Once again Zip looked out the window. “This place is amazing! This could not have been anticipated by anyone! It must have been quite a shock when you found this asteroid, George.”
“Oh yes, I was awestruck, completely, absolutely electrified! Imagine stepping into a remnant of an astounding civilization like this. When I found it, it was abandoned. It seemed as if no one had been in it for probably thousands of years.”
“Tell us everything you know about this place,” ordered Zip, looking intently at the asteroid miner and drawing him over to the nearest table. Zip gently eased the miner into a chair, then turned another chair around and sat in it, folding his arms over its back and facing George. The asteroid miner told the Starmen the story of his discovery of the asteroid and how Troy Putnam had learned about it. They had already heard a brief version of the story from Oritz Konig back at Mars Base.
“Of course, I didn’t know this Putnam was a bad egg at the time. He just seemed like a friendly, curious spaceman to me.”
“What about the asteroid?” pressed Joe. “What have you figured out about the race that built it?”
“As I said, the asteroid was abandoned when I ran across it, but whoever built it couldn’t have been too different from us. Same body type, same size, that’s obvious. Look around you—beds, chairs, everything, just the way we’d make them. Their language was quite different, though. Took me a long time to learn how to use some of their stuff.”
“How’d you learn your way around here?”
“When I first came upon the asteroid, the airlock was open. A huge orifice, made for spaceships, as you can tell. I came through and landed. Went through one of the airlocks into the building portion here, where we are now, and just explored. Trial and error. It’s not too difficult to get the basics down-opening and closing doors, and all that. Then figuring out the right mix of atmosphere. I had plenty of time. I got access to the first four or five stories, but I’m pretty certain the place is much bigger than that. At first, I couldn’t get any further than the first few stories, but after a while I found my way around a couple of deeper sections.”
“And then?”
“What do you mean, ‘and then’? I got bored with it and moved on. I’m a miner, not an explorer or a settler or a scientist. There’s nothing here but iron. I told a few people about it but nobody much believed me or cared until this Troy Putnam fellow I met in Yellow City. He’s the only person who got excited about it, so when he asked me to bring him here, I did it, as I said. Why not? He paid my expenses for the trip, and a little more besides for my time. He was impressed with the place, as was I. Then I went looking for uranium and he went back to Ceres. Never saw him again.”