But when she could do it, information of a kind that was beginning to look very interesting was likely to come filtering into her awareness. Whatever was at work deep in her mind—and she could give a pretty fair guess at what it was now—seemed as weak and slow as the Psychology Service people had indicated. The traces of its work were usually faint and vague. But gradually the traces were forming into some very definite pictures.
Lazing around in the waters of Plasmoid Creek for an hour or so every morning had turned out to be a helpful part of the process. On the flashing, all-out run to Luscious, subspace all the way, with the Commissioner and Quillan spelling each other around the clock at the controls, the transmitters clattering for attention every half hour, the ship’s housekeeping to be handled, and somebody besides Mantelish needed to keep a moderately beady eye on the Ermetyne, she hadn’t even thought of acting on Pilch’s suggestion.
But once they’d landed, there suddenly wasn’t much to keep her busy, and she could shift priority to listening to herself think. It was one of those interim periods where everything was being prepared and nothing had got started. As a plasmoid planet, Luscious was pretty much of a bust. It was true that plasmoids were here. It was also true that until fairly recently plasmoids were being produced here.
By the simple method of looking where they were thickest, Selan’s people even had located the plasmoid which had been producing the others, several days before Mantelish arrived to confirm their find. This one, by the plasmoid standards of Luscious, was a regular monster, some twenty-five feet high; a gray, mummy-like thing, dead and half rotted inside. It was the first plasmoid—with the possible exception of whatever had flattened itself out on Quillan’s gravity mine—known to have died. There had been very considerable excitement when it was first discovered, because the description made it sound very much as if they’d finally located 112-113.
They hadn’t. This one—if Trigger had followed Mantelish correctly—could be regarded as a cheap imitation of 112. And its productions, compared with the working plastic life of Harvest Moon, appeared to be strictly on a kindergarten level: nuts and bolts and less than that. To Trigger, most of the ones that had been collected looked like assorted bugs and worms, though one at least was the size of a small pig.
“No form, no pattern,” Mantelish rumbled. “Was the thing practicing? Did it attempt to construct an assistant and set it down here to test it? Well, now!” He went off again into incomprehensibilities, apparently no longer entirely dissatisfied. “Get me 112!” he bellowed. “Then this business will be solved! Meanwhile we now at least have plasmoid material to waste. We can experiment boldly! Come, Lyad, my dear.”
And Lyad followed him into the lab unit, where they went to work again, dissecting, burning, stimulating, inoculating and so forth great numbers of more or less pancake-sized subplasmoids.
* * *
This morning Trigger wasn’t getting down to the best semi-drowsy level at all readily. And it might very well be that Lyad-my-dear business. “You know,” she had told the Commissioner thoughtfully the day before, “by the time we’re done, Lyad will know more about plasmoids than anyone in the Hub except Mantelish!”
He didn’t look concerned. “Won’t matter much. By the time we’re done, she and the rest of the Ermetynes will have had to cough up control of Tranest. They’ve broken treaty with this business.”
“Oh,” Trigger said. “Does Lyad know that?”
“Sure. She also knows she’s getting off easy. If she were a Federation citizen, she’d be up for compulsory rehabilitation right now.”
“She’ll try something if she gets half a chance!” Trigger warned.
“She sure will,” the Commissioner said absently. He went on with his work.
It didn’t seem to be Lyad that was bothering her. Trigger lay flat on her back on the shallow sand bar, arms behind her head, feeling the sun’s warmth on her closed eyelids. She watched her thoughts drifting by slowly.
It just might be Quillan.
Ole Major Quillan. The rescuer in time of need. The not-catassin smasher. Quite a guy. The water murmured past her.
On the ride out here they’d run by one another now and then, going from job to job. After they’d arrived, Quillan was gone three quarters of the time, helping out in the hunt for the concealed Devagas fortress. It was still concealed; they hadn’t yet picked up a trace.
