Chapter 5

The man who held Trigger’s wrists shifted his grip up her arms, and turned her a little so that she could sit upright on the seat, faced half away from him. She had got only a glimpse of him as he caught her, but he seemed to be wearing the same kind of commercial spacer’s uniform as the group which had hustled her into the car. The other man in the car, the driver, sat up front with his back to them. He looked like any ordinary middle-aged civilian.

Trigger let her breath out slowly. There was no point in yelling now. She could feel her legs tremble a little, but she didn’t seem to be actually frightened. At least, not yet.

“Spot anything so far?” the man who held her asked. It was a deep voice. It sounded matter-of-fact, quite unexcited.

“Three possibles anyway,” the driver said with equal casualness. He didn’t turn his head. “Make it two ... One very definite possible now, I’d say!”

“Better feed it to her then.”

The driver didn’t reply, but the car’s renewed surge of power pushed Trigger down hard on the seat. She couldn’t see much more than a shifting piece of the sky line through the front view plate. Their own car seemed to be rising at a tremendous rate. They were probably, she thought, already above the main traffic arteries over Ceyce.

“Now, Miss Argee,” the man sitting beside her said, “I’d like to reassure you a little first.”

“Go ahead and reassure me,” Trigger said unsteadily.

“You’re in no slightest danger from us,” he said. “We’re your friends.”

“Nice friends!” remarked Trigger.

“I’ll explain it all in a couple of minutes. There may be some fairly dangerous characters on our tail at the moment, and if they start to catch up--”

“Which they seem to be doing,” the driver interrupted. “Hang on for a few fast turns when we hit the next cloud bank.”

“We’ll probably shake them there,” the other man explained to Trigger. “In case we don’t though, I’ll need both hands free to handle the guns.”

“So?” she asked.

“So I’d like to slip a set of cuffs on you for just a few minutes. I’ve been informed you’re a fairly tricky lady, and we don’t want you to do anything thoughtless. You won’t have them on very long. All right?”

Trigger bit her lip. It wasn’t all right, and she didn’t feel at all reassured so far.

“Go ahead,” she said.

He let go of her left arm, presumably to reach for the handcuffs. She twisted around on him and went into fast action.

She was fairly proficient at the practice of unarmed mayhem. The trouble was that the big ape she was trying the stuff on seemed at least as adept and with twice her muscle. She lost a precious instant finding out that the Denton was no longer in her robe pocket. After that she never got back the initiative. It didn’t help either that the car suddenly seemed to be trying to fly in three directions at once.

All in all, about forty seconds passed before she was plumped back on the seat, her hands behind her again, linked at the wrists by the smooth plastic cords of the cuffs. The ape stood behind the driver, his hands resting on the back of the seat. He wasn’t, Trigger observed bitterly, even breathing hard. The view plate was full of the cottony whiteness of a cloud heart. They seemed to be dropping again.

One more violent swerve and they came flashing out into wet gray cloud-shadow and on into brilliant sunlight.

A few seconds passed. Then the ape remarked, “Looks like you lost them, chum.”

“Right,” said the driver. “Almost at the river now. I’ll turn north there and drop down.”

“Right,” said the ape. “Get us that far and we’ll be out of trouble.”

A few minutes passed in silence. Presently Trigger sensed they were slowing and losing altitude. Then a line of trees flashed by in the view plate. “Nice flying!” the ape said. He punched the driver approvingly in the shoulder and turned back to Trigger.

They looked at each other for a few seconds. He was tall, dark-eyed, very deeply tanned, with thick sloping shoulders. He probably wasn’t more than five or six years older than she was. He was studying her curiously, and his eyes were remarkably steady. Something stirred in her for a moment, a small chill of fear. Something passed through her thoughts, a vague odd impression, like a half aroused memory, of huge, cold, dangerous things far away. It was gone before she could grasp it more clearly. She frowned.

The ape smiled. It wasn’t, Trigger saw, an entirely unpleasant face. “Sorry the party got rough,” he said. “Will you give parole if I take those cuffs off and tell you what this is about?”

She studied him again. “Better tell me first,” she said shortly.

“All right. We’re taking you to Commissioner Tate. We’ll be there in about an hour. He’ll tell you himself why he wanted to see you.”

Trigger’s eyes narrowed for an instant. Secretly she felt very much relieved. Holati Tate, at any rate, wouldn’t let anything really unpleasant happen to her--and she would find out at last what had been going on.

“You’ve got an odd way of taking people places,” she observed.

He laughed. “The grabber party wasn’t scheduled. You’d indicated you wanted to speak to the Commissioner. We were sent to the Colonial School to pick you up and escort you to him. When we found out you’d disappeared, we had to do some fast improvising. Not my business to tell you the reasons for that.”

Trigger said hesitantly, “Those people who were chasing this car--”

“What about them?” he asked thoughtfully.

“Were they after me?”

“Well,” he said, “they weren’t after me. Better let the Commissioner tell you about that, too. Now--how about parole?”

She nodded. “Till you turn me over to the Commissioner.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “You’re his problem then.” He took a small flat piece of metal out of a pocket and reached back of her with it. He didn’t seem to do more than touch the cuffs, but she felt the slick coils loosen and drop away.

Trigger rubbed her wrists. “Where’s my gun?” she asked.

“I’ve got it. I’ll give it to the Commissioner.”

“How did you people find me so fast?”

“Police keep bank entrances under twenty-four hour visual survey. We had someone watching their screens. You were spotted going in.” He sat down companionably beside her. “I’d introduce myself, but I don’t know if that would fit in with the Commissioner’s plans.”

Trigger shrugged. It still was quite possible, she decided, that her own plans weren’t completely spoiled. Holati and his friends didn’t necessarily know about that vault account. If they did know she’d had one and had closed it out, they could make a pretty good guess at what she’d done with the money. But if she just kept quiet, there might be an opportunity to get back to Ceyce and the Dawn City by tomorrow evening.

“Cigarette?” the Commissioner’s overmuscled henchman inquired amiably.

Trigger glanced at him from the side. Not amiably. “No, thanks.”

“No hard feelings, are there?” He looked surprised.

“Yes,” she said evenly. “There are.”

“Maybe,” the driver suggested from the front, “what Miss Argee could do with is a shot of Puya. Flask’s in my coat pocket. Left side.”

“There’s an idea,” remarked Trigger’s companion. He looked at her. “It’s very good Puya.”

“So choke on it,” Trigger told him gently. She settled back into the corner of the seat and closed her eyes. “You can wake me up when we get to the Commissioner.”

“In some way,” Holati Tate said, “this little item here seems to be at the core of the whole plasmoid problem. Know what it is?”

Trigger looked at the little item with some revulsion. Dark green, marbled with pink streakings, it lay on the table between them, rather like a plump leech a foot and a half long. It was motionless except that the end nearest her shifted in a short arc from side to side, as if the thing suffered from a very slow twitch.