"No, not quite," Roadgear said annoyedly. "In fact, the Councilmen
would very much prefer it, Commissioner, if I were given an opportunity
to speak to the First Lady directly to reassure myself on the point."

"Well," Commissioner Tate said, "she can't come to the transmitters
right now. She's washing the dishes."

The Councilman reddened very considerably this time. He stared at the
Commissioner a moment longer. Then he said in a very soft voice, "Oh,
the hell with it!" He added, "Good luck, Commissioner--you're going to
need it some time."

The screen went blank.

* * * * *

The scouts of Selan's Independent Fleet, who had first looked this
planet over and decided to call it Luscious, had selected a name,
Trigger thought, which probably would stick. Because that was what it
was, at least in the area where they were camping.

She rolled over from her side to her face and gave herself a push away
from the rock she'd been regarding contemplatively for the past few
minutes. Feet first, she went drifting out into a somewhat deeper
section of Plasmoid Creek.

None of it was very deep. There were pools here and there, in the
stretch of the creek she usually came to, where she could stand on her
toes in the warm clear water and, arms stretched straight up, barely
tickle the surface with her finger tips. But along most of the stretch
the bigger rocks weren't even submerged.

She came sliding over the sand to another rock, turned on her back and
leaned up against the rock, blinking at sun reflections along the water.
Camp was a couple of hundred yards down the valley, its sounds cut off
by a rise of the ground. The Commissioner's ship was there, plus a half
dozen tents, plus a sizable I-Fleet unit with lab facilities which
Selan's outfit had loaned Mantelish for the duration. There were some
fifteen, twenty people in all about the camp at the moment. They knew
she was loafing around in the water up here and wouldn't disturb her.

Strictly speaking, of course, she wasn't loafing. She was learning how
to listen to herself think. She didn't feel she was getting the knack of
it too quickly; but it was coming. The best way seemed to be to let go
mentally as much as possible; to wait without impatience, really to
more-or-less listen quietly within yourself, as if you were looking
around in some strange forest, letting whatever wanted to come to view
come, and fade again, as something else r