ly across her lips. Trigger
glanced up at him. He was walking on beside her, not looking at her.

All right, she thought--she could take a hint. But she felt tense and
uncomfortable now. Something was going on again, apparently.

They turned into the side passage and came up to her cabin. Trigger
started to turn to face him, and Quillan picked her up and went on
without a noticeable break in his stride. Close to her ear, his voice
whispered, "Explain in a moment! Dangerous here."

As the door to the end cabin closed behind them, he put her back on her
feet. He looked at his watch.

"We can talk here," he said. "But there may not be much time for
conversation." He gestured toward a table against the wall. "Take a look
at the setup."

Trigger looked. The table was littered with instruments, like an
electronic workbench. A visual screen showed a view of both her own
cabin and a section of the passage outside 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 catassin trap."

"Catassin!" Trigger squeaked.

"That's right. Don't get too nervous though. I've caught them before.
Used to be a sort of specialty of mine. And there's one thing about
them--they'll blab their pointed little heads off if you can get one
alive and promise it its catnip...." He'd shucked off his jacket and
taken out of it a very large handgun with a bell-shaped mouth. He laid
the gun down next to the view screen. "In case," he said,
unreassuringly. "Now just a moment."

He sat down in front of the view screen and did something to it.

"All right," he said then. "We're here and set. Probability period
starts in three minutes, continues for sixty. Signal on any blip.
Otherwise no gabbing. And remember they're _fast_. Don't get sappy."

There was no answer. Quillan did something else to the screen and stood
up again. He looked broodingly at Trigger. "It's those damn computers
again!" he said. "I don't see any sense in it."

"In what?" she asked shakily.

"Everything that's happening around here is being fed back to them at
the moment," he said. "When they heard about our invite to Lyad's dinner
party, and who was to be present, they came up with a honey. In the time
period I mentioned a catassin is supposed to show up at your cabin. They
give it a pretty high probability."

Trigger didn't say anything. If she had, she probably would have
squeaked again.