“There won’t be any fumble, Trigger,” Lyad said.
“All right. Let’s set up the rest of it before we move. After the Commissioner signs off, he’ll be up here in three minutes flat. Or less. How about this ship’s officers—do they take your orders too?”
“With the obvious exception of yourself,” Lyad said, “everyone on the Griffin takes my orders at the moment.”
“Then just tell whoever’s in charge of the yacht to let the squad in before there’s any shooting. The Commissioner can get awfully short-tempered. Then get the guards away from that entry portal. That’s for their own good.”
The Ermetyne nodded. “Will do.”
“All right. That covers it, I think.”
They looked at each other for a moment.
“With the information you got from Balmordan,” Trigger remarked, “you should still be able to make a very good dicker with the Council, First Lady. I understand they’re very eager to get the plasmoid mess straightened out quietly.”
Lyad lifted one shoulder in a brief shrug. “Perhaps,” she said.
“Let’s move!” said Trigger.
They walked toward the ComWeb rather edgily, not very fast, not very slow, Trigger four or five steps behind. There had been no sound from the walls and no other sign of what must be very considerable excitement nearby. Trigger’s spine kept tingling. A needlebeam and a good marksman could pluck away the Denton and her hand along with it, without much real risk to the Ermetyne. But probably even the smallest of risks was more than the Tranest people would be willing to take when the First Lady’s person was involved.
Lyad reached the ComWeb and stopped. Trigger stopped too, five feet away. “Go ahead,” she said quietly.
Lyad turned to face her. “Let me make one last—well, call it an appeal,” she said. “Don’t be an over-ethical fool, Trigger Argee! The arrangement I’ve planned will do no harm to anybody. Come in with me, and you can write your own ticket for the rest of your life.”
“No ticket,” Trigger said. She waggled the Denton slightly. “Go ahead! You can talk to the Council later.”
Lyad shrugged resignedly, turned again and reached toward the ComWeb.
Trigger might have relaxed just a trifle at that moment. Or perhaps there was some other cue that Pilli could pick up. There came no sound from the ceiling canopy. What she caught was a sense of something moving above her. Then the great golden bulk landed with a terrifying lightness on the thick carpet between Lyad and herself.
The eyeless nightmare head wasn’t three feet from her own.
The lights in the room went out.
Trigger flung herself backwards, rolled six feet to one side, stood up, backed away and stopped again.
22
The blackness in the room was complete. She spun the Denton to kill. There was silence around her and then a soft rustling at some distance. It might have been the cautious shuffle of a heavy foot over thick carpeting. It stopped again. Where was Lyad?
Her eyes shifted about, trying to pierce the darkness. Black-light, she thought. She said, “Lyad?”
“Yes?” Lyad’s voice came easily in the dark. She might be standing about thirty feet away, at the far end of the room.
“Call your animal off,” Trigger said quietly. “I don’t want to kill it.” She began moving in the direction from which Lyad had spoken.
“Pilli won’t hurt you, Trigger,” the Ermetyne said. “He’s been sent in to disarm you, that’s all. Throw your gun away and he won’t even touch you.” She laughed. “Don’t bother shooting in my direction either! I’m not in the room any more.”
Trigger stopped. Not because of what that hateful, laughing voice had said. But because in the dark about her a fresh, pungent smell was growing. The smell of ripe apples.
She moistened her lips. She whispered, “Pilli—keep away!” Eyeless, the dark would mean nothing to it. Seconds later, she heard the thing breathing.
She faced the sound. It stopped for a moment, then it came again. A slow animal breathing. It seemed to circle slowly to her left. After a little it stopped. Then it was coming toward her.
She said softly, almost pleadingly, “Pilli, stop! Go back, Pilli!”
Silence. Pilli’s odor lay heavy all around. Trigger heard her blood drumming in her ears, and, for a second then, she imagined she could feel, like a tangible fog, the body warmth of the monster standing in the dark before her.
It wasn’t imagination. Something like a smooth, heavy pad of rubber closed around her right wrist and tightened terribly.
