“So they helped you find me?” she said cautiously. It was clear that the major had strong feelings about computers.
“Oh, sure,” he said. “It usually turns out it was a good idea to do what those CCs say. Anything unusual that shows up in the area you’re working on gets chunked into the things as a matter of course. We were on the liners. Dawn City reports back a couple of murders. `Dawn City to the head of the list!’ cry the computers. Nobody asks why. They just plow into the ticket purchase records. And right there are the little Argee thumbprints!”
He looked at Trigger. “My own bet,” he said, somewhat accusingly, “was that you were on one of those that had just taken off. We didn’t know about that ticket reservation.”
“What I don’t see,” Trigger said, changing the subject, “is why two murders should seem so very unusual. There must be quite a few of them, after all.”
“True,” said Quillan. “But not murders that look like catassin killings.”
“Oh!” she said startled. “Is that what these were?”
“That’s what Ship Security thinks.”
Trigger frowned. “But what could be the connection—”
Quillan reached across the table and patted her hand. “You’ve got it!” he said with approval. “Exactly! No connection. Some day I’m going to walk down those rows and give them each a blast where it will do the most good. It will be worth being broken for.”
Trigger said, “I thought that catassin planet was being guarded.”
“It is. It would be very hard to sneak one out nowadays. But somebody’s breeding them in the Hub. Just a few. Keeps the price up.”
Trigger grimaced uncomfortably. She’d seen recordings of those swift, clever, constitutionally murderous creatures in action. “You say it looked like catassin killings. They haven’t found it?”
“No. But they think they got rid of it. Emptied the air from most of the ship after they surfaced and combed over the rest of it with life detectors. They’ve got a detector system set up now that would spot a catassin if it moved twenty feet in any direction.”
“Life detectors go haywire out of normal space, don’t they?” she said. “That’s why they surfaced then.”
Quillan nodded. “You’re a well-informed doll. They’re pretty certain it’s been sucked into space or disposed of by its owner, but they’ll go on looking till we dive beyond Garth.”
“Who got killed?”
“A Rest Warden and a Security officer. In the rest cubicle area. It might have been sent after somebody there. Apparently it ran into the two men and killed them on the spot. The officer got off one shot and that set off the automatic alarms. So pussy cat couldn’t finish the job that time.”
“It’s all sort of gruesome, isn’t it?” Trigger said.
“Catassins are,” Quillan agreed. “That’s a fact.”
Trigger took another sip. She set down her glass. “There’s something else,” she said reluctantly.
“Yes?”
“When you said you’d come on board to see I got to Manon, I was thinking none of the people who’d been after me on Maccadon could know I was on the Dawn City. They might though. Quite easily.”
“Oh?” said Quillan.
“Yes. You see I made two calls to the ticket office. One from a street ComWeb and one from the bank. If they already had spotted me by that tracer material, they could have had an audio pick-up on me, I suppose.”
“I think we’d better suppose it,” said Quillan. “You had a tail when you came out of the bank anyway.” His glance went past her. “We’ll get back to that later. Right now, take a look at that entrance, will you?”
Trigger turned in the direction he’d indicated.
“They do look like they’re somebody important,” she said. “Do you know them?”
“Some of them. That gentleman who looks like he almost has to be the Dawn City’s First Captain really is the Dawn City’s First Captain. The lady he’s escorting into the lounge is Lyad Ermetyne. The Ermetyne. You’ve heard of the Ermetynes?”
“The Ermetyne Wars? Tranest?” Trigger said doubtfully.
“They’re the ones. Lyad is the current head of the clan.”
The history of Hub systems other than one’s own became so involved so rapidly that its detailed study was engaged in only by specialists. Trigger wasn’t one. “Tranest is one of the restricted planets now, isn’t it?” she ventured.
“It is. Restriction is supposed to be a handicap. But Tranest is also one of the wealthiest individual worlds in the Hub.”
