Trigger and Friends by James H. Schmitz

Five minutes after that, the purse opened itself. A little later again, Trigger suddenly shifted her shoulder uneasily, frowned and made a little half-angry, half-whimpering cry. Then her face smoothed out. Her breathing grew quiet and slow.

* * *

Major Heslet Quillan of the Subspace Engineers came breezing into Manon Planet’s spaceport very early in the morning. A Precol aircar picked him up and let him out on a platform of the Headquarters dome near Commissioner Tate’s offices. Quillan was handed on toward the offices through a string of underlings and reached the door just as it opened and Trigger Argee stepped through.

He grasped her cordially by the shoulders and cried out a cheery hello. Trigger made a soft growling sound in her throat. Her left hand chopped right, her right hand chopped left. Quillan grunted and let go.

“What’s the matter?” he inquired, stepping back. He rubbed one arm, then the other.

Trigger looked at him, growled again, walked past him, and disappeared through another door, her back very straight.

“Come in, Quillan,” Commissioner Tate said from within the office.

Quillan went in and closed the door behind him. “What did I do?” he asked bewilderedly.

“Nothing much,” said Holati. “You just share the misfortune of being a male human being. At the moment, Trigger’s against ’em. She blew up the Brule Inger setup last night.”

“Oh!” Quillan sat down. “I never did like that idea much,” he said.

The Commissioner shrugged. “You don’t know the girl yet. If I’d hauled Inger in, she would never have really forgiven me for it. I had to let her handle it herself. Actually she understands that.”

“How did it go?”

“Her cover reported it was one hell of a good fight for some seconds. If you’d looked closer, you might have just spotted the traces of the shiner Inger gave her. It was a beaut’ last night.”

Quillan went white.

“But if you’re thinking of having a chat with Inger re that part of it,” the Commissioner went on, “forget it.” He glanced at a report form from the medical department on his desk. “Dislocated shoulder . . . broken thumb . . . moderate concussion. And so on. It was the throat punch that finished the matter. He can’t talk yet. We’ll call it square.”

Quillan grunted. “What are you going to do with him now?”

“Nothing,” Holati said. “We know his contacts. Why bother? He’ll resign end of the month.”

Quillan cleared his throat and glanced at the door. “I suppose she’ll want him put up for rehabilitation—seemed pretty fond of him.”

“Relax, son,” said the Commissioner. “Trigger’s an individualist. If Inger goes up for rehabilitation, it will be because he wants it. And he doesn’t, of course. Being a slob suits him fine. He’s just likely to be more cautious about it in the future. So we’ll let him go his happy way. Now—let’s get down to business. How does Pluly’s yacht harem stack up?”

A reminiscent smile spread slowly over Quillan’s face. He shook his head. “Awesome, brother!” he said. “Plain awesome!”

“Pick up anything useful?”

“Nothing definite. But whenever Belchy comes out of the esthetic trances, he’s a worried man. Count him in.”

“For sure?”

“Yes.”

“All right. He’s in. Crack the Aurora yet?”

“No,” said Quillan. “The girls are working on it, But the Ermetyne keeps a mighty taut ship and a mighty disciplined crew. We’ll have a couple of those boys wrapped up in another week. No earlier.”

“A week might be soon enough,” said the Commissioner. “It also might not.”

“I know it,” said Quillan. “But the Aurora does look a little bit obvious, doesn’t she?”

“Yes,” Holati Tate admitted. “Just a little bit.”

19

By lunchtime, Trigger was acting almost cordial again. “I’ve got the Precol job lined up,” she reported to Holati Tate. “I’ll handle it like I used to, whenever I can. When I can’t, the kids will shift in automatically.” The kids were the five assistants among whom her duties had been divided in her absence.

“Major Quillan called me up to Mantelish’s lab around ten,” she went on. “The prof wanted to see Repulsive, so I took him up there. Then it turned out Mantelish wanted to take Repulsive along on a field trip this afternoon.”

Holati looked startled. “He can’t do that, and he knows it!” He reached for the desk transmitter.

