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."

"_That's_ not very likely," Trigger remarked. "The raiders were a half
mile away from where they should have come down if the plasmoids were
what they wanted. And from what I saw of them, they weren't nearly a big
enough gang for a job of that kind."

"I thought so, too," Mihul said. "They were topflight professionals, in
any case. I got a glimpse of some of their equipment. Knockout
guns--foggers--and that was a fast car!"

"Very fast car," Trigger agreed. "It's what made me suspicious when I
first saw them come in."

"They also," said Mihul, "had a high-speed interplanetary hopper waiting
for them in the hills. Two more men in it. The cops caught them, too."
She added, "They were grabbers, all right!"

"Anything to indicate whom they were after?" Trigger asked.

"No," Mihul said. "Too many possibilities. Twenty or more of the
students in that area at the time had important enough