"After that, if you've got a job for a mere biologist, I've got my lab readied up where it can last till I get back and—I'm not bad with a soldering iron. Meantime, why don't you let Paul and Tombu go eat while you eat?"
"Good idea," said Mike. "You two. You heard the lady. We gotta give our fate the benefit of victuals. Scat."
As soon as the physicist and the engineer were settled to the plastic containers of food and coffee she had brought, wolfing them down hungrily, Millie opened up.
"While we're alone, I'm going to speak my piece," she said. "You two will do me the honor of not taking offense if I say that you have the most brains and the least consciences aboard—and I happen to share the latter characteristic."
The two looked up guiltily and waited.
"Now don't stop eating, for I'm not through talking," she said. "That magneto-ionic effect canceler you dreamed up would probably cancel the six hundred forty pound magneto-ionic effect pull you dreamed up—if such a thing existed.
"What I want to know ... don't stop eating until you've decided whether you're going to let me in on your game or not ... is what really does exist? I might be of some help, you know."
"But—" Mike and Ishie simultaneously choked over their food, looked at each other, and then Mike blurted out, "but how could she know?"
"Don't worry," said Millie. "I'm probably the only one. It takes a person with little conscience and much imagination—takes a thief to catch a thief, I mean—yes, I think I mean that quite literally. Besides, I can help with some of that glassware that disappeared out of my supplies several days ago. Oh yes, I knew it was gone and where it went—but I figured any purpose you had was a good one, Ishie.