Dane turned this around in his fingers. Because it was the
only link with the perfumed planet he couldn't help but feel that it had
some importance.
But Kosti had not shown any interest in the wood. And he, himself, and
Weeks had handled it freely _before_ they had tasted Graft's friendship
cup and had no ill effects--so it couldn't be the wood. Dane put the twig
back on the work table and snapped the protecting cover over the delicate
tools--never realizing until days later how very close he had been in
that moment to the solution of their problem.
After two hours of shifting every one of the steward's belongings, of
crawling on hands and knees about the deck and climbing to inspect
perfectly bare walls, they had found exactly nothing. Rip sat down on the
end of the denuded bunk.
"There's the hydro--Frank spent a lot of time in there--and the
storeroom," he told the places off on his fingers. "The galley and the
mess cabin."
Those had been the extent of Mura's world. They could search the
storeroom, the galley and the mess cabin--but to interfere with the hydro
would endanger their air supply.
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