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Updated: June 27, 2025
He tugged at his ear. "You could dump me on that asteroid with this assortment of junk and I’d spend the rest of my life there. I don’t see how you can use this stuff to move an asteroid!" "Maybe that’s why the Federation sent Planeteers," Rip said, and was sorry the moment the words were out. O’Brine’s jaw muscles bulged, but he held his temper. "I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that, Foster.
Back on the asteroid, the Planeteers started laying the second atomic charge. Rip selected the spot, found a near-by crystal that would serve to house the bomb, and Kemp started cutting. The Planeteers knew what to do now, and the work went rapidly. Rip kept an eye on his chronometer. According to the message from Terra base, he had about fifteen minutes before the Consops cruiser arrived.
"We’ll find it," Rip said confidently. O’Brine nodded. "Yes. But it probably will take some hunting. Meanwhile, let’s get at those cases. The supply clerk is on his way." The supply clerk arrived, issued tools to the Planeteers, then opened a plastic case attached to one of the boxes and produced lists.
Spacemen clapped emergency respirators to their faces and spoke unkindly of Rip's Planeteers in the saltiest space language possible. Rip and his men picked up Koa and continued the march to the decontamination room, grinning under their respirators at the consternation around them. There was no danger to the spacemen, since they had clapped on respirators the moment the warning sounded.
But on the dark side, Rip measured temperatures close to absolute zero. When the Scorpius returned, he arranged with Commander O'Brine for the Planeteers to take turns going to the cruiser for showers and decent meals. The asteroid approached the orbit of Venus, but the bright planet was some distance away, at its greatest elongation to the east of the sun.
He knew asteroid, cruiser, and boats were speeding toward the sun at close to fifty miles a second, and the drag was getting terrific. The Connies knew it, too. There was an exultant yell from the Planeteers as two of the boats gave up and turned back, using full power to regain the safety of the mother ship. Four left!
The residue of carbon and thorium on the blast tube walls was stubborn, dirty, and penetrating. It was caked on in a solid sheet, but when scraped, it broke up into fine powder. The Planeteers wore coveralls, gloves, and face masks with respirators, but that didn’t prevent the stuff from sifting through onto their bodies.
"Sir, landing boats are being launched!" "Bring out the prisoners," Rip ordered. "Line them up. Planeteers fall in behind them." The landing boats, with snapper-boats in watchful attendance, blasted down to the surface of the asteroid. Spacemen jumped out, awkward at first on the no-weight surface. An officer glided to meet Rip, and he had a pistol in his hand. "It’s all right," Rip told him.
Sixty minutes later, clean, fed, and contented, the Planeteers were again on the thorium planet while the Scorpius, riding the same orbit, stood by a few miles out in space. The asteroid and the great cruiser arched high above the belt of tiny worlds in the orbit Rip had set, traveling together toward distant Mars.
He had sent the snapper-boats to try and draw fire in an attempt to find out more surely whether Planeteers or Connies had the thorium rock. "The Scorpius doesn’t know what’s going on," Rip told his Planeteers. "O’Brine didn’t know the cruiser was waiting to ambush him, so the rocket we fired made him think the Connies had taken us over." He put himself in O’Brine’s place.
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