by Anthology
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 plasmoid 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.
In essence, the riddles presented by the Old Galactic Station appeared to be solved.
The three made up their secret report to the U-League. Included was a recommendation to authorize distribution of ten per cent of the less significant plasmoids to various experimental centers in the Hub--the big and important centers which had been bringing heavy political pressure to bear on the Federation to let them in on the investigation. That should keep them occupied, while the U-League concluded the really important work.
"Next day," said Holati, "Doctor Gess Fayle presented Mantelish with a transmitted message from U-League Headquarters. It contained instructions to have Fayle mount the 112-113 unit immediately in one of the League ships at Harvest Moon and bring it quietly to Maccadon."
Mantelish frowned. "The message was faked!" he boomed.
"Not only that," said Holati. "The actual report Doctor Fayle had transmitted the day before to the League was revised to the extent that it omitted any reference to 112-113." He glanced thoughtfully at Mantelish. "As a matter of fact, it was almost a month and a half before League Headquarters became aware of the importance of the unit."
The professor snorted. "Azol," he explained to Trigger, "had become a victim of his scientific zeal. And I--"
"Doctor Azol," said the Commissioner, "as you may remember, had his little mishap with the plasmoid just two days after Fayle departed."
"And I," Mantelish went on, "was involved in other urgent research. How was I to know what that villain Fayle had been up to? A vice president of the University League!"
"Well," Trigger said, "what had Doctor Fayle been up to?"
"We don't know yet," Holati told her. "Obviously he had something in mind with the faked order and the alteration of the report. But the only thing we can say definitely is that he disappeared on the League ship he had requisitioned, along with its personnel and the 112-113 plasmoid, and hasn't shown up again.
"And that plasmoid unit now appears to have been almost certainly the key unit of the entire Old Galactic Station--the unit that kept everything running along automatically there for thirty thousand years."
He glanced at Quillan. "Someone at the door. We'll hold it while you see what they want."
7
The burly character who had appeared at the door said diffidently that Professor Mantelish had wanted to be present while his lab equipment was stowed aboard. If the professor didn't mind, things were about that far along.
Mantelish excused himself and went off with the messenger. The door closed. Quillan came back to his chair.
"We're moving the outfit later tonight," the Commissioner explained. "Mantelish is coming along--plus around eight tons of his lab equipment. Plus his special U-League guards."
"Oh?" Trigger picked up the Puya glass. She looked into it. It was empty. "Moving where?" she asked.
"Manon," said the Commissioner. "Tell you about that later."
Every last muscle in Trigger's body seemed to go limp simultaneously. She settled back slightly in the chair, surprised by the force of the reaction. She hadn't realized by now how keyed up she was! She sighed a small sigh. Then she smiled at Quillan.
"Major," she said, "how about a tiny little refill on that Puya--about half?"
Quillan took care of the tiny little refill.
Commissioner Tate said, "By the way, Quillan does have a degree in subspace engineering and gets assigned to the Engineers now and then. But his real job's Space Scout Intelligence."
Trigger nodded. "I'd almost guessed it!" She gave Quillan another smile. She nearly gave 113-A a smile.
"And now," said the Commissioner, "we'll talk more freely. We tell Mantelish just as little as we can. To tell you the truth, Trigger, the professor is a terrible handicap on an operation like this. I understand he was a great friend of your father's."
"Yes," she said. "Going over for visits to Mantelish's garden with my father is one of the earliest things I remember. I can imagine he's a problem!" She shifted her gaze curiously from one to the other of the two men. "What are you people doing? Looking for Gess Fayle and the key unit?"
Holati Tate said, "That's a
bout it. We're one of a few thousand Federation groups assigned to the same general job. Each group works at its specialties, and the information gets correlated." He paused. "The Federation Council--they're the ones we're working for directly--the Council's biggest concern is the very delicate political situation that's involved. They feel it could develop suddenly into a dangerous one. They may be right."
"In what way?" Trigger asked.
"Well, suppose that key unit is lost and stays lost. Suppose all the other plasmoids put together don't contain enough information to show how the Old Galactics produced the things and got them to operate."
