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Whatever did the chewing was also apparently capable of sealing up the portion behind it as it went along. What it did to the men when it got inside we don't know. Mantelish feels we might compare it roughly to the effects of ordinary germ invasion. It doesn't really matter. It fixed them." "Mighty large germs!" Trigger said. "Why didn't their meteor reflectors stop them?"
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.
I'm not supposed to admit to anyone that I know anything of the whereabouts of Holati Tate or Professor Mantelish." "Fibber!" Trigger said quietly. "So you know!" Plemponi looked appealingly at Mihul. She was grinning. "My lips are sealed, Trigger! I can't help it. Please believe me." "Let me sum it up then," Trigger said, tapping the arm of her chair with a finger tip.
He waved a piece of toast at her. "No. Don't interrupt! I still have to point out that because of the exceptional managerial abilities you revealed under Tate, you've been sent here on detached duty for the Precolonial Department to aid the Commissioner and Professor Mantelish in the University League's Plasmoid Project. That means you're a pretty important person, Trigger!
But I'm in favor of knocking off now and just grabbing a couple of hours' sleep. Then we'll get our brains together again. Maybe by then somebody has come up with something like an idea. What do you say?" "Where," Mantelish said, "is the ship going to be while we're sleeping?" "Subspace," said the Commissioner. He saw their expressions. "Don't worry!
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.
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.
But the Commissioner broke out one of the ship's two heavy-duty suits; and when Trigger wasn't at the controls, eating, sleeping, or taking care of the ship's housekeeping with Lyad and Mantelish, she drilled. She wasn't at the controls too often. When she was, they had to surface and proceed in normal space. But Lyad, not too surprisingly, turned out to be a qualified subspace pilot.
To one side of the big garden house, where Mantelish stayed whenever he found the time to go puttering around among his specimens, stood a giant sequoia, generally reputed to be the oldest living thing in the Hub outside of the Life Banks. It was certainly extremely old, even for a sequoia.
The burly character who had appeared at the door said diffidently that Professor Mantelish had wanted to be present while his lab equipment was stowed aboard. If the professor didn't mind, things were about that far along. Mantelish excused himself and went off with the messenger. The door closed. Quillan came back to his chair. "We're moving the outfit later tonight," the Commissioner explained.
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