Legacy by James H. Schmitz (graded readers txt) 📖

said. "They're cruel. And they laugh about being cruel."

"Are you afraid of them?"

Trigger blinked at the screen for a few seconds. "No," she said in a low, sleepy voice. "Not yet."

Pilch was silent a moment. She said then, "One more."

Trigger looked and frowned. Presently she said, "I have a feeling that does mean something. But all I get is that it's the faces of two clocks. On one of them the hands are going around very fast. And on the other they go around slowly."

"Yes," Pilch said. She waited a little. "No other thought about those clocks? Just that they should mean something?"

Trigger shook her head. "That's all."

Pilch's hand moved on the desk again. The wall-screen went blank, and the light in the little room brightened slowly. Pilch's face was reflective.

"That will have to do for now," she said. "Trigger, this ship is working on an urgent job somewhere else. We'll have to go back and finish that job. But I'll be able to return to Manon in about ten days, and then we'll have another session. And I think that will get this little mystery cleared up."

"All of it?"

"All of it, I'd say. The whole pattern seems to be moving into view. More details will show up in the ten-day interval; and one more cautious boost then should bring it out in full."

Trigger nodded. "That's good news. I've been getting a little fed up with being a kind of walking enigma."

"Don't blame you at all," Pilch said, sounding almost exactly like Commissioner Tate. "Incidentally, you're a busy lady at present, but if you do have half an hour to spare from time to time, you might just sit down comfortably somewhere and listen to yourself thinking. The way things are going, that should bring quite a bit of information to view."

Trigger looked doubtful. "Listen to myself thinking?"

"You'll find yourself getting the knack of it rather quickly," Pilch said. She smiled. "Just head off in that general direction whenever you find the time, and don't work too hard at it. Are there any questions now before we start back to Manon?"

Trigger studied her a moment. "There's one thing I'd like to be sure about," she said. "But I suppose you people have your problems with Security too."

"Who doesn't?" said Pilch. "You're secure enough for me. Fire away."

"All right," Trigger said. "Commissioner Tate told me people like you don't work much with individuals."

"Not as much as we'd like to. That's true."

"So you wouldn't have been working with me if whatever has been going on weren't somehow connected with the plasmoids."

"Oh, yes, I would," said Pilch. "Or old Cranadon. Someone like that. We do give service as required when somebody has the good sense to ask for it. But obviously, we couldn't have dropped that other job just now and come to Manon to clear up some individual difficulty."

"So I am involved with the plasmoid mess?"

"You're right in the middle of it, Trigger. That's definite. In just what way is something we should be able to determine next session."

Pilch turned off the desk light and stood up. "I always hate to run off and leave something half finished like this," she admitted, "but I'll have to run anyway. The plasmoids are nowhere near the head of the Federation's problem list at present. They're just coming up mighty fast."

When Trigger reached her office next morning, she learned that the Psychology Service ship had moved out of the Manon area within an hour after she'd been returned to the Headquarters dome the night before.

None of the members of the plasmoid team were around. The Commissioner, who had a poor opinion of sleep, had been up for the past three hours; he'd left word Trigger could reach him, if necessary, in the larger of his two ships, parked next to the dome in Precol Port. Presumably he had the ship sealed up and was sitting in the transmitter cabinet, swapping messages with the I-Fleets in the Vishni area. He was likely to be at that for hours more. Professor Mantelish hadn't yet got back from his latest field trip, and Major Heslet Quillan just wasn't there.

It looked, Trigger decided, not at all reluctantly, like a good day to lean into her Precol job a bit. She told the staff to pitch everything not utterly routine her way, and leaned.

A set of vitally important reports from Precol's Giant Planet Survey Squad had been mislaid somewhere around Headquarters during yesterday's conferences. She soothed down the G P Squad and instituted a check search. A team of Hub ecologists, who had decided for themselves that outworld booster shots weren't required on Manon, called in nervously from a polar station to report that their hair was falling out. Trigger tapped the "Manon Fever" button on her desk, and suggested toupees.

The ecologists were displeased. A medical emergency skip-boat zoomed out of the dome to go to their rescue; and Trigger gave it its directions while dialing for the medical checker who'd allowed the visitors to avoid their shots. She had a brief chat with the young man, and left him twitching as the G P Squad came back on to inquire whether the reports had been found yet. Trigger began to get a comfortable feeling of being back in the good old groove.

Then a message from the Medical Department popped out on her desk. It was addressed to Commissioner Tate and stated that Brule Inger was now able to speak again.

Trigger frowned, sighed, bit her lip and thought a moment. She dialed for Doctor Leehaven. "Got your message," she said. "How's he doing?"

"All right," the old medic said.

