The miner's name, Sam found as he treated the leg, was Timas Rorke. There was a faint trace of Irish blood in him, responsible perhaps for the red hair of his daughter. He lay back in the bed, complaining at the foolishness that had put him there.
"That damned meteor! I was in too big a hurry to load it, and it slipped and crushed my leg." Timas looked at his daughter. "What do you say, Nancy, shall we call it a season and run back to Terra?"
"There are a few more weeks of good fishing. I can make out."
Sam looked at her, this slip of a girl who was undertaking a man's work. For all her courage she was still a woman, slim and lissome. She was not too tall, rounded sweetly, and well-formed. Under Sam's gaze she lifted her eyes to his, eyes as brown as new-plowed soil.
He had been long away from women, and the sight of her set a wildness coursing in his blood. Strong as she was he could crush her in his arms. He had strength to take care of both of them.
She might have let him too, in other circumstances. Her eyes had already noted the compact sturdiness of his body, noted and approved. But he was Sam Knox, and in his hunt for men a hundred women had tried to deceive him, so that he set his mind against this weakness, and looked away across the room.
Fool! He was a fool to have not seen it sooner. The photograph of a white-haired man stared from a lucite frame. It was Pell.
The report was true. Here was Pell, inventor of the heat rod, hiding where the metal was mined. If he were here, he must be found, and returned to Terra to finish the sentence he had escaped three years before.
He might not have to finish that prison sentence. Only one thing was certain now. In the investigation of the illegal operations of Terran Metals Corporation, the truth had been concealed by the fact that a way had been found to deceive the mind-probe.