Legacy by James H. Schmitz (e book reader for pc txt) 📗
- Author: James H. Schmitz
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"And now we split forces," the Commissioner said. He was the only one, Trigger thought, who didn't seem too enormously excited by it all. "Quillan, you and your group get going! They can use you there a whole lot better than we can here."
For just a second, Quillan looked like a man being dragged violently in two directions. He didn't look at Trigger. He asked, "Think it's wise to leave you people unguarded?"
"Quillan," said Commissioner Tate, "that's the first time in my life anybody has suggested I need guarding."
"Sorry sir," said Quillan.
"You mean," Trigger said, "we're not going? We're just staying here?"
"You've got an appointment, remember?" the Commissioner said.
Quillan and company were gone within the hour. Mantelish, Holati Tate, Lyad and Trigger stayed at camp.
Luscious looked very lonely.
"It isn't just the king plasmoid they're hoping to catch there," the Commissioner told Trigger. "And I wouldn't care, frankly, if the thing stayed lost the next few thousand years. But we had a very odd report last week. The Federation's undercover boys have been scanning the Devagas worlds and Tranest very closely of late, naturally. The report is that there isn't the slightest evidence that a single one of the top members of the Devagas hierarchy has been on any of their worlds in the past two months."
"Oh," she said. "They think they're out here? In that dome?"
"That's what's suspected."
"But why?"
He scratched his chin. "If anyone knows, they haven't told me. It's probably nothing nice."
Trigger pondered. "You'd think they'd use facsimiles," she said. "Like Lyad."
"Oh, they did," he said. "They did. That's one of the reasons for being pretty sure they're gone. They're nowhere near as expert at that facsimile business as the Tranest characters. A little study of the recordings showed the facs were just that."
Trigger pondered again. "Did they find anything on Tranest?"
"Yes. One combat-strength squadron of those souped-up frigates of the Aurora class they're allowed by treaty can't be accounted for."
Trigger cupped her chin in her hands and looked at him. "Is that why we've stayed on Luscious, Holati—the four of us?"
"It's one reason. That Repulsive thing of yours is another."
"What about him?"
"I have a pretty strong feeling," he said, "that while they'll probably find the hierarchy in that Devagas dome, they won't find the 112-113 item there."
"So Lyad still is gambling," Trigger said. "And we're gambling we'll get more out of her next play than she does." She hesitated. "Holati—"
"Yes?"
"When did you decide it would be better if nobody ever got to see that king plasmoid again?"
Holati Tate said, "About the time I saw the reconstruct of that yellow monster of Balmordan's. Frankly, Trigger, there was a good deal of discussion of possibilities along that line before we decided to announce the discovery of Harvest Moon. If we could have just kept it hidden away for a couple of centuries—until there was considerably more good sense around the Hub—we probably would have done it. But somebody was bound to run across it sometime. And the stuff did look as if it might be extremely valuable. So we took the chance."
"And now you'd like to untake it?"
"If it's still possible. Half the Fed Council probably would like to see it happen. But they don't even dare think along those lines. There could be a blowup that would throw Hub politics back into the kind of snarl they haven't been in for a hundred years. If anything is done, it will have to look as if it had been something nobody could have helped. And that still might be bad enough."
"I suppose so. Holati—"
"Yes?"
She shook her head. "Nothing. Or if it is, I'll ask you later." She stood up. "I think I'll go have my swim."
She still went loafing in Plasmoid Creek in the mornings. The bat had been identified as an innocent victim of appearances, a very mild-mannered beast dedicated to the pursuit and engulfment of huge mothlike bugs which hung around watercourses. Luscious still looked like the safest of all possible worlds for any creature as vigorous as a human being. But she kept the Denton near now, just in case.
She stretched out again in the sun-warmed water, selected a smooth rock to rest her head on, wriggled into the sand a little so the current wouldn't shift her, and closed her eyes. She lay still, breathing slowly. Contact was coming more easily and quickly every morning. But the information which had begun to filter through in the last few days wasn't at all calculated to make one happy.
She was afraid now she was going to die in this thing. She had almost let it slip out to Holati, which wouldn't have helped in the least. She'd have to watch that in future.
Repulsive hadn't exactly said she would die. He'd said, "Maybe." Repulsive was scared too. Scared badly.
Trigger lay quiet, her thoughts, her attention drifting softly inward and down. Creek water rippled against her cheek.
It was all because that one clock moved so slowly. That was the thing that couldn't be changed. Ever.
Three mornings later, the emergency signal called her back to camp on the double.
Trigger ran over the developments of the past days in her mind as she trotted along the path, getting dressed more or less on the way. The Devagas dome was solidly invested by now, its transmitters blanked out. It hadn't tried to communicate with its attackers. On their part, the Fed ships weren't pushing the attack. They were holding the point, waiting for the big, slow wrecking boats to arrive, which would very gently and delicately start uncovering and opening the dome, taking it apart, piece by piece. The hierarchy could surrender themselves and whatever they were hiding in there at any point in the process. They didn't have a chance. Nobody and nothing had escaped. The Scouts had swatted down a few Devagas vessels on the way in; but those had been headed toward the dome, not away from it.
Perhaps the Psychology Service ship had arrived, several days ahead of time.
The other three weren't in camp, but the lock to the Commissioner's ship stood open. Trigger went in and found them gathered up front. The Commissioner had swung the transmitter cabinet aside and was back there, prowling among the power leads.
"What's wrong?" Trigger asked.
"Transmitters went out," he said. "Don't know why yet. Grab some tools and help me check."
She slipped on her work gloves, grabbed some tools and joined him. Lyad and Mantelish watched them silently.
