The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 03

by Anthology

  But when she could do it, information of a kind that was beginning to look very interesting was likely to come filtering into her awareness. Whatever was at work deep in her mind--and she could give a pretty fair guess at what it was now--seemed as weak and slow as the Psychology Service people had indicated. The traces of its work were usually faint and vague. But gradually the traces were forming into some very definite pictures.

  Lazing around in the waters of Plasmoid Creek for an hour or so every morning had turned out to be a helpful part of the process. On the flashing, all-out run to Luscious, subspace all the way, with the Commissioner and Quillan spelling each other around the clock at the controls, the transmitters clattering for attention every half hour, the ship's housekeeping had to be handled, and somebody besides Mantelish needed to keep a moderately beady eye on the Ermetyne, she hadn't even thought of acting on Pilch's suggestion.

  But once they'd landed, there suddenly wasn't much to keep her busy, and she could shift priority to listening to herself think. It was one of those interim periods where everything was being prepared and nothing had got started. As a plasmoid planet, Luscious was pretty much of a bust. It was true that plasmoids were here. It was also true that until fairly recently plasmoids were being produced here.

  By the simple method of looking where they were thickest, Selan's people even had located the plasmoid which had been producing the others, several days before Mantelish arrived to confirm their find. This one, by the plasmoid standards of Luscious, was a regular monster, some twenty-five inches high; a gray, mummylike thing, dead and half rotted inside. It was the first plasmoid--with the possible exception of whatever had flattened itself out on Quillan's gravity mine--known to have died. There had been very considerable excitement when it was first discovered, because the description made it sound very much as if they'd finally located 112-113.

  They hadn't. This one--if Trigger had followed Mantelish correctly--could be regarded as a cheap imitation of 112. And its productions, compared with the working plastic life of Harvest Moon, appeared to be strictly on a kindergarten level: nuts and bolts and less than that. To Trigger, most of the ones that had been collected looked like assorted bugs and worms, though one at least was the size of a small pig.

  "No form, no pattern," Mantelish rumbled. "Was the thing practicing? Did it attempt to construct an assistant and set it down here to test it? Well, now!" He went off again to incomprehensibilities, apparently no longer entirely dissatisfied. "Get me 112!" he bellowed. "Then this business will be solved! Meanwhile we now at least have plasmoid material to waste. We can experiment boldly! Come, Lyad, my dear."

  And Lyad followed him into the lab unit, where they went to work again, dissecting, burning, stimulating, inoculating and so forth great numbers of more or less pancake-sized subplasmoids.

  * * * * *

  This morning Trigger wasn't getting down to the best semidrowsy level at all readily. And it might very well be that Lyad-my-dear business. "You know," she had told the Commissioner thoughtfully the day before, "by the time we're done, Lyad will know more about plasmoids than anyone in the Hub except Mantelish!"

  He didn't look concerned. "Won't matter much. By the time we're done, she and the rest of the Ermetynes will have had to cough up control of Tranest. They've broken treaty with this business."

  "Oh," Trigger said. "Does Lyad know that?"

  "Sure. She also knows she's getting off easy. If she were a Federation citizen, she'd be up for compulsory rehabilitation right now."

  "She'll try something if she gets half a chance!" Trigger warned.

  "She sure will!" the Commissioner said absently. He went on with his work.

  It didn't seem to be Lyad that was bothering. Trigger lay flat on her back in the shallow sand bar, arms behind her head, feeling the sun's warmth on her closed eyelids. She watched her thoughts drifting by slowly.

  It just might be Quillan.

  Ole Major Quillan. The rescuer in time of need. The not-catassin smasher. Quite a guy. The water murmured past her.

  On the ride out here they'd run by one another now and then, going from job to job. After they'd arrived, Quillan was gone three quarters of the time, helping out in the hunt for the concealed Devagas fortress. It was still concealed; they hadn't yet picked up a trace.

  But every so often he made it back to camp. And every so often when he was back in camp and didn't think she was looking, he'd be sitting there looking at her.

