He smiled even wider. He could hear his aunt's voice now...
"Come and get it, Starmen!" pealed the voice of George St. George. "Got
some more of that engine-oil coffee steaming away, and I managed to
whip together some biscuits from some powdered stuff I found!"
Zip's eyes shot open and took in the neutral walls of the cubicle where
he, Mark, and Joe had slept. The faint hum of O344's system was drowned
out now with the rustle of human movement as the asteroid miners
gathered around the table.
"There's some sort of orangy liquid I mixed up from some other powder,
too! Probably has some good vitamins in it!"
In minutes the Starmen and miners were tucking in to the best that
George St. George could do with the supplies at hand.
After breakfast, the Starmen sat in the lounge. Mark was poring over
the printout that he had taken from the power plant on the pirates'
asteroid. He had a digital copy of much of the layout of the asteroid,
and information on the power plants, propulsion structures, and
sheathing equipment. The papers were filled with charts, maps, and
diagrams; a few sections were written in an unintelligible, alien
language. He couldn't even tell which symbols were letters and which
were numbers.
"I hope they didn't use a pictorial alphabet like Chinese," said Joe,
looking over Mark's shoulder.
Pages:
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