Trigger watched the woman with some interest as the party moved along a dim corridor, followed by the viewer circuit’s invisible pick-up. Lyad Ermetyne didn’t look more than a few years older than she was herself. Rather small, slender, with delicately pretty features. She wore something ankle-length and long-sleeved in lusterless gray with an odd, smoky quality to it.
“Isn’t she the empress of Tranest or something of the sort?” Trigger asked.
Quillan shook his head. “They’ve had no emperors there, technically, since they had to sign their treaty with the Federation. She just owns the planet, that’s all.”
“What would she be doing, going to Manon?”
“I’d like to know,” Quillan said. “The Ermetyne’s a lady of many interests. Now—see the plump elderly man just behind her?”
“The ugly one with the big head who sort of keeps blinking?”
“That one. He’s Belchik Pluly and—”
“Pluly?” Trigger interrupted. “The Pluly Lines?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Oh—nothing really. I heard—a friend of mine—Pluly’s got a yacht out in the Manon System. And a daughter.”
Quillan nodded. “Nelauk.”
“How did you know?”
“I’ve met her. Quite a girl, that Nelauk. Only child of Pluly’s old age, and he dotes on her. Anyway, he’s been on the verge of being blacklisted by Grand Commerce off and on through the past three decades. But nobody’s ever been able to pin anything more culpable on him than that he keeps skimming extremely close to the limits of a large number of laws.”
“He’s very rich, I imagine?” Trigger said thoughtfully.
“Very. He’d be much richer even if it weren’t for his hobby.”
“What’s that?”
“Harems. The Pluly harems rate among the most intriguing and best educated in the Hub.”
Trigger looked at Pluly again. “Ugh!” she said faintly.
Quillan laughed. “The Pluly salaries are correspondingly high. Viewer’s dropping the group now, so there’s just one more I’d like you to notice. The tall girl with black hair, in orange.”
Trigger nodded. “Yes. I see her. She’s beautiful.”
“So she is. She’s also Space Scout Intelligence. Gaya. Comes from Farnhart where they use the single name system. A noted horsewoman, very wealthy, socially established. Which is why we like to use her in situations like this.”
Trigger was silent a moment. Then she said, “What kind of situation is it? I mean, what’s she doing with Lyad Ermetyne and the others?”
“She probably attached herself to the group as soon as she discovered Lyad had come on board. Which,” Quillan said, “is exactly what I would have told Gaya to do if I’d spotted Lyad first.”
Trigger was silent a little longer this time. “Were you thinking this Lyad could be . . .”
“One of our suspects? Well,” said Quillan judiciously, “let’s say Lyad has all the basic qualifications. Since she’s come on board, we’d better consider her. When something’s going on that looks more than usually tricky, Lyad is always worth considering. And there’s one point that looks even more interesting to me now than it did at first.”
“What’s that?”
“Those two little old ladies I eased out of their rightful cabin.”
Trigger looked at him. “What about them?”
“This about them. The Askab of Elfkund is, you might say, one of the branch managers of the Ermetyne interests in the Hub. He is also a hard-working heel in his own right. But he’s not the right size to be one of the people we’re thinking about. Lyad is. He might have been doing a job for her.”
“Job?” she asked. She laughed. “Not with those odd little grannies?”
“We know the odd little grannies. They’re the Askab’s poisoners and pretty slick at it. They were sizing you up while you were having that little chat, doll. Probably not for a coffin this time. You were just getting the equivalent of a pretty thorough medical check-up. Presumably, though, for some sinister ultimate purpose.”
“How do you know?” Trigger asked, very uncomfortably.
“One of those little suitcases in their cabin was a diagnostic recorder. It would have been standing fairly close to the door while you were there. If they didn’t take your recordings out before I got there, they’re still inside. They’re being watched and they know it. It seemed like a good idea to keep the Askab feeling fairly nervous until we found out whether those sweethearts of his had been parked next door to you on purpose.”
“Apparently they were,” Trigger admitted. “Nice bunch of people!”