by Anthology
"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 moved 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."
"But we had been decontaminated," Lyad said puzzledly.
"Don't try to walk in here, Professor!" Trigger warned as he lumbered forward. "We might have to de-electrocute you. The Commissioner will scrape off a sample and hand it out. This stuff--if it's what you think it might be--is poisonous?"
"Quite harmless to life, my dear," said the professor, bending over the patch of greenish-gray scum the Commissioner had reached out to him. "But ruinous in delicate instruments! That's why we're so careful."
Holati Tate glanced at Trigger. "Better look in the black box, Trig," he said.
She nodded and wormed herself farther into the innards of the transmitters. A minute later she announced, "Full of it! And that's the one part we can't repair or replace, of course. Is it your beast, Professor?"
"It seems to be," Mantelish said unhappily. "But we have, at least, a solvent which will remove it from the equipment."
Trigger came sliding out from under the transmitters, the detached black box under one arm. "Better use it then before the stuff gets to the rest of the ship. It won't help the black box." She shook it. It tinkled. "Shot!" she said. "There went another quarter million of your credits, Commissioner."
Mantelish and Lyad headed for the lock to get the solvent. Trigger slipped off her work gloves and turned to follow them. "Might be a while before I'm back," she said.
The Commissioner started to say something, then nodded and climbed back into the transmitters. After a few minutes, Mantelish came puffing in with sprayers and cans of solvent. "It's at least fortunate you tried to put out a call just now," he said. "It might have done incalculable damage."
"Doubt it," said Holati. "A few more instruments might have gone. Like the communicators. The main equipment is fungus-proof. How do you attach this thing?"
Mantelish showed him.
The Commissioner thanked him. He directed a fine spray of the solvent into the black box and watched the fungus melt. "Happen to notice where Trigger and Lyad went?" he asked.
"Eh?" said Mantelish. He reflected. "I saw them walking down toward camp talking together as I came in," he called. "Should I go get them?"
"Don't bother," Holati said. "They'll be back."
They came walking back into the ship around half an hour later. Both faces looked rather white and strained.
"Lyad has something she wants to tell you, Holati," Trigger said. "Where's Mantelish?"
"In his lab. Taking a nap, I believe."
"That's good. We don't want him here for this. Go ahead, Lyad. Just the important stuff. You can give us the details after we've left."
Three hours later, the ship was well away from Luscious, traveling subspace, traveling fast. Trigger walked up into the control section.
"Mantelish is still asleep," she said. They'd fed the professor a doped drink to get him aboard without detailed explanation and argument about how much of the lab should be loaded on the ship first. "Shall I get Lyad out of her cabin for the rest of the story or wait till he wakes up?"
"Better wait," said the Commissioner. "He'll come out of it in about an hour, and he might as well hear it with us. Looks like navigating's going to be a little rough for a spell anyway."
Trigger nodded and sat down in the control next to his. After a while he glanced over at her.
"How did you get her to talk?" he asked.
"We went back into the woods a bit. I tied her over a stump and broke two sticks across the first seat of Tranest. Got the idea from Mihul sort of," Trigger added vaguely. "When I picked up a third stick, Lyad got awfully anxious to keep things at just a fast conversational level. We kept it there."
"Hm," said the Commissioner. "You don't feel she did any lying this time?"
"I doubt it. I tapped her one now and then, just to make sure she didn't slow down enough to do much thinking. Besides I'd got the whole business down on a pocket recorder, and Lyad knew it. If she makes one more goof till this deal is over, the recording gets released to the Hub's news viewer outfits, yowls and all. She'd sooner lose Tranest than risk having that happen. She'll be good."
"Yeah, probably," he said thoughtfully. "About that substation--would you feel more comfortable if we went after the bunch round the Devagas dome first and got us an escort for the trip?"
"Sure," Trigger said. "But that would just about kill any chances of doing anything personally, wouldn't it?"
"I'm afraid so. Scout I
ntelligence will go along pretty far with me. But they couldn't go that far. We might be able to contact Quillan individually though. He's a topnotch man in a fighter."
"It doesn't seem to me," Trigger said, "that we ought to run any risk of being spotted till we know exactly what this thing is like."
"Well," said the Commissioner, "I'm with you there. We shouldn't."
