Trigger took a small sip of her drink, considering. She hadn't made up
her mind about Major Quillan, but until she could evaluate him more
definitely, it might be best to go by appearances. The appearances so
far indicated small sips in his company.
"How did you people find me so quickly?" she asked.
"Next time you want to sneak off a civilized planet," Quillan advised
her, "pick something like a small freighter. Or hire a small-boat to get
you out of the system and flag down a freighter for you. Plenty of tramp
captains will make a space stop to pick up a paying passenger. Liners we
can check."
"Sorry," Trigger said meekly. "I'm still new at this business."
"And thank God for that!" said Quillan. "If you have the time and the
money, it's also a good idea, of course, to zig a few times before you
zag towards where you're really heading. Actually, I suppose, the credit
for picking you up so fast should go to those collating computers."
"Oh?"
"Yes." Major Quillan looked broodingly at his drink for a moment. "There
they sit," he remarked suddenly, "with their stupid plastic faces
hanging out! Rows of them. You feed them something you don't understand.
They don't understand it either. Nobody can tell me they can. But they
kick it around and giggle a bit, and out comes some ungodly suggestion."
"So they helped you find me?" she said cautiously. It was clear that the
major had strong feelings about computers.
"Oh, sure," he said. "It usually turns out it was a good idea to do what
those CCs say. Anything unusual that shows up in the area you're working
on gets chunked into the things as a matter of course. We were on the
liners. Dawn City reports back a couple of murders. 'Dawn City to the
head of the list!' cry the computers. Nobody asks why. They just plow
into the ticket purchase records. And right there are the little Argee
thumbprints!"
He looked at Trigger. "My own bet," he said, somewhat accusingly, "was
that you were one of those that had just taken off. We didn't know about
that ticket reservation."
"What I don't see," Trigger said, changing the subject, "is why two
murders should seem so very unusual. There must be quite a few of them,
after all."
"True," said Quillan. "But not murders that look like catassin
killings."
"Oh!" she said startled. "Is that what these were?"
"That's what Ship Security thinks."
Trigger frowned. "But what could be the connection--"
Quillan reached across the table and patted her hand. "You've got it!"
he said with approval. "Exactly! No connection. Some day I'm going to
walk down those rows and give them each a blast where it will do the
most good. It will be worth being broken for."
Trigger said, "I thought that catassin planet was being guarded."
"It is. It would be very hard to sneak one out nowadays. But somebody's
breeding them in the Hub. Just a few. Keeps the price up."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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