Chapter III: Part 3

Trigger glanced at the plasmoid. "That sounds," she remarked, "as if you'd let other interested observers feel you'd left them a good opening to get at Repulsive."

He didn't quite smile. "I might have done that. Don't tell the Council."

Trigger pursed her lips. "I won't. So the grabbers who were after me figured I was booby-trapped. But then they came in anyway. That doesn't seem very bright. Or did you do something again to make them think the road was clear?"

"No," he said. "They were trying to clear the road for themselves. We thought they would finally. The deal was set up as a one-two."

"As a what?"

"One-two. You slug into what could be a trap like that with one gang. If it was a trap, they were sacrifices. You hope the opposition will now relax its precautions. Sometimes it does--and a day or so later you're back for the real raid. That works occasionally. Anyway it was the plan in this case."

"How do you know?"

"They'd started closing in for the grab in Ceyce when Quillan's group located you. So Quillan grabbed you first."

She flushed. "I wasn't as smart as I thought, was I?"

The Commissioner grunted. "Smart enough to give us a king-sized headache! But _they_ didn't have any trouble finding you. We discovered tonight that some kind of tracer material had been worked into all your clothes. Even the flimsies. Somebody may have been planted in the school laundry, but that's not important now." He looked at her for a moment. "What made you decide to take off so suddenly?" he asked.

Trigger shrugged. "I was getting pretty angry with you," she admitted. "More or less with everybody. Then I applied for a transfer, and the application bounced--from Evalee! I figured I'd had enough and that I'd just quietly clear out. So I did--or thought I did."

"Can't blame you," said Holati.

Trigger said, "I still think it would have been smarter to keep me informed right from the start of what was going on."

He shook his head. "I wouldn't be telling you a thing even now," he said, "if it hadn't been definitely established that you're already involved in the matter. This could develop into a pretty messy operation. I wouldn't have wanted you in on it, if it could have been avoided. And if you weren't going to be in on it, I couldn't go spilling Federation secrets to you."

"I'm in on it, definitely, eh?"

He nodded. "For the duration."

"But you're still not telling me everything?"

"There're a few things I can't tell you," he said. "I'm following orders in that."

Trigger smiled faintly. "That's a switch! I didn't know you knew how."

"I've followed plenty of orders in my time," the Commissioner said, "when I thought they made sense. And I think these do."

Trigger was silent a moment. "You said a while ago that most of the heat was to go off me tonight. Can you talk about that?"

"Yes, that's all right." He considered. "I'll have to tell you something else again first--why we're going to Manon."

She settled back in her chair. "Go ahead."

"Somebody got the idea that one of the things Gess Fayle might have done is to arrange things so he wouldn't have to come back to the Hub for a while. If he could set up shop on some outworld far enough away, and tinker around with that plasmoid unit for a year or so until he knew all about it, he might do better for himself than by simply selling it to somebody."

"But that would be pretty risky, wouldn't it?" said Trigger. "With just the equipment he could pack on a League transport."

"Not very much risk," said the Commissioner, "if he had an agreement to have an Independent Fleet meet him."

"Oh." She nodded.

"And by what is, at all events, an interesting coincidence," the Commissioner went on, "we've had word that an outfit called Vishni's Fleet hasn't been heard from for some months. Their I-Fleet area is a long way out beyond Manon, but Fayle could have made it there, at League ship speeds, in about twenty days. Less, if Vishni sent a few pilots to meet him and guide him out of subspace. If he's bought Vishni's, he's had his pick of a few hundred uncharted habitable planets and a few thousand very expert outworlders to see nothing happens to him planetside. And Vishni's boys are exactly the kind of crumbs you could buy for a deal like that.

"Now, what's been done is to hire a few of the other I-Fleets around there and set them and as many Space Scout squadrons as could be kicked loose from duty elsewhere to surveying the Vishni territory. Our outfit is in charge of that operation. And Manon, of course, is a lot better point from which to conduct it than the Hub. If something is discovered that looks interesting enough to investigate in detail, we'll only be a week's run away.

"So we've been ready to move for the past two weeks now, which was when the first reports started coming in from the Vishni area--negative reports so far, by the way. I've kept stalling from day to day, because there were also indications that your grabber friends might be getting set to swing at you finally. It seemed tidier to get that matter cleared up first. Now they've swung, and we'll go."

He rubbed his chin. "The nice thing about it all," he remarked, "is that we're going there with the two items the opposition has revealed it wants. We're letting them know those items will be available in the Manon System henceforward. They might get discouraged and just drop the whole project. If they do, that's fine. We'll go ahead with cleaning up the Vishni phase of the operation.

"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 it 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," he 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 had much choice, did I?"

"Afraid not," he admitted. "It's one of those things that just have to be done. But you won't find it all bad. Your companion, by the way, for the next three days will be Mihul."

"Mihul!" Trigger exclaimed.

"Right there," said Mihul's voice. Trigger swung around in her chair. Mihul stood in a door which had appeared in the full 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."

