by Anthology
Lyad said, "Put it on that shelf for the moment. Then bring me Virod's gun, and hers."
"I'm afraid you'll have to go up on that table now, Trigger," she said. "If you've really decided to cooperate, it won't be too bad. And, by and by, you'll start telling us very exactly what should be done with that handbag. And a few other things."
She might have caught Trigger's expression then. She added drily, "I was informed a few nights ago that you're quite an artist in rough-and-tumble tactics. So are Virod and Flam. So if you want to give Virod an opportunity to amuse himself a little, go right ahead!"
At that point, the graceful thing undoubtedly would have been to just smile and get up on the table. Trigger discovered she couldn't do it. She gave them a fast, silent, vicious tussle, mouth clenched, breathing hard through her nose. It was quite insanely useless. They weren't letting her get anywhere near Lyad. After Virod had amused himself a little, he picked her up and plunked her down on the table. A minute later, she was stretched out on it, face down, wrists and ankles secured with padded clamps to its surface.
Flam took a small knife and neatly slit the back of the Precol uniform open along the line of her spine. She folded the cloth away. Then Trigger felt the thin icy touches of some vanilla-smelling spray walk up her, ending at the base of her skull.
It wasn't so very painful; Lyad had told the truth about that. But presently it became extremely undignified. Then her thoughts were speeding up and slowing down and swirling around in an odd, confusing fashion. And at last her voice began to say things she didn't want it to say.
After this, there might have been a pause. She seemed to be floating up out of a small pool of sleep when Lyad's voice said somewhere, with cold fury in it: "There's nothing inside?"
A whole little series of memory-pictures popped up suddenly then, like a chain of firecrackers somebody had set off. They formed themselves into a pattern; and there the pattern was in Trigger's mind. She looked at it. Her eyes flew open in surprise. She began to laugh weakly.
Light footsteps came quickly over to her. "Where is that plasmoid, Trigger?"
The Ermetyne was in a fine, towering rage. She'd better say something.
"Ask the Commissioner," she said, mumbling a little.
"It's wearing off, First Lady," said Flam. "Shall I?"
Trigger's thoughts went eddying away for a moment, and she didn't hear Lyad's reply. But then the vanilla smell was there again, and the thin icy touches. This time, they stopped abruptly, halfway.
And then there was a very odd stillness all around Trigger. As if everybody and everything had stopped moving together.
A deep, savage voice said, "I hope there'll be no trouble, folks. I just want her a lot worse than you do."
Trigger frowned in puzzlement. Next came an angry roar, some thumping sounds, a sudden crack.
"Oops!" the deep voice said happily. "A little too hard, I'm afraid!"
Why, of course, Trigger thought. She opened her eyes and twisted her head around.
"Still awake, Trigger?" Quillan asked from the door of the room. He looked pleasantly surprised. There was a very large bellmouthed gun in his hand.
That was an odd-looking little group in the doorway, Trigger felt. On his knees before Quillan was a fat, elderly man, blinking dazedly at her. He wore a brilliantly purple bath towel knotted about his loins and nothing else. It was a moment before she recognized Belchik Pluly. Old Belchy! And on the floor before Belchy, motionless as if in devout prostration, Virod lay on his face. Dead, no doubt. He shouldn't have got gay with Quillan.
"Yes," Trigger said then, remembering Quillan's question. "I've got a very fast snap-back--but they fed me a fresh load of dope just a moment ago."
"So I saw," said Quillan. His glance shifted beyond Trigger.
"Lyad," he said, almost gently.
"Yes, Quillan?" Lyad's voice came from the other side of Trigger. Trigger turned her head toward it. Lyad and Flam both stood at the far side of the room. Their expressions were unhappy.
"I don't like at all," Quillan said, "what's been going on here. Not one bit! Which is why Big Boy got the neck broken finally. Can the rest of us take a hint?"
"Certainly," the Ermetyne said.
"So the Flam girl quits ogling those guns on the shelf and stays put, or they'll amputate a leg. First Lady, you come up to the table and get Trigger unclamped."
Trigger realized her eyes had fallen shut again. She left them that way for a moment. There was motion near her, and the wrist clamps came off in turn. Lyad moved down to her feet.
