mental vision around. It was
easier than looking. Two fast, powerful tugs from the _Happy Dream_, and
Bellaver's yacht. He frowned in heavy concentration. "Bellaver's aboard.
He's got a mighty goose-egg on his head. Vernon too, with his shields up
tight. The three accurate men and the pilot--his nose is a thing of
beauty--plus crew. Nine in all. Two men each to the tugs. The other
Lazarite, the one I laid out--he's not along."

Shearing nodded approvingly. "You're getting good. Now take a glance at
our fuel-tanks and tell me what you see."

Hyrst sat up straight, fully awake. "Practically," he said, "nothing."

"This skiff was meant for short hops only. We've got enough for perhaps
another forty-five minutes, less if we get too involved. They're faster
than we are, so they'll catch up to us--oh, say in about half an hour.
We have friends coming--"

"Friends?"

"Certainly. You don't think we let each other down, do you? Not the
brotherhood. But they had to come from a long way off. We can't possibly
rendezvous under an hour and a half, maybe more if--"

"I know," said Hyrst. "If we all get involved." He looked out the port.
In the beginning, following directions from the young woman--whose name
he had never thought to ask--he had set a course that plunged him deep
into one of the wildest sectors of the Belt. He was not a pilot. He
could, like most men of his time, handle a simple craft under simple
conditions, but these conditions were not simple. The skiff's radar was
short-range and it had no automatic deflection reflexes. Hyrst had had
to fly on ESP, spotting meteor swarms, asteroids, debris of all sorts in
this poetically named hell-hole, the Path of Minor Worlds, and then
figuring out how to get by, through, or over them without a crash.
Shearing had relieved him just in time.

He glowered at the whirling, glittering mess outside, the dust, the
shards and fragments of a shattered world. It merged into mist and his
mind was roving again. Shearing jockeyed the controls. He was flying
esper too. The tugs and Bellaver's fast yacht were closing up the gap.
The level in the tanks went down, used up not in free fall but in the
constant maneuvering.

Hyrst swung mentally inboard to check vac-suits and equipment in the
locker, and then out again. His vision was strong and free. He could
look at the Sun, and see the splendid fires of the corona. He could look
at Mars, old and cold and dried-up, and at Jupiter, massiv