"What about Mantelish and Lyad? You can't let them know either."
The Commissioner motioned with his head. "The rest cubicle back of the cabins. If we see a chance to do anything, we'll pop them both into Rest. I can dream up something to make that look plausible afterwards, I think."
Trigger was silent a moment. Lyad had told them she'd dispatched the Aurora to stand guard over a subspace station where the missing king plasmoid presently was housed, until both she and the combat squadron from Tranest could arrive there. The exact location of that station had been the most valuable of the bits of information she had extracted so painstakingly from Balmordan. The coordinates were centered on the Commissioner's course screen at the moment.
"How about that Tranest squadron?" Trigger asked. "Think Lyad might have risked a lie, and they could get out here in time to interfere?"
"No," said the Commissioner. "She had to have some idea of where to send them before starting them out of the Hub. They'll be doing fine if they make it to the substation in another two weeks. Now the Aurora--if they started for Luscious right after Lyad called them last night, at best they can't get there any sooner than we can get to the substation. I figure that at four days. If they turn right around then, and start back--"
Trigger laughed. "You can bet on that!" she said. The Commissioner had used his ship's guns to brand the substation's coordinates in twenty-mile figures into a mountain plateau above Plasmoid Creek. They'd left much more detailed information in camp, but there was a chance it would be overlooked in too hurried a search.
"Then they'll show up at the substation again four or five days behind us," the Commissioner said. "So they're no problem. But our own outfit's fastest ships can cut across from the Devagas dome in less than three days after their search party messages from Luscious to tell them why we've stopped transmitting and where we've gone. Or the Psychology ship might get to Luscious before the search party does and start transmitting about the coordinates."
"In any case," said Trigger, "it's our own boys who are likely to be the problem."
"Yes. I'd say we should have two days, give or take a few hours, after we get to the station to see if we can do anything useful and get it done. Of course, somebody might come wandering into Luscious right now and start wondering about those coordinate figures, or drop in at our camp and discover we're gone. But that's not very likely, after all."
"Couldn't be helped anyway," Trigger said.
"No. If we knock ourselves out on this job, somebody besides Lyad's Tranest squadron and the Devagas has to know just where the station is." He shook his head. "That Lyad! I figured she'd know how to run the transmitters, so I gave her the chance. But I never imagined she'd be a good enough engineer to get inside them and mess them up without killing herself."
"Lyad has her points," Trigger said. "Too bad she grew up a rat. You had a playback attachment stuck in there then?"
"Naturally."
"Full of the fungus, I suppose?"
"Full of it," said the Commissioner. "Well, Lyad still lost on that maneuver. Much less comfortably than she might have, too."
"I think she'd agree with you there," Trigger said.
Lyad's first assignment after Professor Mantelish came out of the dope was to snap him back into trance and explain to him how he had once more been put under hypno control and used for her felonious ends by the First Lady of Tranest. They let him work off his rage while he was still under partial control. Then the Ermetyne woke him up.
He stared at her coldly.
"You are a deceitful woman, Lyad Ermetyne!" he declared. "I don't wish to see you about my labs again! At any time. Under any pretext. Is that understood?"
"Yes, Professor," Lyad said. "And I'm sorry that I believed it necessary to--"
Mantelish snorted. "Sorry! Necessary! Just to be certain it doesn't happen again, I shall make up a batch of antihypno pills. If I can remember the prescription."
"I happen," the Ermetyne ventured, "to know a very good prescription for the purpose, Professor. If you will permit me!"
Mantelish stood up. "I'll accept no prescriptions from you!" he said icily. He looked at Trigger as he turned to walk out of the cabin. "Or drinks from you either, Trigger Argee!" he growled. "Who in the great spiraling galaxy is there left to trust!"
"Sorry, Professor," Trigger said meekly.
In half an hour or so, he calmed down enough to join the others in the lounge, to get the final story on Gess Fayle and the missing king plasmoid from the Ermetyne.
Doctor Gess Fayle, Lyad reported, had died very shortly after leaving the Manon System. And with him had died every man on board the U-League's transport ship. It might be simplest, she went on, to relate the first series of events from the plasmoid's point of view.
"Point of view?" Professor Mantelish interrupted. "The plasmoid has awareness then?"
