"
"Oh yes, I was awestruck, completely, absolutely electrified! Imagine
stepping into a remnant of an astounding civilization like this. When I
found it, it was abandoned. It seemed as if no one had been in it for
probably thousands of years."
"Tell us everything you know about this place," ordered Zip, looking
intently at the asteroid miner and drawing him over to the nearest
table. Zip gently eased the miner into a chair, then turned another
chair around and sat in it, folding his arms over its back and facing
George. The asteroid miner told the Starmen the story of his discovery
of the asteroid and how Troy Putnam had learned about it. They had
already heard a brief version of the story from Oritz Konig back at
Mars Base.
"Of course, I didn't know this Putnam was a bad egg at the time. He
just seemed like a friendly, curious spaceman to me."
"What about the asteroid?" pressed Joe. "What have you figured out
about the race that built it?"
"As I said, the asteroid was abandoned when I ran across it, but
whoever built it couldn't have been too different from us. Same body
type, same size, that's obvious. Look around you-beds, chairs,
everything, just the way we'd make them. Their language was quite
different, though. Took me a long time to learn how to use some of
their stuff.
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