"I ... I suppose so. Everything was so vague. No dramatic events. More of an atmosphere than a concrete thing."
"Still, you confirm my own impression," Chung said. Blades jerked his undisciplined imagination back from the idea of a Thing, with bug eyes and tentacles, cast in reinforced concrete, and listened as his partner summed up:
"The popular feeling at home has turned against private enterprise. You can hardly call a corporate monster like Systemic Developments a private enterprise! The new President and Congress share that mood. We can expect to see it manifested in changed laws and regulations. But what has this got to do with a battleship parked a couple of hundred kilometers from us?"
"If the government doesn't want the asterites to develop much further—" Blades bit hard on his pipestem. "They must know we have a caviar mine here. We'll be the only city in this entire sector."
"But we're still a baby," Avis said. "We won't be important for years to come. Who'd have it in for a baby?"
"Besides, we're Americans, too," Chung said. "If that were a foreign ship, the story might be different—Wait a minute! Could they be thinking of establishing a new base here?"
"The Convention wouldn't allow," said Blades.
"Treaties can always be renegotiated, or even denounced. But first you have to investigate quietly, find out if it's worth your while."
"Hoo hah, what lovely money that'd mean!"