splendor that had seemed out of place, a target
shining for thousands of miles.

Haw, haw...! Nelsen could almost hear the coarse laughter of the Jolly
Lads, as they broke it up, robbed it, raped it--because they both
sneered at its effeteness, and missed what it represented to them...
Nelsen remembered very well how a man's attitudes could be warped while
he struggled for mere survival in an Archer drifting in space.

Yet even as he worked with the others, to put up temporary domes and to
gather the bloated dead, the hatred arose in him, and was strengthened
by the fury and grief in the grim, strong faces around him. To exist
where it was, Pallastown could not be as soft as it seemed. And to the
hoppers--the rugged, level-headed ones who deserved the name--it had
meant much, though they had visited it for only a few days of fun, now
and then.

The Jolly Lads had been routed. Some must have fled chuckling and
cursing almost sheepishly, like infants the magnitude of whose mischief
has surpassed their intention, and has awed and frightened them, at
last. They had been followed, even before the various late-coming space
forces could get into action.

Nelsen overheard words that helped complete the pictures:

"I'll get them... They had my wife..."

"This was planned--you know where..."

It was planned, all right. But if Ceres, the Tovie colony, had actually
been the instigator, there was evidence that the scheme had gotten out
of hand. The excitement of destruction had spread. Stories came back
that Ceres had been attacked, too.

"I killed a man, Frank--with this pre-Asteroidal knife. He was after
Helen and my son..."

This was timid David Lester talking, awed at himself, proud, but
curiously ashamed. This made another picture. By luck the Lesters lived
in the small above-the-surface portion of Pallastown that had not been
seriously damaged.

Frank Nelsen also killed, during a trip to Post One of the KRNH
Enterprises, to get more stellene and other materials to expand the
temporary encampments for the survivors. He killed two fleeing men
coldly and at a distance, because they did not answer his hail. The
shreds of their bodies and the loot they had been carrying were
scattered to drift in the vacuum, adding another picture of retribution
to thousands like it.

Belt Parnay was the name of the leader whom everybody really wanted to
get. Belt Parnay--another Fessler, another Fanshaw. That was a curious
thing. T