I gulped, but couldn’t talk. The words were in my head but I couldn’t get my tongue interested in saying them. The way things had been, up until this afternoon, this development was absolutely miraculous.
Finally, after a long silence I managed to find my voice. “I’ll try to live up to your expectations, Dr. Thompson.”
He looked at me very sternly for long moments before he said another word. “I know you will. If you don’t, I’ll tell. As I understood you, the lawyer-client privilege is mine alone to claim, and while what I did was not really illegal it will infuriate some people. You’re making yourself my accomplice, you know.”
“I know,” I replied. I knew he wasn’t really threatening me. Had I thought otherwise I would simply have gotten up and walked out. What he was really doing was testing me, trying to raise my temper. I also knew that chance alone had given me an opportunity anybody else I knew would kill to get. I was not here because I was brighter that the rest, or more honorable, or for any other noble reason. It was simply the luck of the draw. I understood Thompson very well, and I knew that compared to what he had personally risked I was risking almost nothing. Our Earth, I said to myself, is worth that much, and I hoped our mutual luck would hold.