Our "task" was, of course, just plain digging. From that grayish-looking topsoil we had to peel away the crumbling layers which would lead us to the basaltic depths beneath. From this substratum we must extract a quantity of the pumice which was to justify our presence here. A simple thing.
Only it didn't turn out that way. It took us three days to scrape off the detritus layer. Then we reached rock. But it wasn't exactly the sort of rock we had expected to find: obsidian or basalt, lava flow. It was sandstone. Gray shale.
Lancelot Biggs looked at samples of this rock and shook his head. He said, "Hmmm! That's funny! Sandstone is not an igneous formation. You know—"
"I don't know nothin'," said the Old Man, "except we ain't got too much time to spare. Let's get on with our job."
So we kept on digging. We had to use atomotors. The rock layer was tougher than a blue-plate steak, but slowly our blaster chunked its way through ... to a layer of slate!
Cap Hanson said worriedly, "You reckon they might of made a mistake back on Earth, Lanse, boy? This here roofing material don't look like what we was supposed to find. Maybe there's pumice underneath, but—"
"Frankly," I said, "I doubt it. Pumice is the result of air bubbles mixing with an uncooled lava mixture. Slate is a sedimentary deposit. I think we've stumbled across a punk piece of ground, myself. We'd better go buy another hunk of property. Eh, Biggs?"
Lancelot Biggs said soberly, "If we want to locate pumice, I'm afraid so. I've been reading up on geological structure, and all the evidence indicates that—"
"Go see what you can do, then, Sparks," ordered the Old Man. "You're the only one of us which can talk Irisian. See if you can buy a nice soap-mine somewhere."
So I went. And I got nowhere—fast. The Irisian from whom we had bought this piece of property was nowhere to be found. He had "disappeared." No other native of the tiny planet would even listen to my pleas. The moment I started talking shop, they covered their fuzzy ears with furry claws and scuttled away.