The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 03

by Anthology

  "I know. Let's go on a moment. We had this inharmonious inclination. So we told Commissioner Tate to bring you to the Hub and keep you there, to see what would happen. And on Maccadon, in just a few weeks, you'd begun working that moderate inclination to be back in the Manon System up to a dandy first-rate compulsion."

  Trigger licked her lips. "I--"

  "Sure," said Pilch. "You had to have a good sensible reason. You gave yourself one."

  "Well!"

  "Oh, you were fond of that young man, all right. Who wouldn't be? Wonderful-looking lug. I'd go for him myself--till I got him on that couch, that is. But that was the first time you hadn't been able to stand a couple of months away from him. It was also the first time you'd started worrying about competition. You now had your justification. And we," Pilch said darkly, "had a fine, solid compulsion with no doubt very revealing ramifications to it to work on. Just one thing went wrong with that, Trigger. You don't have the compulsion any more."

  "Oh?"

  "You don't even," said Pilch, "have the original moderate inclination. Now one might have some suspicions there! But we'll let them ride for the moment."

  She did something on the desk. The huge wall-screen suddenly lit up. A soft, amber-glowing plane of blankness, with a suggestion of receding depths within it.

  "Last night, shortly before you woke up," Pilch said, "you had a dream. Actually you had a series of eight dreams during the night which seem pertinent here. But the earlier ones were rather vague preliminary structures. In one way and another, their content is included in this final symbol grouping. Let's see what we can make of them."

  A shape appeared on the screen.

  Trigger started, then laughed.

  "What do you think of it?" Pilch asked.

  "A little green man!" she said. "Well, it could be a sort of counterpart to the little yellow thing on the ship, couldn't it? The good little dwarf and the very bad little dwarf."

  "Could be," said Pilch. "How do you feel about the notion?"

  "Good plasmoids and bad plasmoids?" Trigger shook her head. "No. It doesn't feel right."

  "What else feels right?" Pilch asked.

  "The farmer. The little old man who owned the farm where the mud pond was."

  "Liked him, didn't you?"

  "Very much! He knew a lot of fascinating things." She laughed again. "You know, I'd hate to have him find out--but that little green man also reminds me quite a bit of Commissioner Tate."

  "I don't think he'd mind hearing it," Pilch said. She paused a moment. "All right--what's this?"

  A second shape appeared.

  "A sort of caricature of a wild, mean horse," Trigger said. She added thoughtfully, "there was a horse like that on that farm, too. I suppose you know that?"

  "Yes. Any thoughts about it?"

  "No-o-o. Well, one. The little farmer was the only one who could handle that horse. It was mutated horse, actually--one of the Life Bank deals that didn't work out so well. Enormously strong. It could work forty-eight hours at a stretch without even noticing it. But it was just a plain mean animal."

  "'Crazy-mean,'" observed Pilch, "was the dream feeling about it."

  Trigger nodded. "I remember I used to think it was crazy for that horse to want to go around kicking and biting things to pieces. Which was about all it really wanted to do. I imagine it was crazy, at that."

  "You weren't ever in any danger from it yourself, were you?"

  Trigger laughed. "I couldn't have got anywhere near it! You should have seen the kind of place the old farmer kept it when it wasn't working."

  "I did," said Pilch. "Long, wide, straight-walled pit in the ground. Cover for shade, plenty of food, running water. He was a good farmer. Very high locked fence around it to keep little girls and anyone else from getting too close to his useful monster."

  "Right," said Trigger. She shook her head. "When you people look into somebody's mind, you look!"

  "We work at it," Pilch said. "Let's see what you can do with this one."

  Trigger was silent for almost a minute before she said in a subdued voice, "I just get what it shows. It doesn't seem to mean anything?"

  "What does it show?"

  "Laughing giants stamping on a farm. A tiny sort of farm. It looks like it might be the little green man's farm. No, wait. It's not his! But it belongs to other little green people."

  "How do you feel about that?"

  "Well--I hate those giants!" Trigger said. "They're cruel. And they laugh about being cruel."

