blinking, puzzled. Then he laughed,
richly. "Trigger, I've fed you one drink too many! I never thought you'd
let me do it. Be sensible now--if I had a plasmoid here, how could you
tell?"

"I can tell. Brule, I don't know how you took it or why you took it. I
don't really care." And that was a lie, Trigger thought dismally. She
cared. "Just give it to me, and I'll put it back. We can talk about it
afterwards."

"Afterwards," Brule said. The laugh came again, but it sounded a little
hollow. He moved a step toward her, stopped again, hands on his hips.
"Trigger," he said soberly, "if I've ever done anything you mightn't
approve of, it was done for both of us. You realize that, don't you?"

"I think I do," Trigger said warily. "Yes. Give it to me, Brule."

Brule leaped forward. She slid sideways out of the chair to the floor as
he leaped. She was crying inside, she realized vaguely. Brule was going
to kill her now, if he could.

She caught his left foot with both hands as he came down, and twisted
viciously.

Brule shouted something. His red, furious face swept by above. He
thumped to the floor beside her, one leg flung across her thighs,
gripping.

In colonial school Brule had received the same basic training in unarmed
combat that Trigger had. He was close to eighty pounds heavier than
Trigger, and it was still mostly muscle. But it was nearly four years
now since he had bothered himself with drills.

And he hadn't been put through Mihul's advanced students' courses
lately.

He stayed conscious a little less than nine seconds.

The plasmoids were in a small electronic safe built into a music
cabinet. The stamp to the safe was in Brule's billfold.

There were three of them, about the size of mice, starfish-shaped lumps
of translucent, hard, colorless jelly. They didn't move.

Trigger laid them in a row on the polished surface of a small table, and
blinked at them for a moment from a streaming left eye. The right eye
was swelling shut. Brule had got in one wild wallop somewhere along the
line. She picked up a small jar, emptied some spicy-smelling, crumbly
contents out on the table, dropped the plasmoids inside, closed the jar
and left the apartment with it. Brule was just beginning to stir and
groan.

Commissioner Tate hadn't retired yet. He let her in without a word.
Trigger put the jar down on a table.

"Three of your nuts and bolts in there," she said.

He nodded. "I know."

"I thought you did," s