  Trigger grinned happily. Ole Major Quillan--being bashful! Well now!

  And that did it. She could feel herself relaxing, slipping down and away, drifting down through her mind ... farther ... deeper ... toward the tiny voice that spoke in such a strange language and still was becoming daily more comprehensible.

  "Uh, say, Trigger!"

  25

  Trigger gasped. Her eyes flew open. She made a convulsive effort to vanish beneath the surface of the creek. Being flat on the sand as it was, that didn't work. So she stopped splashing about and made rapid covering-up motions here and there instead.

  "You've got a nerve!" she snapped as her breath came back. "Beat it! Fast!"

  Ole bashful Quillan, standing on the bank fifteen feet above her, looked hurt. He also looked.

  "Look!" he said plaintively. "I just came over to make sure you were all right--wild animals around! I wasn't studying the color scheme."

  "Beat it! At once!"

  Quillan inhaled with apparent difficulty.

  "Though now it's been mentioned," he went on, speaking rapidly and unevenly, "there is all that brown and that sort of pink and that lovely white." He was getting more enthusiastic by the moment; Trigger became afraid he would fall off the bank and land in the creek beside her. "And the--ooh-ummh!--wet red hair and the freckles!" he rattled along, his eyes starting out of his head. "And the lovely--"

  "Quillan!" she yelled. "Please!"

  Quillan checked himself. "Uh!" he said. He drew a deep breath. The wild look faded. Sanity appeared to return. "Well, it's the truth about those wild animals! Some sort of large, uncouth critter was observed just now ducking into the forest at the upper end of the valley!"

  Trigger darted a glance along the bank. Her clothes were forty feet away, just beside the water.

  "I'm observing some sort of large, uncouth critter right here!" she said coldly. "What's worse, it's observing me. Turn around!"

  Quillan sighed. "You're a hard woman, Argee," he said. But he turned. He was carrying a holstered gun, as a matter of fact; but he usually did that nowadays anyway. "This thing," he went on, "is supposed to have a head like a bat, three feet across. It flies."

  "Very interesting," Trigger told him. She decided he wasn't going to turn around again. "So now I'll just get into my clothes, and then--"

  It came quietly out of the trees around the upper bend of the creek sixty feet away. It had a head like a bat, and was blue on top and yellow below. Its flopping wing tips barely cleared the bank on either side. The three-foot mouth was wide open, showing very long thin white teeth. It came skimming swiftly over the surface of the water toward her.

  "Quiiii-LLAN!"

  * * * * *

  They walked back along the trail to camp. Trigger walked a few steps ahead, her back very straight. The worst of it had been the smug look on his face.

  "Heel!" she observed. "Heel! Heel! Heel!"

  "Now, Trigger," Quillan said calmly behind her. "After all, it was you who came flying up the bank and wrapped yourself around my neck. All wet, too."

  "I was scared!" Trigger snarled. "Who wouldn't be? You certainly didn't hesitate an instant to take full advantage of the situation!"

  "True," Quillan admitted. "I'd dropped the bat. There you were. Who'd hesitate? I'm not out of my mind."

  She did two dance steps of pure rage and spun to face him. She put her hands on her hips. Quillan stopped warily.

  "Your mind!" she said. "I'd hate to have one like it. What do you think I am? One of Belchik's
houris?"

  For a man his size, he was really extremely quick. Before she could move, he was there, one big arm wrapped about her shoulders, pinning her arms to her sides. "Easy, Trigger!" he said softly.

  Well, others had tried to hold her like that when she didn't want to be held. A twist, a jerk, a heave--and over and down they went. Trigger braced herself quietly. If she was quick enough now---- She twisted, jerked, heaved. She stopped, discouraged. The situation hadn't altered appreciably.

  She had been afraid it wasn't going to work with Quillan.

  "Let go!" she said furiously, aiming a fast heel at his instep. But the instep flicked aside. Her shoe dug into the turf of the path. The ape might even have an extra pair of eyes on his feet!

