"She," said Trigger, "is a woman."
"Yeah," said Quillan. "Remarkable."
"May I ask you, finally, a questions?" Trigger humbly.
"Not here, sweet stuff," said Quillan.
"You're a of slob, Heslet Quillan," she said equably.
Quillan didn't answer. They had come the to the level and were walking along the big toward their cabins. Trigger relaxed. But she did have a great many questions to ask Quillan now, and she wanted to started on them.
"Oh!" she said suddenly. Just as suddenly, Quillan's hand was on her shoulder, moving her along.
"Hush now," he said. "And keep walking."
"But you saw it, didn't you?" Trigger asked, trying to look to the small open door into the they'd just passed.
Quillan sighed. "Certainly," he said. "Guy in space armor."
"But what's he doing there?"
"Checking something, I suppose." His hand left her shoulder; and, for just a moment, his rested across her lips. Trigger up at him. He was walking on her, not looking at her.
All right, she thought—she take a hint. But she and now. Something was going on again, apparently.
They into the passage and came up to her cabin. Trigger started to turn to him, and Quillan her up and on without a in his stride. Close to her ear, his voice whispered, "Explain in a moment! Dangerous here."
As the door to the end closed them, he put her on her feet. He looked at his watch.
"We can talk here," he said. "But there may not be much time for conversation." He toward a table against the wall. "Take a look at the setup."
Trigger looked. The table was with instruments, like an workbench. A screen a view of her own and a of the passage it, up to the point where it entered the big hall.
"What is it?" she asked uncertainly.
"Essentially," said Quillan, "we've set up a trap."
"Catassin!" Trigger squeaked.
"That's right. Don't too though. I've them before. Used to be a of of mine. And there's one thing about them—they'll their pointed little off if you can one alive and promise it its catnip...." He'd off his jacket and taken out of it a very large with a bell-shaped mouth. He the gun next to the view screen. "In case," he said, unreassuringly. "Now just a moment."
He sat in of the view screen and did something to it.
"All right," he said then. "We're here and set. Probability period in three minutes, for sixty. Signal on any blip. Otherwise no gabbing. And they're fast. Don't sappy."
There was no answer. Quillan did something else to the screen and up again. He looked at Trigger. "It's those again!" he said. "I don't see any in it."
"In what?" she asked shakily.
"Everything that's around here is being to them at the moment," he said. "When they about our to Lyad's dinner party, and who was to be present, they came up with a honey. In the time period I mentioned a is to up at your cabin. They give it a high probability."
Trigger didn't say anything. If she had, she would have again.
"Now don't worry," he said, her a large thumb and four less large fingers. "Nice muscle!" he said absently. "The cabin's and I've taken other precautions." He the gently. "Probably the only thing that will is that we'll around here for an hour or so, and then we'll have a laugh together at those computers!" He smiled.
"I thought," Trigger said without squeaking, "that was sure it was dead."
Quillan frowned. "Well, that's something else again! There are at least two I know of to it past that search. Jump it out and in with a is one—they have done that from their own as soon as they had its pattern. So I don't think it's dead. It's just—"
"Quillan," a voice said from the viewer.
He turned, took two steps, and sat fast the viewer. "Go ahead!"
"Fast motion in B section. Going your way."
Fast motion. A up. "Quillan—" Trigger began.
He a hand. "Get a silhouette?" he asked. His hands to a set of and there.
"No. Pickup a like in the reconstruct." An instant's pause. "Leaving B section."
"Motion in C section," said another voice.
Quillan said, "All right. It's coming. No more reports unless it direction. If you want to alive, don't move unless you're in armor."
There was silence. Quillan sat unmoving, on the screen. Trigger just him. Her had to tremble. She'd tell him.
"Quillan—"
For an instant, in the screen, there was something like at the end of the passage. Then she saw her door open.
The of the in a of light. In it was a shape. It again.
She Quillan make a shocked, sound. His left hand at a on the panel.
Twenty from them, just the closed door to the passage, was a noise like a slap. Then another noise, like a cloudburst. Then again.
She Quillan was on his her, the gun in his hand. It was pointed at the door. His from the door to the screen and again. She him slowly. Then she she was a of his shirt along with a of skin. She on it.
"Fly got it!" he said. "Whew!" He looked and the hand. "No catassin! The in the just wasn't fast enough. Had a mine our door, just in case. That was fast enough!" For once, Quillan looked almost awed.
"L-l-l-like—" Trigger began. She again. "Like a little yellow man—"
"You saw it? In the cabin? Yes. Never saw anything just like it before!"
Trigger pressed her together to make them steady.
"I have," she said. "That's what I was trying to tell you."
Quillan at her for an instant. "You'll tell me about it in a of minutes. I've got some quick work to do first." He himself. A wide spread over his face. "Know something, doll?"
"What?"
"The computers!" Major Quillan said happily. "They goofed!"
