“I saw they camouflaged out what was still visible of the original substation before they let in the news viewers,” Trigger remarked. “Bright idea somebody had there!”
“Yes. It was I. And the Devagas hierarchy is broken, and the Ermetynes run out of Tranest. Two very bad spots, those were! I don’t recall having heard what they did to your friend Pluly.”
“I heard,” Trigger said. “He just got black-listed by Grand Commerce finally and lost all his shipping concessions. However, his daughter is married to an up and coming young businessman who happened to be on hand and have the money and other qualifications to pick up those concessions.” She laughed. “It’s the Inger Lines now. They’re smart characters, in a way!”
“Yes,” said Pilch. “In a way. Did you know Lyad Ermetyne put in for voluntary rehabilitation with us, and then changed her mind and joined the Service?”
“I’d heard of it.” Trigger hesitated. “Did you know Lyad paid me a short visit about an hour before you got here this morning?”
“I thought she would,” Pilch said. “We came in to Maccadon together.”
Trigger had been a little startled when she answered the doorchime and saw Lyad standing there. She invited the Ermetyne in.
“I thought I’d thank you personally,” Lyad said casually, “for a recording which was delivered to me some months ago.”
“That’s quite all right,” Trigger said, also casually. “I was sure I wasn’t going to have any use for it.”
Lyad studied her face for a moment. “To be honest about it, Trigger Argee,” she said, “I still don’t feel entirely cordial toward you! However, I did appreciate the gesture of letting me have the recording. So I decided to drop by to tell you there isn’t really too much left in the way of hard feelings, on my part.”
They shook hands restrainedly, and the Ermetyne sauntered out again.
“The other reason she came here,” Pilch said, “is to take care of the financing of Mantelish’s expedition.”
“I didn’t know that!” Trigger said, surprised.
“It’s her way of making amends. Her legitimate Hub holdings are still enormous, of course. She can afford it.”
“Well,” Trigger said, “that’s one thing about Lyad—she’s wholehearted!”
“She’s that,” said Pilch. “Rarely have I seen anyone rip into total therapy with the verve displayed by the Ermetyne. She mentioned on one occasion that there simply had to be some way of getting ahead of you again.”
“Oh,” said Trigger.
“Yes,” said Pilch. “By the way, what are your own plans nowadays? Aside from getting married.”
Trigger stretched slim tanned arms over her head and grinned. “No immediate plans!” she said. “I’ve resigned from Precol. Got a couple of checks from the Federation. One to cover my expenses on that plasmoid business—that was the Dawn City fare mainly—and the other for the five weeks special duty they figured I was on for them. So I’m up to around five thousand crowns again, and I thought I’d just loaf around and sort of think things over till Quillan gets back from his current assignment.”
“I see. When is Major Quillan returning?”
“In about a month. It’s Captain Quillan at present, by the way.”
“Oh?” said Pilch. “What happened?”
“That unwarranted interference with a political situation business. They’d broadcast a warning against taking individual action of any kind against the plasmoid station. But when he got there and heard the Commissioner was in a kind of coma, and I wasn’t even on board, he lost his head and came charging into the station after me, flinging grenades and so on around. The plasmoids would have finished him off pretty quick, except most of them had started slowing down as soon as Repulsive turned off the main one. The lunatic was lucky the termites didn’t get to him before he even reached the station!”
Pilch said, “Termites?”
Trigger told her about the termites.
“Ugh!” said Pilch. “I hadn’t heard about those. So they broke him for that. It hardly seems right.”
“Well, you have to have discipline,” Trigger said tolerantly. “Ape’s a bit short on that end anyway. They’ll be upgrading him again fairly soon, I imagine. I might just be going into Space Scout Intelligence myself, by the way. They said they’d be glad to have me.”
“Not at all incidentally,” remarked Pilch, “my Service also would be glad to have you.”
“Would they?” Trigger looked at her thoughtfully. “That includes that total therapy process, doesn’t it?”
“Usually,” said Pilch.
