"You've got an appointment, remember?" the Commissioner said.
Quillan and company were gone within the hour. Mantelish, Holati Tate, Lyad and Trigger stayed at camp.
Luscious looked very lonely.
"It isn't just the king plasmoid they're hoping to catch there," the Commissioner told Trigger. "And I wouldn't care, frankly, if the thing stayed lost the next few thousand years. But we had a very odd report last week. The Federation's undercover boys have been scanning the Devagas worlds and Tranest very closely of late, naturally. The report is that there isn't the slightest evidence that a single one of the top members of the Devagas hierarchy has been on any of their worlds in the past two months."
"Oh," she said. "They think they're out here? In that dome?"
"That's what's suspected."
"But why?"
He scratched his chin. "If anyone knows, they haven't told me. It's probably nothing nice."
Trigger pondered. "You'd think they'd use facsimiles," she said. "Like Lyad."