“Uh-huh. Sound data back of the rumors, too. We felt that with a sharp operator like Ramog the situation we set up had better be genuine.” After a moment, he added, “There really wasn’t any way of doing it gently, Trigger girl. That Academy outfit was too cocksure of its position; it needed hard processing. One of the things they had to learn was that—away from civilization, anyway—the members of the Society can play rougher and dirtier than any commissioner they can send out. After all,” he concluded mildly, “we’ve had the training for that. Years of it.”
Trigger looked at him curiously. “What puzzles me is that they seem to have got the idea so quickly. I wouldn’t have thought Precol Academy would let itself be impressed too much by just one object lesson.”
“They might have missed some of the implications,” Holati admitted. “However, we gave them a helpful hint.”
“Oh?” she said. “What?”
“A formal complaint from our Society, signed by its president. It listed Society members and others who had been killed on Precol Projects in the last ten years, because of the inefficiency, let’s say, of specific Project commissioners. The commissioners in question—all members of the Academy—were also listed. Ramog’s name happened to be at the head of that list . . . and they got the complaint the day after Ramog was reported lost.”
Trigger’s eyes widened. “Well,” she acknowledged, “that’s as broad as a hint can get!”
“We weren’t trying to be subtle. Murder gets to be hard to prove under Project conditions—there’re too many possibilities. So the Academy group is safe enough that way; we aren’t accusing anyone of anything worse than inefficiency. But the complaint suggested that the people we listed be withdrawn from active service, as they were obviously unfit for such work.”
She smiled briefly. “And since the Society has taken the precaution of turning its president into an extremely famous man, the home office can’t resort to obvious counteraction—like firing the whole twelve thousand of you from the various Projects?”
“That would raise a terrible stink, wouldn’t it?” Holati said cheerfully. “And, who knows, we might even publish our complaint then. With additional data we could—Slow her down again, will you? We should be pretty close to course end by now.”
“A few minutes off,” Trigger said reluctantly. “What is it—more Harvesters?”
He was fiddling with the target screen again. “Uh-huh,” he said absently. “But we’ll move on a little farther. Slow and easy now!”
* * *
Trigger kept it slow and easy, ignoring the dark shapes they slid past occasionally. After a while, she said, “There’s one thing the Academy must have thought of trying, though—”
“To pin Ramog’s disappearance on me?”
She glanced at him. “Perhaps not on you personally. There’s evidence enough you’d just started walking back from the edge of the swamps when Ramog climbed into a jet suit, took off for the Moon Belt on an undisclosed mission, and vanished. But it wouldn’t be too unreasonable for the Academy to assume that some retired, but not so decrepit Space Scouts, were waiting for him up there when he arrived.”
“You know,” Holati said with some satisfaction, “that’s exactly how they did figure it.” He kept his eyes on the screen as he went on. “Naturally, they wouldn’t expect us to leave a body floating around, but a really capable investigator doesn’t need anything as crude as that in the line of evidence. The Academy had some very good boys combing over the Moon Belt and other parts of the system the past couple of months. There were times when we had to be careful not to trip over them.”
“Oh?” said Trigger. “What did they find?”
“Nothing,” Holati said. “Naturally. They gave up finally.”
She frowned. “How do you know?”
“I get the word. The word I got last week was that the bad eggs in Precol we named on that list are resigning in droves and heading for the Federation. And the men that are being moved up are men we like. Just today,” he added, “an Academy courier came in with an official notification for me. I’m confirmed in rank as commissioner now, in permanent charge of the Manon Project.”
Trigger Argee sat thoughtfully silent for a while. “So there really wasn’t anyone waiting up in the Moon Belt for Ramog?”
Holati shook his head. “No,” he said almost casually. “We never laid a finger on him. Wouldn’t have been quite ethical—we had no proof.”
Her face began working curiously. “And there was that plankton signal you had me copying for you—Did you ever find out whether it attracted the Harvesters, too?”