“Well, I might some day. But not just yet.” She smiled. “Let’s let Lyad get a head start! Actually, it’s just I’ve found out there are so many interesting things going on all around that I’d like to look them over a bit before I go charging seriously into a career again.” She reached across the table and tapped Pilch’s wrist. “And I’ll show you one interesting thing that’s going on right here! Take Mantelish’s big tree out there!”
“The sequoia?”
“Yes. Now just last year it was looking so bad they almost talked the professor into having it taken away. Hardly a green branch left on it.”
Pilch shaded her eyes and looked at the sequoia’s crown far above them. “It looks,” she observed reflectively, “in fairly good shape at the moment, I’d say!”
“Yes, and it’s getting greener every week. Mantelish brags about a new solvent he’s been dosing its roots with. You see that great big branch like an L turned upward, just a little above the center?”
Pilch looked again. “Yes,” she said after a moment, “I think so.”
“Just before the L turns upward, there’s a little cluster of green branches,” Trigger said.
“I see those, yes.”
Trigger picked up the field glasses and handed them to her. “Get those little branches in the glasses,” she said.
Pilch said presently, “Got them.”
Trigger stood up and faced up to the sequoia. She cupped her hands to her mouth, took a deep breath, and yelled, “Yoo-hoo! Reeepul-sive!”
Down in the garden, Mantelish straightened and looked about angrily. Then he saw Trigger and smiled.
“Yoo-hoo yourself, Trigger!” he shouted, and turned back to his spading.
Trigger watched Pilch’s face from the side. She saw her give a sudden start.
“Great Galaxies!” Pilch breathed. She kept on looking. “That’s one for the book, isn’t it?” Finally she put the glasses down. She appeared somewhat stunned. “He really is a little green man!”
“Only when he’s trying to be. It’s a sort of sign of friendliness.”
“What’s he doing up there?”
“He moved over into the sequoia right after we got back,” Trigger said. “And that’s where he’ll probably stay indefinitely now. It’s just the right kind of place for Repulsive.”
“Have you been doing any more—well, talking?”
“No. Too strenuous both ways. Until a few days before we got back here, there wasn’t even a sign from him. He just about knocked himself out on that big plasmoid.”
“Who else knows about this?” asked Pilch.
“Nobody. I would have told Holati, except he’s still mad enough about having been put into a coma, he might go out and chop the sequoia down.”
“Well, it won’t go into the report then,” Pilch said. “They’d just want to bother Repulsive!”
“I knew it would be all right to tell you. And here’s something else very interesting that’s going on at present.”
“What’s that?”
“The real hush-hush reason for Mantelish’s expedition,” Trigger explained, “is, of course, to scout around this whole area of space with planetary plasmoid detectors. They don’t want anybody stumbling on another setup like Harvest Moon and accidentally activating another king plasmoid.”
“Yes,” Pilch said. “I’d heard that.”
“It was Mantelish’s idea,” said Trigger. “Now Mantelish is very fond of that sequoia tree. He’s got a big, comfortable bench right among its roots, where he likes to sit down around noon and have a little nap when he’s out here.”
“Oh!” said Pilch. “Repulsive’s been up to his old tricks, eh?”
“Sure. He’s given Mantelish very exact instructions. So they’re going to find one of those setups, all right. And they won’t come back with any plasmoids. But they will come back with something they don’t know about.”
Pilch looked at her for a moment. “You say it!”
Trigger’s grin widened. “A little green woman,” she said.
Sour Note on Palayata
[Editor’s note: This story is not directly part of the Trigger Argee and Heslet Quillan cycle of tales. It relates an early adventure of the same Pilch who, many years later, features so prominently in Trigger’s history and appears once, in “Compulsion,” in the Telzey saga.]
1
Bayne Duffold, Assistant Secretary of the Hub Systems’ Outposts Department, said that the entire proposed operation was not only illegal but probably unethical. Conceivably, it might lead to anything from the scientific murder of a single harmless Palayatan native to open warfare with an opponent of completely unknown potential.
Pilch, acting as spokesman for the Hub’s Psychological Service Ship stationed off Palayata, heard him out patiently. “All that is very true, Excellency,” she said then. “That is why you were instructed to call in the Service.”