"Oh, yes. That one does."
"Self-awareness?"
"Definitely."
"Oho! But then--"
"Professor," Trigger interrupted politely in turn, "may I get you a drink?"
He glared at her, growled, then grinned. "I'll shut up," he said. Lyad went on.
Doctor Fayle had resumed experimentation with the 112-113 unit almost as soon as he was alone with it; and one of the first things he did was to detach the small 113 section from the main one. The point Doctor Fayle hadn't adequately considered when he took this step was that 113's function appeared to be that of a restraining, limiting or counteracting device on its vastly larger partner. The Old Galactics obviously had been aware of dangerous potentialities in their more advanced creations, and had used this means of regulating them. That the method was reliable was indicated by the fact that, in the thirty thousand years since the Old Galactics had vanished, plasmoid 112 had remained restricted to the operations required for the maintenance of Harvest Moon.
But it hadn't liked being restricted.
And it had been very much aware of the possibilities offered by the new life-forms which lately had intruded on Harvest Moon.
The instant it found itself free, it attempted to take control of the human minds in its environment.
"Mind-level control?" Mantelish exclaimed, looking startled. "Not unheard-of, of course. And we'd been considering.... But of human minds?"
Lyad nodded. "It can contact human minds," she said, "though, perhaps rather fortunately, it can project that particular field effect only within a quite limited radius. A little less, the Devagas found later, than five miles."
Mantelish shook his head, frowning. He turned toward the Commissioner. "Holati," he said emphatically, "I believe that thing could be dangerous!"
For a moment, they all looked at him. Then the Commissioner cleared his throat. "It's a possibility, Mantelish," he admitted. "We will give it thought later."
"What," Trigger asked Lyad, "killed the people on the ship?"
"The attempt to control them," Lyad said. Doctor Fayle apparently had died as he was leaving the laboratory with the 113 unit. The other men died wherever they were. The ship, running subspace and pilotless, plowed headlong into the next gravitic twister and broke up.
A Devagas ship's detectors picked up the wreckage three days later. Balmordan was on board the Devagas ship and in charge.
The Devagas, at that time, were at least as plasmoid-hungry as anybody else, and knew they were not likely to see their hunger gratified for several decades. The wreck of a U-League ship in the Manon area decidedly was worth investigating.
If the big plasmoid hadn't been capable of learning from its mistakes, the Devagas investigating party also would h
ave died. Since it could and did learn, they lived. The searchers discovered human remains and the crushed remnants of the 113 unit in a collapsed section of the ship. Then they discovered the big plasmoid--alive in subspace, undamaged and very conscious of the difficulties it now faced.
It had already initiated its first attempt to solve the difficulties. It was incapable of outward motion and could not change its own structure, but it was no longer alone. It had constructed a small work-plasmoid with visual and manipulating organs, as indifferent to exposure to subspace as its designer. When the boarding party encountered the twain, the working plasmoid apparently was attempting to perform some operation on the frozen and shriveled brain of one of the human cadavers.
Balmordan was a scientist of no mean stature among the Devagas. He did not understand immediately what he saw, but he realized the probable importance of understanding it. He had the plasmoids and their lifeless human research object transferred to the Devagas ship and settled down to observe what they did.
Released, the working plasmoid went back immediately to its task. It completed it. Then Balmordan and, presumably, the plasmoids waited. Nothing happened.
Finally, Balmordan investigated the dead brain. Installed in it he found what appeared to be near-microscopic energy receivers of plasmoid material. There was nothing to indicate what type of energy they were to--or could--receive.
Devagas scientists, when they happened to be of the hierarchy, always had enjoyed one great advantage over most of their colleagues in the Federation. They had no difficulty in obtaining human volunteers to act as subjects for experimental work. Balmordan appointed three of his least valuable crew members as volunteers for the plasmoid's experiments.
The first of the three died almost immediately. The plasmoid, it turned out, lacked understanding of, among other things, the use and need of anesthetics. Balmordan accordingly assisted obligingly in the second operation. He was delighted when it became apparent that his assistance was being willingly and comprehendingly accepted. This subject did not die immediately. But he did not regain consciousness after the plasmoid devices had been installed; and some hours later he did die, in convulsions.