He nodded. “Chow call, pure and simple. Now, pilot, do you spot that singleton on your screen over there?”
Trigger’s head was swimming for a moment; then she saw the distant dark blob. “Yes,” she said faintly.
“Move in on it, adjust to the drift, and stop.” She heard him stand up.
“Holati!” It wasn’t much more than a gasp. “Are you going out?”
“Well, what else? It won’t take long.”
Trigger closed her eyes slowly, opened them again and grimly maneuvered the sluggishly gliding boat in on its dark target. From behind her came a series of vague metallic sounds, followed by the snaps of the magnetic suit clamps. She stopped the boat and stared out at the shadow shape swimming like a whale in the tides of space beside them. Soft heavy footsteps passed behind her, moving toward the lock. Waves of horror began crawling over her skin.
The lock hissed, and presently stopped hissing. She was alone. The boat turned slowly, and she found herself staring again at the green blaze of Manon’s sun. But the dark thing still floated at the edge of her vision, and now and then it seemed to move slightly. She felt like screaming. Then the lock began hissing again, and stopped again.
* * *
He came in slowly and turned to the back of the ship. Something went dragging and bumping heavily across the floor behind him.
She nodded slowly, though he couldn’t see that from the back of the ship.
Riding a directional beam, she thought—and the beam pre-set to cut out when he hit the altitude where the Plankton Drift is thickest. So there he hangs wondering what’s happened, while the suit is broadcasting to those—whew!
“Holati,” she said evenly, “I think I’m going to faint.”
“Not you,” his voice came from the back of the ship. “Or I wouldn’t have picked you for the trip.” He was breathing heavily. “You can start us back to base now.”
Trigger didn’t faint. The ship began to move and the thing outside vanished. The thing he had brought inside went with them. Holati made no stir for the moment; she guessed he was glad of a chance to rest.
The happy little monster is right, her thoughts ran on. It wasn’t a murder; it wasn’t even an execution. They couldn’t prove Ramog was a killer, so they tested him. He couldn’t climb into that suit until he’d got Holati Tate out of the way. And once he’d done that, he couldn’t send anyone else because, with stakes that big there was never anyone else a man like Ramog could trust.
The Society had it set up, all right—
There was a loud metal clang from the back of the ship, and a pale purple glow grew in the dark behind Trigger. The little fuel converter door had been opened. At the same time, something seemed to shut off her breathing.
Holati said conversationally, “Precol Service was a pretty fair organization before the Academy took over, Trigger. Shouldn’t be long before it’s back in good shape again now—” He stopped and grunted with effort, and there was a sharp cracking sound like a stick of dry wood being broken.
“The Academy’s all right,” he went on, breathing unevenly again, “for raising funds and things like that. We’ll keep it around. But it’s out in the field where the fun is, and we intend to keep the fun clean from now on.”
The purple light faded; the converter door clanged shut. The little boat’s interior lights came on. “All right,” Holati said. “You can look around now.”
Trigger looked around. There were dark streaks on the floor before the converter door, but the thing that had been brought in from outside was gone. Holati Tate was climbing out of his space-duty suit. He looked at her and closed one eye in a wink that was not, in the slightest degree, humorous.
“Processed!” he said.
Lion Loose
1
For twelve years, at a point where three major shipping routes of the Federation of the Hub crossed within a few hours’ flight of one another, the Seventh Star Hotel had floated in space, a great golden sphere, gleaming softly in the void through its translucent shells of battle plastic. The Star had been designed to be much more than a convenient transfer station for travelers and freight; for some years after it was opened to the public, it retained a high rating among the more exotic pleasure resorts of the Hub. The Seventh Star Hotel was the place to have been that season, and the celebrities and fat cats converged on it with their pals and hangers-on. The Star blazed with life, excitement, interstellar scandals, tinkled with streams of credits dancing in from a thousand worlds. In short, it had started out as a paying proposition.