Part 30 (1/2)

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 s.p.a.ceport on which the Dawn City had set down that morning, and the towering gla.s.sy 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 a.s.sorted 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 full of something which Mantelish considered to be nutritive for plasmoids, or at least for this one. Its sides pulsed lightly and regularly against her palms. ”The level of the stuff keeps going down,” she added.

”Good,” said Holati. He pulled a chair up to the table and sat down opposite her. He looked broodingly at plasmoid 113-A.

”You really think this thing _likes_ me--personally?” Trigger inquired.

Her boss said, ”It's eating, isn't it? And moving. There were a couple of days before you got here when it looked pretty dead to me.”

”Hard to believe,” Trigger observed, ”that a sort of leech-looking thing could distinguish between people.”

”This one can. Do you get any sensations while holding it?”

”Sensations?” She considered. ”Nothing particular. It's just like I said the other time--little Repulsive is rather nice to feel.”

”For you,” he said. ”I didn't tell you everything.”

”You rarely do,” Trigger remarked.

”I'll tell you now,” said Holati. ”The day after we left, when it started acting very agitated and then very droopy, Mantelish said it might be missing the female touch it had got from you. He was being facetious, I think. But I couldn't see any reason not to try it, so I called in your facsimile and had her sit down at the table where the thing was lying.”

”Yes?”

”Well, first it came flying up to her, crying 'Mama!' Not actually, of course. Then it touched her hand and recoiled in horror.”

Trigger raised an eyebrow.

”It looked like it,” he insisted. ”We all commented on it. So then she reached out and touched it. Then she recoiled in horror.”

”Why?”

”She said it had given her a very nasty electric jolt. Apparently like the one it gave Mantelish.”

Trigger glanced down dubiously at Repulsive. ”Gee, thanks for letting me hold it, Holati! It seems to have stopped eating now, by the way. Or whatever it does. Doesn't look much fatter if any, does it?”

The Commissioner looked. ”No,” he said. ”And if you weighed it, you'd probably find it still weighs an exact three and a half pounds.

Mantelish feels the thing turns any food intake directly into energy.”

”Then it should be able to produce a very nice jolt at the moment,”

Trigger commented. ”Now, what do I do with Repulsive?”

Holati took a towel from beneath the table and spread it out. ”Absorbent material,” he said. ”Lay it on that and just let it dry. That's what we used to do.”