"I'm a busy man," Craven reminded him.
Puckering lines of amusement wrinkled Chambers' eyes as he lit up, watching Craven.
"You do seem to be busy, Doctor," he said. "I only wish you had something concrete to report."
The scientist bristled. "I may have in a few days, if you leave me alone and let me work."
"I presume that you are still working on your radiation collector. Any progress?"
"Not too much. You can't expect a man to turn out discoveries to order. I'm working almost night and day now. If the thing can be solved, I'll solve it."
Chambers glowed. "Keep up the good work. But I wanted to talk to you about something else. You heard, I suppose, that I lost a barrel of money on the Ranthoor exchange."
Craven smiled, a sardonic twisting of his lips. "I heard something about it."
"I thought you had," said Chambers sourly. "If not, you would have been the only one who hadn't heard how Ben Wrail took Chambers for a ride."
"He really took you then," commented Craven. "I thought maybe it was just one of those stories."