At the exact instant the monitor released its new flight of targets, she
became aware of the aircar gliding down toward her from the
administration buildings on the right. Startled, she glanced sideways
long enough to identify the car's two occupants, shifted her attention
back to the cluster of targets speeding toward her, studied the flight
pattern for another unhurried half-second, finally raised the Denton.
The little gun spat its noiseless, invisible needle of destruction eight
times. Six small puffs of crimson smoke hung in the air. The two
remaining targets swerved up in a mocking curve and shot back to their
discharge huts.
The girl bit her lip in moderate annoyance, safetied and holstered the
gun and waved her hand left-right at the range attendant to indicate she
was finished. Then she turned to face the aircar as it settled slowly to
the ground twenty feet away. Her gray eyes studied its occupants
critically.
"Fine example you set the students!" she remarked. "Flying right into a
hot gun range!"
Doctor Plemponi, principal of the Colonial School, smiled soothingly.
"Eight years ago, your father bawled me out for the very same thing,
Trigger! Much more abusively, I must say. You know that was my first
meeting with old Runser Argee, and I--"
"Plemp!" Mihul, Chief of Physical Conditioning, Women's Division,
cautioned sharply from the seat behind him. "Watch what you're doing,
you ass!"
Confused, Doctor Plemponi turned to look at her. The aircar dropped the
last four feet to a jolting landing. Mihul groaned. Plemponi apologized.
Trigger walked over to them.
"Does he do that often?" she asked interestedly.
"Every other time!" Mihul asserted. She was a tall, lean, muscular slab
of a woman, around forty. She gave Trigger a wink behind Plemponi's
back. "We keep the chiropractors on stand-by duty when we go riding with
Plemp."
"Now then! Now then!" Doctor Plemponi said. "You distracted my attention
for a moment, that's all. Now, Trigger, the reason we're here is that
Mihul told me at our prebreakfast conference you weren't entirely happy
at the good old Colonial School. So climb in, if you don't have much
else to do, and we'll run up to the office and discuss it." He opened
the door for her.
"Much else to do!" Trigger gave him a look. "All right, Doctor. We'll
run up and discuss it."
She went back for her sun hat, climbed in, closed the door and sat down
beside him, shoving the holstered Denton forward on her thigh.
Plemponi eyed the gun dubiously. "Brushing up in case there's another
grabber raid?" he inquired. He reached out for the guide stick.
Trigger shook her head. "Just working off hostility, I guess." She
waited till he had lifted the car off the ground in a reckless swoop.
"That business yesterday--it really was a grabber raid?"
"We're almost sure it was," Mihul said behind her, "though I did hear
some talk they might have been after those two top-secret plasmoids in
your Project."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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