Daneshaw roused suddenly and turned an eager face to Brill. "That's a great thing! Never thought I'd see the day, though I was quite a science-fiction fan in my eighties and nineties. I've read everything I could lay my hands on about the Colonia. Do you really know who the colonists are going to be—or is that a secret between the United Assembly and the insurance companies?"
Brill looked pleased. This nice old boy realized the confidence of The Powers in The Company. "It hasn't been settled yet—may take months more the way they're wrangling. The Chinese don't want it to be the Dutch and the Dutch don't want the Brazilians. You know how it is. Myself, I think the government bit off more than it could chew, offering the first American built ship to whatever group the Assembly decided to send."
Dr. Farrar winced inwardly. A political discussion with Tim Daneshaw would certainly antagonize Brill if not exhaust him. "Who would you like to see go, Tim?" he veered the talk away from the errors of the present regime.
"I suppose farmers would be the first choice—big scale men with experience in hydroponics, from what I know of conditions on Venus."
"But the Assembly seems to be set against any group now economically favored," Brill offered the objection condescendingly, "and small farmers as a class have some sort of prejudice against any type of farming or scenery except what they grew up with."
"Well, speaking purely academically, Mr. Brill, I think the Assembly could do worse than send us."
"Us?"
"Us old duffers. Economically speaking, we're nobodies, our local ties are the weakest, we are of no particular value to anybody except Dr. Farrar here," he waved a hand, "and we're obviously of no political danger to the Chinese or the commists or the insulars either. We're not even a bloc. But of course we wouldn't please anybody especially as colonists, either. It's only an academic suggestion, you understand."
He grinned first at Brill, and at Farrar. "We couldn't put the good Jules out of a job, of course."