Chapter 29

Mantelish’s garden in the highland south of Ceyce had a certain renown all over the Hub. It had been donated to the professor twenty-five years ago by the populace of another Federation world. That populace had negligently permitted a hideous pestilence of some kind to be imported, and had been saved in the nick of time by the appropriate pestilence-killer, hastily developed and forwarded to it by Mantelish. In return, a lifetime ambition had been fulfilled for him--his own private botanical garden plus an unlimited fund for stocking and upkeep.

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. For the last decade there had been considerable talk about the advisability of removing it before it collapsed and crushed the house and everyone in it. But it was one of the professor’s great favorites, and so far he had vetoed the suggestion.

Elbows propped on the broad white balustrade of the porch before her third-story bedroom, Trigger was studying the sequoia’s crown with a pair of field glasses when Pilch arrived. She laid the glasses down and invited her guest to pull up a chair and help her admire the view.

They admired the view for a little in silence. “It certainly is a beautiful place!” Pilch said then. She glanced down at Professor Mantelish, a couple of hundred yards from the house, dressed in a pair of tanned shorts and busily grubbing away with a spade around some new sort of shrub he’d just planted, and smiled. “I took the first opportunity I’ve had to come see you,” she said.

Trigger looked at her and laughed. “I thought you might. You weren’t satisfied with the reports then?”

Pilch said, “Of course not! But it was obvious the emergency was over, so I was whisked away to something else.” She frowned slightly. “Sometimes,” she admitted, “the Service keeps me the least bit busier than I’d prefer to be. So now it’s been six months!”

“I would have come in for another interview if you’d called me,” Trigger said.

“I know,” said Pilch. “But that would have made it official. I can keep this visit off the record.” Her eyes met Trigger’s for a moment. “And I have a feeling I will. Also, of course, I’m not pushing for any answers you mightn’t care to give.”

“Just push away,” Trigger said agreeably.

“Well, we got the Commissioner’s call from his ship. A worried man he was. So it seems now that we’ve had one of the Old Galactics around for a while. When did you first find out about it?”

“On the morning after our interview. Right after I got up.”

“How?”

Trigger laughed. “I watch my weight. When I noticed I’d turned three and a half pounds heavier overnight than I’d averaged the past four years, I knew all right!”

Pilch smiled faintly. “You weren’t alarmed at all?”

“No. I guess I’d been prepared just enough by that time. But then, you know, I forgot all about it again until Lyad and Flam opened that purse--and he wasn’t inside. Then I remembered, and after that I didn’t forget again.”

“No. Of course.” Pilch’s slim fingers tapped the surface of the table between them. She said then, paying Repulsive the highest compliment Pilch could give, “It--he--was a good therapist!” After a moment, she added. “I had a talk with Commissioner Tate an hour or so ago. He’s preparing to leave Maccadon again, I understand.”

“That’s right. He’s been organizing that big exploration trip of Mantelish’s the past couple of months. He’ll be in charge of it when they take off.”

“You’re not going along?” Pilch asked.

Trigger shook her head. “Not this time. Ape and I--Captain Quillan and I, that is--”

“I heard,” Pilch said. She smiled. “You picked a good one on the second try!”

“Quillan’s all right,” Trigger agreed. “If you watch him a little.”

“Anyway,” said Pilch, “Commissioner Tate seems to be just the least bit worried about you still.”

Trigger put a finger to her temple and made a small circling motion. “A bit ta-ta?”

“Not exactly that, perhaps. But it seems,” said Pilch, “that you’ve told him a good deal about the history of the Old Galactics, including what ended them as a race thirty-two thousand years ago.”

Trigger’s face clouded a little. “Yes,” she said. She sat silent for a moment. “Well, I got that from Repulsive somewhere along the line,” she said then. “It didn’t really come clear until some time after we’d got back. But it was there in those pictures in the interview.”

“The giants stamping on the farm?”

Trigger nodded. “And the fast clock and the slow one. He was trying to tell it then. The Jesters--that’s the giants--they’re fast and tough like us. Apparently,” Trigger said thoughtfully, “they’re a good deal like us in a lot of ways. But worse. Much worse! And the Old Galactics were just slow. They thought slow; they moved slow--they did almost everything slow. At full gallop, old Repulsive couldn’t have kept up with a healthy snail. Besides, they just liked to grow things and tinker with things and so on. They didn’t go in for fighting, and they never got to be at all good at it. So they just got wiped out, practically.”

“The Jesters were good at fighting, eh?”

Trigger nodded. “Very good. Like us, again.”

“Where did they come from?”

“Repulsive thought they were outsiders. He wasn’t sure. He and that other O.G. were on the sidelines, running their protein collecting station, when the Jesters arrived; and it was all over and they were gone before he had learned much about it.”

“From outside the galaxy!” Pilch said thoughtfully. She cleared her throat. “What’s this business about they might be back again?”

“Well,” Trigger said, “he thought they might be. Just might. Actually he believed the Jesters got wiped out too.”

“Eh?” Pilch said. “How’s that?”

“Quite a lot of the Old Galactics went along with them like Repulsive went along with me. And one of the things they did know,” Trigger said, “was how to spread diseases like nobody’s business. About like we use weed-killers. Wholesale. They could clean out the average planet of any particular thing they didn’t want there in about a week. So it’s not really too likely the Jesters will be back.”

“Oh!” said Pilch.

“But if they are coming, Repulsive thought they’d be due in this area in about another eight centuries. That looked like a very short time to him, of course. He thought it would be best to pass on a warning.”

“You know,” Pilch said after a brief pause, “I find myself agreeing with him there, Trigger! I might turn in a short report on this, after all.”

“I think you should, really,” Trigger said. She smiled suddenly. “Of course, it might wind up with people thinking both of us are ta-ta!”

“I’ll risk that,” said Pilch. “It’s been thought of me before.”

“If they did come,” Trigger said, “I guess we’d take them anyway. We’ve taken everything else like that that came long. And besides--”

Her voice trailed off thoughtfully. She studied the table top for a moment. Then she looked up at Pilch.

“Well,” she said, smiling, “any other questions?”

“A few,” said Pilch, passing up the “and besides--” She considered. “Did you ever actually see him make contact with you?”

“No,” Trigger said. “I was always asleep, and I suppose he made sure I’d stay asleep. They’re built sort of like a leech, you know. I guess he knew I wouldn’t feel comfortable about having something like that go oozing into the side of my neck or start oozing out again. Anyway, he never did let me see it.”

“Considerate little fellow!” said Pilch. She sighed. “Well, everything came out very satisfactorily--much more so than anyone could have dared hope at one time. All that’s left is a very intriguing mystery which the Hub will be chatting about for years ... What happened aboard Doctor Fayle’s vanished ship that caused the king plasmoid to awaken to awful life?” she cried. “What equally mysterious event brought about its death on that strangely hideous structure it had built in subspace? _What was it planning to do there?_ Etcetera.” She smiled at Trigger. “Yes, very good!”

“I saw they camouflaged out what was still visible of the original substation before they let in the news viewers,” Trigger remarked. “Bright idea somebody had there!”