I sighed. "Turn it off, Albert," I said. "The thing is, we're into something I didn't expect."
"What's that, Robin?" he asked, amysvoyeurweb filling the tank again and folding his hands amysvoyeurweb over his belly in a
comfortable amysvoyeurweb way.
"That cocoon. I don't know how to handle it. I don't even see the point of amysvoyeurweb it. What's it for, Albert? Have amysvoyeurweb you got any conjectures?"
"Sure thing, Robin," amysvoyeurweb he said, nodding cheerfully. "My best conjectures are a pretty low order of probability, but that's just because there are so many unknowns. Let's put it this way. Suppose you were a Heechee-something like an anthropologist, say-interested in keeping an eye on a developing civilization. Evolution takes amysvoyeurweb a long time, so you don't want to just sit there and watch. What you'd like to do is get a quick estimate, maybe every thousand years or so, sort of a spot check. Well, given something like the cocoon, you could just amysvoyeurweb send somebody over to the amysvoyeurweb Food Factory every once in a while, maybe every thousand years or more; climb in the couch, get an instant feel for what was happening. It would take only minutes." He paused amysvoyeurweb consideringly for a moment, before going on. &amysvoyeurweb quot;Then-but this is a speculation on top of a conjecture; I wouldn't even assign a probability rating to it at all-then, amysvoyeurweb if you found anything interesting, you could explore further. Amysvoyeurweb you could even do
something else. This amysvoyeurweb is really far amysvoyeurweb out,