get landing boats assigned, and we can load. Then prepare
space packs. Lay out suits and bubbles. We want to be ready to go the
moment we get the word."

Lines were taken from a locker and secured to the equipment. As the
Planeteers worked, the ship's spinning slowed and stopped. They were
in no-weight. Rip grabbed for a hand cord that hung from the wall and
hauled himself out into the engine control room. The deputy commander was
at his post, waiting tensely for orders. Rip thrust against a bulkhead
with one foot and floated to his side. "I need two landing boats, sir,"
he requested. "One stays on the asteroid with us."

"Take numbers five and six. I'll assign a pilot to bring number five back
to the ship after you've landed."

"Thank you." Rip would have been surprised at the deputy's quick assent
if Commander O'Brine hadn't shown him that the spacemen were ready to do
anything possible to aid the Planeteers. He went back to the supply room
and told Koa which boats were to be used, instructed him to get the
supplies aboard, then made his way to Commander O'Brine's office.

O'Brine was not in. Rip searched and found him in the astroplot room,
watching a 'scope. Green streaks called "blips" marked the panel, each
one indicating an asteroid.

"All too small," O'Brine said. "We've only seen two large ones, and they
were too large."

"Space is certainly full of junk," Rip commented. "At least this corner
of it is pretty full."

A junior space officer overheard him. "This is nothing. We're on the edge
of the asteroid belt. Closer to the middle, there's so much stuff a ship
has to crawl through it."

Rip wandered over to the main control desk. A senior space officer was
seated before a simple panel on which there were only a dozen small
levers, a visiphone, and a radar screen. The screen was circular, with
numbers around the rim like those on an Earth clock. In the center of the
screen was a tiny circle. The central circle represented the _Scorpius_.
The rest of the screen was the area dead ahead. Rip watched and saw
several blips on it that indicated asteroids. They were all small. He
watched, interested, as the _Scorpius_ overtook them. Once, according to
the screen, the cruiser passed under an asteroid, with a clearance of
only a few hundred feet.

"You didn't miss that one by much," Rip told the space officer.

"Don't have to miss by much," he retorted. "A few feet are as good as a
mile in space. Our blast m