"Don't you?" he repeated.
The other men didn't answer. They had settled back to their dreams, staring hypnotically at the Detector face.
"They've had enough time," Edwardson said, half to himself.
Cassel yawned and licked his lips. "Anyone want to play some gin?" he asked, stroking his beard. The beard was a memento of his undergraduate days. Cassel maintained he could store almost fifteen minutes worth of oxygen in its follicles. He had never stepped into space unhelmeted to prove it.
Morse looked away, and Edwardson automatically watched the indicator. This routine had been drilled into them, branded into their subconscious. They would as soon have cut their throats as leave the indicator unguarded.
"Do you think they'll come soon?" Edwardson asked, his brown rodent's eyes on the indicator. The men didn't answer him. After two months together in space their conversational powers were exhausted. They weren't interested in Cassel's undergraduate days, or in Morse's conquests.
They were bored to death even with their own thoughts and dreams, bored with the attack they expected momentarily.
"Just one thing I'd like to know," Edwardson said, slipping with ease into an old conversational gambit. "How far can they do it?"
They had talked for weeks about the enemy's telepathic range, but they always returned to it.