mainly a sensation as if the ship were trying continuously to turn over on its axis around her and not quite making it--and she knew from previous experience that after the first hour or so she would be completely free of that. She walked into a low, dimly lit, very swank-looking gambling room, still well patronized by the hardier section of her fellow travelers, searching for a place where she could sit down unobtrusively for a while and let the subspace reaction work itself out.

  A couch beside a closed door near the unlit end of the room seemed about right for the purpose.

  Trigger sat down and glanced around. There were a variety of games in progress, all unfamiliar to her. The players were mostly men, but a remarkable number of beautiful women, beautifully gowned, stood around the tables as observers. Traveler's Companions, Trigger realized suddenly--the Dawn City's employees naturally would be inured to subspace effects. From the scraps of talk she could pick up, the stakes seemed uniformly high.

  A swirl of vertigo suddenly built up in her again. This one was stronger than most; for a moment she couldn't be sure whether she was going to be sick or not. She stood up, stepped over to the door a few feet away, pulled it open and went through, drawing it shut behind her.

  There had been a shielding black-light screen in the doorway. On the other side was bottled sunshine.

  She found herself on a long balcony which overlooked a formal garden enclosure thirty feet below. There was no one else in
sight. She leaned back against the wall beside the door, closed her eyes and breathed slowly and deeply for some seconds. The sickish sensation began to fade.

  When she opened her eyes again, she saw the little yellow man.

  He stood motionless at the far end of the garden, next to some flowering shrubbery out of which he might have just stepped. He seemed to be peering along the sand path which curved in toward the balcony and vanished beneath it, below the point where Trigger stood.

  It was sheer fright which immobilized her at first. Because there was not anything really human about that small, squat, manshaped figure. A dwarfish yellow demon he seemed, evil and menacing. The garden, she realized suddenly, might be an illusion scene. Or else--

  The thing moved in that instant. It became a blur of motion along the curving path and disappeared under the balcony. After a second or so she heard the sound of a door closing some distance away. The garden lay still again.

  Trigger stayed where she was, her knees shaking a little. The fright appeared to have driven every trace of nausea out of her, and gradually her heartbeat began to return to normal. She took three cautious steps forward to the balcony railing, where the tip of a swaying green tree branch was in reach.

  She put her hand out hesitantly, felt the smooth vegetable texture of a leaf, grasped it, pulled it away. She moved back to the door and examined the leaf. It was a quite real leaf. Thin sap formed a bead of amber moisture at the break in the stalk as she looked at it.

  No illusion structure could be elaborated to that extent.

  So she'd just had her first dive hallucination--and it had been a dilly!

  Trigger dropped the leaf, pushed shakily at the balcony door, and stepped back through the black-light screen into the reassuring murmur of human voices in the gambling room.

  An hour later, the ship's loudspeaker system went on. It announced that the Dawn City would surface in fifteen minutes because of gravitic disturbances, and proceed the rest of the way to Evalee in normal space, arriving approximately five hours behind schedule. Rest cubicle passengers would not be disturbed, unless this was specifically requested by a qualified associate.

  Trigger turned her attention back to her viewer, feeling rather relieved. She hadn't experienced any further hallucinations, or other indications of subspace distress; but the one she'd had would do her for a while. The little viewer library she was in was otherwise deserted, and she'd been going about her studies there just the least bit nervously.

  Subject of the studies were the Hub's principal games of chance. She'd identified a few of those she'd been watching--and one of them did look as if someone who went at it with an intelligent understanding of the odds--

  A part of Trigger kept tut-tutting and shaking its head at such reckless notions. But another part pointed out that they couldn't be much worse off financially than they were right now. So what if they arrived in Manon dead-broke instead of practically? Besides, there was the problem of remaining inconspicuous till they got there. On the Dawn City no one whose wardrobe was limited to one Automatic Sales dress was going to remain inconspicuous very long.

  Trigger-in-toto went on calculating the odds for various possible play combinations. She developed her first betting system, presently discovered several holes in it, and began to develop another.

  The loudspeaker system went on again. She was too absorbed to pay much attention to it at first. Then she suddenly straightened up and listened, frowning.

  The man speaking now was the liner's First Security Officer. He was being very polite and regretful. Under Section such and such, Number so and so, of the Federation's Legal Code, a cabin by cabin search of the passenger area of the Dawn City had become necessary. The persons of passengers would not be searched. Passengers might, if they wished, be present while their cabins were inspected; but this was not required. Baggage need not be opened, providing its spyproofing was not activated. Any information revealed by the search which did not pertain to a violation of the Code Section and Number in question would not be recorded and could not be introduced as future legal evidence under any circumstances. Complaints regarding the search could be addressed to any Planetary Moderator's office.

