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Updated: May 6, 2025
It's a force-out attempt aimed at us or at anybody who thinks our way. After two lost shipments, and a lot of new installations here at the Post, we're about broke, again. Worse, we've got the asteroid-hoppers expecting us to come through with pay for the new metal in their nets, and with stuff they need. Back home, some people used to raise hell about a trifle like a delayed letter.
For it was a new kind which contained an exothermic ingredient. They ate, in the absence of gravity, by squeezing the bottles. "Guess we'll have to become asteroid-hoppers miners like the slob said," Nelsen growled. "Well I did want to try everything..." This was to become the pattern of their lives. But not right away. They still had an incomplete conception of the vast distances.
Fifty asteroid-hoppers, ten of them accompanied by wives, went with Nelsen as he started out with a loaded caravan toward an empty region halfway between the orbits of Earth and Mars. Everyone in the group was convinced by yearnings of his own. Thinking of Nance Codiss, Nelsen planned to keep within beam range of the Red Planet. He had called Nance quite often.
Soon their big hope was that some reasonable asteroid-hoppers would come within the few thousand mile range of their weakened transmitters. Then they could call, and be picked up. Mostly to keep themselves occupied, they hunted paymetal, taking only the very best that they could find, to keep the towage mass down.
He talked with asteroid-hoppers who meant to spend some time on Earth. Several had become almost rich. Most had strong, quiet faces that showed both distance- and home-hunger. A few had broken, and the angry sensitivity was visible. Nelsen treated himself well. He was relieved of the duty of eternal vigilance by men whose job it was. So, for a while, his purpose was almost successful.
"I hate to break this off," he said. "But a lot of asteroid-hoppers are out at the post, waiting for Ramos and me to bring stuff back. It's a long ride through a troubled region. There's plenty to get arranged beforehand... So first, what do we do to realize some quick funds out of these relics?" Hines terminated the pictured sequence. "Frank Ramos I'd keep this camera," he said urgently.
Riding a mile off was the Space Force patrol bubb. All through the long journey beam calls ahead were avoided for added safety Nelsen kept wondering if he'd find the post in ruins, with what was left of Art and Joe drifting and drying. But nothing like that happened yet, and the shipment was brought through. Business with the asteroid-hoppers was started at once.
They did pick up the voices of scattered asteroid-hoppers, talking cautiously back and forth to each other, far away. "... Got me pinpointed, Ed? Coming in almost empty, this trip. Not like the last... Stake me to a run into Pallastown...?" Most of such voices sounded regular, friendly. Once they heard wild laughter, and what could have been a woman's scream.
Six fellas and the wife of one of them a Bunch from Baltimore were just drying shreds that drifted in the wreckage. Big Joe, though he had a rocket chip through his chest, had been able to beat off the attackers, with the help of a few asteroid-hoppers and his novice crew which turned out to be more rugged than some people might have expected.
There were only the constant dangers, natural, human, and a combination. There was always a job a convoy to meet, a load of supplies to rush to a distant point, Jolly Lads to scare off. Reckless Ramos might be with Nelsen, or Joe Kuzak who usually operated separately, or a few guards, or several asteroid-hoppers, most of whom were tough and steady and good friends to know.
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