9

It was really infernally bad luck! Mihul was going to be the least easy of wardens to get away from ... particularly in time to catch a liner tomorrow night. Mihul knew her much too well.

"Like to come along and meet your facsimile now?" Mihul inquired. She grinned. "Most people find the first time quite an experience."

Trigger stood up resignedly. "All right," she said. They were being polite about it, but it was clear that it was still a cop and prisoner situation. And old friend Mihul! She remembered something then. "I believe Major Quillan has my gun."

He looked at her thoughtfully, not smiling. "No," he said. "Gave it to Mihul."

"That's right," said Mihul. "Let's go, kid."

They went out through the door that had appeared in the wall. It closed again behind them.

The facsimile stood up from behind a table at which she had been sitting as Trigger and Mihul came into the room. She gave Trigger a brief, impersonal glance, then looked at Mihul.

Mihul performed no introductions.

"Dress, robe and scarf," she said to the facsimile. "The shoes are close enough." She turned to Trigger. "She'll be wearing your street clothes when she leaves," she said. "Could we have the dress now?"

Trigger pulled the dress over her head, tossed it to Mihul and stood in her underwear, looking at her double slip out of her street clothes. They did seem to be a very close match in size and proportions. Watching the shifting play of slim muscles in the long legs and smooth back, Trigger decided the similarity was largely a natural one. The silver-blonde hair was the same, of course. The gray eyes seemed almost identical--and the rest of the face was a little _too_ identical! They must have used a life-mask there.

It was a bit uncanny. Like seeing one's mirror image start moving about independently. If the girl had talked, it might have reduced the effect. But she remained silent.

She put on the dress Trigger had been wearing and smoothed it down. Mihul surveyed the result. She nodded. "Perfect." She took Trigger's robe and scarf from the back of a chair where someone had draped them and handed them over.

"You won't wear the scarf," she said. "Just shove it into a pocket of the coat."

The girl slung the cloak over her shoulder and stood holding the scarf. Mihul looked her over once more. "You'll do," she said. She smiled briefly. "All right."

The facsimile glanced at Trigger again, turned and moved attractively out of the room. Trigger frowned.

"Something wrong?" Mihul asked. She had gone over to a wall basin and was washing out a tumbler.

"Why does she walk like that?"

"The little swing in the rear? She's studied it." Mihul half filled the tumbler with water, fished a transparent splinter of something out of a pocket and cracked the splinter over the edge of the glass. "Among your friends it's referred to as the Argee Lilt. She's got you down pat, kid."

Trigger didn't comment. "Am I supposed to put on her clothes?"

"No. We've got another costume for you." Mihul came over, holding out the glass. "This is for you."

Trigger looked at the glass suspiciously. "What's in it?"

The blue eyes regarded her mildly. "You could call it a sedative."

"Don't need any. Thanks."

"Better take it anyway." Mihul patted her hip with her other hand. "Little hypo gun here. That's the alternative."

"What!"

"That's right. Same type of charge as in your fancy Denton. Stuff in the glass is easier to take and won't leave you groggy."

"What's the idea?"

"I've known you quite a while," said Mihul. "And I was watching you the last twenty minutes in that room through a screen. You'll take off again if you get the least chance. I don't blame you a bit. You're being pushed around. But now it's my job to see you don't take off; and until we get to where you're going, I want to be sure you'll stay quiet."

She still held out the glass, in a long, tanned, capable hand. She stood three inches taller than Trigger, weighted thirty-five pounds more. Not an ounce of that additional thirty-five pounds was fat. If she'd needed assistance, the hunting lodge was full of potential helpers. She didn't.

"I never claimed I liked this arrangement," Trigger said carefully. "I did say I'd go along with it. I will. Isn't that enough?"

"Sure," Mihul said promptly. "Give word of parole?"

There was a long pause.

"No!" Trigger said.

"I thought not. Drink or gun?"

"Drink," Trigger said coldly. She took the glass. "How long will it put me out?"

"Eight to nine hours." Mihul stood by watchfully while Trigger emptied the tumbler. After a moment the tumbler fell to the floor. She reached out and caught Trigger as she started down.

"All right," she said across her shoulder to the open doorway behind her. "Let's move!"

* * * * *

Trigger awoke and instantly went taut with tension. She lay quiet a few seconds, not even opening her eyes. There was cool sunlight on her eyelids, but she was indoors. There was a subdued murmur of sound somewhere; after a moment she knew it came from a news viewer turned low, in some adjoining room. But there didn't seem to be anybody immediately around her. Warily she opened her eyes.

She was on a couch in an airy, spacious room furnished in the palest of greens and ivory. One entire side of the room was either a window or a solido screen. In it was a distant mountain range with many snowy peaks, an almost cloudless blue sky. Sun at midmorning or midafternoon.

Sun and all had the look of Maccadon--they probably still were on the planet. That was where the interview was to take place. But she also could have been sent on a three-day space cruise, which would be a rather good way to make sure a prisoner stayed exactly where you wanted her. This could be a spaceliner suite with a packaged view of any one of some hundreds of worlds, and with packaged sunlight thrown in.