"Somebody would get that worked out pretty soon, wouldn't they?"
"Not necessarily, or even probably, according to Mantelish and some other people who know what's happened. There seem to be too many basic factors missing. It might be necessary to develop a whole new class of sciences first. And that could take a few centuries."
"Well," Trigger admitted, "I could get along without the things indefinitely."
"Same here," the plasmoid nabob agreed ungratefully. "Weird beasties! But--let's see. At present there are twelve hundred and fifty-eight member worlds to the Federation, aren't there?"
"More or less."
"And the number of planetary confederacies, subplanetary governments, industrial, financial and commercial combines, assorted power groups, etc. and so on, is something I'd hate to have to calculate."
"What are you driving at?" she asked.
"They've all been told we're heading for a new golden age, courtesy of the plasmoid science. Practically everybody has believed it. Now there's considerable doubt."
"Oh," she said. "Of course--practically everybody is going to get very unhappy, eh?"
"That," said Commissioner Tate, "is only a little of it."
"Yes, the thing isn't just lost. Somebody's got it."
"Very likely."
Trigger nodded. "Fayle's ship might have got wrecked accidentally, of course. But the way he took off shows he planned to disappear--a crack-up on top of that would be too much of a coincidence. So any one of umpteen thousands of organizations in the Hub might be the one that has that plasmoid now!"
"Including," said Holati, "any one of the two hundred and fourteen restricted worlds. Their treaties of limitation wouldn't have let them get into the plasmoid pie until the others had been at it a decade or so. They would have been quite eager...."
There was a little pause. Then Trigger said, "Lordy! The thing could even set off another string of wars--"
"That's a point the Council is nervous about," he said.
"Well, it certainly is a mess. You would have thought the Federation might have had a Security Chief in on that first operation. Right there on Harvest Moon!"
"They did," he said. "It was Fayle."
"Oh! Pretty embarrassing." Trigger was silent a moment. "Holati, could those things ever become as valuable as people keep saying? It's all sounded a little exaggerated to me."
The Commissioner said he'd wondered about it too. "I'm not enough of a biologist to make an educated guess. What it seems to boil down to is that they might. Which would be enough to tempt a lot of people to gamble very high for a chance to get control of the plasmoid process--and we know definitely that some people are gambling for it."
"How do you know?"
"We've been working a couple of leads here. Pretty short leads so far, but you work with what you can get." He nodded at the table. "We picked up the first lead through 113-A."
Trigger glanced down. The plasmoid lay there some inches from the side of her hand. "You know," she said uncomfortably, "old Repulsive moved again while we were talking! Towards my hand." She drew the hand away.
"I was watching it," Major Quillan said reassuringly from the end of the table. "I would have warned you, but it stopped when it got as far as it is now. That was around five minutes ago."
Trigger reached back and gave old Repulsive a cautious pat. "Very lively character! He does feel pleasant to touch. Kitty-cat pleasant! How did you get a lead through him?"
"Mantelish brought it back to Maccadon with him, mainly because of its similarity to 113. He was curious because he couldn't even guess at what its function was. It was just lying there in a cubicle. So he did considerable experimenting with it while he waited for Gess Fayle to show up--and League Headquarters fidgeted around, hoping to get the kind of report from Mantelish and Fayle that Mantelish thought they'd already received. They were wondering where Fayle was, too. But they knew Fayle was Security, so they didn't like to get too nosy."
Trigger shook her head. "Wonderful! So what happened with 113-A?"
"Mantelish began to get results with it," the Commissioner said. "One experiment was rather startling. He'd been trying that electrical stimulation business. Nothing happened until he had finished. Then he touched the plasmoid, and it fed the whole charge back to him. Apparently it was a fairly hefty dose."
She laughed delightedly. "Good for Repulsive! Stood up for his rights, eh?"
"Mantelish gained some such impression anyway. He became more cautious with it after that. And then he learned something that should be important. He was visiting another lab where they had a couple of plasmoids which actually moved now and then. He had 113-A in his coat pocket. The two lab plasmoids stopped moving while he was there. They haven't moved since."
