“Patience, Captain,” Thrawn said. “It may not be necessary, after all. Key for a midrange scan, and tell me what you see.
Pellaeon swiveled back to his command board and tapped for the appropriate readout. There was Myrkr itself of course, and the standard TIE fighter defense cloud ranged around the Chimaera. The only other object anywhere within midrange distance-“You mean that little asteroid out there?”
“That’s the one,” Thrawn nodded. “Nothing remarkable about it, is there? No, don’t do a sensor focus,” he added, almost before the thought of doing one had even occurred to Pellaeon. “We wouldn’t want to prematurely flush our quarry, would we?”
“Our quarry?” Pellaeon repeated, frowning at the sensor data again. The routine sensor scans that had been done of the asteroid three hours earlier had come up negative, and nothing could have sneaked up on it since then without being detected. “With all due respect, sir, I don’t see any indication that anything’s out there.
“I don’t either,” Thrawn agreed. “But it’s the only sizable cover available for nearly ten million kilometers around Myrkr. There’s really no other place for Karrde to watch our operation from.”
Pellaeon pursed his lips. “Your permission, Admiral, but I doubt Karrde is foolish enough to just sit around waiting for us to arive.
The glowing red eyes narrowed, just a bit. “You forget, Captain,” he said softly, “that I’ve met the man. More important, I’ve seen the sort of artwork he collects.” He turned back to his displays. “No; he’s out there. I’m sure of it. Talon Karrde is not merely a smuggler, you see. Perhaps not even primarily a smuggler. His real love is not goods or money but information. More than anything else in the galaxy, he craves knowledge:and the knowledge of what we have or have not found here is too valuable a gem for him to pass up.”
Pellaeon studied the Grand Admiral’s profile. It was, in his opinion, a pritty tenuous leap of logic. But on the other hand, he’d seen too many similar leaps borne out not to take this one seriously.