There was one door to the room. It stood open, and the news viewer talk came from there.

Trigger sat up quietly and looked down at the clothes she wore. All white. A short-sleeved half-blouse of some soft, rather heavy, very comfortable unfamiliar stuff. Bare midriff. White kid trousers which flared at the thighs and were drawn in to a close fit just above the knees and down the calves, vanishing into kid boots with thick, flexible soles.

Sporting outfit.... That meant Maccadon!

She pulled a handful of hair forward and looked at it. They'd recolored it--this time to a warm mahogany brown. She swung her legs off the couch and stood up quietly. A dozen soft steps across the springy thick-napped turf of ivory carpet took her to the window.

The news viewer clicked and went silent.

"Not bad," Trigger said. She saw a long range of woodlands and open heath, rising gradually into the flanks of the mountains. On the far right was the still, silver glitter of two lakes. "Where are we?"

"Byla Uplands Game Preserve. That's the game bird area before you." Mihul appeared in the doorframe, in an outfit almost a duplicate of Trigger's, in pearl-gray tones. "Feel all right?"

"Feeling fine," Trigger said. Byla Uplands--the southern tip of the continent. She could make it back to Ceyce in two hours or less! She turned and grinned at Mihul. "I also feel hungry. How long was I out?"

Mihul glanced at her wrist watch. "Eight hours, ten minutes. You woke up on schedule. I had breakfast sent up thirty minutes ago. I've already eaten mine--took one sniff and plunged in. It's good!" Mihul's hair, Trigger saw, had been cropped short and a streak of gray added over the right side; and they'd changed the color of her eyes to hazel. She wondered what had been done to her along that line. "Want to come in?" Mihul said. "We can talk while you eat."

Trigger nodded. "After I've freshened up."

The bathroom mirror showed they'd left her eyes alone. But there was a very puzzling impression that she was staring at an image considerably plumper, shorter, younger than it should be--a teen-ager around seventeen or eighteen. Her eyes narrowed. If they'd done flesh-sculpting on her, it could cause complications.

She stripped hurriedly and checked. They hadn't tampered with her body. So it had to be the clothes; though it was difficult to see how even the most cunning cut could provide such a very convincing illusion of being more rounded out, heavier around the thighs, larger breasts--just missing being dumpy, in fact. She dressed again, looked again, and came out of the bathroom, still puzzled.

"Choice of three game birds for breakfast." Mihul announced. "Never heard of any of them. All good. Plus regular stuff." She patted her flat midriff. "Ate too much!" she admitted. "Now dig in and I'll brief you."

Trigger dug in. "I had a look at myself in the mirror," she remarked. "What's this now-you-see-it-now-you-don't business of fifteen or so pounds of baby fat?"

Mihul laughed. "You don't really have it."

"I know that too. How do they do it?"

"Subcolor job in the clothes. They're not really white. Anyone looking at you gets his vision distorted a little without realizing it. Takes a wider view of certain areas, for example. You can play it around in a lot of ways."

"I never heard of that one," Trigger said. "You'd think it would be sensational in fashions."

"It would be. Right now it's top secret for as long as Intelligence can keep it that way."

Trigger chewed a savory morsel of something. "Then why did you tell me?"

"You're one of the gang, however reluctant. And you're good at keeping the mouth shut. Your name, by the way, is now Comteen Lod, just turned eighteen. I am your dear mama. You call me Drura. We're from Slyth-Talgon on Evalee, here for a few days shooting."

Trigger nodded. "Do we do any shooting?"

Mihul pointed a finger at a side table. The Denton lay there, looking like a toy beside a standard slender-barrelled sporting pistol. "Bet your life, Comteen!" she said. "I've always been too stingy to try out a first-class preserve on my own money. And this one is _first_ class." She paused. "Comteen and Drura Lod really exist. We're a very fair copy of what they look like, and they'll be kept out of sight till we're done here. Now--"

She leaned back comfortably, tilting the chair and clasping her hands around one knee. "Aside from the sport, we're here because you're a convalescent. You're recovering from a rather severe attack of Dykart Fever. Heard of it?"

Trigger reflected. "Something you pick up in some sections of the Evalee tropics, isn't it?"

Mihul nodded. "That's what you did, child! Skipped your shots on the last trip we took--and six months later you're still paying for it. You were in one of those typical Dykart fever comas when we brought you in last night."

"Very clever!" Trigger commented acidly.

"Very." Mihul pursed her lips. "The Dykart bug causes temporary derangements, you know--spells during which convalescents talk wildly, imagine things."

Trigger popped another fragment of meat between her teeth and chewed thoughtfully, looking over at Mihul. "Very good duck or whatever!" she said. "Like imagining they've been more or less kidnapped, you mean?"

"Things like that," Mihul agreed.

Trigger shook her head. "I wouldn't anyway. You types are bound to have all the legal angles covered."

"Sure," said Mihul. "Just thought I'd mention it. Have you used the Denton much on game?"

"Not too often." Trigger had been wondering whether they'd left the stunner compartment loaded. "But it's a very fair gun for it."

