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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.
She slipped it into the container, and it seemed to snuggle down comfortably inside. Trigger closed the handbag, lightened it to half its normal weight, slipped the strap back over her left shoulder. "And now," she inquired, "what am I to do with the stuff I usually keep in a purse?" "You'll be in Precol uniform while you're here. We've had a special uniform made for you. Extra pockets."
"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.
One of the Junior Scientists on your Project mentioned the 112-113 unit. That brought it to mind. Is this 113?" "No," said Holati Tate. "But it appears to be a duplicate of it." He was a mild-looking little man, well along in years, sparse and spruce in his Precol uniform.
A Precol aircar picked him up and let him out on a platform of the Headquarters dome near Commissioner Tate's offices. Quillan was handed on toward the offices through a string of underlings and reached the door just as it opened and Trigger Argee stepped through. He grasped her cordially by the shoulders and cried out a cheery hello. Trigger made a soft growling sound in her throat.
Since Manon was a Precol preserve, she wouldn't have to meet the problem of precise personal identification, such as one ran into when booking passage to some of the member worlds. The ticket office would have her thumbprints then. That was unavoidable. But there were millions of thumbprints being deposited every hour of the day on Maccadon.
Any obvious lack of friendliness between them might make the job more difficult. Trigger sighed. Things were getting complicated again. While Quillan was indulging his baser nature among the questionable attractions of the Inferno, she'd shot three hundred of her Precol credits on a formal black gown ... on what, yesterday, she would have considered a rather unbelievable gown.
The Precol headquarters dome on Manon Planet was still in the spot where Trigger had left it, looking unchanged; but everything else in the area seemed to have been moved, improved, expanded or taken away entirely, and unfamiliar features had appeared.
"Here's a little extra spending money then," he said. "The balance of your Precol pay to date. I had it picked up on Evalee this morning. Seven hundred twenty-eight FC." "Thanks," Trigger said. "I can use some of that." They stood looking at each other. "Any questions?" he asked. "Sure," Trigger said. "But you wouldn't answer them." "Try me, doll," said Quillan.
There had been, Trigger recalled, a trifle nostalgically, barely eight hundred Precol employees, and not another human being, on that world in the days before Holati Tate announced his discovery. She was just letting the viewer panel slide back into the desk when the office ComWeb gave forth with a musical ping. She switched it on. "Hi, Rak!" she said cheerily. "Anything new?"
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