h Pole," the instrument man reported
instantly. "How's her spin?"

"Wait a bit. The spot hasn't come round again yet. Looks like we'll
have some fun with her, though." He kept three stars fixed carefully
in his spotters to make sure he didn't drift enough to throw his
calculations off. And waited.

Meanwhile, the instrument man abandoned his radar panel and turned to
the locker where his vacuum suit waited at the ready. By the time the
pilot had seen the splotch of silver come round again and timed it,
the instrument man was ready in his vacuum suit.

"Sixteen minutes, forty seconds," the pilot reported. "Angular
momentum one point one times ten to the twenty-first gram centimeters
squared per second."

"So we play Ride 'Em Cowboy," the instrument man said "I'm evacuating.
Tell me when." He had already poised his finger over the switch that
would pull the air from his compartments, which had been sealed off
from the pilot's compartment when the timing had started.

"Start the pump," said the pilot.

The switch was pressed, and the pumps began to evacuate the air from
the compartment. At the same time, the pilot jockeyed the ship to a
position over the north pole of the asteroid.

"Over" isn't quite the right word. "Next to" is not much better, but
at least it has no implied up-and-down orientation. The surface
gravity of the asteroid was only two millionths of a Standard Gee,
which is hardly enough to give any noticeable impression to the human
nervous system.

"Surface at two meters," said the pilot. "Holding."

* * * * *

The instrument man opened the outer door and saw the surface of the
gigantic rock a couple of yards in front of him. And projecting from
that surface was the eye of an eyebolt that had been firmly anchored
in the depths of the asteroid, a nickel-steel shaft thirty feet long
and eight inches in diameter, of which only the eye at the end showed.

The instrument man checked to make sure that his safety line was
firmly anchored and then pushed himself across the intervening space
to grasp the eye with a space-gloved hand.

This was the anchor.

Moving a nickel-iron asteroid across space to nearest processing plant
is a relatively simple job. You slap a powerful electromagnet on her,
pour on the juice, and off you go.

The stony asteroids are a different matter. You have to have something
to latch on to, and that's where the anchor-setter comes in. His job