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<h2>16</h2> The Precol headquarters dome on Manon Planet was still in the spot where Trigger had left it, looking unchanged; but everything else in the area seemed to have been moved, improved, expanded or taken away entirely, and unfamiliar features had appeared. In the screens of Commissioner Tate's Precol offices, Trigger could see both the new metropolitan-sized spaceport on which the Dawn City had set down that morning, and the towering glassy structures of the giant shopping and recreation center, which had been opened here recently by Grand Commerce in its bid for a cut of prospective outworld salaries. The salaries weren't entirely prospective either. Ten miles away on the other side of Headquarters dome, new squares of living domes were sprouting up daily. At this morning's count they housed fifty-two thousand people. The Hub's p. 175 major industries and assorted branches of Federation government had established a solid foothold on Manon. Trigger turned her head as Holati Tate came into the office. He closed the door carefully behind him. "How's the little critter doing?" he asked. "Still absorbing the goop," Trigger said. She held Mantelish's small mystery plasmoid cupped lightly between thumbs and fingers, its bottom side down in a shallow bowl half full of something which Mantelish considered to be nutritive for plasmoids, or at least for this one. Its sides pulsed lightly and regularly against her palms. "The level of the stuff keeps going down," she added. "Good," said Holati. He pulled a chair up to the table and sat down opposite her. He looked broodingly at plasmoid 113-A. "You really think this thing likes me—personally?" Trigger inquired. Her boss said, "It's eating, isn't it? And moving. There were a couple of days before you got here when it looked pretty dead to me." "Hard to believe," Trigger observed, "that a sort of leech-looking thing could distinguish between people." "This one can. Do you get any sensations while holding it?" "Sensations?" She considered. "Nothing particular. It's just like I said the other time—little Repulsive is rather nice to feel." p. 176 "For you," he said. "I didn't tell you everything." "You rarely do," Trigger remarked. "I'll tell you now," said Holati. "The day after we left, when it started acting very agitated and then very droopy, Mantelish said it might be missing the female touch it had got from you. He was being facetious, I think. But I couldn't see any reason not to try it, so I called in your facsimile and had her sit down at the table where the thing was lying." "Yes?" "Well, first it came flying up to her, crying 'Mama!' Not actually, of course. Then it touched her hand and recoiled in horror." Trigger raised an eyebrow. "It looked like it," he insisted. "We all commented on it. So then she reached out and touched it. Then she recoiled in horror." "Why?" "She said it had given her a very nasty electric jolt. Apparently like the one it gave Mantelish." Trigger glanced down dubiously at Repulsive. "Gee, thanks for letting me hold it, Holati! It seems to have stopped eating now, by the way. Or whatever it does. Doesn't look much fatter if any, does it?" The Commissioner looked. "No," he said. "And if you weighed it, you'd probably find it still weighs an exact three and a half pounds. Mantelish feels the thing turns any food intake directly into energy." p. 177 "Then it should be able to produce a very nice jolt at the moment," Trigger commented. "Now, what do I do with Repulsive?" Holati took a towel from beneath the table and spread it out. "Absorbent material," he said. "Lay it on that and just let it dry. That's what we used to do." Trigger shook her head. "Next thing, I'll be changing its diapers!" "It isn't that bad," the Commissioner said. "Anyway, you will adopt baby, won't you?" "I suppose I have to." She placed the plasmoid on the towel, wiped her hands and stepped back from it. "What happens if it falls on the floor?" "Nothing," Holati said. "It just moves on in the direction it was going. Pretty hard to hurt those things." "In that case," Trigger said, "let's check out its container now." The Commissioner took Repulsive's container out of a desk safe and handed it to her. Its outer appearance was that of a neat modern woman's handbag with a shoulder strap. It had an antigrav setting which would reduce its overall weight, with the plasmoid inside, down to nine ounces if Trigger wanted it that way. It also had a combination lock, unmarked, virtually invisible, the settings of which Trigger already had memorized. Without knowing the settings, a determined man using a high-powered needle blaster might have opened the handbag in around nine hours. A very special job. p. 178 Trigger ran through the settings, opened the container and peered inside. "Rather cramped," she observed. "Not for one of them. We needed room for the gadgetry." "Yes," she said. "Subspace rotation." She shook her head. "Is that another Space Scout invention?" "No," said Holati. "They stole it from Subspace Engineers. Engineers don't know we have it yet. Far as I know, nobody else has got it from them. Go ahead—give it a try." "I was going to." Trigger snapped the container shut, slipped the strap over her shoulder and stood straight, left hand closed over the lower rim of the purselike object. She shifted the ball of her thumb and the tip of her middle finger to the correct spots and began to apply pressure. Then she started. Handbag and strap had vanished. "Feels odd!" She smiled. "And to bring it back, I just have to be here—the same place—and say those words." He nodded. "Want to try that now?" Trigger waved her left hand gently through the air beside her. "What happens," she asked, "if the thing surfaces exactly where my hand happens to be?" "It won't surface if there's anything bulkier than a few dust motes in the way. That's one improvement the Sub Engineers haven't heard about yet." "Well...." She glanced around, picked