It didn't seem to be Lyad that was bothering. Trigger lay flat on her back in the shallow sand bar, arms behind her head, feeling the sun's warmth on her closed eyelids. She watched her thoughts drifting by slowly. It just might be Quillan. Ole Major Quillan. The rescuer in time of need. The not-catassin smasher. Quite a guy. The water murmured past her. On the ride out here they'd run by one another now and then, going from job to job. After they'd arrived, Quillan was gone three quarters of the time, helping out in the hunt for the concealed Devagas fortress. It was still concealed; they hadn't yet picked up a trace. But every so often he made it back to camp. And every so often when he was back in camp and didn't think she was looking, he'd be sitting there looking at her. Trigger grinned happily. Ole Major Quillan--being bashful! Well now! And that did it. She could feel herself relaxing, slipping down and away, drifting down through her mind ... farther ... deeper ... toward the tiny voice that spoke in such a strange language and still was becoming daily more comprehensible. "Uh, say, Trigger!" 25 Trigger gasped. Her eyes flew open. She made a convulsive effort to vanish beneath the surface of the creek. Being flat on the sand as it was, that didn't work. So she stopped splashing about and made rapid covering-up motions here and there instead. "You've got a nerve!" she snapped as her breath came back. "Beat it! Fast!" Ole bashful Quillan, standing on the bank fifteen feet above her, looked hurt. He also looked. "Look!" he said plaintively. "I just came over to make sure you were all right--wild animals around! I wasn't studying the color scheme." "_Beat it! At once!_" Quillan inhaled with apparent difficulty. "Though now it's been mentioned," he went on, speaking rapidly and unevenly, "there _is_ all that brown and that sort of pink and that lovely white." He was getting more enthusiastic by the moment; Trigger became afraid he would fall off the bank and land in the creek beside her. "And the--ooh-ummh!--wet red hair and the freckles!" he rattled along, his eyes starting out of his head. "And the lovely--" "Quillan!" she yelled. "Please!" Quillan checked himself. "Uh!" he said. He drew a deep breath. The wild look faded. Sanity appeared to return. "Well, it's the truth about those wild animals! Some sort of large, uncouth critter was observed just now ducking into the forest at the upper end of the valley!" Trigger darted a glance along the bank. Her clothes were forty feet away, just beside the water. "I'm observing some sort of large, uncouth critter right here!" she said coldly. "What's worse, it's observing me. Turn around!" Quillan sighed. "You're a hard woman, Argee," he said. But he turned. He was carrying a holstered gun, as a matter of fact; but he usually did that nowadays anyway. "This thing," he went on, "is supposed to have a head like a bat, three feet across. It flies."