“Don’t bother, Commissioner. I told Mantelish I’d been put in charge of Repulsive, and that he’d lose an arm if he tried to walk out of the lab with him.”

Holati cleared his throat. “I see! How did Mantelish react?”

“Oh, he huffed a bit. Like he does. Then he calmed down and agreed he could get by without Repulsive out there. So we stood by while he measured and weighed the thing, and so on. After that he got friendly and said you’d asked him to fill me in on current plasmoid theory.”

“So I did,” said Holati. “Did he?”

“He tried, I think. But it’s like you say. I got lost in about three sentences and never caught up.” She looked curiously at the Commissioner. “I didn’t have a chance to talk to Major Quillan alone, so I’m wondering why Mantelish was told the I-Fleets in the Vishni area are hunting for planets with plasmoids on them. I thought you felt he was too wooly-minded to be trusted.”

“We couldn’t keep that from him very well,” Holati said. “He was the boy who thought of it.”

“You didn’t have to tell him they’d found some possibles, did you?”

“We did, unfortunately. He’s had those plasmoid detectors of his for about a month, but he didn’t happen to think of mentioning them. The reason he was to come back to Manon originally was to sort over the stuff the Fleets have been sending back here. It’s as weird a collection of low-grade life-forms as I’ve ever seen, but not plasmoid. Mantelish went into a temper and wanted to know why the idiots weren’t using detectors.”

“Oh, Lord!” Trigger said.

“That’s what it’s like when you’re working with him,” said the Commissioner. “We started making up detectors wholesale and rushing them out there, but the new results haven’t come in yet.”

“Well, that explains it.” Trigger looked down at the desk a moment, then glanced up and met the Commissioner’s eye. She colored slightly.

“Incidentally,” she said, “I did take the opportunity to apologize to Major Quillan for clipping him a couple this morning. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“He didn’t seem offended,” said Holati.

“No, not really,” she agreed.

“And I explained to him that you had very good reason to feel disturbed.”

“Thanks,” said Trigger. “By the way, was he really a smuggler at one time? And a hijacker?”

“Yes—very successful at it. It’s excellent cover for some phases of Intelligence work. As I heard it, though, Quillan happened to scramble up one of the Hub’s nastier dope rings in the process, and was broken two grades in rank.”

“Broken?” Trigger said. “Why?”

“Unwarranted interference with a political situation. The Scouts are rough about that. You’re supposed to see those things. Sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you do and go ahead anyway. They may pat you on the back privately, but they also give you the axe.”

“I see,” she said. She smiled.

His desk transmitter buzzed and Trigger took it on an earphone extension.

“Argee,” she said. She listened a moment. “All right. Coming over.” She stood up, replacing the earphone. “Office tangle,” she explained. “Guess they feel I’m fluffing off, now I’m back. I’ll get back here as soon as it’s straightened out. Oh, by the way.”

“Yes?”

“The Psychology Service ship messaged in during the morning. It’ll arrive some time tomorrow and wants a station assigned to it outside the system, where it won’t be likely to attract attention. Are they really as huge as all that?”

“I’ve seen one or two that were bigger,” the Commissioner said. “But not much.”

“When they’re stationed, they’ll send someone over in a shuttle to pick me up.”

The Commissioner nodded. “I’ll check on the arrangements for that. The idea of the interview still bothering you?”

“Well, I’d sooner it wasn’t necessary,” Trigger admitted. “But I guess it is.” She grinned briefly. “Anyway, I’ll be able to tell my grandchildren some day that I once talked to one of the real eggheads!”

* * *

The Psychology Service woman who stood up from a couch as Trigger came into the small spaceport lounge next evening looked startlingly similar to Major Quillan’s Dawn City assistant, Gaya. Standing, you could see that she was considerably more slender than Gaya. She had all of Gaya’s good looks.

“The name is Pilch,” she said. She looked at Trigger and smiled. It was a good smile, Trigger thought; not the professional job she’d expected. “And everyone who knows Gaya,” she went on, “thinks we must be twins.”

Trigger laughed. “Aren’t you?”

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