probably prove to be a tiny, stony
mass, not worth capturing. It might even be large and valuable, but
moving so rapidly that he could not overtake it with the power of the
diminutive Millen rocket.

He studied the tiny speck intently, with practised eye, as the minutes
passed--an untrained eye would never have seen it at all, among the
flaming hosts of stars. Skilfully he judged, from its apparent rate of
motion and its slow increase in brilliance, its size and distance
from him.

"Must be--must be fair size," he spoke aloud, at length. "A hundred
tons, I'll bet my helmet! But scooting along pretty fast. Stretch the
little old rocket to run it down."

He clambered back to the rocket, changed the angle of the flaming
exhaust, to drive him directly across the path of the object ahead,
filled the magazine again with the little pellets of uranite, which
were fed automatically into the combustion chamber, and increased the
firing rate.

The trailing blue flame reached farther backward from the incandescent
orifice of the exhaust. The vibration of the metal sphere increased.
Thad left the sputtering rocket and went back where he could see the
object before him.

* * * * *

It was nearer now, rushing obliquely across his path. Would he be in
time to capture it as it passed, or would it hurtle by ahead of him,
and vanish in the limitless darkness of space before his feeble rocket
could check the momentum of his ball of metal?

He peered at it, as it drew closer.

Its surface seemed oddly bright, silvery. Not the dull black of
meteoric iron. And it was larger, more distant, than he had thought at
first. In form, too, it seemed curiously regular, ellipsoid. It was no
jagged mass of metal.

His hopes sank, rose again immediately. Even if it were not the mass
of rich metal for which he had prayed, it might be something as
valuable--and more interesting.

He returned to the rocket, adjusted the angle of the nozzle again, and
advanced the firing time slightly, even at the risk of a ruinous
explosion.

When he returned to where he could see the hurtling object before him,
he saw that it was a ship. A tapering silver-green rocket-flier.

Once more his dreams were dashed. The officers of interplanetary
liners lose no love upon the meteor miners, claiming that their
collected masses of metal, almost helpless, always underpowered, are
menaces to navigation. Thad could expect nothing from t