Legacy | Page 9

startled. "Oh!" he said. "We were hoping you would be
willing to give us a little information."
"I would," Trigger assured him, "if I had any to give. I don't,
unfortunately." She considered. "Why do you feel additional League
guards are required?"
"We heard," Rak remarked cautiously, "that there were raiders in the
Colonial School area yesterday."
"Grabbers," Trigger said. "They wouldn't bother you. Your section of
the project is supposed to be raidproof anyway."
Rak glanced at his companions again and apparently received some
undetectable sign of consent. "Miss Farn, as you know, our group has
been entrusted with the care of two League plasmoids here. Are you
aware that six of the plasmoids which were distributed to responsible
laboratories throughout the Hub have been lost to unknown raiders?"
She was startled. "No, I didn't know that. I heard there'd been some
unsuccessful attempts to steal distributed plasmoids."
"These six attempts," Rak said primly, "were completely successful.
One must assume that the victimized laboratories also had been
regarded as raidproof."
Trigger admitted it was a reasonable assumption.
"There is another matter," Rak went on. "When we arrived here, we

understood Doctor Gess Fayle was to bring Plasmoid Unit 112-113 to
this project. It seems possible that Doctor Fayle's failure to appear
indicates that League Headquarters does not consider the project a
sufficiently safe place for 112-113."
"Why don't you ask Headquarters?" Trigger suggested.
They stirred nervously.
"That would be a violation of the Principle of the Chain of Command,
Miss Farn!" Rak explained.
"Oh," she said. The Juniors were overdisciplined, all right. "Is that
112-113 such a particularly important item?"
"If Doctor Fayle is in personal charge of it," Rak said carefully, "I
would say yes."
Recalling her meetings with Doctor Gess Fayle in the Manon System,
Trigger silently agreed. He was one of the U-League's big shots, a
political scientist who had got himself appointed as Mantelish's chief
assistant when that eminent biologist was first sent to Manon to take
over League operations there. Trigger had disliked Fayle on sight, and
hadn't changed her mind on closer acquaintance.
"I remember that 112-113 unit now," she said suddenly. "Big, ugly
thing--well, that describes a lot of them, doesn't it?"
Rak and the others looked quietly affronted. In a moment, Trigger
realized, one of them was going to go into a lecture on functional
esthetics unless she could head them off--and she'd already heard quite
enough about functional esthetics in connection with the plasmoids.
"Now, 113," she hurried on, "is a very small plasmoid"--she held her
hands fifteen inches or so apart--"like that; and it's attached to the big
one. Correct?"
Rak nodded, a little stiffly. "Essentially correct, Miss Farn."

"Well," Trigger said, "I can't blame you for worrying a bit. How about
your Guard Captain? Isn't it all right to ask him about reinforcements?"
Rak pursed his lips. "Yes. And I did. This morning. Before I called
you."
"What did he say?"
Rak grimaced unhappily. "He implied, Miss Farn, that his present
guard complement could handle any emergency. How would he
know?"
"That's his job," Trigger pointed out gently. The Juniors did look badly
worried. "He didn't have any helpful ideas?"
"None," said Rak. "He said that if someone wanted to put up the money
to hire a battle squad of Special Federation Police, he could always find
some use for them. But that's hopeless, of course."
Trigger straightened up. She reached out and poked Rak's bony chest
with a finger tip. "You know something?" she said. "It's not!"
The four faces lit up together.
"The fact is," Trigger went on, "that I'm handling the Project budget
until someone shows up to take over. So I think I'll just buy you that
Federation battle squad, Rak! I'll get on it right away." She stood up.
The Juniors bounced automatically out of their chairs. "You go tell
your guard Captain," she instructed them from the hall door, "there'll be
a squad showing up in time for dinner tonight."
* * * * *
The Federation Police Office in Ceyce informed Trigger that a Class A
Battle Squad--twenty trained men with full equipment--would report
for two months' duty at the Colonial School during the afternoon. She
made them out a check and gave it the Ruya Farn signature via
telewriter. The figure on that check was going to cause some U-League

auditor's eyebrows to fly off the top of his head one of these days; but if
the League insisted on remaining aloof to the problems of its Plasmoid
Project, a little financial anguish was the least it could expect in return.
Trigger felt quite cheerful for a while.
Then she had a call from Precol's Maccadon office. She was requested
to stand by while a personal interstellar transmission was switched to
her ComWeb.