"Now don't worry," he said, squeezing her shoulder reassuringly between
a large thumb and four slightly less large fingers. "Nice muscle!" he
said absently. "The cabin's trapped and I've taken other precautions."
He massaged the muscle gently. "Probably the only thing that will happen
is that we'll sit around here for an hour or so, and then we'll have a
hearty laugh together at those foolish computers!" He smiled.

"I thought," Trigger said without squeaking, "that everybody was pretty
sure it was dead."

Quillan frowned. "Well, that's something else again! There are at least
two ways I know of to sneak it past that search. Jump it out and in with
a subtub is one--they could have done that from their own cabin as soon
as they had its pattern. So I don't really think it's dead. It's just--"

"Quillan," a tiny voice said from the viewer.

He turned, took two steps, and sat down fast before the viewer. "Go
ahead!"

"Fast motion in B section. Going your way."

Fast motion. A thought flicked up. "Quillan--" Trigger began.

He raised a shushing hand. "Get a silhouette?" he asked. His hands went
to a set of control switches and stayed there.

"No. Pickup shows a haze 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 verbal reports unless it
changes direction. If you want to stay alive, don't move unless you're
in armor."

There was silence. Quillan sat unmoving, eyes fixed on the screen.
Trigger stood just behind him. Her legs had begun to tremble. She'd
better tell him.

"Quillan--"

For an instant, in the screen, there was something like heat shimmer at
the far end of the passage. Then she saw her cabin door pop open.

The interior of the cabin showed in a brief flare of blue light. In it
was a shape. It vanished instantly again.

She heard Quillan make a shocked, incredulous sound. His left hand
slashed at a switch on the panel.

Twenty feet from them, just behind the closed door to the passage, was a
splatting noise like a tremendous slap. Then another noise, strangely
like a brief cloudburst. Then silence again.

She realized Quillan was on his feet beside her, the oversized gun in
his hand. It was pointed at the door. His eyes switched suddenly from
the door to the screen and back again. She felt him relaxing slowly.
Then she discovered she was clutching a handful of his shirt along with
a