up a plastic ruler from the desk behind her, and moved p. 179 back a cautious step. She waved the ruler's tip gingerly about in the area where the handbag had been. "Come, Fido!" she said. Nothing happened. She drew the ruler back. "Come, Fido!" Handbag and strap materialized in mid-air and thumped to the floor. "Convinced?" Holati asked. He picked up the handbag and gave it back to her. "It seems to work. How long will that little plasmoid last if it's left in subspace like that?" He shrugged. "Indefinitely, probably. They're tough. We know that twenty-four hours at a stretch won't bother it in the least, so we've set that as the limit it's to stay rotated except in emergencies." "And you—and one other person I'm not to know about, but who isn't anywhere near here—can also bring it back?" "Yes. If we know the place from which it's been rotated. So the agreement is that—again except in absolute emergencies—it will be rotated only from one of the six points specified and known to all three of us." Trigger nodded. She opened the container and went over to the table where the plasmoid still lay on its towel. It was dry by now. She picked it up. "You're a lot of trouble, Repulsive!" she told it. "But these people think you must be worth it." She slipped it into the container, and it seemed to snuggle down comfortably inside. Trigger closed the handbag, lightened it to half its normal p. 180 weight, slipped the strap back over her left shoulder. "And now," she inquired, "what am I to do with the stuff I usually keep in a purse?" "You'll be in Precol uniform while you're here. We've had a special uniform made for you. Extra pockets." Trigger sighed. "Oh, they're quite inconspicuous and convenient," he assured her. "We checked with the girls on that." "I'll bet!" she said. "Did they okay the porgee pouch too?" "Sure. Porgee doping is a big thing all over the Hub at the moment. Among the ladies anyway. Shows you're the delicate sort, or something like that. I forget what they said. Want to start carrying it?" "Hand it over," Trigger said resignedly. "I did see quite a few pouches on the ship. Might as well get people used to thinking I've turned into a porgee sniffer." Holati went back to the desk safe and took out a flat pouch, the length of his hand but narrower. He gave it to her. It appeared to be worked of gold thread; one side was studded with tiny pearls, the opposite surface was plain. Trigger laid the plain side against the cloth of her skirt, just below the right hip, and let go. It adhered there. She stretched her right leg out to the side and considered the porgee pouch. "Doesn't look too bad," she conceded. "That's real porgee in the top section?" p. 181 "The real article. Close to nine hundred and fifty credits worth." "Suppose somebody wants to borrow a sniff? Wouldn't be good to have them fumbling around the pouch very much!" "They can't," said the Commissioner. "That's why we made it porgee. When you buy a supply, it has to be adjusted to your individual chemistry, exactly. That's mainly what makes it expensive. Try using someone else's, and it'll flip you across the room." "Better get this adjusted to my chemistry then. I might have to take a demonstration sniff now and then to make it look right." "We've already done that," he said. "Good," said Trigger. "Now let's see!" She straightened up, left hand closed lightly around the bottom of the purse, right hand loose at her side. Her eyes searched the office briefly. "Some object around here you don't particularly value?" she asked. "Something largish?" "Several," the Commissioner said. He glanced around. "That overgrown flower pot in the corner is one. Why?" "Just practicing," said Trigger. She turned to face the flower pot. "That will do. Now—here I come along, thinking of nothing." She started walking toward the flower pot. "Then, suddenly, in front of me, there stands a plasmoid snatcher." She stopped in mid-stride. Handbag and strap vanished, as her right hand slapped the porgee p. 182 pouch. The Denton popped into her palm. The flower pot screeched and flew apart. "Golly!" she said, startled. "Come, Fido!" Handbag and strap reappeared and she reached out and caught the strap. She looked around at Commissioner Tate. "Sorry about your pot, Holati. I was just going to shake it up a little. I forgot you people had been handling my gun. I keep it switched to stunner myself when I'm carrying it," she added pointedly. "Perfectly all right about the pot," the Commissioner said. "I should have warned you. Otherwise, I'd say all you'd need is a moment to see them coming." Trigger spun the Denton to its stunner setting and laid it back inside the slit which had appeared along the side of the porgee pouch. She ran thumb and finger tip along the length of the slit, and the pouch was sealed again. "That's the part that's worrying me," she admitted. <hr /> <ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: preceding thought break missing in the original text.">When</ins> Trigger presented herself at Commissioner Tate's personal quarters early that evening, she found him alone. "Sit down," he said. "I've been trying to get hold of Mantelish for the past hour. He's over on the other side of the planet again." Trigger sat down and lifted an eyebrow. "Should he be?" "I don't think so," said Holati. "But I've been overruled on that. He's still the best man the Federation has working on the various plasmoid p. 183 problems, so I'm not to interfere with his investigations any more than I can show is absolutely necessary. It's probably all right. Those U-League guards of his aren't a bad group." "If they compare with the boys the League had watching the Plasmoid Project, they should be just about tops," Trigger said. "The Space Scouts thank you for those kind words," the Commissioner told her. "Those weren't League guards. When it came to deciding who was to keep an eye on you, I overruled everybody." She smiled. "I might have guessed it. What's there for the professor to