er of
planetoids would ever collide. They would march about the sun in precise
order, like the soldiers in a military parade, except that they would
retain their spacing much longer than any group of soldiers could
possibly manage to do.

But the orbits are elliptical. There is a chance that any two given
bodies _might_ collide, although the chance is small. The one
compensation is that if they do collide they won't strike each other
very hard.

The detective was not worried about collision; he was worried about
observation. Had the people here seen his boat? If so, had they
recognized it in spite of the heavy camouflage? And, even if they only
suspected, what would be their reaction?

He waited.

It takes nerve and patience to wait for thirteen solid hours without
making any motion other than an occasional flexing of muscles, but he
managed that long before the instrument case that he held waggled a
meter needle at him. The one tension-relieving factor was the low
gravity; the problem of sleeping on a bed of nails is caused by the
likelihood of the sleeper accidentally throwing himself off the bed. The
probability of puncture or discomfort from the points is almost
negligible.

When the needle on the instrument panel flickered, he got to his feet
and began moving. He was almost certain that he had not been detected.

Walking was out of the question. This was a silicate-alumina rock, not a
nickel-iron one. The group of people that occupied it had deliberately
chosen it that way, so that there would be no chance of its being picked
out for slicing by one of the mining teams in the Asteroid Belt.
Granted, the chance of any given metallic planetoid's being selected was
very small--but they had not wanted to take even that chance.

Therefore, without any magnetic field to hold him down, and with only a
very tiny gravitic field, the detective had to use different tactics.

It was more like mountain climbing than anything else, except that there
was no danger of falling. He crawled over the surface in the same way
that an Alpine climber might crawl up the side of a steep slope--seeking
handholds and toeholds and using them to propel himself onward. The only
difference was that he covered distance a great deal more rapidly than a
mountain climber could.

When he reached the spot he wanted, he carefully concealed himself
beneath a craggy overhang. It took a little searching to find exactly
the right spot, but when h