"I know. The other one's a Yool. Good game gun, too. You'll use that."

Trigger swallowed. She met the calm eyes watching her. "I've never handled a Yool. Why the switch?"

"They're easy to handle. The reason for the switch is that you can't just stun someone with a Yool. It's better if we both stay armed, though it isn't really necessary--so much money comes to play around here they can afford to keep the Uplands very thoroughly policed, and they do. But an ace in the hole never hurts." She considered. "Changed your mind about that parole business yet?"

"I hadn't really thought about it," Trigger said.

"I'd let you carry your own gun then."

Trigger looked reflective, then shook her head. "I'd rather not."

"Suit yourself," Mihul said agreeably. "In that case though, there should be something else understood."

"What's that?"

"We'll have up to three-four days to spend here together before Whatzzit shows up."

"Whatzzit?"

"For future reference," Mihul said, "Whatzzit will be that which--or he or she who--wishes to have that interview with you and has arranged for it. That's in case you want to talk about it. I might as well tell you that I'll do very little talking about Whatzzit."

"I thought," Trigger suggested, "I was one of the gang."

"I've got special instructions on the matter," Mihul said. "Anyway, Whatzzit shows up. You have your interview. After that we do whatever Whatzzit says we're to do. As you know."

Trigger nodded.

"Meanwhile," said Mihul, "we're here. Very pleasant place to spend three-four days in my opinion, and I think, in yours."

"Very pleasant," Trigger agreed. "I've been suspecting it was you who suggested it would be a good place to wait in."

"No," Mihul said. "Though I might have, if anyone had asked me. But Whatzzit's handling all the arrangements, it seems. Now we could have fun here--which, I suspect, would be the purpose as far as you're concerned."

"Fun?" Trigger said.

"To put you into a good frame of mind for that interview, might be the idea," Mihul said. "I don't know. Three days here should relax almost anyone. Get in a little shooting. Loaf around the pools. Go for rides. Things like that. The only trouble is I'm afraid you're nourishing dark notions which are likely to take all the enjoyment out of it. Not to mention the possibility of really relaxing."

"Like what?" Trigger asked.

"Oh," Mihul said, "there're all sorts of possibilities, of course." She nodded her head at the guns. "Like yanking the Denton out of my holster and feeding me a dose of the stunner. Or picking up that coffee pot there and tapping me on the skull with it. It's about the right weight."

Trigger said thoughtfully, "I don't think either of those would work."

"They might," Mihul said. "They just might! You're fast. You've been taught to improvise. And there's something eating you. You're edgy as a cat."

"So?" Trigger said.

"So," Mihul said, "there are a number of alternatives. I'll lay them out for you. You take your pick. For one, I could just keep you doped. Three days in dope won't hurt you, and you'll certainly be no problem then. Another way--I'll let you stay awake, but we stay in our rooms. I can lock you in at night, and that window is escape-proof. I checked. It would be sort of boring, but we can have tapes and stuff brought up. I'd have the guns put away and I'd watch you like a hawk every minute of the day."

She looked at Trigger inquiringly. "Like either of those?"

"Not much," Trigger said.

"They're safe," Mihul said. "Quite safe. Maybe I should.... Well, the heat's off, and it's just a matter now of holding you for Whatzzit. There're a couple of other choices. One of them has an angle you won't like much either. On the other hand, it would give you a sporting chance to take off if you're really wild about it. And it's entirely in line with my instructions. I warned them you're tricky."

Trigger stopped eating. "Let's hear that one."

Mihul tilted the chair back a little farther and studied her a moment. "Pretty much like I said before. Everything friendly and casual. Gun a bit, swim a bit. Go for a ride or soar. Lie around in the sun. But because of those notions of yours, there'd be one thing added. An un-incentive."

"An un-incentive?" Trigger repeated.

"Exactly," said Mihul. "_That_ isn't at all in line with my instructions. But you're a pretty dignified little character, and I think it should work."

"Just what does this un-incentive consist of?" Trigger inquired warily.

"If you make a break and get away," Mihul said, "that's one thing. Something's eating you, and I'm not sure I like the way this matter's been handled. In fact, I don't like it. So I'll try to stop you from leaving, but if it turns out I couldn't, I won't hold any grudges. Even if I wake up with lumps."

She paused. "On the other hand," she said, "there we are--together for three-four days. I don't want to spend them fighting off attempts to clobber me every thirty seconds. So any time you try and miss, Comteen, mama is going to pin you down fast, and hot up your seat with whatever is handiest."

Trigger stared at her.

She cleared her throat.

"While I'm carrying a gun?" she said shakily. "Don't be ridiculous, Mihul!"

"You're not going to gun me for keeps to get out of a licking," Mihul said. "And that's all the Yool can do. How else will you stop me?"

Trigger's fingernails drummed the table top briefly. She wet her lips. "I don't know," she admitted.

"Of course," said Mihul, "all this unpleasantness can be avoided very easily. There's always the fourth method."

"What's that?"

"Just give parole."

"No parole," Trigger said thinly.

"All right. Which of the other ways will it be?"

