"Good idea." Trigger yawned, finished her drink, put the glass on a
table, and wandered over to the couch. She stretched out on it. A drowsy
somnolence enveloped her almost instantly. She closed her eyes.

Ten minutes later, Gaya, standing over her, announced, "Well, she's
out."

"Fine," said Quillan, packaging the rest of the equipment. "Tell them to
haul in the rest cubicle. I'll be done here in a minute. Then you and
the lady warden can take over."

Gaya looked down at Trigger. There was a trace of regret in her face. "I
think," she said, "she's going to be fairly displeased with you when she
wakes up and finds she's on Manon."

"Wouldn't doubt it," said Quillan. "But from what I've seen of that
chick, she's going to get fairly displeased with me from time to time on
this operation anyway."

Gaya looked at his back.

"Major Quillan," she said, "would you like a tip from a keen-eyed
operator?"

"Go ahead, ole keen-eyed op!" Quillan said in kindly tones.

"Not that you don't have it coming, boy," said Gaya. "But watch
yourself! This one is dangerous. This one could sink you for keeps."

"You're going out of your mind, doll," said Quillan.

16

The Precol headquarters dome on Manon Planet was still in the spot where
Trigger had left it, looking unchanged; but everything else in the area
seemed to have been moved, improved, expanded or taken away entirely,
and unfamiliar features had appeared. In the screens of Commissioner
Tate's Precol offices, Trigger could see both the new metropolitan-sized
spaceport on which the Dawn City had set down that morning, and the
towering glassy structures of the giant shopping and recreation center,
which had been opened here recently by Grand Commerce in its bid for a
cut of prospective outworld salaries. The salaries weren't entirely
prospective either.

Ten miles away on the other side of Headquarters dome, new squares of
living domes were sprouting up daily. At this morning's count they
housed fifty-two thousand people. The Hub's major industries and
assorted branches of Federation government had established a solid
foothold on Manon.

Trigger turned her head as Holati Tate came into the office. He closed
the door carefully behind him.

"How's the little critter doing?" he asked.

"Still absorbing the goop," Trigger said. She held Mantelish's small
mystery plasmoid cupped lightly between thumbs and fingers, its bottom
side down in a shallow bowl half ful