Part 19 (1/2)

Trigger went curiously over to the cabinet. It opened at her touch and she sat down before it, glancing over its panels. A remarkable number of uses were indicated, which might make it confusing to the average Hub citizen. But she had been trained in communications, and the service cabinet was as simple as any gadget in its cla.s.s could get.

She punched in the s.h.i.+p's location diagram. The Dawn City was slightly more than an hour out of Ceyce Port, but it hadn't yet cleared the subs.p.a.ce nets which created interlocking and impenetrable fields of energy about the Maccadon System. A s.h.i.+p couldn't dive in such an area without risking immediate destruction; but the nets were painstakingly maintained insurance against a day when subs.p.a.ce warfare might again explode through the Hub.

Trigger glanced over the diagrammed route ahead. Evalee.... Garth. A tiny green spark in the far remoteness of s.p.a.ce beyond them represented Manon's sun.

Eleven days or so. With the money to afford a rest cubicle, the time could be cut to a subjective three or four hours.

But it would have been foolish anyway to sleep through the one trip on a Hub luxury liner she was ever likely to take in her life.

She set the cabinet to a review of the Dawn City's pa.s.senger facilities, and was informed that everything would remain at the disposal of waking pa.s.sengers throughout all dives. She glanced over bars, fas.h.i.+on shows, dining and gaming rooms. The Cascade Plunge, from the looks of it, would have been something for Mihul.... ”Our Large Staff of Traveler's Companions”--just what she needed. The Solido Auditorium ”... and the Inferno--our Sensations Unlimited Hall.” A dulcet voice informed her regretfully that Federation Law did not permit the transmission of full SU effects to individual cabins. It did, however, permit a few sample glimpses. Trigger took her glimpses, sniffed austerely, switched back to the fas.h.i.+ons.

There had been a neat little black suit on display there. While she didn't intend to start roaming about the s.h.i.+p until it dived and the majority of her fellow travelers were immersed in their rest cubicles, she probably still would be somewhat conspicuous in her Automatic Sales dress on a boat like the Dawn City. That little black suit hadn't looked at all expensive--

”Twelve hundred forty-two Federation credits?” she repeated evenly a minute later. ”I see!”

Came to roughly eight hundred fifty Maccadon crowns, was what she saw.

”May we model it in your suite, madam?” the store manager inquired.

”No, thanks,” Trigger told her. ”Just looking them over a bit.” She switched off, frowned absently at a panel labeled ”Your Selection of Personalized Illusion Arrangements,” shook her head, snapped the cabinet shut and stood up. It looked like she had a choice between being conspicuous and staying in her cabin and playing around with things like the creation of illusion scenes.

And she was really a little old for that kind of entertainment.

She opened the door to the narrow pa.s.sageway outside the cabin and glanced tentatively along it. It was very quiet here. One of the reasons this was the cheapest cabin they'd had available presumably was that it lay outside the main pa.s.senger areas. To the right the corridor opened on a larger hall which ran past a few hundred yards of storerooms before it came to a stairway. At the head of the stairway, one came out eventually on one of the pa.s.senger levels. To the left the corridor ended at the door of what seemed to be the only other cabin in this section.

Trigger looked back toward the other cabin.

”Oh,” she said. ”Well ... h.e.l.lo.”

The other cabin door stood open. A rather odd-looking little person sat in a low armchair immediately inside it. She had lifted a thin, green-sleeved arm in a greeting or beckoning gesture as Trigger turned.

She repeated the gesture now. ”Come here, girl!” she called amiably in a quavery old-woman voice.

Well, it couldn't do any harm. Trigger put on her polite smile and walked down the hall toward the open door. A quite tiny old woman it was, with a head either shaved or naturally bald, dressed in a kind of dark-green pajamas. Long gla.s.sy earrings of the same color pulled down the lobes of her small ears. The oddness of the face was due mainly to the fact that she wore a great deal of make-up, and that the make-up was a matching green.

She twisted her head to the left as Trigger came up, and chirped something. Another woman appeared behind the door, almost a duplicate of the first, except that this one had gone all out for pink. Tiny things.

They both beamed up at her.

Trigger beamed back. She stopped just outside the door.

”Greetings,” said the pink one.

”Greetings,” Trigger replied, wondering what world they came from. The style wasn't exactly like anything she'd seen before.

”We,” the green lady informed her with a not unkindly touch of condescension, ”are with the Askab of Elfkund.”

”Oh!” said Trigger in the tone of one who is impressed. Elfkund hadn't rung any bells.