Trigger didn't hesitate. "The sporting chance," she said. "The others aren't choices."

"Fair enough," said Mihul. She stood up and went over to the wall. She selected a holster belt from the pair hanging there and fastened it around her. "I rather thought you'd pick it," she said. She gave Trigger a brief grin. "Just make sure it's a good opening!"

"I will," Trigger said.

Mihul moved to the side table, took up the Denton, looked at it, and slid it into her holster. She turned to gaze out the window. "Nice country!" she said. "If you're done with breakfast, how about going out right now for a first try at the birds?"

Trigger hefted the coffee pot gently. It was about the right weight at that. But the range was a little more than she liked, considering the un-incentive.

Besides, it might crack the monster's skull.

She set the pot gently down again.

"Great idea!" she said. "And I'm all finished eating."

10

Half an hour later there still hadn't been any decent openings. Trigger was maintaining a somewhat brooding silence at the moment. Mihul, beside her, in the driver's seat of the tiny sports hopper, chatted pleasantly about this and that. But she didn't appear to expect any answers.

There weren't many half-hours left to be wasted.

Trigger stared thoughtfully out through the telescopic ground-view plate before her, while the hopper soared at a thousand feet toward the two-mile square of preserve area which had been assigned to them to hunt over that morning. Dimly reflected in the view plate, she could see the head of the gun-pup who went with that particular area lifted above the seat-back behind her. He was gazing straight ahead between the two humans, absorbed in canine reflections.

There was plenty of bird life down there. Some were original Terran forms, maintained unchanged in the U-League's genetic banks. Probably many more were inspired modifications produced on Grand Commerce game ranches. At any other time, Trigger would have found herself enjoying the outing almost as much as Mihul.

Not now. Other things kept running through her head. Money, for example. They hadn't returned her own cash to her and apparently didn't intend to--at least not until after the interview. But Mihul was carrying at least part of their spending money in a hip pocket wallet. The rest of it might be in a concealed room safe or deposited with the resort hotel's cashier.

She glanced over at Mihul again. Good friend Mihul never before had looked quite so large, lithe, alert and generally fit for a rough-and-tumble. That un-incentive idea was fiendishly ingenious! It was difficult to plan things through clearly and calmly while one's self-esteem kept quailing at vivid visualizations of the results of making a mistake.

The hopper settled down near the center of their territory, guided the last half mile by Mihul who had fancied the looks of some shrub-cluttered ravines ahead. Trigger opened the door on her side. The gun-pup leaped lightly across the seat and came out behind her. He turned to look over his huntresses and gave them a wag, a polite but perfunctory one. Then he stood waiting for orders.

Mihul considered him. "Guess he's in charge here," she said. She waved a hand at the pup. "Go find 'em, old boy! We'll string along."

He loped off swiftly, a lean brown houndlike creature, a Grand Commerce development of some aristocratic Terran breed and probably a considerable improvement on the best of his progenitors. He curved around a thick clump of shrubs like a low-flying hawk. Two plump feather-shapes, emerald-green and crimson, whirred up out of the near side of the shrubbery, saw the humans before them and rose steeply, picking up speed.

A great many separate, clearly detailed things seemed to be going on within the next four or five seconds. Mihul swore, scooping the Denton out of its holster. Trigger already had the Yool out, but the gun was unfamiliar; she hesitated. Fascinated, she glanced from the speeding, soaring feather-balls to Mihul, watched the tall woman straighten for an overhead shot, left hand grasping right wrist to steady the lightweight Denton--and in that particular instant Trigger knew exactly what was going to happen next.

The Denton flicked forth one bolt. Mihul stretched a little more for the next shot. Trigger wheeled matter-of-factly, dropping the Yool, left elbow close in to her side. Her left fist rammed solidly into Mihul's bare brown midriff, just under the arch of the rib cage.

That punch, in those precise circumstances, would have paralyzed the average person. It didn't quite paralyze Mihul. She dropped forward, doubled up and struggling for breath, but already twisting around toward Trigger. Trigger stepped across her, picked up the Denton, shifted its setting, thumbed it to twelve-hour stunner max, and let Mihul have it between the shoulder blades.

Mihul jerked forward and went limp.

Trigger stood there, shaking violently, looking down at Mihul and fighting the irrational conviction that she had just committed cold-blooded murder.

The gun-pup trotted up with the one downed bird. He placed it reverently by Mihul's outflung hand. Then he sat back on his haunches and regarded Trigger with something of the detached compassion of a good undertaker.

Apparently this wasn't his first experience with a hunting casualty.

The story Trigger babbled into the hopper's communicator a minute later was that Drura Lod had succumbed to an attack of Dykart fever coma--and that an ambulance and a fast flit to a hospital in the nearest city were indicated.

The preserve hotel was startled but reassuring. That the mother should be afflicted with the same ailment as the daughter was news to them but plausible enough. Within eight minutes, a police ambulance was flying Mihul and Trigger at emergency speeds towards a small Uplands City behind the mountains.

