It was almost a month since she’d even heard from Brule. She could make up another personal tape to him today if she felt like it. He would get it in fourteen days or so via a Federation packet. But she’d already sent him three without reply. Brule wasn’t at all good at long distance lovemaking, and she didn’t blame him much. She was a little awkward herself when it came to feeding her personal feelings into a tape. And—because of security again—there was very little else she could feed into it. She couldn’t even let Brule know just where she was.
She put the solido back in its drawer, reached for one of the bank of buttons on the right side of the desk and pushed it down. A desk panel slid up vertically in front of her, disclosing a news viewer switched to the index of current headlines.
Trigger glanced over the headlines, while a few items dissolved slowly here and there and were replaced by more recent developments. Under the “Science” heading a great deal seemed to be going on, as usual, in connection with plasmoid experiments around the Hub.
She dialed in the heading, skimmed through the first item that appeared. Essentially it was a summary of reports on Hubwide rumors that nobody could claim any worthwhile progress in determining what made the Old Galactic plasmoids tick. Which, so far as Trigger knew, was quite true. Other rumors, rather unpleasant ones, were that the five hundred or so scientific groups to whom individual plasmoids had been issued by the Federation’s University League actually had gained important information, but were keeping it to themselves.
The summary plowed through a few of the learned opinions and counter-opinions most recently obtained, then boiled them down to the statement that a plasmoid might be compared to an engine which appeared to lack nothing but an energy source. Or perhaps more correctly—assuming it might have an as yet unidentified energy source—a starter button. One group claimed to have virtually duplicated the plasmoid loaned to it by the Federation, producing a biochemical structure distinguishable from the Old Galactic model only by the fact that it had—quite predictably—fallen apart within hours. But plasmoids didn’t fall apart. The specimens undergoing study had shown no signs of deterioration. A few still absorbed nourishment from time to time; some had been observed to move slightly. But none could be induced to operate. It was all very puzzling!
It was very puzzling, Trigger conceded. Back in the Manon System, when they had been discovered, the plasmoids were operating with high efficiency on the protein-collecting station which the mysterious Old Galactics appeared to have abandoned, or forgotten about, some hundreds of centuries ago. It was only when humans entered the base and switched off its mechanical operations that the plasmoids stopped working—and then, when the switches which appeared to have kept them going were expectantly closed again, they had stayed stopped.
The economic benefit, if they could be restarted, was obvious. On the Harvest Moon there had been a differently shaped plasmoid for every job. They could apparently take any form necessary for their function, and would sit and perform that function indefinitely. Personally, Trigger couldn’t have cared less if they never did move again. It was nice that old Holati Tate had made an almost indecently vast fortune out of his first-discovery rights to the things, because she was really very fond of the Commissioner when he wasn’t being irritating. But in some obscure way she found the plasmoids themselves and the idea of unlimitedly plastic life which they embodied rather appalling. However, she was in a minority there. Practically everybody else seemed to feel that plasmoids were the biggest improvement since the creation of Eve.
She switched the viewer presently to its local-news setting and dialed in the Manon System’s reference number. Keeping tab on what was going on out there had become a private little ritual of late. Occasionally she even picked up references to Brule Inger, who functioned nowadays as Precol’s official greeter and contact man in the system. He was very popular with the numerous important Hub citizens who made the long run out to Manon—some bent on getting a firsthand view of the marvels of Old Galactic science, and a great many more bent on getting an early stake in the development of Manon Planet, which was rapidly approaching the point where its status would shift from Precol Project to Federation Territory, opening it to all qualified comers.
Today there was no news about Brule. Grand Commerce had opened its first business and recreation center on Manon, not ten miles from the Precol Headquarters dome where Trigger recently had been working. The subspace net which was being installed about the Old Galactic base was very nearly completed. The permanent Hub population on Manon Planet had just passed the forty-three thousand mark. There had been, Trigger recalled, a trifle nostalgically, barely eight hundred Precol employees, and not another human being, on that world in the days before Holati Tate announced his discovery.
She was just letting the viewer panel slide back into the desk when the office ComWeb gave forth with a musical ping. She switched it on.
“Hi, Rak!” she said cheerily. “Anything new?”
The bony-faced young man looking out at her wore the lusterless black uniform of a U-League Junior Scientist. His expression was worried.
He said, “I believe there is, Miss Farn.” Rak was the group leader of the thirty-four Junior Scientists the League had installed in the Project. Like all the Juniors, he took his duties very seriously. “Unfortunately it’s nothing I can discuss over a communicator. Would it be possible for you to come over and meet with us during the day?”
“That,” Trigger stated, “was a ridiculous question, Rak! Want me over right now?”
He grinned. “Thanks, Miss Farn! In twenty minutes then? I’ll get my advisory committee together and we can meet in the little conference room off the Exhibition Hall.”
Trigger nodded. “I’ll be wandering around the Hall. Just send a guard out to get me when you’re ready.”
3
She switched off the ComWeb and stood up. Rak and his group were stuck with the Plasmoid Project a lot more solidly than she was. They’d been established here, confined to their own wing of the Project area, when she came in from Manon with the Commissioner. Until the present security rulings were relaxed—which might not be for another two years—they would remain on the project.
Trigger felt a little sorry for them, though the Junior Scientists didn’t seem to mind the setup. Dedication stood out all over them. Since about half were young women, one could assume that at any rate they weren’t condemned to a completely monastic existence.
A couple of workmen were guiding a dozen big cleaning robots around the Plasmoid Exhibition Hall, which wouldn’t be open to students or visitors for another few hours. Trigger strolled across the floor of the huge area toward a couple of exhibits that hadn’t been there the last time she’d come through. Life-sized replicas of two O.G. Plasmoids—Numbers 1432 and 1433—she discovered. She regarded the waxy-looking, lumpish, partially translucent forms with some distaste. She’d been all over the Old Galactic Station itself, and might have stood close enough to the originals of these models to touch them. Not that she would have.
She glanced at her watch, walked around a scale model of Harvest Moon, the O.G. station, which occupied the center of the Hall, and went on among the exhibits. There were views taken on Manon Planet in one alcove, mainly of Manon’s aerial plankton belt and of the giant plasmoids called Harvesters which had moved about the belt, methodically engulfing its clouds of living matter. A whale-sized replica of a Harvester dominated one end of the Hall, a giant dark-green sausage in external appearance, though with some extremely fancy internal arrangements.
“Miss Farn . . .”
She turned. A League cop, standing at the entrance of a hallway thirty feet away, pitched her the old flourish and followed it up with a bow. Excellent manners these guard boys had!
Trigger gave him a smile.
“Coming,” she said.
Junior Scientist Rak and his advisory committee—two other young men and a young woman—were waiting in the conference room for her. They all stood up when she came in. This room marked the border of their territory; they would have violated several League rules by venturing out into the hall through which Trigger had entered.
And that would have been unthinkable.
Rak did the talking, as on the previous occasions when Trigger had met with this group. The advisory committee simply sat there and watched him. As far as Trigger could figure it, they were present at these sessions only to check Rak if it looked as if he were about to commit some ghastly indiscretion.
“We were wondering, Miss Farn,” Rak said questioningly, “whether you have the authority to requisition additional University League guards for the Plasmoid Project?”