  This wasn't good at all! Trigger stood up. The absence of luggage in her cabin mightn't arouse more than passing interest in the searchers. Her gun was a different matter. Discreet inquiries regarding a female passenger who carried a double-barreled sporting Denton might be one of the check methods used by the Scout Intelligence boys if they started thinking of liners which recently had left Maccadon in connection with Trigger's disappearance. There weren't likely to be more than two or three guns of that type on board, and it was almost certain that she would be the only woman who owned one.

  She'd better go get the Denton immediately ... and then vanish again into the public sections of the ship! Some Security officer with a good memory and a habit of noticing faces might identify her otherwise from the news viewer pictures taken on Manon.

  And he just might start wondering then why she was traveling as Birna Drellgannoth--and start to check.

  She paused long enough to get the Legal Code article referred to into the viewer.

  Somebody on board appeared to have got himself murdered.

  She reached the cabin too late. A couple of young Security men already were going over it. Trigger said hello pleasantly. It was too bad, but it wasn't their fault. They just had a job to do.

  They smiled back at her, apologized for the intrusion and went on with their business. She sat down and watched them. The Denton was there in plain sight. Dropping it into her purse now would be more likely to fix it in their memory than leaving it where it was.

  The gadgets they were using were in concealing casings, and she couldn't guess what they were looking for by the way they used them. It didn't seem that either of them was trying to haul up an identifying memory about her. They did look a little surprised when the second cabin closet was opened and found to be as empty as the first; but no comments were made about that. Two minutes after Trigger had come in, they were finished and bowed themselves out of the cabin again. They turned then toward the cabin occupied by the ancient retainers of the Askab of Elfkund.

  Trigger left her door open. This she wanted to hear, if she could.

  She heard. The Elfkund door also stayed open, while the racket beyond it grew shriller by the moment. Finally a ComWeb chimed. A feminine voice spoke sternly. The Quavering outcries subsided. It looked as if Security had been obliged to call on someone higher up in the Elfkund entourage to come to its aid. Trigger closed her door grinning.

  On the screen of her secluded library, she presently watched a great port shuttle swing in from Evalee to meet the hovering Dawn City. It would bring another five hundred or so passengers on board and take off the few who had merely been making the short run from Maccadon to Evalee in style. Solidopic operators were quite likely to be on the shuttle, so she had decided to keep away from the entry area.

  The transfer operation was carried out very expeditiously, probably to make up for some of the time lost on the surface. When the shuttle shoved off, the loudspeaker announced that normal space flight would be maintained till after the stopover at Garth. Trigger wandered thoughtfully back to her cabin. She closed the door behind her.

  Then she saw the man sitting by the ComWeb cabinet. Her breath sucked in. She crouched a little, ready to wheel and bolt.

  "Take it easy, Trigger!" Major Quillan said. He was in civilian clothes, of rather dudish cut.

  Trigger swallowed. There was, too obviously, no place to bolt to. "How did you find me?"

  He shrugged. "Longish story. You're not under arrest."

  "I'm not?"

  "No," said Quillan. "When we get to Manon, the Commissioner will have a suggestion to make to you."

  "Suggestion?" Trigger said warily.

  "I believe you're to take back your old Precol job in Manon, but as cover for your participation in our little project. If
you agree to it."

  "What if I don't?"

  He shrugged again. "It seems you'll be writing your own ticket from here on out."

  Trigger stared at him, wondering. "Why?"

  Quillan grinned. "New instructions have been handed down," he said. "If you're still curious, ask Whatzzit."

  "Oh," Trigger said. "Then why are you here?"

  "I," said Quillan, "am to make damn sure you get to Manon. I brought a few people with me."

  "Mihul, too?" Trigger asked, a shade diffidently.

  "No. She's on Maccadon."

  "Is she--how's she doing?"

  "Doing all right," Quillan said. "She sends her regards and says a little less heft on the next solar plexus you torpedo should be good enough."

  Trigger flushed. "She isn't sore, is she?"

  "Not the way you mean," he considered. "Not many people have jumped Mihul successfully. In her cockeyed way, she seemed pretty proud of her student."

  Trigger felt the flush deepen. "I got her off her guard," she said.

  "Obviously," said Quillan. "In any ordinary argument she could pull your legs off and tie you up with them. Still, that wasn't bad. Have you talked to anybody since you came on board?"

  "Just the room stewardess. And a couple of old ladies in the next cabin."

  "Yeah," he said. "Couple of old ladies. What did you talk about?"

  Trigger recounted the conversation. He reflected, nodded and stood up.

  "I put a couple of suitcases in that closet over there," he said. "Your personal stuff is in them, de-tracered. Another thing--somebody checked over your finances and came to the conclusion you're broke."

  "Not exactly broke," said Trigger.

  Quillan reached into a pocket, pulled out an envelope and laid it on the cabinet. "Here's a little extra spending money then," he said. "The balance of your Precol pay to date. I had it picked up on Evalee this morning. Seven hundred twenty-eight FC."