  "Are you afraid of them?"

  Trigger blinked at the screen for a few seconds. "No," she said in a low, sleepy voice. "Not yet."

  Pilch was silent a moment. She said then, "One more."

  Trigger looked and frowned. Presently she said, "I have a feeling that does mean something. But all I get is that it's the faces of two clocks. On one of them the hands are going around very fast. And on the other they go around slowly."

  "Yes," Pilch said. She waited a little. "No other thought about those clocks? Just that they should mean something?"

  Trigger shook her head. "That's all."

  Pilch's hand moved on the desk again. The wall-screen went blank, and the light in the little room brightened slowly. Pilch's face was reflective.

  "That will have to do for now," she said. "Trigger, this ship is working on an urgent job somewhere else. We'll have to go back and finish that job. But I'll be able to return to Manon in about ten days, and then we'll have another session. And I think that will get this little mystery cleared up."

  "All of it?"

  "All of it, I'd say. The whole pattern seems to be moving into view. More details will show up in the ten-day interval; and one more cautious boost then should bring it out in full."

  Trigger nodded. "That's good news. I've been getting a little fed up with being a kind of walking enigma."

  "Don't blame you at all," Pilch said, sounding almost exactly like Commissioner Tate. "Incidentally, you're a busy lady at present, but if you do have half an hour to spare from time to time, you might just sit down comfortably somewhere and listen to yourself thinking. The way things are going, that should bring quite a bit of information to view."

  Trigger looked doubtful. "Listen to myself thinking?"

  "You'll find yourself getting the knack of it rather quickly," Pilch said. She smiled. "Just head off in that general direction whenever you find the time, and don't work too hard at it. Are there any questions now before we start back to Manon?"

  Trigger studied her a moment. "There's one thing I'd like to be sure about," she said. "But I suppose you people have your problems with Security too."

  "Who doesn't?" said Pilch. "You're secure enough for me. Fire away."

  "All right," Trigger said. "Commissioner Tate told me people like you don't work much with individuals."

  "Not as much as we'd like to. That's true."

  "So you wouldn't have been working with me if whatever has been going on weren't somehow connected with the plasmoids."

  "Oh, yes, I would," said Pilch. "Or old Cranadon. Someone like that. We do give service as required when somebody has the good sense to ask for it. But obviously, we couldn't have dropped that other job just now and come to Manon to clear up some individual difficulty."

  "So I am involved with the plasmoid mess?"

  "You're right in the middle of it, Trigger. That's definite. In just what way is something we should be able to determine next session."

  Pilch turned off the desk light and stood up. "I always hate to run off and leave something half finished like this," she admitted, "but I'll have to run anyway. The plasmoids are nowhere near the head of the Federation's problem list at present. They're just coming up mighty fast."

  When Trigger reached her office next morning, she learned that the Psychology Service ship had moved out of the Manon area within an hour after she'd been returned to the Headquarters dome the night before.

  None of the members of the plasmoid team
were around. The Commissioner, who had a poor opinion of sleep, had been up for the past three hours; he'd left word Trigger could reach him, if necessary, in the larger of his two ships, parked next to the dome in Precol Port. Presumably he had the ship sealed up and was sitting in the transmitter cabinet, swapping messages with the I-Fleets in the Vishni area. He was likely to be at that for hours more. Professor Mantelish hadn't yet got back from his latest field trip, and Major Heslet Quillan just wasn't there.

  It looked, Trigger decided, not at all reluctantly, like a good day to lean into her Precol job a bit. She told the staff to pitch everything not utterly routine her way, and leaned.

  A set of vitally important reports from Precol's Giant Planet Survey Squad had been mislaid somewhere around Headquarters during yesterday's conferences. She soothed down the G P Squad and instituted a check search. A team of Hub ecologists, who had decided for themselves that outworld booster shots weren't required on Manon, called in nervously from a polar station to report that their hair was falling out. Trigger tapped the "Manon Fever" button on her desk, and suggested toupees.

