“Find anything?”
“A little lead.”
Robinson clucked with mock sympathy.
“Too bad,” he said, “too bad. Funny you would stay on one asteroid so long when all you found was a little lead. We saw you here 20 days ago when we passed by. When we picked you up again this time we thought you might have found something, so we dropped down.”
Vince said nothing. There was nothing to say.
“Been doing a lot of blasting, too,” observed the pirate. “In one place. That’s funny. Seems to me you would blast a lot of test pits if you were just exploring.”
“We were hopeful of finding something really worthwhile,” explained Vernon. “Had just decided to quit. If we find nothing from this last shot we won’t do any more exploring here. We’ve wasted too much time here as it is.”
“You’re right,” said Robinson and his voice was silky. “You won’t do any more exploring…..here or on any other asteroid.”
“What do you mean?” asked Vernon.
Robinson did not seem to hear the question. He leaned forward over the desk and beat a clenched fist on its polished top.