They found the first spots of the fungus a few minutes later.
"Fungus!" Mantelish said, startled. He began to rumble in his pockets. "My microscope—"
"I have it." Lyad handed it to him. She looked at him with concern. "You don't think—"
"It seems possible. We did come in here last night, remember? And we came straight from the lab."
"But we had been decontaminated," Lyad said puzzledly.
"Don't try to walk in here, Professor!" Trigger warned as he lumbered forward. "We might have to de-electrocute you. The Commissioner will scrape off a sample and hand it out. This stuff—if it's what you think it might be—is poisonous?"
"Quite harmless to life, my dear," said the professor, bending over the patch of greenish-gray scum the Commissioner had reached out to him. "But ruinous in delicate instruments! That's why we're so careful."
Holati Tate glanced at Trigger. "Better look in the black box, Trig," he said.
She nodded and wormed herself farther into the innards of the transmitters. A minute later she announced, "Full of it! And that's the one part we can't repair or replace, of course. Is it your beast, Professor?"
"It seems to be," Mantelish said unhappily. "But we have, at least, a solvent which will remove it from the equipment."
Trigger came sliding out from under the transmitters, the detached black box under one arm. "Better use it then before the stuff gets to the rest of the ship. It won't help the black box." She shook it. It tinkled. "Shot!" she said. "There went another quarter million of your credits, Commissioner."
Mantelish and Lyad headed for the lock to get the solvent. Trigger slipped off her work gloves and turned to follow them. "Might be a while before I'm back," she said.
The Commissioner started to say something, then nodded and climbed back into the transmitters. After a few minutes, Mantelish came puffing in with sprayers and cans of solvent. "It's at least fortunate you tried to put out a call just now," he said. "It might have done incalculable damage."
"Doubt it," said Holati. "A few more instruments might have gone. Like the communicators. The main equipment is fungus-proof. How do you attach this thing?"
Mantelish showed him.
The Commissioner thanked him. He directed a fine spray of the solvent into the black box and watched the fungus melt. "Happen to notice where Trigger and Lyad went?" he asked.
"Eh?" said Mantelish. He reflected. "I saw them walking down toward camp talking together as I came in," he called. "Should I go get them?"
"Don't bother," Holati said. "They'll be back."
They came walking back into the ship around half an hour later. Both faces looked rather white and strained.
"Lyad has something she wants to tell you, Holati," Trigger said. "Where's Mantelish?"
"In his lab. Taking a nap, I believe."
"That's good. We don't want him here for this. Go ahead, Lyad. Just the important stuff. You can give us the details after we've left."
Three hours later, the ship was well away from Luscious, traveling subspace, traveling fast. Trigger walked up into the control section.
"Mantelish is still asleep," she said. They'd fed the professor a doped drink to get him aboard without detailed explanation and argument about how much of the lab should be loaded on the ship first. "Shall I get Lyad out of her cabin for the rest of the story or wait till he wakes up?"
"Better wait," said the Commissioner. "He'll come out of it in about an hour, and he might as well hear it with us. Looks like navigating's going to be a little rough for a spell anyway."
Trigger nodded and sat down in the control next to his. After a while he glanced over at her.
"How did you get her to talk?" he asked.
"We went back into the woods a bit. I tied her over a stump and broke two sticks across the first seat of Tranest. Got the idea from Mihul sort of," Trigger added vaguely. "When I picked up a third stick, Lyad got awfully anxious to keep things at just a fast conversational level. We kept it there."
"Hm," said the Commissioner. "You don't feel she did any lying this time?"
"I doubt it. I tapped her one now and then, just to make sure she didn't slow down enough to do much thinking. Besides I'd got the whole business down on a pocket recorder, and Lyad knew it. If she makes one more goof till this deal is over, the recording gets released to the Hub's news viewer outfits, yowls and all. She'd sooner lose Tranest than risk having that happen. She'll be good."
"Yeah, probably," he said thoughtfully. "About that substation—would you feel more comfortable if we went after the bunch round the Devagas dome first and got us an escort for the trip?"
"Sure," Trigger said. "But that would just about kill any chances of doing anything personally, wouldn't it?"
"I'm afraid so. Scout Intelligence will go along pretty far with me. But they couldn't go that far. We might be able to contact Quillan individually though. He's a topnotch man in a fighter."
"It doesn't seem to me," Trigger said, "that we ought to run any risk of being spotted till we know exactly what this thing is like."
"Well," said the Commissioner, "I'm with you there. We shouldn't."
"What about Mantelish and Lyad? You can't let them know either."
The Commissioner motioned with his head. "The rest cubicle back of the cabins. If we see a chance to do anything, we'll pop them both into Rest. I can dream up something to make that look plausible afterwards, I think."
Trigger was silent a moment. Lyad had told them she'd dispatched the Aurora to stand guard over a subspace station where the missing king plasmoid presently was housed, until both she and the combat squadron from Tranest could arrive there. The exact location of that station had been the most valuable of the bits of information she had extracted so painstakingly from Balmordan. The coordinates were centered on the Commissioner's course screen at the moment.
"How about that Tranest squadron?" Trigger asked. "Think Lyad might have risked a lie, and they could get out here in time to interfere?"
"No," said the Commissioner. "She had to have some idea of where to send them before starting them out of the Hub. They'll be doing fine if they make it to the substation in another two weeks. Now the Aurora—if they started for Luscious right after Lyad called them last night, at best they can't get there any sooner than we can get to the substation. I figure that at four days. If they turn right around then, and start back—"
Trigger laughed. "You can bet on that!" she said. The Commissioner had used his
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