"Like the Harvest Moon plasmoids when they stimulated 113?"
"Right. He thought about that, and then located another moving plasmoid. He dropped in to look it over, with 113-A in his pocket again, and it stopped. He did the same thing in one more place and then quit. There aren't that many moving plasmoids around. Those three labs are still wondering what hit their specimens."
She studied 113-A curiously. "A mighty mite! What does Mantelish make of it?"
"He thinks the 112-113 unit forms a kind of self-regulating system. The big one induces plasmoid activity, the little one modifies it. This 113-A might be a spare regulator. But it seems to be more than a spare--which brings us to that first lead we got. A gang of raiders crashed Mantelish's lab one night."
"When was that?"
"Some months ago. Before you and I left Manon. The professor was out, and 113-A had gone along in his pocket as usual. But his two lab guards and one of the raiders were killed. The others got away. Gess Fayle's defection was a certainty by then, and everybody was very nervous. The Feds got there, fast, and dead-brained the raider. They learned just two things. One, he'd been mind-blocked and couldn't have spilled any significant information even if they had got him alive. The other item they drew from his brain was a clear impression of the target of the raid--the professor's pal here."
"Uh-huh," Trigger said, lost in thought. She poked Repulsive lightly. "That would be Fayle and his associates then. Or somebody who knew about them. Did they want to kill it or grab it?"
The Commissioner looked at her. "Grab it, was the dead-brain report. Why?"
"Just wondering. Would make a difference, wouldn't it? Did they try again?"
"There've been five more attempts," he said.
"And what's everybody concluded from that?"
"They want 113-A in a very bad way. So they need it."
"In connection with the key unit?" Trigger asked.
"Probably."
"That makes everything look very much better, doesn't it?"
"Quite a little," he said. "The unit may not work, or may not work satisfactorily, unless 113-A is in the area. Mantelish talks of something he calls proximity influence. Whatever that is, 113-A has demonstrated it has it."
"So," Trigger said, "they might have two thirds of what everybody wants, and you might have one third. Right here on the table. How many of the later raiders did you catch?"
"All of them," said the Commissioner. "Around forty. We got them dead, we got them alive. It didn't make much difference. They were hired hands. Very expensive hired hands, but still just that. Most of them didn't know a thing we could u
se. The ones that did know something were mind-blocked again."
"I thought," Trigger said reflectively, "you could unblock someone like that."
"You can, sometimes. If you're very good at it and if you have time enough. We couldn't afford to wait a year. They died before they could tell us anything."
There was a pause. Then Trigger asked, "How did you get involved in this, personally?"
"More or less by accident," the Commissioner said. "It was in connection with our second lead."
"That's me, huh?" she said unhappily.
"Yes."
"Why would anyone want to grab me? I don't know anything."
He shook his head. "We haven't found out yet. We're hoping we will, in a very few days."
"Is that one of the things you can't tell me about?"
"I can tell you most of what I know at the moment," said the Commissioner. "Remember the night we stopped off at Evalee on the way in from Manon?"
"Yes," she said. "That big hotel!"
8
"About an hour after you'd decided to hit the bunk," Holati said, "I portaled back to your rooms to pick up some Precol reports we'd been setting up."
Trigger nodded. "I remember the reports."
"A couple of characters were working on your doors when I got there. They went for their guns, unfortunately. But I called the nearest Scout Intelligence office and had them dead-brained."
"Why that?" she asked.
"It could have been an accident--a couple of ordinary thugs. But their equipment looked a little too good for ordinary thugs. I didn't know just what to be suspicious of, but I got suspicious anyway."
"That's you, all right," Trigger acknowledged. "What were they?"
"They had an Evalee record which told us more than the brains did. They were high-priced boys. Their brains told us they'd allowed themselves to be mind-blocked on this particular job. High-priced boys won't do that unless they can set their standard price very much higher. It didn't look at all any more as if they'd come to your door by accident."
"No," she admitted.
"The Feds got in on it then. There'd been that business in Mantelish's lab. There were similarities in the pattern. You knew Mantelish. You'd been on Harvest Moon with him. They thought there could be a connection."