Legacy Part 59

"Usually," said Pilch.

"Well, I might some day. But not just yet." She smiled. "Let's let Lyad get a head start! Actually, it's just I've found out there are so many interesting things going on all around that I'd like to look them over a bit before I go charging seriously into a career again." She reached across the table and tapped Pilch's wrist. "And I'll show you one interesting thing that's going on right here! Take Mantelish's big tree out there!"

"The sequoia?"

"Yes. Now just last year it was looking so bad they almost talked the professor into having it taken away. Hardly a green branch left on it."

Pilch shaded her eyes and looked at the sequoia's crown far above them.

"It looks," she observed reflectively, "in fairly good shape at the moment, I'd say!"

"Yes, and it's getting greener every week. Mantelish brags about a new solvent he's been dosing its roots with. You see that great big branch like an L turned upward, just a little above the center?"

Pilch looked again. "Yes," she said after a moment, "I think so."

"Just before the L turns upward, there's a little cl.u.s.ter of green branches," Trigger said.

"I see those, yes."

Trigger picked up the field gla.s.ses and handed them to her. "Get those little branches in the gla.s.ses," she said.

Pilch said presently, "Got them."

Trigger stood up and faced up to the sequoia. She cupped her hands to her mouth, took a deep breath, and yelled. "Yoo-hoo! Reee-pul-sive!"

Down in the garden, Mantelish straightened and looked about angrily.

Then he saw Trigger and smiled.

"Yoo-hoo yourself, Trigger!" he shouted, and turned back to his spading.

Trigger watched Pilch's face from the side. She saw her give a sudden start.

"Great Galaxies!" Pilch breathed. She kept on looking. "That's one for the book, isn't it?" Finally she put the gla.s.ses down. She appeared somewhat stunned. "He really is a little green man!"

"Only when he's trying to be. It's a sort of sign of friendliness."

"What's he doing up there?"

"He moved over into the sequoia right after we got back," Trigger said.

"And that's where he'll probably stay indefinitely now. It's just the right kind of place for Repulsive."

"Have you been doing any more--well, talking?"

"No. Too strenuous both ways. Until a few days before we got back here, there wasn't even a sign from him. He just about knocked himself out on that big plasmoid."

"Who else knows about this?" asked Pilch.

"n.o.body. I would have told Holati, except he's still mad enough about having been put into a coma, he might go out and chop the sequoia down."

"Well, it won't go into the report then," Pilch said. "They'd just want to bother Repulsive!"

"I knew it would be all right to tell you. And here's something else very interesting that's going on at present."

"What's that?"

"The real hush-hush reason for Mantelish's expedition," Trigger explained, "is, of course, to scout around this whole area of s.p.a.ce with planetary plasmoid detectors. They don't want anybody stumbling on another setup like Harvest Moon and accidentally activating another king plasmoid."

"Yes," Pilch said. "I'd heard that."

"It was Mantelish's idea," said Trigger. "Now Mantelish is very fond of that sequoia tree. He's got a big, comfortable bench right among its roots, where he likes to sit down around noon and have a little nap when he's out here."

"Oh!" said Pilch. "Repulsive's been up to his old tricks, eh?"

"Sure. He's given Mantelish very exact instructions. So they're going to find one of those setups, all right. And they won't come back with any plasmoids. But they will come back with something they don't know about."

Pilch looked at her for a moment. "_You_ say it!"

Trigger's grin widened. "A little green woman," she said.

CONSIDER THE PLASMOIDS....

Ancient living machines that after millennia of stillness suddenly begin to move under their own power, for reasons that remain a mystery to men.

Holati Tate discovered them--then disappeared. Trigger Argee was his closest a.s.sociate--she means to find him. She's brilliant, beautiful, and skilled in every known martial art. She's worth plenty--dead or alive--to more than one faction in this obscure battle. And she's beginning to have a chilling notion that the long-vanished Masters of the Old Galaxy were wise when they exiled the plasmoids to the most distant and isolated world they knew....