d been the source of many
guffaws.

"Did you get a letter, too, Frank?" Ramos asked. For close
communication, the old helmet-phones still worked okay.

"I did," Nelsen breathed. "Why didn't they just knock us off? Alive, we
might tell on them."

"Not slow and funny enough, maybe," Ramos answered dolefully. "In these
broken-down outfits, we might not live to tell. Besides, even with these
notes for clues, who'd ever find out who they are, way out here?"

Nelsen figured that all this was probably the truth. In the Belt, life
was cheap. Death got to be a joke.

"There was an ox of a guy with big teeth!" he hissed furiously. "Thought
I saw Tiflin, too--the S.O.B.! Cripes, do I always land in the soup?"

"The bossman with the teeth, I remember," Ramos grated. "Tiflin I don't
know about. Could be... Hell, though--what now? I suppose we're going in
about the same direction and at the same speed as before? Have to watch
the sun and planets to make sure. Did they leave us any instruments?
Meanwhile, we might try to decelerate. I'd like to get out to Pluto
sometime, but not equipped like this."

"We'll check everything--see how bad off they left us," Nelsen said.

So that was what they did, after they had set their decrepit
shoulder-ionics to slow them down in the direction of the Belt.

Each of their hauling nets contained battered chisels, hammers, saws for
metal, a radiation counter, a beaten-up-looking pistol, some old
position-finding instruments, including a wristwatch that had seen much
better days to be used as a chronometer. There were also two large
flasks of water and two month-supply boxes of dehydrated
space-gruel--these last items obviously granted them from their own, now
vanished stores. Here was weird generosity--or perhaps just more
ghoulish fun to give them the feeble hope of survival.

Now they checked each other's Archer Threes as well as they could while
they were being worn. No use even to try to communicate over any
distance with the worn-out radio transmitters. The nuclear batteries
were ninety-percent used up, which still left considerable
time--fortunately, because they had to add battery power to the normally
sun-energized shoulder-ionics, in order to get any reasonable
decelerating effect out of them. Out here, unlike on the Moon at night,
the air-restorers could also take direct solar energy through their
windows. They needed current only for their pumps. But the green
chlorophane, key to