“I meant your efforts to get them to work,” she said.
Commissioner Tate looked at Mantelish. “You. tell her about that part of it,” he suggested.
Mantelish shook his head. “I’d get too technical,” he said resignedly. “I always do. At least they say so. You tell her.”
Butsaid. “We don’t — ” But Holati Tate’s eyesattention had shifted suddenly to the table. “Hey, now!” he said in a low voice.
Trigger followed his gaze. After a moment she made a soft, sucking sound of alarmed distaste.
“Ugh!” she remarked. “It’s moving!”
“So it is,” Holati said.
“Towards me!” said Trigger. “I think–”
“Don’t get startled. Mantelish!”
Mantelish already was coming up slowly behind Trigger’s chair. “Don’t move!” he cautioned her.
“Why not?” said Trigger.
“Hush, my dear.” Mantelish laid a large, heavy hand on each of her shoulders and bore down slightly. “It’s sensitive! This is very interesting. Very.”
Perhaps it was. She kept watching the plasmoid. It had thinned out somewhat and was gliding very slowly but very steadily across the table. Definitely in her direction.
“Ho-ho!” said Mantelish in a thunderous murmur. “Perhaps it likes you, Trigger! Ho-ho!” He seemed immensely pleased.
“Well,” Trigger said helplessly, “I don’t like it!” She wriggled slightly under Mantelish’s hands. “And I’d sooner get out of this chair!”
“Don’t be childish, Trigger,” said the professor annoyedly. “You’re behaving as if it were, in some manner, offensive.”
“It is,” she said.
“Hush, my dear,” Mantelish said absently, putting on a little more pressure. Trigger hushed resignedly. They watched. In about a minute, the gliding thing reached the edge of the table. Trigger gathered herself to duck out from under Mantelish’s hands and go flying out of the chair if it looked as if the plasmoid was about to drop into her lap.
But it stopped. For a few seconds it lay motionless. Then it gradually raised its front end and began waving it gently back and forth in the air. At her, Trigger suspected.
“Yipes!” she said, horrified.
The front end sank back. The plasmoid lay still again. After a minute it was still lying still.
“Show’s over for the moment, I guess,” said the Commissioner.
“I’m afraid so,” said Professor Mantelish. His big hands went away from Trigger’s aching shoulders. “You startled it, Trigger!” he boomed at her accusingly.
One of the things, Holati Tate said, which had not become public knowledge so far was that Professor Mantelish actually succeeded in getting some of the plasmoids on the Old Galactic base back into operation. One plasmoid in particular.
The reason the achievement hadn’t been announced was that for nearly six weeks no one except the three men directly involved in the experiments had known about them. And during that time other things occurred which made subsequent publicity seem very inadvisable.
Mantelish scowled. “We made up a report to the League the day of the initial discovery,” he informed Trigger. “It was a complete and detailed report!”
“True,” Holati said, “but the report the U-League got didn’t happen to be the one Professor Mantelish helped make up. We’ll go into that later. The plasmoid the professor was experimenting with was the 112-113 unit.”
He shifted his gaze to Mantelish. “Still want me to tell it?”
“Yes, yes!” Mantelish said impatiently. “You will oversimplify grossly, of course, but it should do for the moment. At a more leisurely time I shall be glad to give Trigger an accurate description of the processes.”
Trigger smiled at him. “Thank you, Professor!” She took her second sip of the Puya. Not bad.
“Well, Mantelish was dosing this plasmoid with mild electrical stimulations,” Holati went on. “He noticed suddenly that as he did it other plasmoids in that section of Harvest Moon were indicating signs of activity. So he called in Doctor Fayle and Doctor Azol.”
The three scientists discovered quickly that stimulation of the 112 part of the unit was in fact producing random patterns of plasmoid motion throughout the entire base, while an electrical prod at 113 brought everything to an abrupt stop again. After a few hours of this, 112 suddenly extruded a section of its material, which detached itself and moved off slowly under its own power through half the station, trailed with great excitement by Mantelish and Azol. It stopped at a point where another plasmoid had been removed for laboratory investigations, climbed up and settled down in the place left vacant by its predecessor. It then reshaped itself into a copy of the predecessor, and remained where it was. Obviously a replacement.