Trigger never found out the city's name. Three minutes after she'd followed Mihul's floating stretcher into the hospital, she quietly left the building again by a street entrance. Mihul's wallet had contained two hundred and thirteen crowns. It was enough, barely.

She got a complete change of clothes in the first Automatic Service store she came to and left the store in them, carrying the sporting outfit in a bag. The aircab she hired to take her to Ceyce had to be paid for in advance, which left her eighty-two crowns. As they went flying over a lake a while later, the bag with the sporting clothes and accessories was dumped out of the cab's rear window. It was just possible that the Space Scouts had been able to put that tracer material idea to immediate use.

In Ceyce a short two hours after she'd felled Mihul, Trigger called the interstellar spaceport and learned that the Dawn City was open to passengers and their guests.

Birna Drellgannoth picked up her tickets and went on board, mingling unostentatiously with a group in a mood of festive leave-taking. She went fading even more unostentatiously down a hallway when the group stopped cheerfully to pose for a solidopic girl from one of the news agencies. She located her cabin after a lengthy search, set the door to don't-disturb, glanced around the cabin and decided to inspect it in more detail later.

She pulled off her slippers, climbed on the outsized divan which passed here for a bunk, and stretched out.

She lay there a while, blinking at the ceiling and worrying a little about Mihul. Even theoretically a stunner-max blast couldn't cause Mihul the slightest permanent damage. It might, however, leave her in a fairly peevish mood after the grogginess wore off, since the impact wasn't supposed to be pleasant. But Mihul had stated she would hold no grudges over a successful escape attempt; and even if they caught up with her again before she got to Manon, this attempt certainly had to be rated a technical success.

They might catch up, of course, Trigger thought. The Federation must have an enormous variety of means at its disposal when it set out seriously to locate one of its missing citizens. But the Dawn City would be some hours on its way before Mihul even began to think coherently again. She'd spread the alarm then, but it should be a while before they started to suspect Trigger had left the planet. Maccadon was her home world, after all. If she'd just wanted to hole up, that was where she would have had the best chance to do it successfully.

Evalee, the first Hub stop, was only nine hours' flight away; Garth lay less than five hours beyond Evalee. After that there was only the long subspace run to Manon....

They'd have to work very fast to keep her from leaving the Hub this time!

Trigger glanced over at the Denton lying by the bedside ComWeb on a little table at the head of the divan-thing. She was aware of a feeling of great contentment, of growing relaxation. She closed her eyes.

By and large, she thought--all things considered--she hadn't come off badly among the cloak and dagger experts! She was on her way to Manon.

Some hours later she slept through the Dawn City's thunderous takeoff.

When she woke up next she was in semidarkness. But she knew where she was and a familiar feeling of low-weight told her the ship was in flight. She sat up.

At her motion, the area about her brightened, and the cabin grew visible again. It was rather large, oval-shaped. There were three closed doors in the walls, and the walls themselves were light amber, of oddly insubstantial appearance. A rosy tinge was flowing up from the floor level through them, and as the color surged higher and deepened, there came an accompanying stir of far-off, barely audible music. The don't-disturb sign still reflected dimly from the interior panels of the passage door. Trigger found its control switch on the bedstand and shut it off.

At once a soft chiming sounded from the miniature ComWeb on the bedstand. Its screen filled with a pulsing glow, and there was a voice.

"This is a recording, Miss Drellgannoth," the voice told her. "If Room Service may intrude with an audio message, please be so good as to touch the blue circle at the base of your ComWeb."

Trigger touched the blue circle. "Go ahead," she invited.

"Thank you, Miss Drellgannoth," said the voice. "For the duration of the voyage your personal ComWeb will be opened to callers, for either audio or visual intrusion, only by your verbal permission or by your touch on the blue circle."

It stopped. Another voice picked up. "This is your Personal Room Stewardess, Miss Drellgannoth. Forgive the intrusion, but the ship will dive in one hour. Do you wish to have a rest cubicle prepared?"

"No, thanks," Trigger said. "I'll stay awake."

"Thank you, Miss Drellgannoth. As a formality and in accordance with Federation regulations, allow me to remind you that Federation Law does not permit the bearing of personal weapons by passengers during a dive."

Her glance went to the Denton. "All right," she said. "I won't. It's because of dive hallucinations, I suppose?"

"Thank you very much, Miss Drellgannoth. Yes, it is because of the misapprehensions which may be caused by dive hallucinations. May I be of service to you at this time? Perhaps you would like me to demonstrate the various interesting uses of your personal ComWeb Cabinet?"

Trigger's eyes shifted to the far end of the cabin. A rather large, very elegant piece of furniture stood there. Its function hadn't been immediately obvious, but she had heard of ComWeb Service Cabinets.

She thanked the stewardess but declined the offer. The lady switched off, apparently a trifle distressed at not having discovered anything Birna Drellgannoth's personal stewardess might do for Birna right now.

Trigger went curiously over to the cabinet. It opened at her touch and she sat down before it, glancing over its panels. A remarkable number of uses were indicated, which might make it confusing to the average Hub citizen. But she had been trained in communications, and the service cabinet was as simple as any gadget in its class could get.

