“Surely you could make the thing hold air, even below the freezing point of sulfur?”
“Yes, I guess so. It’s never seemed to be worth the trouble. If you want a sample, it would be easier to send a smaller container down, anyway — you can work with it better afterwards.”
A thought suddenly struck Ken.
“How about the stuff you get from the natives? Doesn’t that give any clue? Could I work with some of it?” Laj Drai cut in at this point.
“You said you were not a specialist. We have tried to get the stuff analyzed by people who were, without success. After all, if it were possible to synthesize the material, do you think we’d be going to all this trouble to trade for it? That’s why we want you to get the planetary conditions for us — when you’ve done that, we’ll figure out a means of getting seeds from the natives and growing our own.”
“I see,” Ken replied. The statement was certainly reasonable enough, and did not necessarily imply anything about the nature of the material they were discussing.
It did not refute anything, either.
Ken thought that one over for a time, letting his eyes wander over the exposed machinery as he did so. He had a few more questions in mind, but he wanted to dodge anything that might be interpreted as unhealthy curiosity, if these people actually were drug-runners.
“What do these natives get from you for this product?” he asked finally. “Is it a manufactured article they can’t make, or a substance they don’t have? In the latter case, I might be able to draw some conclusions about the planet.” Drai sent a ripple down his tentacles, in a gesture equivalent to a human shrug.
“It’s material — heavy metals that don’t sulfide easily. We’ve been giving them platinum-group nuggets most of the time — they’re easiest to come by; there’s an outcropping of the stuff only a short distance from this station, and it’s easy to send a man out to blast off a few pieces. I don’t know what they use them for — for all I know they may worship the torpedo, and use the nuggets as priests’ insignia. I can’t say that I care, as long as they keep filling their end of the bargain.” Ken made the gesture of agreement, and spoke of something which had caught his attention during the last speech.