When Trigger woke up from her five-hour nap, the purse was shut. She opened it and looked inside. Repulsive was down there, quietly curled up.
“Smart little bugger, aren’t you?” she said, not entirely with approval. Then she reached in and gave him a pat. She locked the purse, got dressed and went up to the front of the ship, carrying Repulsive along.
All four of the others were up in the lounge area which included the partitioned control section. The partition had been slid into the wall and the Commissioner, who was at the controls at the moment, had swung his seat half around toward the lounge.
He glanced at the plasmoid purse as Trigger came in, grinned and gave her a small wink.
“Come in and sit down,” he said. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
Trigger sat down and looked at them. Something apparently had been going on. Quillan’s tanned face was thoughtful, perhaps a trifle amused. Mantelish looked very red and angry. His shock of white hair was wildly rumpled. The Ermetyne appeared a bit wilted.
“What’s been going on?” Trigger asked.
It was the wrong question. Mantelish took a deep breath and began bellowing like a wounded thunder-ork. Trigger listened, with some admiration. It was one of the best jobs of well-verbalized huffing she’d heard, even from the professor. He ran down in less than five minutes, though—apparently he’d already let off considerable steam.
Lyad had dehypnotized him, at the Commissioner’s suggestion. It had been a lengthy job, requiring a couple of hours, but it was a complete one. Which was understandable, since it was the First Lady herself, Trigger gathered gradually from the noise, who had put Mantelish under the influence, back in his own garden on Maccadon, and within two weeks after his first return from Harvest Moon.
It was again Lyad who had given Mantelish his call to bemused duty via a transmitted verbal cue on her arrival in Manon, and instructed him to get lost from his League guards for a few hours in Manon’s swamps. There she had met and conferred with him and pumped him of all he could tell her. As the final outrage, she had instructed him to lug her crated cohorts, preserved like Pluly’s harem ladies, into the Precol dome—to care for them tenderly there and at the proper cued moment to release them for action—all under the illusion that they were priceless biological specimens!
Mantelish wasn’t in the least appeased by the fact that—again at the Commissioner’s suggestion—Lyad had installed one minor new hypno-command which, she said, would clear up permanently his tendency toward attacks of dive sickness. But he just ran down finally and sat there, glowering at the Ermetyne now and then.
“Well,” the Commissioner remarked, “this might be as good a time as any to ask a few questions. Got your little quizzer with you, Quillan?”
Quillan nodded. Lyad looked at both of them in turn and then, briefly and for the first time, glanced in Trigger’s direction.
It wasn’t exactly an appealing glance. It might have been a questioning one. And Trigger discovered suddenly that she felt just a little sympathy for Lyad. Lyad had lost out on a very big gamble. And, each in his own way, these were three very formidable males among whom she was sitting. None of them was friendly; two were oversized, and the undersized one had a fairly blood-chilling record for anyone on the wrong side of law and order. Trigger decided to forget about beady stares for the moment.
“Cheer up, Lyad!” she said. “Nobody’s going to hurt you. Just give ’em the answers!”
She got another glance. Not a grateful one, exactly. Not an ungrateful one either. Temporary support had been acknowledged.
“Commissioner Tate has informed me,” the Ermetyne said, “that this group does not recognize the principle of diplomatic immunity in my case. Under the circumstances I must accept that. And so I shall answer any questions I can.” She looked at the pocket quizzer Quillan was checking over unhurriedly. “But such verification instruments are of no use in questioning me.”
“Why not?” Quillan asked idly.
“I’ve been conditioned against them, of course,” Lyad said. “I’m an Ermetyne of Tranest. By the time I was twelve years old, that toy of yours couldn’t have registered a reaction from me that I didn’t want it to show.”
Quillan slipped the toy back in his pocket.
“True enough, First Lady,” he said. “And that’s one small strike in your favor. We thought you might try to gimmick the gadget. Now we’ll just pitch you some questions. A recorder’s on. Don’t stall on the answers.”