  Then his free palm was cupped under her chin, tilting it carefully. His other eyes appeared above hers. Very close. Very dark.

  "I'll bite!" Trigger whispered fiercely. "I'll bi--mmph!

  "Mmmph--grrmm!

  "Grr-mm-mhm.... Hm-m-m ... mhm!"

  * * * * *

  They walked on along the trail, hand in hand. They came up over the last little rise. Trigger looked down on the camp. She frowned.

  "Pretty dull!" she observed.

  "Eh?" Quillan asked, startled.

  "Not that, ape!" she said. She squeezed his hand. "Your morals aren't good, but dull it wasn't. I meant generally. We're just sitting here now waiting. Nothing seems to be happening."

  It was true, at least on the surface. There were a great number of ships and men around and near Luscious, but they weren't in view. They were ready to jump in any direction, at any moment, but they had nothing to jump at yet. The Commissioner's transmitters hadn't signaled more than two or three times in the last two days. Even the short communicators remained mostly silent.

  "Cheer up, Doll!" Quillan said. "Something's bound to break pretty soon."

  That evening, a Devagas ship came zooming in on Luscious.

  They were prepared for it, of course. That somebody came round from time to time to look over the local plasmoid crop was only to be expected. As the ship surfaced in atmosphere on the other side of the planet, four one-man Scout fighters flashed in on it from four points of the horizon, radiation screens up. They tacked holding beams on it and braced themselves. A Federation destroyer appeared in the air above it.

  The Devagas ship couldn't escape. So it blew itself up.

  They were prepared for that, too. The Devagas pilot was being dead-brained three minutes later. He didn't know a significant thing except the exact coordinates of an armed, subterranean Devagas dome, three days' run away.

  The Scout ships that had been hunting for the dome went howling in toward it from every direction. The more massive naval vessels of the Federation followed behind. There was no hurry for the heavies. The captured Devagas ship's attempt to beam a warning to its base had been smothered without effort. The Scouts were getting in fast enough to block escape attempts.

  "And now we split forces," the Commissioner said. He was the only one, Trigger thought, who didn't seem too enormously excited by it all. "Quillan, you and your group get going! They can use you there a whole lot better than we can here."

  For just a second, Quillan looked like a man being dragged violently in two directions. He didn't look at Trigger. He asked, "Think it's wise to leave you people unguarded?"

  "Quillan," said Commissioner Tate, "that's the first time in my life anybody has suggested I need guarding."

  "Sorry sir," said Quillan.

  "You mean," Trigger said, "we're not going? We're just staying here?"

  "You've got an appointment, remember?" the Commissioner said.

  Quillan and company were gone within the hour. Mantelish, Holati Tate, Lyad and Trigger stayed at camp.

  Luscious looked very lonely.

  * * * * *

  "It isn't just the king plasmoid they're hoping to catch there," the Commissioner told Trigger. "And I wouldn't care, frankly, if the thing stayed lost the next few thousand years. But we had a very odd report last week. The Federation's undercover boys have been scanning the Devagas worlds and Tranest very closely of late, naturally. The report is that there isn't the slightest evidence that a single one of the top members of the Devagas hierarchy has been on any of their worlds in the past two months."

  "Oh," she said. "They think they're out here? In that dome?"

  "That's what's suspected."

  "But why?"

  He scratched his chin. "If anyone knows, they haven't told me. It's probably nothing nice."

  Trigger pondered. "You'd think they'd use facsimiles," she said. "Like Lyad."

  "Oh, they did," he said. "They did. That's one of the reasons for being pretty sure they're gone. They're nowhere near as expert at that facsimile business as the Tranest characters. A little study of the recordings showed the facs were just that."

  Trigger pondered again. "Did they find anything on Tranest?"

  "Yes. One combat-strength squadron of those souped-up frigates of the Aurora class they're allowed by treaty can't be accounted for."

  Trigger cupped her chin in her hands and looked at him. "Is that why we've stayed on Luscious, Holati--the four of us?"

