ut two miles or thereabouts in diameter, only it couldn't
be said to have a diameter because it was quite irregular in shape.
But to Willy it must have been as fascinating as a jewel. So he
planted the homer on it so that he could find it again when he wanted
to. Of course, he hadn't yet thought of a reason for wanting an
asteroid, but he would. He usually found reasons for the strange
things he did.

And he did. It must have been just after Ollie Hadaway lost control of
his tug. It had been headed in the direction of a rather large
asteroid. Ollie had tried to unjumble the steering jets, but he
couldn't, so he bailed out and was picked up a little later. The tug
went on and shattered on the surface of the asteroid. Then later,
Willy, at my directions, investigated the accident, examined the tug,
and wrote up an accident report on it. And the inspection part of it
must have gone something like this:

When Willy arrived to examine the shattered tug on the surface of the
asteroid, he must have been pleasantly surprised to note that the hull
was a battered mess, but miraculously some of the innards were intact.
He must have looked closer and saw that the drive unit had escaped
destruction. The drive unit of a tug is a super-heavy duty workhorse
of a unit chock full of more power than would ever be packed or needed
in a conventional ship of the same size. But as I said before, this
was a propulsion unit from a tug, and tugs like ones we use need
plenty of power.

And that must have been when Willy decided on a reason for having his
own private asteroid. He would add the drive unit to it and make it
mobile. He must have sparkled with the idea for the rest of the day. I
recall his accident report saying the tug was a total loss. Of course,
no one checked Willy's decision on that.

* * * * *

I also had Willy under observation the time he retrieved the drive
unit and took it to his newly acquired privately owned (now) asteroid.
The peculiar shape of the asteroid would lend itself to adaptation to
mobility. So Willy blasted off the tip of the elongated end with some
explosives he had diverted from some other project, drilled it out
with some small charges, and fitted the drive unit in it, and anchored
it down. It had taken quite a while to do all that, but Willy had
interminable patience once he started a project. The entire procedure
would seem impossible for one man, but bulk and weight we