hanging its diapers!"

"It isn't that bad," the Commissioner said. "Anyway, you will adopt
baby, won't you?"

"I suppose I have to." She placed the plasmoid on the towel, wiped her
hands and stepped back from it. "What happens if it falls on the floor?"

"Nothing," Holati said. "It just moves on in the direction it was going.
Pretty hard to hurt those things."

"In that case," Trigger said, "let's check out its container now."

The Commissioner took Repulsive's container out of a desk safe and
handed it to her. Its outer appearance was that of a neat modern woman's
handbag with a shoulder strap. It had an antigrav setting which would
reduce its overall weight, with the plasmoid inside, down to nine ounces
if Trigger wanted it that way. It also had a combination lock, unmarked,
virtually invisible, the settings of which Trigger already had
memorized. Without knowing the settings, a determined man using a
high-powered needle blaster might have opened the handbag in around nine
hours. A very special job.

Trigger ran through the settings, opened the container and peered
inside. "Rather cramped," she observed.

"Not for one of them. We needed room for the gadgetry."

"Yes," she said. "Subspace rotation." She shook her head. "Is that
another Space Scout invention?"

"No," said Holati. "They stole it from Subspace Engineers. Engineers
don't know we have it yet. Far as I know, nobody else has got it from
them. Go ahead--give it a try."

"I was going to." Trigger snapped the container shut, slipped the strap
over her shoulder and stood straight, left hand closed over the lower
rim of the purselike object. She shifted the ball of her thumb and the
tip of her middle finger to the correct spots and began to apply
pressure. Then she started. Handbag and strap had vanished.

"Feels odd!" She smiled. "And to bring it back, I just have to be
here--the same place--and say those words."

He nodded. "Want to try that now?"

Trigger waved her left hand gently through the air beside her. "What
happens," she asked, "if the thing surfaces exactly where my hand
happens to be?"

"It won't surface if there's anything bulkier than a few dust motes in
the way. That's one improvement the Sub Engineers haven't heard about
yet."

"Well...." She glanced around, picked up a plastic ruler from the desk
behind her, and moved back a cautious step. She waved the ruler's tip
gingerly about in the area where the handbag had been.

"Come