"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."