  The ecologists were displeased. A medical emergency skip-boat zoomed out of the dome to go to their rescue; and Trigger gave it its directions while dialing for the medical checker who'd allowed the visitors to avoid their shots. She had a brief chat with the young man, and left him twitching as the G P Squad came back on to inquire whether the reports had been found yet. Trigger began to get a comfortable feeling of being back in the good old groove.

  Then a message from the Medical Department popped out on her desk. It was addressed to Commissioner Tate and stated that Brule Inger was now able to speak again.

  Trigger frowned, sighed, bit her lip and thought a moment. She dialed for Doctor Leehaven. "Got your message," she said. "How's he doing?"

  "All right," the old medic said.

  "Has he said anything?"

  "No. He's scared. If he could get up the courage, he'd ask for a personnel lawyer."

  "Yes, I imagine. Tell him this then--from the Commissioner; not from me--there'll be no charges, but Precol expects his resignation, end of the month."

  "That on the level?" Doctor Leehaven demanded incredulously.

  "Of course."

  The doctor snorted. "You people are getting soft-headed! But I'll tell him."

  The morning went on. Trigger was suspiciously studying a traffic control note stating that a Devagas missionary shop had checked in and berthed at the spaceport when the G C Center's management called in to report, with some nervousness, that the Center's much advertised meteor-repellent roof had just flipped several dozen tons of falling Moon Belt material into the spaceport area. Most of it, unfortunately, had dropped around and upon a Devagas missionary ship.

  "Not damaged, is it?" she asked.

  The Center said no, but the Missionary Captain insisted on speaking to the person in charge here. To whom should they refer him?

  "Refer him to me," Trigger said expectantly. She switched on the vision screen.

  The Missionary Captain was a tall, gray-haired, gray-eyed, square-jawed man in uniform. After confirming to his satisfaction that Trigger was indeed in charge, he informed her in chilled tones that the Devagas Union would hold her personally responsible for the unprovoked outrage unless an apology was promptly forthcoming.

  Trigger apologized promptly. He acknowledged with a curt nod.

  "The ship will now require new spacepaint," he pointed out, unmollified.

  Trigger nodded. "We'll send a work squad out immediately."

  "We," the Missionary Captain said, "shall supervise the work. Only the best grade of paint will be acceptable!"

  "The very best only," Trigger agreed.

  He gave her another curt nod, and switched off.

  "Ass," she said. She cut in the don't-disturb barrier and dialed Holati's ship.

  It took a while to get through; he was probably busy somewhere in the crate. Like Belchik Pluly, the Commissioner, while still a very wealthy man, would have been a very much wealthier one if it weren't for his hobby. In his case, the hobby was ships, of which he now owned two. What made them expensive was that they had been tailor-made to the Commissioner's specifications, and his specifications had provided him with two rather exact duplicates of the two types of Scout fighting ships in which Squadron Commander Tate had made space hideous for evildoers in the good old days. Nobody as yet had got up the nerve to point out to him that private battlecraft definitely were not allowable in the Manon System.

  He came on finally. Trigger told him about the Devagas. "Did you know those characters were in the area?" she asked.

  The Commissioner knew. They'd stopped in at the system check station three days before. The ship was clean. "Their missionaries all go armed, of course; but that's their privilege by treaty. They've been browsing around and going hither and yon in skiffs. The ship's been in orbit till this morning."

  "Think they're here in connection with whatever Balmordan is up to?" Trigger inquired.

  "We'll take that for granted. Balmordan, by the way, attended a big shindig on the Pluly yacht yesterday. Unless his tail goofed, he's still up there, apparently staying on as a guest."

  "Are you having these other Devagas watched?"

  "Not individually. Too many of them, and they're scattered all over the place. Mantelish got back. He checked in an hour ago."

  "You mean he's upstairs in his quarters now?" she asked.

  "Right. He had a few more crates hauled into the lab, and he's locked himself in with them and spy-blocked the place. May have got something important, and may just be going through one of his secrecy periods again. We'll find out by and by. Oh, and here's a social note. The First Lady of Tranest is shopping in the Grand Commerce Center this morning."

