“Brandon and I carried quite a few of these onboard yesterday. Well, to be fair, not all of them were this large. But as you can see from this specimen, there are a myriad of colors shining throughout, much like fire opals. To my knowledge, there are none like this to be found on Earth. In fact, there aren’t many diamonds on Earth that can compare to the size of this one. Actually, most of the ones we saw were more around the size of large marbles and ping-pong balls. But Earth diamonds that are the size of ping-pong balls represent a very small percentage,” Tom turned toward Sally, “Did I say that all correctly?” She was sitting just off camera, laughing into her hands as silently as possible, at his put-on slightly fumbling, absentminded professor act.
“Oh, and the piles of diamonds,” Tom took a large drink from his glass and went on, “there are close to fifty of them, each about a meter high and a meter in diameter at the base. So, we are estimating that around ten of those piles will pay for this whole fu… fantastic mission. It’s a good thing this isn’t a live feed going out over the networks. But wait! There’s more!” He skewed up his face and took a big gulp, emptying his glass, while everyone onboard hooted at his entertaining parody of a tipsy game show host.
“Earlier today, Sally and I went for a stroll… well, more accurately an EVA, to the floor of the Penny Bright.” Tom paused a moment as Brandon refilled his glass. “Thank you. We ran sounding tests and determined that in the top thirty-five meters or so of the ground, there are… a lot… more… diamonds!” Tom intoned his best impression of Captain James T. Kirk and it was dead-on. High on adrenaline rather than alcohol, he was really on a roll and thoroughly enjoying every minute of it.