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They've got a detector system set up now that would spot a catassin if it moved twenty feet in any direction." "Life detectors go haywire out of normal space, don't they?" she said. "That's why they surfaced then." Quillan nodded. "You're a well-informed doll. They're pretty certain it's been sucked into space or disposed of by its owner, but they'll go on looking till we dive beyond Garth."
She'd seen recordings of those swift, clever, constitutionally murderous creatures in action. "You say it looked like catassin killings. They haven't found it?" "No. But they think they got rid of it. Emptied the air from most of the ship after they surfaced and combed over the rest of it with life detectors.
"Whew!" He looked down and patted the clutching hand. "No catassin! The trap in the cabin just wasn't fast enough. Had a gravity mine outside our door, just in case. That was barely fast enough!" For once, Quillan looked almost awed. "L-l-l-like " Trigger began. She tried again. "Like a little yellow man " "You saw it? In the cabin? Yes. Never saw anything just like it before!"
A rather unusually small and heavy catassin, the Security chief pointed out, would present such an outline. That something quite material was finally undergoing devastating structural disorganization on the gravity mine was unpleasantly obvious, but it produced no further information. The sequence ended with the short blaze of heat which had set off the extinguishers.
It didn't occur to the Security chief to question Trigger. A temporal restructure of a recent event was a far more reliable witness than any set of human senses and memory mechanisms. He left presently, reassured that the catassin incident was concluded.
"Did you people know," Lyad said, "that the trouble on the way between Maccadon and Evalee was caused by a catassin killing?" There was a touch of mischief in the question, Trigger thought. There were assorted startled responses. The Ermetyne went briefly over some of the details Quillan had told; essentially it was the same story. "And do you know, Belchik, what the creature was trying to do?
Some day I'm going to walk down those rows and give them each a blast where it will do the most good. It will be worth being broken for." Trigger said, "I thought that catassin planet was being guarded." "It is. It would be very hard to sneak one out nowadays. But somebody's breeding them in the Hub. Just a few. Keeps the price up." Trigger grimaced uncomfortably.
"You're safe when you're in one of those things, Belchik!" Quillan said reassuringly. "Wouldn't you feel a little safer there yourself, Lyad? If you say they're not even sure they've killed the creature...." "I probably shall have a cubicle set up here," Lyad said. "But not as protection against a catassin. It would never get past Pilli, for one thing." She looked at Trigger. "Oh, I forgot.
There must be quite a few of them, after all." "True," said Quillan. "But not murders that look like catassin killings." "Oh!" she said startled. "Is that what these were?" "That's what Ship Security thinks." Trigger frowned. "But what could be the connection " Quillan reached across the table and patted her hand. "You've got it!" he said with approval. "Exactly! No connection.
The table was littered with instruments, like an electronic workbench. A visual screen showed a view of both her own cabin and a section of the passage outside it, up to the point where it entered the big hall. "What is it?" she asked uncertainly. "Essentially," said Quillan, "we've set up a catassin trap." "Catassin!" Trigger squeaked. "That's right. Don't get too nervous though.
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