There was dignified scientific jubilation among the three. This was precisely the kind of information the U-League — and everybody else had been hoping to obtain. 112-113 tentatively could be assumed to be a kind of monitor of the station’s activities. It could be induced to go into action and to activate the other plasmoids. With further observation and refinement of method, its action undoubtedly could be shifted from the random to the purposeful. Finally, and most importantly, it had shown itself capable of producing a different form of plasmoid life to fulfill a specific requirement.
In essence, the riddles presented by the Old Galactic Station appeared to be solved.
The three made up their secret report to the U-League. Included was a recommendation to authorize distribution of ten per cent of the less significant plasmoids to various experimental centers in the Hub — the big and important centers which had been bringing heavy political pressure to bear on the Federation to let them in on the investigation. That should keep them occupied, while the U-League concluded the really important work.
“Next day,” said Holati, “Doctor Gess Fayle presented Mantelish with a transmitted message from U-League Headquarters. It contained instructions to have Fayle mount the 112-113 unit immediately in one of the League ships at Harvest Moon and bring it quietly to Maccadon.”
Mantelish frowned. “The message was faked!” he boomed.
“Not only that,” said Holati. “The actual report Doctor Fayle had transmitted the day before to the League was revised to the extent that it omitted any reference to 112-113.” He glanced thoughtfully at Mantelish. “As a matter of fact, it was almost a month and a half before League Headquarters became aware of the importance of the unit.”
The professor snorted. “Azol,” he explained to Trigger, “had become a victim of his scientific zeal. And I–”
“Doctor Azol,” said the Commissioner, “as you may remember, had his little mishap with the plasmoid just two days after Fayle departed.”
“And I,” Mantelish went on, “was involved in other urgent research. How was I to know what that villain Fayle had been up to? A vice president of the University League!”
“Well,” Trigger said, “what had Doctor Fayle been up to?”
“We don’t know yet,” Holati told her. “Obviously he had something in mind with the faked order and the alteration of the report. But the only thing we can say definitely is that he disappeared on the League ship he had requisitioned, along with its personnel and the 112-113 plasmoid, and hasn’t shown up again.”
“And that plasmoid unit now appears to have been almost certainly the key unit of the entire Old Galactic Station — the unit that kept everything running along automatically there for thirty thousand years.”
HeHolati glanced at Quillan. “Someone at the door. We’ll hold it while you see what they want.”
Chapter 7
The burly character who had appeared at the door said diffidently that Professor Mantelish had wanted to be present while his lab equipment was stowed aboard. If the professor didn’t mind, things were about that far along.
Mantelish excused himself and went off with the messenger. The door closed. Quillan came back to his chair.
“We’re moving the outfit later tonight,” the Commissioner explained. “Mantelish is coming along — plus around eight tons of his lab equipment. Plus his six special U-League guards.”
“Oh?” Trigger picked up the Puya glass. She looked into it. It was empty. “Moving where?” she asked.
“Manon,” said the Commissioner. “Tell you about that later.”
Every last muscle in Trigger’s body seemed to go limp simultaneously. She settled back slightly in the chair, surprised by the force of the reaction. She hadn’t realized by half how keyed up she was! She sighed a small sigh. Then she smiled at Quillan.
“Major,” she said, “how about a tiny little refill on that Puya — about half?”
Quillan took care of the tiny little refill.
Commissioner Tate said, “By the way, Quillan does have a degree in subspace engineering and gets assigned to the Engineers now and then. But his real job’s Space Scout Intelligence.”
Trigger nodded. “I’d almost guessed it!” She gave Quillan another smile. She nearly gave 113-A a smile.
“And now,” said the Commissioner, “we’ll talk more freely. We tell Mantelish just as little as we can. To tell you the truth, Trigger, the professor is a terrible handicap on an operation like this. I understand he was a great friend of your father’s.”