start
back--"

Trigger laughed. "You can bet on that!" she said. The Commissioner had
used his ship's guns to brand the substation's coordinates in
twenty-mile figures into a mountain plateau above Plasmoid Creek. They'd
left much more detailed information in camp, but there was a chance it
would be overlooked in too hurried a search.

"Then they'll show up at the substation again four or five days behind
us," the Commissioner said. "So they're no problem. But our own outfit's
fastest ships can cut across from the Devagas dome in less than three
days after their search party messages from Luscious to tell them why
we've stopped transmitting and where we've gone. Or the Psychology ship
might get to Luscious before the search party does and start
transmitting about the coordinates."

"In any case," said Trigger, "it's our own boys who are likely to be the
problem."

"Yes. I'd say we _should_ have two days, give or take a few hours, after
we get to the station to see if we can do anything useful and get it
done. Of course, somebody might come wandering into Luscious right now
and start wondering about those coordinate figures, or drop in at our
camp and discover we're gone. But that's not very likely, after all."

"Couldn't be helped anyway," Trigger said.

"No. If we knock ourselves out on this job, somebody besides Lyad's
Tranest squadron and the Devagas has to know just where the station is."
He shook his head. "That Lyad! I figured she'd know how to run the
transmitters, so I gave her the chance. But I never imagined she'd be a
good enough engineer to get inside them and mess them up without killing
herself."

"Lyad has her points," Trigger said. "Too bad she grew up a rat. You had
a playback attachment stuck in there then?"

"Naturally."

"Full of the fungus, I suppose?"

"Full of it," said the Commissioner. "Well, Lyad still lost on that
maneuver. Much less comfortably than she might have, too."

"I think she'd agree with you there," Trigger said.

Lyad's first assignment after Professor Mantelish came out of the dope
was to snap him back into trance and explain to him how he had once more
been put under hypno control and used for her felonious ends by the
First Lady of Tranest. They let him work off his rage while he was still
under partial control. Then the Ermetyne woke him up.

He stared at her coldly.

"You are a deceitful woman, Lyad Ermetyne!" he declared. "I don't wish
to see you about my