"The fancy-looking gun is Trigger's?" Quillan inquired.
"Yes," said Lyad.
"Is that what happened to Pilli and the other gent out there?"
"Yes."
"Imagine!" said Quillan thoughtfully. "Uh--got something to seal up the clothes?"
"Yes," Lyad said. "Bring it here, Flam."
"Toss it, Flam!" cautioned Quillan. "Remember the leg."
Lyad's hands did things to the clothes at her back. Then they went away.
"You can sit up now, Trigger!" Quillan's voice informed her loudly. "Sort of slide down easy off the table and see if you can stand."
Trigger opened her eyes, twisted about, slid her legs over the edge of the table, came down on her feet, stood.
"I want my gun and the handbag," she announced. She saw them again then, on the shelf, walked over and picked up the plasmoid container. She looked inside, snapped it shut and slung the strap over her shoulder. She picked up the Denton, looked at its setting, spun it and turned.
"First Lady--" she said.
Lyad went white around the lips. Quillan made some kind of startled sound. Trigger shot.
Flam ran at her then, screaming, arms waving, eyes wild and green like an animal's. Trigger half turned and shot again.
She looked at Quillan. "Just stunned," she explained. She waited.
Quillan let his breath out slowly. "Glad to hear it!" He glanced down at Pluly. "Purse was open," he remarked significantly.
"Uh-huh," Trigger agreed.
"How's the doohinkus?"
She laughed. "Safe and sound! Believe me."
"Good," he said. He still looked somewhat puzzled. "Put the eye on Belchy for a few seconds then. We're taking Lyad along. I'll have to carry her now."
"Right," Trigger said. She felt rather jaunty at the moment. She put the eye on Belchik. Belchik moaned.
They started out of the little room, Pluly in the van, clutching his towel. The Ermetyne, dangling loosely over Quillan's left shoulder, looked fairly gruesomely dead. "You walk this side of me, Trigger," Quillan said. "Still all right?"
She nodded. "Yes." Actually she wasn't quite. It was mainly a problem with her thoughts, which showed a tendency to move along in odd little leaps and bounds, with short stops in between, as if something were trying to freeze them up. But if it was going to be like the first time, she should last till they got to wherever they were going.
Halfway across the room, she saw the golden thing like a huge furry sack on the carpet and shivered. "Poor Pilli!" she said.
"Alas!" Quillan said politely. "I gather you didn't just stun Pilli?"
She shook her head. "Couldn't," she said. "Too big. Too fast."
"How about the other one?"
"Oh, him. Stunned. He's an investigator. They thought he was dead, though. That's what scared Lyad and Flam."
"Yeah," Quillan said thoughtfully. "It would."
Another section of wall hanging had folded aside, and a wide door stood open behind it. They went through the door and turned into a mirrored passageway, Pluly still tottering rapidly ahead. "Might keep that gun ready, Trigger," Quillan warned. "We just could get jumped here. Don't think so, though. They'd have to get past the Commissioner."
"Oh, he's here, too?"
She didn't hear what Quillan answered, because things faded out around then. When they faded in again, the passageway with the mirrors had disappeared, and they were coming to
the top of a short flight of low, wide stairs and into a very beautiful room. This room was high and long, not very wide. In the center was a small square swimming pool, and against the walls on either side was a long row of tall square crystal pillars through which strange lights undulated slowly. Trigger glanced curiously at the nearest pillar. She stopped short.
"Galaxy!" she said, startled.
Quillan reached back and grabbed her arm with his gun hand. "Keep moving, girl! That's just how Belchik keeps his harem grouped around him when he's working. Not too bad an idea--it does cut down the chatter. This is his office."
"Office!" Then she saw the large business desk with prosaic standard equipment which stood on the carpet on the other side of the pool. They moved rapidly past the pool, Quillan still hauling at her arm. Trigger kept staring at the pillars they passed. Long-limbed, supple and languid, they floated in their crystal cages, in tinted, shifting lights, eyes closed, hair drifting about their faces.
"Awesome, isn't it?" Quillan's voice said.
"Yes," said Trigger. "Awesome. One in each--he is a pig! They look drowned."