The Denton went off two, three, four times before she was jerked violently sideways, flung away, sent stumbling backward against some low piece of furniture and, sprawling, over it. The gun was lost.
As she scrambled dizzily to her feet, Pilli screamed. It was a thin, high, breathless sound like the screaming of a terrified human child. It stopped abruptly. And, as if that had been a signal, the room came full of light again.
Trigger blinked dazedly against the light. Virod stood before her, looking at her, a pair of opaque yellow goggles shoved up on his forehead. Black-light glasses. The golden-haired thing lay in a great shapeless huddle on the floor twenty feet to one side. She couldn’t see her gun. But Virod held one, pointing at her.
Virod’s other hand moved suddenly. Its palm caught the side of her face in a hefty slap. Trigger staggered dumbly sideways, got her balance, and stood facing him again. She didn’t even feel anger. Her cheek began to burn.
“Stop amusing yourself, Virod!” It was Lyad’s voice. Trigger saw her then, standing in a small half-opened door across the room, where a wall hanging had been folded away.
“She appeared to be in shock, First Lady,” Virod explained blandly.
“Is Pilli dead?”
“Yes. I have her gun. He got it from her.” Virod slapped a pocket of his jacket, and some part of Trigger’s mind noted the gesture and suddenly came awake.
“So I saw. Well—too bad about Pilli. But it was necessary. Bring her here then. And be reasonably gentle.” Lyad still sounded unruffled. “And put that gun in a different pocket, fool, or she’ll take it away from you.”
She looked at Trigger impersonally as Virod brought her to the little door, his left hand clamped on her arm just above the elbow.
She said, “Too bad you killed my expert, Trigger! We’ll have to use a chemical approach now. Flam and Virod are quite good at that, but there will be some pain. Not too much, because I’ll be watching them. But it will be rather undignified, I’m afraid. And it will take a great deal longer.”
Tanned, tall, sinuous Flam stood in the small room beyond the door. Trigger saw a long, low, plastic-covered table, clamps and glittering gadgetry. That would have been where cold-fish Balmordan hadn’t been able to make it against his mind-blocks finally. There was still one thing she could do. The yacht was orbiting.
“That sort of thing won’t be at all necessary!” she said shakily. Her voice shook with great ease, as if it had been practicing it all along.
“No?” Lyad said.
“You’ve won,” Trigger said resignedly. “I’ll play along now. I’ll show you how to open that handbag, to start with.”
Lyad nodded. “How do you open it?”
“You have to press it in the right places. Have them bring it here. I’ll show you.”
Lyad laughed. “You’re a little too eager. And much too docile, Trigger! Considering what’s in that handbag, it’s not at all likely it will detonate if we brightly hand it to you and let you start pressing. But something or other of a very undesirable nature would certainly happen! Flam—”
The tall redhead nodded and smiled. She went over to a wall cabinet, unlocked it and took out Repulsive’s container.
Lyad said, “Put it on that shelf for the moment. Then bring me Virod’s gun, and hers.”
She laid the Denton on the shelf beside the handbag and kept Virod’s gun in her hand.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to go up on that table now, Trigger,” she said. “If you’ve really decided to cooperate, it won’t be too bad. And, by and by, you’ll start telling us very exactly what should be done with that handbag. And a few other things.”
She might have caught Trigger’s expression then. She added dryly, “I was informed a few nights ago that you’re quite an artist in rough-and-tumble tactics. So are Virod and Flam. So if you want to give Virod an opportunity to amuse himself a little, go right ahead!”
At that point, the graceful thing undoubtedly would have been to just smile and get up on the table. Trigger discovered she couldn’t do it. She gave them a fast, silent, vicious tussle, mouth clenched, breathing hard through her nose. It was quite insanely useless. They weren’t letting her get anywhere near Lyad. After Virod had amused himself a little, he picked her up and plunked her down on the table. A minute later, she was stretched out on it, face down, wrists and ankles secured with padded clamps to its surface.