Nema smiled brightly. "Of course. We've already prepared a construction
camp for you. You'll find most of the tools you used in your world
waiting there and all the engineers we could get or make for you."
He'd been considering stalling while he demanded exactly such things. He
was reasonably sure by now that they had no transistors, signal
generators, frequency meters or whatever else he could demand. He could
make quite an issue out of the need to determine the characteristic
impedance of their sky. That might even be interesting, at that; would
it be anywhere near 300 ohms here? But it seemed that stalling wasn't
going to work. They'd given him what they expected him to need, and he'd
have to be careful to need only what they expected, or they might just
decide he wasn't Dave Hanson.
"I can't work on this stuff here," he said.
"Then why didn't you say so?" she asked sharply. She let out a cry and a
raven came flying in. She whispered something to it, frowned, and then
ordered it off. "There's no surface transportation available, and all
the local rocs are in use. Well, we'll have to make do with what we
have."
She darted for the outer office, rummaged in a cabinet, and came back
with a medium-sized rug of worn but gaudy design. Bad imitation Sarouk,
Dave guessed. She tossed it onto the largest cleared space, gobbled
some outlandish noises, and dropped onto it, squatting near one end.
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