"He is and they aren't," said Quillan. "Very lively girls when he lets them out. Now around this turn and ... oops!"
Pluly had reached the turn at the end of the row of pillars, moaned again and fallen forwards.
"Fainted!" Quillan said. "Well, we don't need him any more. Watch your step, Trigger--dead one just behind Pluly."
Trigger stretched her stride and cleared the dead one behind Pluly neatly. There were three more dead ones lying inside the entrance to the next big room. She went past them, feeling rather dreamy. The sight of a squat, black subtub parked squarely on the thick purple carpeting ahead of her, with its canopy up, didn't strike her as unusual. Then she saw that the man leaning against the canopy, a gun in one hand, was Commissioner Tate. She smiled.
She waved her hand at him as they came up. "Hi, Holati!"
"Hi, yourself," said the Commissioner. He asked Quillan, "How's she doing?"
"Not bad," Quillan said. "A bit ta-ta at the moment. Double dose of ceridim, by the smell of it. Had a little trouble here, I see."
"A little," the Commissioner acknowledged. "They went for their guns."
"Very uninformed gentlemen," said Quillan. He let Lyad's limp form slide off his shoulder, and bent forward to lower her into the subtub's back seat. Trigger had been waiting for a chance to get into the conversation.
"Just who," she demanded now, frowning, "is a bit ta-ta at the moment?"
"You," said Quillan. "You're doped, remember? You'll ride up front with the Commissioner. Here." He picked her up, plasmoid purse and all, and set her down on the front seat. Holati Tate, she discovered then, was already inside. Quillan swung down into the seat behind her. The canopy snapped shut above.
The Commissioner shifted the tub's controls. In the screens, the room outside vanished. A darkness went rushing downwards past them.
A thought suddenly popped to mind again, and Trigger burst into tears. The Commissioner glanced over at her.
"What's the matter, Trigger girl?"
"I'm so s-sorry I killed Pilli. He s-screamed."
Then her mind froze up with a jolt, and thinking stopped completely. Quillan reached over the back of the seat and eased her over on her side.
"Got to her finally!" he said. He sat down again. He brooded a moment. "She shouldn't get so disturbed about that Pilli thing," he remarked then. "It couldn't have lived anyway."
"Eh?" the Commissioner said absently, watching the screens. "Why not?"
"Its brains," Quillan explained, "were too far apart."
The Commissioner blinked. "It's getting to you too, son!" he said.
23
Trigger came out of the ceridim trance hours before Lyad awoke from the stunner blast she'd absorbed. The Commissioner was sitting in a chair beside her bunk, napping.
She looked around a moment, feeling very comfortable and secure. This was her personal cabin on Commissioner Tate's ship, the one he referred to as the Big Job, modeled after the long-range patrol ships of the Space Scouts. It wasn't actually very big, but six or seven people could go traveling around in it very comfortably. At the moment it appeared to be howling through subspace at its hellish rate again, going somewhere.
Well, that could keep.
Trigger reached out and poked the Commissioner's knee. "Hey, Holati!" she whispered. "Wake up."
His eyes opened. He looked at her and smiled. "Back again, eh?" he said.
Trigger motioned at the door. "Close it," she whispered. "Got something to tell you."
"Talk away," he said. "Quillan's piloting, the First Lady's out cold, and Mantelish got dive-sick and I doped him. Nobody else on board."
Trigger lay back and looked at him. "This is going to sound pretty odd!" she warned him. Then she told him what Repulsive had done and what he was trying to do.
The Commissioner looked badly shaken.
"You sure of that, Trigger?"
"Sure, I'm sure."
"Trying to talk to you?"
"That's it."
He blinked at her. "I looked in the bag, and the thing was gone."
"Lyad knows it was gone," Trigger said. "So in case she gets a chance to blab to someone, we'll say you had it."
He nodded and stood up. "You stay here," he said. "Prescription for the kind of treatment you've had is a day of bed rest."
"Where are you going?"
"I'm going to go talk to that Psychology ship," he said. "And just let 'em try to stall me this time!"
He went off up the passage toward the transmitter cabinet in the forward part of the ship. Some minutes passed. Then Trigger suddenly heard Commissioner Tate's voice raised in great wrath. She listened. It appeared the Psychology Service had got off on the wrong foot by advising him once more to stay calm.
