Trigger laughed. "You can bet on that!" she said. The Commissioner had used his ship's guns to brand the substation's coordinates in twenty-mile figures into a mountain plateau above Plasmoid Creek. They'd left much more detailed information in camp, but there was a chance it would be overlooked in too hurried a search.
"Then they'll show up at the substation again four or five days behind us," the Commissioner said. "So they're no problem. But our own outfit's fastest ships can cut across from the Devagas dome in less than three days after their search party messages from Luscious to tell them why we've stopped transmitting and where we've gone. Or the Psychology ship might get to Luscious before the search party does and start transmitting about the coordinates."
"In any case," said Trigger, "it's our own boys who are likely to be the problem."
"Yes. I'd say we should have two days, give or take a few hours, after we get to the station to see if we can do anything useful and get it done. Of course, somebody might come wandering into Luscious right now and start wondering about those coordinate figures, or drop in at our camp and discover we're gone. But that's not very likely, after all."
"Couldn't be helped anyway," Trigger said.
"No. If we knock ourselves out on this job, somebody besides Lyad's Tranest squadron and the Devagas has to know just where the station is." He shook his head. "That Lyad! I figured she'd know how to run the transmitters, so I gave her the chance. But I never imagined she'd be a good enough engineer to get inside them and mess them up without killing herself."
"Lyad has her points," Trigger said. "Too bad she grew up a rat. You had a playback attachment stuck in there then?"
"Naturally."
"Full of the fungus, I suppose?"
"Full of it," said the Commissioner. "Well, Lyad still lost on that maneuver. Much less comfortably than she might have, too."