And he and the Commissioner started flipping out questions. The Ermetyne flipped back the answers. So far as Trigger could tell, there wasn’t any stalling. Or any time for it.
* * *
Along with Mantelish, Doctors Gess Fayle and Azol had been the three big U-League boys in charge of the initial investigation on Harvest Moon. Doctor Azol had been her boy from the start. After faking his own death, he was now on Tranest. The main item in his report to her had been the significance of the 112-113 plasmoid unit. He’d also reported that Trigger Argee had become unconscious on Harvest Moon. They’d considered the possibility that somebody was controlling Trigger Argee, or attempting to control her, because of her connections with the plasmoid operations.
Lyad had not been able to buy Gess Fayle. So far as she knew, nobody had been able to buy him. Doctor Fayle had appeared to intend to work for himself. Lyad was convinced he was the one who had actually stolen the 112-113 unit. He was at present well outside the Hub’s area of space. He still had 112-113 with him. Yes, she could become more specific about the location—with the help of star maps.
“Let’s get them out,” said Commissioner Tate.
They got them out. The Ermetyne presently circled a largish section of the Vishni Fleet’s area. The questions began again.
113-A: Professor Mantelish had told her of his experiments with this plasmoid—
There was an interruption here while Mantelish huffed reflexively. But it was very brief. The professor wanted to learn more about the First Lady’s depravities himself.
—and its various possible associations with the main unit. But by the time this information became available to her, 113-A had been placed under heavy guard. Professor Mantelish had made one attempt to smuggle it out to her.
Huff-huff!
—but had been unable to walk past the guards with it. Tranest agents had made several unsuccessful attempts to pick up the plasmoid. She knew that another group had made similarly unsuccessful attempts. The Devagas. She did not yet know the specific nature of 113-A’s importance. But it was important.
As for the rest of it . . .
Trigger: Trigger Argee might be able to tell them why Trigger was important. Doctor Fayle certainly could. So could the top ranks of the Devagas hierarchy. Lyad, at the moment, could not. She did know that Trigger Argee’s importance was associated directly with that of plasmoid 113-A. This information had been obtained from a Devagas operator, now dead. Not Balmordan. The operator had been in charge of the attempted pickup on Evalee. The much more elaborate affair at the Colonial School had been a Tranest job. A Devagas group had made attempts to interfere with it, but had been disposed of.
Pluly: Lyad had strings on Belchik. He was afraid of the Devagas but somewhat more terrified of her. His fear of the Devagas was due to the fact that he and an associate had provided the hierarchy with a very large quantity of contraband materials. The nature of the materials indicated the Devagas were constructing a major fortified outpost on a world either airless or with poisonous atmosphere. Pluly’s associate had since been murdered. Pluly believed he was next in line to be silenced.
Balmordan: Balmordan had been a rather high-ranking Devagas Intelligence agent. Lyad had heard of him only recently. He had been in charge of the attempts to obtain 113-A. Lyad had convinced him that she would make a very dangerous competitor in the Manon area. She also had made information regarding her activities there available to him.
So Balmordan and a select group of his gunmen had attended Pluly’s party on Pluly’s yacht. They had been allowed to force their way into the sealed level and were there caught in a black-light trap. The gunmen had been killed. Balmordan had been questioned.
The questioning revealed that the Devagas had found Doctor Fayle and the 112-113 unit. They had succeeded in creating some working plasmoids. To go into satisfactory operation, they still needed 113-A. Balmordan had not known why. But they no longer needed Trigger Argee. Trigger Argee was now to be destroyed at the earliest opportunity. Again Balmordan had not known why. Fayle and his unit were in the fortress dome the Devagas had been building. It was in the area Lyad had indicated. It was supposed to be very thoroughly concealed. Balmordan might or might not have known its exact coordinates. His investigators made the inevitable slip finally and triggered a violent mind-block reaction. Balmordan had died. Dead-braining him had produced no further relevant information.