"Has he said anything?"

"No. He's scared. If he could get up the courage, he'd ask for a personnel lawyer."

"Yes, I imagine. Tell him this then—from the Commissioner; not from me—there'll be no charges, but Precol expects his resignation, end of the month."

"That on the level?" Doctor Leehaven demanded incredulously.

"Of course."

The doctor snorted. "You people are getting soft-headed! But I'll tell him."

The morning went on. Trigger was suspiciously studying a traffic control note stating that a Devagas missionary ship had checked in and berthed at the spaceport when the G C Center's management called in to report, with some nervousness, that the Center's much advertised meteor-repellent roof had just flipped several dozen tons of falling Moon Belt material into the spaceport area. Most of it, unfortunately, had dropped around and upon a Devagas missionary ship.

"Not damaged, is it?" she asked.

The Center said no, but the Missionary Captain insisted on speaking to the person in charge here. To whom should they refer him?

"Refer him to me," Trigger said expectantly. She switched on the vision screen.

The Missionary Captain was a tall, gray-haired, gray-eyed, square-jawed man in uniform. After confirming to his satisfaction that Trigger was indeed in charge, he informed her in chilled tones that the Devagas Union would hold her personally responsible for the unprovoked outrage unless an apology was promptly forthcoming.

Trigger apologized promptly. He acknowledged with a curt nod.

"The ship will now require new spacepaint," he pointed out, unmollified.

Trigger nodded. "We'll send a work squad out immediately."

"We," the Missionary Captain said, "shall supervise the work. Only the best grade of paint will be acceptable!"

"The very best only," Trigger agreed.

He gave her another curt nod, and switched off.

"Ass," she said. She cut in the don't-disturb barrier and dialed Holati's ship.

It took a while to get through; he was probably busy somewhere in the crate. Like Belchik Pluly, the Commissioner, while still a very wealthy man, would have been a very much wealthier one if it weren't for his hobby. In his case, the hobby was ships, of which he now owned two. What made them expensive was that they had been tailor-made to the Commissioner's specifications, and his specifications had provided him with two rather exact duplicates of the two types of Scout fighting ships in which Squadron Commander Tate had made space hideous for evildoers in the good old days. Nobody as yet had got up the nerve to point out to him that private battlecraft definitely were not allowable in the Manon System.

He came on finally. Trigger told him about the Devagas. "Did you know those characters were in the area?" she asked.

The Commissioner knew. They'd stopped in at the system check station three days before. The ship was clean. "Their missionaries all go armed, of course; but that's their privilege by treaty. They've been browsing around and going hither and yon in skiffs. The ship's been in orbit till this morning."

"Think they're here in connection with whatever Balmordan is up to?" Trigger inquired.

"We'll take that for granted. Balmordan, by the way, attended a big shindig on the Pluly yacht yesterday. Unless his tail goofed, he's still up there, apparently staying on as a guest."

"Are you having these other Devagas watched?"

"Not individually. Too many of them, and they're scattered all over the place. Mantelish got back. He checked in an hour ago."

"You mean he's upstairs in his quarters now?" she asked.

"Right. He had a few more crates hauled into the lab, and he's locked himself in with them and spy-blocked the place. May have got something important, and may just be going through one of his secrecy periods again. We'll find out by and by. Oh, and here's a social note. The First Lady of Tranest is shopping in the Grand Commerce Center this morning."

"Well, that should boost business," said Trigger. "Are you going to be back in the dome by lunchtime?"

"I think so. Might have some interesting news, too, incidentally."

"Fine," she said. "See you then."

Twenty minutes later the desk transmitter gave her the "to be shielded" signal. Up went the barrier again.

Major Quillan's face looked out at her from the screen. He was, Trigger saw, in Mantelish's lab. Mantelish stood at a work bench behind him.

"Hi!" he said.

"Hi, yourself. When did you get in?"

"Just now. Could you pick up the whoosis-and-whichis and bring it up here?"

"Right now?"

"If you can," Quillan said. "The professor's got something new, he thinks."

"I'm on my way," said Trigger. "Take about five minutes."

She hurried down to her quarters, summoned Repulsive's container into the room and slung the strap over her shoulder.

Then she stood still a moment, frowning slightly. Something—something like a wisp of memory, something she should be remembering—was stirring in the back of her mind. Then it was gone.

Trigger shook her head. It would keep. She opened the door and stepped out into the hall.

She fell down.

As she fell, she tried to give the bag the send-off squeeze, but she couldn't move her fingers. She couldn't move anything.

There were people around her. They were doing things swiftly. She was turned over on her back and, for a few moments then, she saw her own face smiling down at her from just a few feet away.