maller than a planet you can't find it even when
you are there. To put it crudely, what space has is space. And finding
something that doesn't want to be found in space is like looking for a
missing germ in the Atlantic.

He had the coordinates of the beacon he had chosen for his appointment
point and the robot pilot took him to that area with automatic
precision. But once there he had to cruise manually back and forth
three times through the perpendicular plane of Earth's equator before
picking up the radar pip of the buoy, which was set to broadcast its
presence by a circular sweep of radar pulses on a flat plane
corresponding to the Earth equatorial average.

He found it no later than expected, which was over an hour early, on
the principle that he who arrives first finds no ambush.

He left Pierce with certain instructions and floated from the ship to
the familiar globe that spun so placidly on the anchoring rod that
attached it to the controlling buoy. The buoy was powered strongly
enough to have controlled the orbits of fifty such globes without
strain. Buoys of that type were just beginning to be popular in the
Belt.

Once inside he opened his faceplate, looking around with the same
pleasure he always felt on his visits here. It was like being back at
the Belt for a time. After the raw harshness of the moon and the
artificial luxuries of its cities, after the agoraphobic vastness of
Earth's giant surface, to be within this little close-knit familiar
world was soothing and relaxing. It was a green glade of leaves and
branches, greenness underfoot and overhead, a brown metal cliff with
vines and a door to his left, a larger brown metal cliff like the
round head of a barrel with doors in it to his right, and a circular
silver door in the center. Behind the small right hand cliff was the
small amount of regulating machinery required, behind the doors of the
larger cliff was a small kitchen, and convertible study-bedrooms.
Behind the silver door was a corridor leading to the airlock and
space. It was forty feet from cliff to cliff, and from the growing
greenery underfoot to the growing greenery overhead, as spacious as a
wide glade in the woods of Earth.

He picked his way among the vines and shrubs to a carpetlike patch of
green moss and sat down comfortably to wait. Pierce had drawn the ship
off beyond detector range by now, and it would seem to any ship
approaching that he had not yet arrived.

It was peace