“But,” he continued, “the indications are they can’t drop their project any more than we can drop looking for that key unit. So we’ll expect them to show up in Manon. When they do, they’ll be working in unfamiliar territory and in a system where they have only something like fifty thousand people to hide out in, instead of a planetary civilization. I think they’ll find things getting very hot for them very fast in Manon.”
“Very good,” said Trigger. “That I like! But what makes you think the opposition is just one group? There might be a bunch of them by now. Maybe even fighting among themselves.”
“I’d bet on at least two groups myself,” he said. “And if they’re fighting, they’ve got our blessing. They’re still all opposition as far as we’re concerned.”
She nodded. “How are you letting them know about the move?”
“The mountains around here are lousy with observers. Very cute tricks some of them use — one boy has been sitting in a hollow tree for weeks. We let them see what we want to. This evening they saw you coming in. Later tonight they’ll see you climbing into the ship with the rest of the party and taking off. They’ve already picked up messages to tell them just where the ship’s going.” He paused. “But you’ve got a job to finish up here first, Trigger. That’ll take about four days. So it won’t really be you they see climbing into the ship.”
“What!” She straightened up.
“We’ve got a facsimile for you,” he explained. “Girl agent. She goes along to draw the heat to Manon.”
Trigger felt herself tightening up slowly all over.
“What’s this job you’re talking about?” she asked evenly.
“Can’t tell you in too much detail. But around four days from now somebody is coming in to Maccadon to interview you.”
“Interview me? What about?”
He hesitated a moment. “There’s a theory,” he said, “that you might have information you don’t know you have. And that the people who sent grabbers after you want that information. If it’s true, the interview will bring it out.”
Her mouth went dry suddenly.She turned her head to Quillan. “Major,” she said, “I think I’d like that cigarette now.”
He came over and lit one for her. Trigger thanked him and puffed. And she’d almost spilled everything, she was thinking. The paid-up reservation. Every last thing.
“I’d like to get itthis straight,” she said. “What you’re talking about sounds like it’s a mind-search job, Holati.”
“It’s in that class,” he said. “But it won’t be an ordinary mind-search. The people who are coming here are top experts at that kind of work.”
She nodded. “I don’t know much about it… Do they think somebody’s got to me with a hypno-spray or something? That I’ve been conditioned? Something like that?”
“I don’t know, Trigger,” be said. “It may be something in that line. But whatever it is, they’ll be able to handle it.”
Trigger moistened her lips. “I was thinking, you know,” she said. “Supposing I’m mind-blocked.”
He shook his head. “I can tell you that, anyway,” he said. “We already know you’re not.”
Trigger was silent a moment. Then she said, “After that interview’s over, I’m to ship out to Manon — is that it?”
“That’s right.”
“But it would depend on the outcome of that interview too, wouldn’t it?” Trigger pointed out. “I mean you can’t really be sure what those people might decide, can you?”
“Yes, I can,” he said. “This thing’s been all scheduled out, Trigger. And the next step of the schedule for you is Manon. Nothing else.”
She didn’t believe him in the least. He couldn’t know. She nodded.
“Guess I might as well play along.” She looked at him. “I don’t think I really hadhave much choice, diddo I?”
“Afraid not,” he admitted. “It’s one of those things that just havehas to be done. But you won’t find it at all bad. Your companion, by the way, for the next three days will be Mihul.”
“Mihul!” Trigger exclaimed.
“Right here,” said Mihul’s voice. Trigger swung around in her chair.
Mihul stood in a door which had appeared in the far wall of the room. She gave Trigger a smile. Trigger looked back at the Commissioner.
“I don’t get it,” she said.
“Oh, Mihul’s in Scout Intelligence,” he said. “Wouldn’t be here if she weren’t.”
“Been an agent for eighteen years,” Mihul said, coming forward. “Hi, Trigger. Surprised?”
“Yes,” Trigger admitted. “Very.”
“They brought me into this job,” Mihul said, “because they figured you and I would get along together just fine.”
Holati Tate brought her the drink and went on with the details. Trigger and he and a dozen or so of the first group of U-League investigators had been in what was now designated as Section 52 Ofof Harvest Moon. The Commissioner was by himself, checking over some equipment which had been installed in one of the compartments.After a while Doctor Azol joined him and told him Mantelish and the others had gone onto another section. Holati and Azolhad finished the check-uptogether and werewas about to leave the area to catch up with the group, when Holatiarea, when he saw Trigger lying on the floor in an adjoining compartment.
“You seemed to be in some kind of coma,” he said. “We”I picked you up and put you into a chair by one of the survey screens, and werewas trying to get out a callon Azol’s suit communicator to the ambulance boat when you suddenly opened your eyes. You looked at me and said, ‘Oh, there you are! I was just going to go looking for you.'”
It was obvious that she didn’t realize anything unusual had happened.”Azol started to say something, but I stepped on his foot, and he caught on. In fact, he caught on so fast that I became a littlesuspicious of him.”
“Poor Azol!” Trigger said.
“Poor nothing!” the Commissioner said cryptically. “I’ll tell you about that some other time.” He had cautioned Doctor Azol to say nothing to anybody until the incident had been clarified, in view ofthe stringent security precautions being practiced. “…supposedly being practiced,” he amended. Then he’d returned to Manon Planet with Trigger immediately, where she was checked over by Precol’s medical staff. Physically there wasn’t a thing wrong with her.
The transmitter signaled for attention while she was studying the report. Holati Tate went off to answer it. The report was rather lengthy, and Trigger was still going over it when he got back. He sat down again and waited.
When she looked up finally, he asked, “Can you make much sense of it?”
“Not very much,” Trigger admitted. “It just states what seems to have happened. Not how or why. Apparently they did get me to develop total recall of that knocked-out period in the last interview — I even reported hearing youand Doctor Azol moving aroundand talking in the nextcompartment.”
He nodded. “I remember enough of my conversation with Azol to be able to verify that part of it.”
“Then,compartment. Then, some time before I actually fell down,” said Trigger,she continued, “I was apparently already in that mysterious coma. Getting deeper into it. It started when I walked away from Mantelish’s group, without having any particular reason for doing it. I just walked. Then I was in another compartment by myself and still walking, and the stuff kept getting deeper, until I lost physical control of myself and fell down. Then I lay there a while until you came down that aisle and saw me. And after you’d picked me up and put me in that chair — Justjust like that, everything clears up! Except that I don’t remember what happened and think I’ve just left Mantelish to go looking for you. I don’t even wonder how I happen to be sitting there in a chair!”
The Commissioner smiled briefly. “That’s right. You didn’t.”
Her slim fingers tapped the pages of the report, the green stone in the ring he’d given her to wear reflecting little flashes of light. “They seem quite positive that nobody else came near me during that period. And that nobody had used a hypno-spray on me or shot a hypodermic pellet into me — anything like that — before the seizure or whatever it was came on. How do you suppose they could be so sure of that?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Holati said. “But I think we might as well assume they’re right.”
“I suppose so. What it seems to boil down to is they’re saying I was undergoing something like a very much slowed-down, very profound emotional shock — source still undetermined, but profound enough to knock me completely out for a while. Only they also say that — for a whole list of reasons — it couldn’t possibly have been an emotional shock after all! And when the effect left, it went instantaneously. That would be just the reverse to the pattern of an emotional shock, wouldn’t it?”