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Trigger kept staring at the pillars they passed. Long-limbed, supple and languid, they floated in their crystal cages, in tinted, shifting lights, eyes closed, hair drifting about their faces. "Awesome, isn't it?" Quillan's voice said. "Yes," said Trigger. "Awesome. One in each he is a pig! They look drowned." "He is and they aren't," said Quillan. "Very lively girls when he lets them out.
"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.
Dead, no doubt. He shouldn't have got gay with Quillan. "Yes," Trigger said then, remembering Quillan's question. "I've got a very fast snap-back but they fed me a fresh load of dope just a moment ago." "So I saw," said Quillan. His glance shifted beyond Trigger. "Lyad," he said, almost gently. "Yes, Quillan?" Lyad's voice came from the other side of Trigger. Trigger turned her head toward it.
When they switched off the illusion background for a look at the goings-on during the Garth stopover, she took the occasion to study her companions in more detail. There were three men at the table; Lyad and herself. Quillan sat opposite her. Belchik Pluly's unseemly person, in a black silk robe which left his plump arms bare from the elbows down, was on Quillan's right.
For a moment she was startled. Then she saw that the stylist had produced a shining make-up kit and was opening it. This time she was getting the works.... Twenty minutes later, Quillan's voice informed her via the ComWeb that he could be outside her cabin any time she was ready.
This one, by the plasmoid standards of Luscious, was a regular monster, some twenty-five inches high; a gray, mummylike thing, dead and half rotted inside. It was the first plasmoid with the possible exception of whatever had flattened itself out on Quillan's gravity mine known to have died.
Naturally, Major Quillan's personal habits were none of her business. It was just that in less than an hour he was to pick her up and take her to the Ermetyne suite for that dinner. She was wondering how she should behave towards him. Reasonably pleasant but cool, she decided. But again, not too cool, since she'd obligated herself to help him find out what the Tranest tycooness was after.
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!
That had been the passage's automatic fire extinguishers going into brief but correspondingly violent action. Quillan's group stayed out of sight for the time being.
Quillan's tanned face was thoughtful, perhaps a trifle amused. Mantelish looked very red and angry. His shock of white hair was wildly rumpled. The Ermetyne appeared a bit wilted. "What's been going on?" Trigger asked. It was the wrong question. Mantelish took a deep breath and began bellowing like a wounded thunder-ork. Trigger listened, with some admiration.
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