“No—I’m sensible. We want to nail this down. My future, yours, and that of your people depend upon how carefully we work. You wouldn’t want to let us all down by being too eager, would you?”
She shook her head. “No—you’re right of course. But I still would like to see.”
They moved cautiously through the airlock and into the control room.
“Ah!” Kennon said with satisfaction. “I hoped for this, but I didn’t dare expect it.”
“What?”
“Look around. What do you see?”
“Nothing but an empty room. It’s shaped like half an orange, and it has a lot of funny instruments and dials on the walls, and a video screen overhead. But that’s all. Why—what’s so unusual about it? It looks just like someone had left it.”
“That’s the point. There’s nothing essential that’s missing. They didn’t cannibalize the instruments—and they didn’t come back.”
“Why not?”
“Maybe because that curse you mentioned a few minutes ago was real.”