“I don’t like taking chances,” he reminded them. “But that thing out there is a cornucopia of advanced technology that we can’t overlook.”
“What’s your verdict?” Ed Spratt asked, examining the bowl of his unlit pipe. “Is Clifford still batty?”
Lamont toyed with his half-cup of instant coffee. He was seated with the members of the senior staff around the boomerang-shaped table of the conference room. The television monitor at the end of the room was flickering through a sequence of camera feeds, internal and external, that interspersed scenes of the repair efforts with brief glimpses of the mysterious cylindrical tower that half the ship’s complement was now calling home. “Obviously I’m not qualified to say,” he recused himself. “He seemed coherent enough, and talked as if he recognized that he’d been—compromised in some way by his contact with the tower.”
“Compromised!” Chief Santana repeated, pinching the bridge of her nose. “The way he was talking, he would have happily finished the job and blown up Westward if given the chance.”
“I was disoriented by my own contact with the tower,” Lamont reminded her. “Rosemary snapped me out of it after a few moments. For Clifford, the experience lasted for hours. He may have just needed more time for it to wear off.”
“And you think that it has worn off?” Captain Carter asked. “To the extent that he can resume normal duties? I’m just asking for your personal opinion, naturally.”
The newspaperman shrugged and gulped down the rest of his lukewarm coffee. “He seems to want to know the truth. I can respect that.”
Ed sighed, leaning back in his chair and tapping the stem of his pipe on the tabletop. “I don’t like taking chances,” he reminded them. “But that thing out there is a cornucopia of advanced technology that we can’t overlook. We need every available person with a qualified skill set to be over there learning about it, and Ashton fits that bill.”
“Wait,” Lamont interjected. “Are you planning to harvest pieces of technology from the tower?”
“If there’s something we can use to help get Westward up and running, sure,” Ed replied. “Wasn’t that your idea?”
“My idea was to borrow a vehicle of some kind, since it seems that they aren’t being used and probably haven’t been for a long time,” Lamont objected. “There’s a big difference between doing that and plundering any gadget that happens to catch your fancy.”
“I fail to see the distinction,” Chief Covington admitted in his Scottish brogue. He turned his eyes to the captain. “And for the record, I’m opposed to all of it.”