The mine would have almost any life-form which moved into its to a thin smear, but there wasn't that left of the yellow demon-shape. Something, something it was carrying, had it into a small of energy as the mine it out. Which the like a cloudburst. That had been the passage's fire going into but action.
Quillan's group out of for the time being. He'd got the mine put away, along with a of metal slugs, which was what the mine had left of their attacker's equipment, and Trigger's door locked again, when three visitors came p. 169the in a small car. A ship's and two had to check on what had started the extinguishers.
"They may," Quillan said hopefully, "just go away again." He and Trigger were the through the which had been to their end of the passage.
They didn't just go away again. They the extinguishers, looked at the floor, still wet but the last of the deluge. They puzzled comment. They once more. Finally the leader use of the door and asked if he might intrude.
Quillan off the viewer. "Come in," he said resignedly.
The door opened. The three at Quillan, and then at Trigger-plus-Beldon. Their only slightly. Duty on the Dawn City produced men.
Neither Quillan Trigger offer the as to what had started the extinguishers. The and withdrew. The door closed again.
Quillan on the viewer. Their voices came into the as they into their car.
"So that's how it happened," one of the was saying reflectively.
"Right," said the ship's engineer. "Like to into myself."
"Ha-ha-ha!" They off.
Trigger flushed. She looked at Quillan.
"Perhaps I ought to into something else," she said. "Now that the party's over."
"Perhaps," Quillan admitted. "I'll have Gaya something down. We want to out of your for an hour or so till everything's been checked. There'll be a to go through now."
Gaya next, with clothes. Trigger retired to the cabin's with them and came out a minutes later, again. Meanwhile the Dawn City's First Security Officer also had and was setting up a portable stage in the center of the cabin. He looked grim, but he also looked like a very much man.
"I we your off first, Major," he said. "Then we can put them on together, and them."
Trigger sat on a Gaya to watch. She'd been told that the view of the little demon-shape in the had been from Security's copy of their own and wasn't to be mentioned.
Otherwise there was not too much to see. What the had used to the wasn't clear, that it wasn't a scrambler. Amplified to the limits of and in time to the limit of immobility, all that was a shifting of energy, which very at a shape in outline. A small and catassin, the Security pointed out, would present such an outline. That something p. 171quite material was on the mine was obvious, but it produced no information. The ended with the of which had set off the extinguishers.
Then they ran the of the killing. Trigger watched, a little, till it came to the point where the shape actually was about to touch its victims. Then she the until Gaya her to the was over. Catassins almost used their natural in the kill; it was a process, of course, but brutal, and Trigger didn't to what the results looked like in a being. Both men had been killed in that manner; and the purpose was to the that the was not a catassin, but something more along those lines.
It didn't to the Security to question Trigger. A of a event was a more than any set of and memory mechanisms. He left presently, that the was concluded. It Trigger to that Security did not to be the possibility of the agent the murders.
Quillan shrugged. "Whoever did it is three in every direction. The it. He can't four thousand people on suspicions, and he'd mind-blocks in every p. 172twentieth presently on if he did. Anyway he we're on it, and that we have a great of the eventually."
"More for the computers, eh?" Trigger said.
"Uh-huh."
"You got this little the hard way, I feel," she observed.
"True," Quillan admitted, "But we have to it any way we can till we to move on. Then we move." He looked at her, with an air of a new idea. "You know," he said, "you don't do for an amateur!"
"She doesn't do badly," Gaya's voice said Trigger, "for anybody. How do you people about a drink? I I use one myself after looking at the chief's restructure."
Trigger herself coloring. Praise from the and experts! For some it pleased her immensely. She her to at Gaya, there with three on a tray.
"Thanks!" she said. She took one of the glasses. Gaya the out to Quillan and took the third herself.
It was some five minutes later when Trigger remarked, "You know, I'm sleepy."
Quillan looked around the he and Gaya were dismantling. "Why not the over there and take a nap?" he suggested. "It'll be about an hour the boys can here for the conference."
"Good idea." Trigger yawned, her drink, put the on a table, and over to the couch. She out on it. A her almost instantly. She closed her eyes.
Ten minutes later, Gaya, over her, announced, "Well, she's out."
"Fine," said Quillan, the of the equipment. "Tell them to in the cubicle. I'll be done here in a minute. Then you and the lady can take over."
Gaya looked at Trigger. There was a of in her face. "I think," she said, "she's going to be with you when she up and she's on Manon."
"Wouldn't it," said Quillan. "But from what I've of that chick, she's going to with me from time to time on this operation anyway."
Gaya looked at his back.
"Major Quillan," she said, "would you like a from a keen-eyed operator?"
"Go ahead, keen-eyed op!" Quillan said in tones.
"Not that you don't have it coming, boy," said Gaya. "But watch yourself! This one is dangerous. This one you for keeps."
"You're going out of your mind, doll," said Quillan.
