e chunk, and began to search clumsily for
worthwhile metal. It was fantastic that somebody had been there before
them, chiselling and sawing out a greyish material, of which there was a
little left that made the needles of their radiation counters swing
wildly.

They got a few scraps of the stuff to put into the nets which they were
towing.

"For luck," Ramos laughed. "Without it we'll never pay J. John."

"Shut up. Big deal," Nelsen snapped.

"Okay. Shut up it is!" Ramos answered him.

So they stayed silent until they couldn't stand that, either. Everything
was getting on their nerves.

Their next asteroids were mere chips a foot long--core fragments of the
planet, heavy metals that had sunk deep. No crust material of any
normally formed world could ever show such wealth. It gleamed with a
pale yellow shine, and made Ramos' sunken eyes light up with an ancient
fever, until he remembered, and until Nelsen said:

"Not for the gold, anymore, pal. Common, out here. So it's almost
worthless, everywhere. Not much use as an industrial metal. But the
osmium and uranium alloyed with it are something else. One hunk for each
of our nets. Too bad there isn't more."

The uranium was driving their radiation-counters wild.

"Could we drag it, if there was more?" Ramos growled. "With just
sun-power on these lousy shoulder-ionics?"

Everything was going sour, even Ramos. After a long deceleration they
were afraid to draw any more power for propulsion from their weakened
batteries. They needed the remaining current for the moisture-reclaimers
and the pumps of the air-restorers--a relatively much lighter but vital
drain. The sunlight was weak way out here. Worse, the solar
thermocouples to power the ionics were almost shot. They tried to fix
them up, succeeding a little, but using far more time than they had
expected. Meanwhile, the changed positions of the various large
asteroids, moving in their own individual orbits, lost them any definite
idea of where the Kuzaks' supply post was, and the dizzying distance to
Pallas, with only half-functioning ionics to get them there, fuddled
them in their inexperience.

Soon their big hope was that some reasonable asteroid-hoppers would come
within the few thousand mile range of their weakened transmitters. Then
they could call, and be picked up.

Mostly to keep themselves occupied, they hunted paymetal, taking only
the very best that they could find, to keep the towage mass down. Ri