  "Well, that should boost business," said Trigger. "Are you going to be back in the dome by lunchtime?"

  "I think so. Might have some interesting news, too, incidentally."

  "Fine," she said. "See you then."

  Twenty minutes later the desk transmitter gave her the "to be shielded" signal. Up went the barrier again.

  Major Quillan's face looked out at her from the screen. He was, Trigger saw, in Mantelish's lab. Mantelish stood at a work bench behind him.

  "Hi!" he said.

  "Hi, yourself. When did you get in?"

  "Just now. Could you pick up the whoosis-and-whichis and bring it up here?"

  "Right now?"

  "If you can," Quillan said. "The professor's got something new, he thinks."

  "I'm on my way," said Trigger. "Take about five minutes."

  She hurried down to her quarters, summoned Repulsive's container into the room and slung the strap over her shoulder.

  Then she stood still a moment, frowning slightly. Something--something like a wisp of memory, something she should be remembering--was stirring in the back of her mind. Then it was gone.

  Trigger shook her head. It would keep. She opened the door and stepped out into the hall.

  She fell down.

  As she fell, she tried to give the bag the send-off squeeze, but she couldn't move her fingers. She couldn't move anything.

  There were people around her. They were doing things swiftly. She was turned over on her back and, for a few moments then, she saw her own face smiling down at her from just a few feet away.

  21

  She was, suddenly, in a large room, well lit, with elaborate furnishings--sitting leaned back in a soft chair before a highly polished little table. On the opposite side of the table two people sat looking at her with expressions of mild surprise. One of them was Lyad Ermetyne. The other was a man she didn't know.

  The man glanced aside at Lyad. "Very fast snap-back!" he said. He looked again at Trigger. He was a small man with salt-and-pepper hair, a deeply lined face, beautiful liquid-black eyes.

  "Very!" Lyad said. "We must remember that. Hello, Trigger!"

  "Hello," Trigger said. Her glance went once aroun
d the room and came back to Lyad's amiably observant face. Repulsive's container was nowhere around. There seemed to be nobody else in the room. An ornamental ComWeb stood against one wall. Two of the walls were covered with heavy hangings, and a great gold-brocaded canopy bellied from the ceiling. No doors or portals in sight; they might be camouflaged, or behind those hangings. Any number of people could be in call range--and a few certainly must be watching her right now, because that small man was no rough-and-tumble type.

  The small man was regarding her with something like restrained amusement.

  "A cool one," he murmured. "Very cool!"

  Trigger looked at him a moment, then turned her eyes back to Lyad. She didn't feel cool. She felt tense and scared cold. This was probably very bad!

  "What did you want to see me about?" she asked.

  Lyad smiled. "A business matter. Do you know where you are?"

  "Not on your ship, First Lady."

  The light-amber eyes barely narrowed. But Lyad had become, at that moment, very alert.

  "Why do you think so?" she asked pleasantly.

  "This room," said Trigger. "You don't gush, I think. What was the business matter?"

  "In a moment," Lyad said. She smiled again. "Where else might you be?"

  Trigger thought she could guess. But she didn't intend to. Not out loud. She shrugged. "It's no place I want to be." She settled back a little in her chair. Her right hand brushed the porgee pouch.

  The porgee pouch.

  It would have been like the Ermetyne to investigate the pouch carefully, take out the gun and put the pouch back. But they might not have.

  Somebody was bound to be watching. She couldn't find out--not until the instant after she decided to try the Denton.

  "I can believe that," Lyad said. "Forgive me the discourtesy of so urgent an invitation, Trigger. A quite recent event made it seem necessary. As to the business--as a start, this gentleman is Doctor Veetonia. He is an investigator of extraordinary talents along his line. At the moment, he is a trifle tired because of the very long hours he worked last night."

  Doctor Veetonia turned his head to look at her. "I did, First Lady? Well, that does explain this odd weariness. Did I work well?"