ed," he said.

He stayed in Pallastown until, however patched it looked, it was
functioning as the center of the free if rough-and-tumble part of the
Belt once more--though he didn't know for how long this would be true.
Order of one kind had been fairly restored. But out of the disaster, and
something very similar on Ceres, the thing that had always been most
feared had sprung. It was the fact of opposed organized might in close
proximity in the region between Pallas and Ceres. Again there was
blaming and counter-blaming, about incidents the exact sources of which
never became clear. What each of the space forces, patrolling opposite
each other, had in the way of weapons, was of course no public matter,
either; but how do you rate two inconceivables? Nor did the threat stay
out in the vastness between the planets.

From Earth came the news of a gigantic, incandescent bubble, rising from
the floor of the Pacific Ocean, and spreading in almost
radioactivity-free waves and ripples, disrupting penned-in areas of
food-producing sea, and lapping at last at far shores. Both sides
disclaimed responsibility for the blast.

Everybody insisted hopefully that this latest danger would die down,
too. Statesmen would talk, official tempers would be calmed, some new
working arrangements would be made. But meanwhile, the old Sword of
Damocles hung by a thinner hair than ever before. One trigger-happy
individual might snap it for good. If not now, the next time, or the
next. A matter of hours, days, or years. The mathematics of
probabilities denied that luck could last forever. In this thought there
was a sense of helplessness, and the ghost of a second Asteroid Belt.

Frank Nelsen might have continued to make himself useful in Pallastown,
or he might have rejoined the Kuzaks, who had moved their mobile posts
back into a safer zone on the other side of Pallas. But his instincts,
now, all pointed along another course of action--the only course that
seemed to make any sense just then.

He approached Art Kuzak at Post One. "About deployment," he began. "I've
made up some sketches, showing what I'd like the factories to turn out.
The ideas aren't new--now they'll spring up all around like thoughts of
food in a famine. If anything will approach answering all problems, they
will. And KRNH is as well able to put them into effect as anybody...
So--unless you've got some better suggestions?"

Art Kuzak looked the sketches over shrewdly for