The situation had been taken care of and there was no point in remaining in the depressing atmosphere of the village for too long.
Besides, there was that adventure [p 24] projection he hadn’t finished. Perhaps it would be of interest now.
As the projection faded, Barra looked around the study, then got out of his chair and picked the crystal from its pedestal. He stood, looking at it approvingly for a few seconds, then went over to the cabinet and set it back in its case. For a time, he looked at the rest of the assortment.
Finally, he shook his head. Some of them, he would sell unscanned. The others—well, they could wait.
Yes, he thought, the record crystals had better be left alone for a while. He hadn’t finished his inspection of the Estates and the situation at Tibara might not be an isolated case. It would be well to make a really searching inspection. He sighed.
In fact, it might be well to make frequent searching inspections.
Shortly after his accession to the Estates, he had seen to the defense of Kira Barra. He smiled wryly as he thought of the expense he had incurred in securing all those power and control crystals to make up his surrogate installations. But they had been well worth it.
He had been most thorough then, but that had been some time ago. His last full inspection had been almost a year ago. Lately he had been satisfying himself with spot inspections, not really going over the Estates from border to border.
Of course, the spot inspections had been calculated to touch the potential trouble spots and they had been productive of results, but there
might still be hidden things he should know about. This would have to be looked into.