be investigating on the other side of Manon?" "He's hunting for some theoretical creatures he calls wild plasmoids." "Wild plasmoids?" "Uh-huh. His idea is that some of the plasmoids the Old Galactics were using on Manon might have got away from them, or just been left lying around, so to speak, and could have survived till now. He thinks they might even be reproducing themselves. He's looking for them with a special detector he built." Trigger held up a finger on which was a slim gold ring with a small green stone in it. "Like this one?" she asked. "He's got a large version of that type of detector with him too. But he thinks that if any wild plasmoids are around, they're likely to be along the lines of 113-A. So he's also constructed a detector which reacts to 113-A." p. 184 "I see." Trigger was silent a moment. "Does Mantelish have any idea why Repulsive is the only plasmoid known to which our ring detectors don't react?" "Apparently he does," Holati said. "But when he starts in on those subjects, I find him difficult to follow." He looked soberly at Trigger. "There are times," he confessed, "when I suspect Professor Mantelish is somewhat daft. But probably he's just so brilliant that he keeps fading beyond my mental range." Trigger laughed. "My father used to come home from a session with Mantelish muttering the same sort of thing." She glanced at the ring again. "By the way, have any plasmoids actually been stolen around here for us to detect?" He nodded. "Quite a few have been snitched from Harvest Moon and various storage points by now. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them turn up here in the dome eventually. Not that it's a serious loss. What the thieves have been getting away with is small stuff—plasmoid nuts and bolts, so to speak. Still, each of those would still fetch around a hundred thousand credits, if you offered them to the right people. Incidentally, if asking you to this conference has interfered with any personal plans, just say so. We can put it off till tomorrow. Especially since it's beginning to look as if Mantelish won't make it here either." "Either?" Trigger said. "Quillan's already had to cancel. He got involved with something during the afternoon." p. 185 "Oh," she said coolly. She looked at her watch. "I do have a dinner date with Brule Inger in an hour and a half. But you said this meeting wasn't to take more than an hour anyway, didn't you?" He nodded. "Then I'm free. My quarters are arranged, and I'm ready to go back on my old job in the morning." "Fine," said the Commissioner. "There are things I wanted to discuss with you privately anyway. If we can't get through to Mantelish in another ten minutes, we'll go ahead with that. I would have liked to have Quillan here to fill us in with data about some of the top-level crooks in the Hub. They're a <ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: 'specailty' in the original text.">specialty</ins> of his. I don't know too much about them myself." He paused. "That Lyad Ermetyne now," he said, "looks as if she either already is part of the main problem or is working very hard to get there. She's had a Tranest warship stationed here for the past two weeks. A thing called the Aurora." Trigger was startled. "But warships aren't allowed in Manon System!" "It isn't in the system. It's stationed a half light-year away, where it has a legal right to be. Nothing to worry about as such. It's just a heavy armed frigate, which is the limit Tranest is allowed to build. Since it's Lyad's private boat, I imagine it's been souped up with everything they could throw in. Anyway, the fact that she sent it here ahead of her indicates she isn't just dropping in for a casual visit." p. 186 "She made that pretty clear herself!" Trigger said. "Why do you think she's being so open about it?" He shrugged. "Might have a number of reasons. One could be that she'd get the beady eye anyway as soon as she showed up here. When Lyad goes anywhere, it's usually on business. After Quillan reported on your dinner party, I got all the information I could on her. The First Lady stacks up as a tough cookie! Also smart. Most of those Ermetynes wind up being dead-brained by some loving relative, and apparently they have to know how to whip up a sharp brew of poison before they're let into kindergarten. Lyad's been top dog among them since she was eighteen—" His head turned. A bell had begun pinging in the next room. He stood up. "Probably Mantelish's outfit on the transmitter," he said. "I told them to call as soon as they located him." He stopped at the door. "Care for a drink, Trigger girl? You know where the stuff is." "Not just now, thanks." The Commissioner came back in a couple of minutes. "Darn fool got lost in a swamp! They found him finally, but he's too tired to come over now." He sat down and scratched his chin thoughtfully. "Do you remember the time you passed out on the Harvest Moon?" he asked. Trigger looked at him, puzzled. "The time I what?" "Passed out. Fainted. Went out cold." p. 187 "I? You're out of your mind, Holati! I never fainted in my life." "Reason I asked," he said, "is that I've been told a spell in a rest cubicle—same thing as a rest cubicle anyway, only it's used for therapy—sometimes resolves amnesias." "Amnesias! What are you talking about?" The Commissioner said. "I'm talking about you. This is bound to be a jolt, Trigger girl. Might have been easier after a drink. But I'll just give it to you straight. About a week after Mantelish and his U-League crew first arrived here, you did pass out on one occasion while we were on the Harvest Moon with them. And afterwards you didn't remember doing it." "I didn't?" Trigger said weakly. "No. I thought it might have cleared up, and you just had some reason for not wanting to mention it." He got to his feet. "Like that drink now—before I go on with the details?" She nodded. p. 188 <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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