She punched in the ship's location diagram. The Dawn City was slightly more than an hour out of Ceyce Port, but it hadn't yet cleared the subspace nets which created interlocking and impenetrable fields of energy about the Maccadon System. A ship couldn't dive in such an area without risking immediate destruction; but the nets were painstakingly maintained insurance against a day when subspace warfare might again explode through the Hub.

Trigger glanced over the diagrammed route ahead. Evalee.... Garth. A tiny green spark in the far remoteness of space beyond them represented Manon's sun.

Eleven days or so. With the money to afford a rest cubicle, the time could be cut to a subjective three or four hours.

But it would have been foolish anyway to sleep through the one trip on a Hub luxury liner she was ever likely to take in her life.

She set the cabinet to a review of the Dawn City's passenger facilities, and was informed that everything would remain at the disposal of waking passengers throughout all dives. She glanced over bars, fashion shows, dining and gaming rooms. The Cascade Plunge, from the looks of it, would have been something for Mihul.... "Our Large Staff of Traveler's Companions"--just what she needed. The Solido Auditorium "... and the Inferno--our Sensations Unlimited Hall." A dulcet voice informed her regretfully that Federation Law did not permit the transmission of full SU effects to individual cabins. It did, however, permit a few sample glimpses. Trigger took her glimpses, sniffed austerely, switched back to the fashions.

There had been a neat little black suit on display there. While she didn't intend to start roaming about the ship until it dived and the majority of her fellow travelers were immersed in their rest cubicles, she probably still would be somewhat conspicuous in her Automatic Sales dress on a boat like the Dawn City. That little black suit hadn't looked at all expensive--

"Twelve hundred forty-two Federation credits?" she repeated evenly a minute later. "I see!"

Came to roughly eight hundred fifty Maccadon crowns, was what she saw.

"May we model it in your suite, madam?" the store manager inquired.

"No, thanks," Trigger told her. "Just looking them over a bit." She switched off, frowned absently at a panel labeled "Your Selection of Personalized Illusion Arrangements," shook her head, snapped the cabinet shut and stood up. It looked like she had a choice between being conspicuous and staying in her cabin and playing around with things like the creation of illusion scenes.

And she was really a little old for that kind of entertainment.

She opened the door to the narrow passageway outside the cabin and glanced tentatively along it. It was very quiet here. One of the reasons this was the cheapest cabin they'd had available presumably was that it lay outside the main passenger areas. To the right the corridor opened on a larger hall which ran past a few hundred yards of storerooms before it came to a stairway. At the head of the stairway, one came out eventually on one of the passenger levels. To the left the corridor ended at the door of what seemed to be the only other cabin in this section.

Trigger looked back toward the other cabin.

"Oh," she said. "Well ... hello."

The other cabin door stood open. A rather odd-looking little person sat in a low armchair immediately inside it. She had lifted a thin, green-sleeved arm in a greeting or beckoning gesture as Trigger turned.

She repeated the gesture now. "Come here, girl!" she called amiably in a quavery old-woman voice.

Well, it couldn't do any harm. Trigger put on her polite smile and walked down the hall toward the open door. A quite tiny old woman it was, with a head either shaved or naturally bald, dressed in a kind of dark-green pajamas. Long glassy earrings of the same color pulled down the lobes of her small ears. The oddness of the face was due mainly to the fact that she wore a great deal of make-up, and that the make-up was a matching green.

She twisted her head to the left as Trigger came up, and chirped something. Another woman appeared behind the door, almost a duplicate of the first, except that this one had gone all out for pink. Tiny things. They both beamed up at her.

Trigger beamed back. She stopped just outside the door.

"Greetings," said the pink one.

"Greetings," Trigger replied, wondering what world they came from. The style wasn't exactly like anything she'd seen before.

"We," the green lady informed her with a not unkindly touch of condescension, "are with the Askab of Elfkund."

"Oh!" said Trigger in the tone of one who is impressed. Elfkund hadn't rung any bells.

"And with whom are you, girl?" the pink one inquired.

"Well," Trigger said, "I'm not actually _with_ anybody."

The smiles faded abruptly. They glanced at each other, then looked back at Trigger. Rather severely, it seemed.

"Did you mean," the green one asked carefully, "that you are _not_ a retainer?"

Trigger nodded. "I'm from Maccadon," she explained. "The name is Birna Drellgannoth."

"Maccadon," the pink one repeated. "You are a commoner then, young Birna?"

"Of course she is!" The green one looked offended. "Maccadon!" She got out of her chair with remarkable spryness and moved to the door. "It's quite drafty," she said, looking pointedly past Trigger. The door closed on Trigger's face. A second later, she heard the lock snap shut. A moment after that, the don't-disturb sign appeared.

Well, she thought, wandering back to her cabin, it didn't look as if she were going to be bothered with excessively friendly neighbors on this trip.

She had a bath and then discovered a mechanical stylist in a recess beside the bathroom mirror. She swung the gadget out into the room, set it for a dye removal operation and sat down beneath it. A redhead again a minute or so later, she switched the machine to Orado styles and left it to make up its electronic mind as to what would be the most suitable creation under the circumstances.

