Trigger and Friends by James H. Schmitz

Nearby space, since the only vehicles available to personnel on Manon had a limited range.

Dropping that line for the moment, the commissioner’s reflections ran on, one came to the really interesting third item—which was that Tate was an old-timer in Precol service. And as an old-timer, he knew that a requisition of this kind would not escape notice on an Academy-conducted Project. In fact, he could expect it to draw a rather prompt inquiry. One had to assume again that he intended to accomplish whatever he was out to accomplish with such equipment before an inquiry caught up with him—unless, of course, he had a legitimate explanation to offer when the check was made.

In any event, Commissioner Ramog concluded, no check was going to be made. At least, none of the kind that the senior assistant commissioner might be expecting.

Ramog stood up and walked over to the viewwall. There were two other planets in the system of Manon’s great green sun. Giant planets both and impossible for a man in a hopper to approach. Neither of them had a moon. There would be stray chunks of matter sprinkled through the system that nobody knew about, but Tate didn’t have the equipment for a planned prospecting trip. He had the experience: his record showed he’d taken leave of absence a half dozen times during his Precol service period to take part in private prospecting jaunts. But without equipment, and the time to use it, experience wouldn’t help him much in sifting through the expanses of a planetary system.

* * *

And that left what really had been the most likely probability almost to start with. The commissioner switched off the image of Manon and replaced it with that of Manon’s Moon Belt.

The planet had possessed a sizable satellite at one time; but the time lay far in Manon’s geological past. What was left by now was debris, thick enough to provide both a minor navigational problem and an interesting night-time display, but not heavy enough to represent a noteworthy menace to future colonists. So far there had been no opportunity to survey the Belt thoroughly.

But anyone who was using a hopper regularly could have made an occasional unobserved trip up there.

He couldn’t, however, have left his vehicle. Neither to make a closer investigation, nor to pick up something he thought he’d spotted. Not unless he had a Moon-suit.

The commissioner felt excitement growing up in him, and now he could allow it to come through. Because there was really only one reason why an old-timer like Tate would violate Precol regulations so obviously. Only one thing big enough! The thing that Commissioner Ramog had come to Manon to find. An Old Galactic artifact—

He noticed he was shaking a little when he switched on the communicator to the outer office of his quarters. But his tone was steady. “Mora?”

“Right here.” A cool feminine voice.

“See what you got on Tate during the day.”

“The S.A.C.? He was out with Argee for two hours this afternoon. No coverage on that period.”

Ramog frowned a little, nodded. “I have her report here. A Project Five item. What else?”

“Afterwards—Warehouse Center . . .”

“Have that, too.”

“I’m scanning the tapes,” Mora said. And presently, “Seems to have been in his hopper alone since early morning. Location checks to his station. Nothing of interest, so far. Hm-m-m . . . well, now!”

“What is it?”

“I think,” Mora told him, “I should bring this in to you. He’s going to be gone two or three days.”

“I’ll come out.” Ramog already was on his feet. “Get me a current location check on that hopper of his.”

Mora looked around as he came hurriedly into the office. “No luck, commissioner. Hopper can’t be traced. He’s gone off-planet.”

* * *

Ramog’s eyes narrowed very briefly as he dropped into a chair at her desk. “Start up the playback. And don’t look so pleased!”

Mora smiled. She was a slender quick-moving, black-haired girl with big eyes almost as dark as her hair. “That’s my little blond tiger!” she murmured.

His face was flushed. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” she said, “that I feel very, very sorry for the S.A.C.” She started the playback. “The other one talking is Chelly. Ecologist. Tate’s unofficial second-in-command at the station.”

Ramog nodded impatiently. There weren’t more than a dozen sentences to the conversation between Holati Tate and Chelly. Mora shut off the playback. “That’s all there is to his tape.” She waited.

Ramog had had a bad moment. The S.A.C. had simply put Chelly in charge of station operations for the next two or three days, until he returned. No explanation for his intended absence, and Chelly seemed only mildly surprised. But obviously he wasn’t involved in what Tate was doing.

What had bothered Ramog was the sudden thought that Tate might have arranged for an off-planet rendezvous with an FTL. But a second or two later he knew it wasn’t possible. The Precol patrol boat stationed off Manon would spot, report, and challenge anything equipped with a space drive before it got close enough to the system for a hopper to meet it. The patrol-boat’s job was a legitimate one: a planet undergoing orderly processing became a Federation concern and closed to casual interlopers. But in this case it insured that wherever Holati Tate was heading, he would have to return to Manon eventually.

The commissioner had relaxed a little. He smiled at Mora, his mind reverting to something she’d said a minute or so ago. A thrill-greedy, sanguinary little devil, he thought, but it would be regrettable if he ever had to get rid of Mora. They understood each other so well.

“You know,” he told her, “I seem to feel very sorry for the S.A.C., too!” He added, “Now.”

She gurgled excitedly and came over to him. “Are you going to tell me what it’s all about?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Commissioner Ramog said tolerantly. An operation like this was a game to Mora. But she wasn’t stupid. She was the most valuable assistant he’d ever developed.

“How many possible lines of action?” she persisted.

Ramog already had considered that. “Three,” he said. “And I don’t think we’d better waste any time.”

* * ** * *

As it happened, it was Ramog’s third line of action with which Holati Tate became involved when he dropped back into Manon’s atmosphere two and a half planet days after his departure. Had he set the hopper down then in some wild section of the planet it would have been a different story. Ramog had been obliged to consider the possibility that the S.A.C. would be so lacking in human trustfulness that he might bury some item of value where it would never be found by anyone else.

An electronics specialist by the name of Gision was, therefore, on Holati’s tail in an armed hopper as soon as he was spotted again, and he followed the S.A.C. around the curve of the planet as unobtrusively as one hopper could follow another. However, Holati Tate was merely heading by the shortest route for his Bio Station. When he settled down there, Gision took up a position halfway between Headquarters and the Bio domes and waited for developments.

At the Bio Station Essidy took over. For the past eighteen hours Essidy had been conducting an unhurried inventory of the station, assisted by a small crew of husky warehouse men. Holati locked his hopper when he got out, and it wasn’t Essidy’s job to do anything about that. He merely reported to Ramog that the S.A.C.—looking a little travel-worn and towing a bulky object by a gravity tube—had gone to his personal quarters. The object appeared to be, and probably was, the packaged Moon-suit. A few minutes later, Holati re-appeared at the hopper without the object, climbed in and took off. Gision reported from his aerial vantage point that the S.A.C. was going toward Headquarters now and was told by Ramog to precede him there.

Essidy was chattering over the private beam again before Gision signed off. Holati Tate had left his quarters sealed, but that had been no problem. “We got the thing unwrapped,” Essidy said. “It’s the Moon-suit, all right, and nothing else. He’s got the directional tracker installed. It’s activated. And that’s the only interesting thing in these rooms.”

“Go ahead,” Ramog said quietly. “What’s the reading on the tracker?”

Essidy checked again to make sure. “Locked on Object,” he reported. “At two to twenty thousand miles.”

And that was all Ramog had wanted to know. For a moment he was surprised to discover that his palms were slippery with sweat.

“All right, Essidy,” he said. “Seal up his rooms and bring the suit over here, immediately.” He added with no change in inflection, “If anyone has tampered with that reading before I see it, I’ll burn him and you personally.”

“Yes, sir,” Essidy said meekly. “Shall I have the boys go ahead with the inventory to make it look right?”

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