Chapter 6

The point of it, Holati Tate explained, was that this had been more activity than 113-A normally displayed over a period of a week. And 113-A was easily the most active plasmoid of them all nowadays.

“It is, of course, possible,” Mantelish said, arousing from deep thought, “that it was attracted by your body odor.”

“Thank you, Mantelish!” said Trigger.

“You’re welcome, my dear.” Mantelish had pulled his chair up to the table; he hitched himself forward in it. “We shall now,” he announced, “try a little experiment. Pick it up, Trigger.”

She stared at him. “Pick it up! No, Mantelish. We shall now try some other little experiment.”

Mantelish furrowed his Jovian brows. Holati gave her a small smile across the table. “Just touch it with the tip of a finger,” he suggested. “You can do that much for the professor, can’t you?”

“Barely,” Trigger told him grimly. But she reached out and put a cautious finger tip to the less lively end of 113-A. After a moment she said, “Hey!” She moved the finger lightly along the thing’s surface. It had a velvety, smooth, warm feeling, rather like a kitten. “You know,” she said surprised, “it feels sort of nice! It just looks disgusting.”

“Disgusting!” Mantelish boomed, offended again.

The Commissioner held up a hand. “Just a moment,” he said. He’d picked up some signal Trigger hadn’t noticed, for he went over to the wall now and touched something there. A release button apparently. The door to the room opened. Trigger’s grabber came in. The door closed behind him. He was carrying a tray with a squat brown flask and four rather small glasses on it.

He gave Trigger a grin. She gave him a tentative smile in return. The Commissioner had introduced him: Heslet Quillan--Major Heslet Quillan, of the Subspace Engineers. For a Subspace Engineer, Trigger had thought skeptically, he was a pretty good grabber. But there was a qualified truce in the room. It would last, at least, until Holati finished his explaining. There was no really good reason not to include Major Quillan in it.

“Ah, Puya!” Professor Mantelish exclaimed, advancing on the tray as Quillan set it on the table. Mantelish seemed to have forgotten about plasmoid experiments for the moment, and Trigger didn’t intend to remind him. She drew her hand back quietly from 113-A. The professor unstoppered the flask. “You’ll have some, Trigger, I’m sure? The only really good thing the benighted world of Rumli ever produced.”

“My great-grandmother,” Trigger remarked, “was a Rumlian.” She watched him fill the four glasses with a thin purple liquid. “I’ve never tried it; but yes, thanks.”

Quillan put one of the glasses in front of her.

“And we shall drink,” Mantelish suggested, with a suave flourish of his Puya, “to your great-grandmother!”

“We shall also,” suggested Major Quillan, pulling a chair up to the table for himself, “Advise Trigger to take a very small sip on her first go at the stuff.”

Nobody had invited him to sit down. But nobody was objecting either. Well, that fitted, Trigger thought.

She sipped. It was tart and hot. Very hot. She set the glass back on the table, inhaled with difficulty, exhaled quiveringly. Tears gathered in her eyes.

“Very good!” she husked.

“Very good,” the Commissioner agreed. He put down his empty glass and smacked his lips lightly. “And now,” he said briskly, “let’s get on with this conference.”

Trigger glanced around the room while Quillan refilled three glasses. The small live coal she had swallowed was melting away; a warm glow began to spread through her. It did look like the dining room of a hunting lodge. The woodwork was dark, old-looking, worn with much polishing. Horned heads of various formidable Maccadon life-forms adorned the walls.

But it was open season now on a different kind of game. Three men had walked briskly past them when Quillan brought her in by the front door. They hadn’t even looked at her. There were sounds now and then from some of the other rooms, and that general feeling of a considerable number of people around--of being at an operating headquarters of some sort, which hummed with quiet activity.

One of the things, Holati Tate said, which had not become public knowledge so far was that Professor Mantelish actually succeeded in getting some of the plasmoids on the Old Galactic base back into operation. One plasmoid in particular.

The reason the achievement hadn’t been announced was that for nearly six weeks no one except the three men directly involved in the experiments had known about them. And during that time other things occurred which made subsequent publicity seem very inadvisable.