"Why the professor?"
"He could help a lot with the explaining. If he's in the mood. Anyway he's got a kind of pet I'd like you to look at."
"A pet!" cried Trigger. She shook her head again and stood up resignedly. "Lead on, Commissioner!"
They joined Mantelish and his plasmoid weirdie in what looked like the dining room of what had looked like an old-fashioned hunting lodge when the aircar came diving down on it between two ice-sheeted mountain peaks. Trigger wasn't sure in just what section of the main continent they were; but there were only two or three alternatives—it was high in the mountains, and night came a lot faster here than it did around Ceyce.
She greeted Mantelish and sat down at the table. Then the Commissioner locked the doors and introduced her to the professor's pet.
"It's labelled 113-A," he said now. "Even the professor isn't certain he could distinguish between the two. Right, Mantelish?"
"That is true," said Mantelish, "at present." He was a very big, rather fat but healthy-looking old man with a thick thatch of white hair and a ruddy face. "Without a physical comparison—" He shrugged.
"What's so important about the critter?" Trigger asked, eyeing the leech again. One good thing about it, she thought—it wasn't equipped to eye her back.
"It goes back to the time," the Commissioner said, "when Mantelish and Fayle and Azol were conducting the first League investigation of the plasmoids on Harvest Moon. You recall the situation?"
"If you mean their attempts to get the things to show some signs of life, I do, naturally."