But every so often he made it back to camp. And every so often when he was back in camp and didn’t think she was looking, he’d be sitting there looking at her.
Trigger grinned happily. Ole Major Quillan—being bashful! Well now!
And that did it. She could feel herself relaxing, slipping down and away, drifting down through her mind . . . farther . . . deeper . . . toward the tiny voice that spoke in such a strange language and still was becoming daily more comprehensible.
“Uh, say, Trigger!”
* * *
Trigger gasped. Her eyes flew open. She made a convulsive effort to vanish beneath the surface of the creek. Being flat on the sand as it was, that didn’t work. So she stopped splashing about and made rapid covering-up motions here and there instead.
“You’ve got a nerve!” she snapped as her breath came back. “Beat it. Fast!”
Ole bashful Quillan, standing on the bank fifteen feet above her, looked hurt. He also looked.
“Look!” he said plaintively. “I just came over to make sure you were all right—wild animals around! I wasn’t studying the color scheme.”
“Beat it! At once!”
Quillan inhaled with apparent difficulty.
“Though now it’s been mentioned,” he went on, speaking rapidly and unevenly, “there is all that brown and that sort of pink and that lovely white.” He was getting more enthusiastic by the moment; Trigger became afraid he would fall off the bank and land in the creek beside her. “And the—ooh-ummh!—wet red hair and the freckles!” he rattled along, his eyes starting out of his head. “And the lovely—”
“Quillan!” she yelled. “Please!”
Quillan checked himself. “Uh!” he said. He drew a deep breath. The wild look faded. Sanity appeared to return. “Well, it’s the truth about those wild animals. Some sort of large, uncouth critter was observed just now ducking into the forest at the upper end of the valley.”
Trigger darted a glance along the bank. Her clothes were forty feet away, just beside the water.
“I’m observing some sort of large, uncouth critter right here,” she said coldly. “What’s worse, it’s observing me. Turn around!”
Quillan sighed. “You’re a hard woman, Argee,” he said. But he turned. He was carrying a holstered gun, as a matter of fact; but he usually did that nowadays anyway. “This thing,” he went on, “is supposed to have a head like a bat, three feet across. It flies.”
“Very interesting,” Trigger told him. She decided he wasn’t going to turn around again. “So now I’ll just get into my clothes, and then—”
It came quietly out of the trees around the upper bend of the creek sixty feet away. It had a head like a bat, and was blue on top and yellow below. Its flopping wing tips barely cleared the bank on either side. The three-foot mouth was wide open, showing very long thin white teeth. It came skimming swiftly over the surface of the water toward her.
“Quiiiii-LLAN!”
26
They walked back along the trail to camp. Trigger walked a few steps ahead, her back very straight. The worst of it had been the smug look on his face.
“Heel!” she observed. “Heel! Heel! Heel!”
“Now, Trigger,” Quillan said calmingly behind her. “After all, it was you who came flying up the bank and wrapped yourself around my neck. All wet, too.”
“I was scared!” Trigger snarled. “Who wouldn’t be? You certainly didn’t hesitate an instant to take full advantage of the situation!”
“True,” Quillan admitted. “I’d dropped the bat. There you were. Who’d hesitate. I’m not out of my mind.”
She did two dance steps of pure rage and spun to face him. She put her hands on her hips. Quillan stopped warily.
“Your mind!” she said. “I’d hate to have one like it. What do you think I am? One of Belchik’s houris?”
For a man his size, he was really extremely quick. Before she could move, he was there, one big arm wrapped about her shoulders, pinning her arms to her sides. “Easy, Trigger,” he said softly.
Well, others had tried to hold her like that when she didn’t want to be held. A twist, a jerk, a heave—and over and down they went. Trigger braced herself quietly. If she was quick enough now—She twisted, jerked, heaved. She stopped, discouraged. The situation hadn’t altered appreciably.
She had been afraid it wasn’t going to work with Quillan.