He came back presently and sat down beside the bunk, still a little red in the face. "They're going to follow us," he said. "If they hadn't, I would have turned back and gunned our way on board that lopsided disgrace of theirs."
"Follow us? Where?"
He grunted. "A place called Luscious. We'll be there in under a week. It'll take them about three. But they're starting immediately."
Trigger blinked. "Looks like the plasmoids have made it to the head of the problem list!"
"I wouldn't be surprised," said the Commissioner. "I was put through to that Pilch after a while. She said to remind you to listen to your thinking whenever you can get around to it. Know what she meant?"
"I'm not sure I do," Trigger said hesitantly. "But she's mentioned it. I'll give it a whirl. Why are we going to Luscious?"
"Selan's Fleet found plasmoids on it. It's in the Vishni area."
"What kind of plasmoids?"
He shrugged. "They don't amount to much, from what I heard. Small stuff. But definitely plasmoid. It looks like somebody might have done some experimenting there for a while. And not long ago."
"Did they find the big one?"
"Not yet. No trace of any people on Luscious either." He chewed his lip thoughtfully for a moment. "About an hour after we picked you and Lyad up," he said, "we had a Council Order transmitted to the ship. Told us to swing off course a bit and rendezvous with a fast courier boat of theirs."
"What for?"
"The order said the courier was to take Lyad on board and head for the Hub with her. Some diplomatic business." He scratched his chin. "It also instructed us to treat the First Lady of Tranest with the courtesy due to her station meanwhile."
"Brother!" Trigger said, outraged.
"Just too bad I couldn't read that message," said Holati Tate. "Some gravitic disturbance! Rendezvous point's hours behind us. They'll never catch up."
"Ho-ho!" said Trigger. "But that's being pretty insubordinate, Holati!"
"It was till just now," he said. "I mentioned that we had Lyad on board to that Pilch person. She said she'd speak to the Council. We're to hang on to Lyad and when Pilch
gets to Luscious she'll interview her."
Trigger grinned. "Now that," she remarked, "gives me a feeling of great satisfaction, somehow. When Pilch gets her little mitts on someone, there isn't much left out."
"I had that impression. Meanwhile, we'll put the Ermetyne through a routine questioning ourselves when she gets over being groggy. Courtesy will be on the moderate side. She'll probably spill part of what she knows, especially if you sit there and hand her the beady stare from time to time."
"That," Trigger assured him, "will be hardly an effort at all!"
"I can imagine. You're pretty sure that thing will show up again?"
Trigger nodded. "Just leave the handbag with me."
"All right." He stood up. "I've got a hot lunch prepared for you. I'll bring the bag along. Then you can tell me what happened after they grabbed you."
"How did you find out I was gone?" Trigger asked.
"Your fac," he said. "The girl was darn good actually. I talked to you--her--on office transmitter once and didn't spot a sour note. Mostly she just kept out of everybody's way. Very slick at it! We would have got her fairly fast because we were preparing for take-off to Luscious by then. But she spilled it herself."
"How?"
"I located her finally again, on transmitter screen. There was no one on her side to impress. She took a sniff of porgee."
Trigger laughed delightedly. "Good old porgee pouch! It beat them twice. But how did you know where I was?"
"No problem there. We knew Lyad had strings on Pluly. Quillan knew about that sealed level on Pluly's yacht and got Pluly to invite him over to admire the harem right after the Dawn City arrived. While he was admiring, he was also recording floor patterns for a subtub jump. That gimmick's pretty much of a spilled secret now, but on a swap for you and Lyad it was worth it. We came aboard five minutes after we'd nabbed your fac."
"The Ermetyne figured you'd go chasing after the Aurora," Trigger said.
"Well," the Commissioner said tolerantly, "the Ermetyne's pretty young. The Aurora was a bit obvious."
"How come Quillan didn't start wondering when I didn't show up in Mantelish's lab with Repulsive?"
"So that's what he was for!" Holati said. He rubbed the side of his jaw. "I was curious about that angle! That wasn't Quillan. That was Quillan's fac."