Cal thought that one over. The idea of having Tinker Elliott along appealed to him. He'd wanted her for years, and this plea of hers was an admission of surrender. But Cal felt that conditional surrender was not good enough. He didn't like the idea of Tinker's willingness to be bought for a treasure unknown. What was really in the depths of her mind he could not guess—unless she were trying to goad him into making the expedition.
"No," he said.
"Then you'll never go," she taunted him.
"I'll go," he snapped. "And I'll prove that I can take care of myself. I hate space-roving, but I'm big enough to do it despite my distaste. Now will you tell me what Murdoch's Hoard is that it is so valuable?"
"Not unless you take me along."
Pride is always cropping up in the wrong place. If Cal or Tinker had not taken such a firm stand in the first place, it would have been easier for either one of them to back down. The argument had started in fun, and was now in deadly earnest. How and where the change came Cal did not know. He reviewed the whole thing again. The first pair were ignorant. Benj was vindictive enough to deprive his brother of a useless thing that interested Cal. Dr. Lange was enigmatic. He had neither personal view or ignorance to draw his desire for Murdoch's worthless Hoard. Tinker Elliott might be goading Cal into making an adventuresome trip for the purpose of bringing him closer to her way of living. He wouldn't put it past her.
But the more he thought about it, the deeper and deeper he was falling into his own bullheadedness. He was going to get Murdoch's Hoard himself if it turned up to be a bale of one hundred dollar bills of the twenty-first century—worth exactly three cents per hundred-weight for scrap paper.
Tinker Elliott returned to the Association after the dinner with Cal. She worked diligently for an hour, and loafed luxuriously for another hour. It was just after this that Cal came into her laboratory and grinned sheepishly at her.
"Now what?" she asked. "Changed your mind?"