The stylist hovered above her for over a minute, muttering and clucking as it conducted an apparently disapproving survey of the job. Then it went swiftly and silently to work. When it shut itself off, Trigger checked the results in the mirror.

She wasn't too pleased. An upswept arrangement which brought out the bone structure of her face rather well but didn't do much else for her. Possibly the stylist had included the Automatic Sales dress in its computations.

Well, it would have to do for her first tour of the ship.

11

The bedside ComWeb warned her politely that it was now ten minutes to dive point. Waking passengers who experienced subspace distress in any form could obtain immediate assistance by a call on any ComWeb. If they preferred, they could have their cabins kept under the continuous visual supervision of their personal steward or stewardess.

The Dawn City's passenger areas still looked rather well populated when Trigger arrived. But some of the passengers were showing signs of regretting their decision to stay awake. Presently she became aware of a faint queasiness herself.

It wasn't bad--mainly a sensation as if the ship were trying continuously to turn over on its axis around her and not quite making it--and she knew from previous experience that after the first hour or so she would be completely free of that. She walked into a low, dimly lit, very swank-looking gambling room, still well patronized by the hardier section of her fellow travelers, searching for a place where she could sit down unobtrusively for a while and let the subspace reaction work itself out.

A couch beside a closed door near the unlit end of the room seemed about right for the purpose.

Trigger sat down and glanced around. There were a variety of games in progress, all unfamiliar to her. The players were mostly men, but a remarkable number of beautiful women, beautifully gowned, stood around the tables as observers. Traveler's Companions, Trigger realized suddenly--the Dawn City's employees naturally would be inured to subspace effects. From the scraps of talk she could pick up, the stakes seemed uniformly high.

A swirl of vertigo suddenly built up in her again. This one was stronger than most; for a moment she couldn't be sure whether she was going to be sick or not. She stood up, stepped over to the door a few feet away, pulled it open and went through, drawing it shut behind her.

There had been a shielding black-light screen in the doorway. On the other side was bottled sunshine.

She found herself on a long balcony which overlooked a formal garden enclosure thirty feet below. There was no one else in sight. She leaned back against the wall beside the door, closed her eyes and breathed slowly and deeply for some seconds. The sickish sensation began to fade.

When she opened her eyes again, she saw the little yellow man.

He stood motionless at the far end of the garden, next to some flowering shrubbery out of which he might have just stepped. He seemed to be peering along the sand path which curved in toward the balcony and vanished beneath it, below the point where Trigger stood.

It was sheer fright which immobilized her at first. Because there was not anything really human about that small, squat, manshaped figure. A dwarfish yellow demon he seemed, evil and menacing. The garden, she realized suddenly, might be an illusion scene. Or else--

The thing moved in that instant. It became a blur of motion along the curving path and disappeared under the balcony. After a second or so she heard the sound of a door closing some distance away. The garden lay still again.

Trigger stayed where she was, her knees shaking a little. The fright appeared to have driven every trace of nausea out of her, and gradually her heartbeat began to return to normal. She took three cautious steps forward to the balcony railing, where the tip of a swaying green tree branch was in reach.

She put her hand out hesitantly, felt the smooth vegetable texture of a leaf, grasped it, pulled it away. She moved back to the door and examined the leaf. It was a quite real leaf. Thin sap formed a bead of amber moisture at the break in the stalk as she looked at it.

No illusion structure could be elaborated to that extent.

So she'd just had her first dive hallucination--and it had been a dilly!

Trigger dropped the leaf, pushed shakily at the balcony door, and stepped back through the black-light screen into the reassuring murmur of human voices in the gambling room.

An hour later, the ship's loudspeaker system went on. It announced that the Dawn City would surface in fifteen minutes because of gravitic disturbances, and proceed the rest of the way to Evalee in normal space, arriving approximately five hours behind schedule. Rest cubicle passengers would not be disturbed, unless this was specifically requested by a qualified associate.

Trigger turned her attention back to her viewer, feeling rather relieved. She hadn't experienced any further hallucinations, or other indications of subspace distress; but the one she'd had would do her for a while. The little viewer library she was in was otherwise deserted, and she'd been going about her studies there just the least bit nervously.

Subject of the studies were the Hub's principal games of chance. She'd identified a few of those she'd been watching--and one of them did look as if someone who went at it with an intelligent understanding of the odds--

A part of Trigger kept tut-tutting and shaking its head at such reckless notions. But another part pointed out that they couldn't be much worse off financially than they were right now. So what if they arrived in Manon dead-broke instead of practically? Besides, there was the problem of remaining inconspicuous till they got there. On the Dawn City no one whose wardrobe was limited to one Automatic Sales dress was going to remain inconspicuous very long.

Trigger-in-toto went on calculating the odds for various possible play combinations. She developed her first betting system, presently discovered several holes in it, and began to develop another.

The loudspeaker system went on again. She was too absorbed to pay much attention to it at first. Then she suddenly straightened up and listened, frowning.