Trigger shook her head. It would keep. She opened the door and stepped out into the hall.
She fell down.
As she fell, she tried to give the bag the send-off squeeze, but she couldn't move her fingers. She couldn't move anything.
There were people around her. They were doing things swiftly. She was turned over on her back and, for a few moments then, she saw her own face smiling down at her from just a few feet away.
21
She was, suddenly, in a large room, well lit, with elaborate furnishings—sitting leaned back in a soft chair before a highly polished little table. On the opposite side of the table two people sat looking at her with expressions of mild surprise. One of them was Lyad Ermetyne. The other was a man she didn't know.
The man glanced aside at Lyad. "Very fast snap-back!" he said. He looked again at Trigger. He was a small man with salt-and-pepper hair, a deeply lined face, beautiful liquid-black eyes.
"Very!" Lyad said. "We must remember that. Hello, Trigger!"
"Hello," Trigger said. Her glance went once around the room and came back to Lyad's amiably observant face. Repulsive's container was nowhere around. There seemed to be nobody else in the room. An ornamental ComWeb stood against one wall. Two of the walls were covered with heavy hangings, and a great gold-brocaded canopy bellied from the ceiling. No doors or portals in sight; they might be camouflaged, or behind those hangings. Any number of people could be in call range—and a few certainly must be watching her right now, because that small man was no rough-and-tumble type.
The small man was regarding her with something like restrained amusement.