  "It's one reason. That Repulsive thing of yours is another."

  "What about him?"

  "I have a pretty strong feeling," he said, "that while they'll probably find the hierarchy in that Devagas dome, they won't find the 112-113 item there."

  "So Lyad still is gambling," Trigger said. "And we're gambling we'll get more out of her next play than she does." She hesitated. "Holati--"

  "Yes?"

  "When did you decide it would be better if nobody ever got to see that king plasmoid again?"

  Holati Tate said, "About the time I saw the reconstruct of that yellow monster of Balmordan's. Frankly, Trigger, there was a good deal of discussion of possibilities along that line before we decided to announce the discovery of Harvest Moon. If we could have just kept it hidden away for a couple of centuries--until there was considerably more good sense around the Hub--we probably would have done it. But somebody was bound to run across it sometime. And the stuff did look as if it might be extremely valuable. So we took the chance."

  "And now you'd like to untake it?"

  "If it's still possible. Half the Fed Council probably would like to see it happen. But they don't even dare think along those lines. There could be a blowup that would throw Hub politics back into the kind of snarl they haven't been in for a hundred years. If anything is done, it will have to look as if it had been something nobody could have helped. And that still might be bad enough."

  "I suppose so. Holati--"

  "Yes?"

  She shook her head. "Nothing. Or if it is, I'll ask you later." She stood up. "I think I'll go have my swim."

  She still went loafing in Plasmoid Creek in the mornings. The bat had been identified as an innocent victim of appearances, a very mild-mannered beast dedicated to the pursuit and engulfment of huge mothlike bugs which hung around watercourses. Luscious still looked like the safest of all possible worlds for any creature as vigorous as a human being. But she kept the Denton near now, just in case.

  She stretched out again in the sun-warmed water, selected a smooth rock to rest her head on, wriggled into the sand a little so the current wouldn't shift her, and closed her eyes. She lay still, breathing slowly. Contact was coming more easily and quickly every morning. But the information which had begun to filter through in the last few days wasn't at all calculated to make one happy.

  She was afraid now she was going to die in this thing. She had almost let it slip out to Holati, which wouldn't have helped in the least. She'd have to watch that in future.

  Repulsive hadn't exactly said she would die. He'd said, "Maybe." Repulsive was scared too. Scared badly.

  Trigger lay quiet, her thoughts, her attention drifting softly inward and down. Creek water rippled against her cheek.

  It was all because that one clock mov
ed so slowly. That was the thing that couldn't be changed. Ever.

  26

  Three mornings later, the emergency signal called her back to camp on the double.

  Trigger ran over the developments of the past days in her mind as she trotted along the path, getting dressed more or less on the way. The Devagas dome was solidly invested by now, its transmitters blanked out. It hadn't tried to communicate with its attackers. On their part, the Fed ships weren't pushing the attack. They were holding the point, waiting for the big, slow wrecking boats to arrive, which would very gently and delicately start uncovering and opening the dome, taking it apart, piece by piece. The hierarchy could surrender themselves and whatever they were hiding in there at any point in the process. They didn't have a chance. Nobody and nothing had escaped. The Scouts had swatted down a few Devagas vessels on the way in; but those had been headed toward the dome, not away from it.

  Perhaps the Psychology Service ship had arrived, several days ahead of time.

  The other three weren't in camp, but the lock to the Commissioner's ship stood open. Trigger went in and found them gathered up front. The Commissioner had swung the transmitter cabinet aside and was back there, prowling among the power leads.

  "What's wrong?" Trigger asked.

  "Transmitters went out," he said. "Don't know why yet. Grab some tools and help me check."

  She slipped on her work gloves, grabbed some tools and joined him. Lyad and Mantelish watched them silently.

  They found the first spots of the fungus a few minutes later.

  "Fungus!" Mantelish said, startled. He began to rumble in his pockets. "My microscope--"

  "I have it." Lyad handed it to him. She looked at him with concern. "You don't think--"

  "It seems possible. We did come in here last night, remember? And we came straight from the lab."