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Updated: June 27, 2025
As Major Joe Barris had told the officers of Rip’s class, "You might say that the spacemen own space, but we Planeteers own everything solid that’s found in it." The Planeteers were the specialists—in science, exploration, colonization, and fighting. The spacemen carried them back and forth, kept them supplied, and handled their message traffic.
The enlisted Planeteers knew as well as he what that meant. There were whistles of astonishment. Koa slapped his big thigh. "By Gemini! What do we do about it, sir?" "We capture it," Rip said. "We blast it loose from its orbit and ride it back to earth." He sat back and watched their reactions. At first they were stunned. Trudeau, the Frenchman, muttered to himself in French.
The two Federation cruisers were still holding course along with the asteroid, the Connie cruiser between them. Within an hour, Rip and Santos, both in false good health thanks to medical magic, were on their way back to the asteroid in a ball-bat boat. "Let Him Go Back to the Asteroid, Doctor." The remaining time passed quickly. The sun receded. The Planeteers corrected course.
Commander O'Brine had not exaggerated. 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.
Landing craft and snapper-boats swarmed to meet them, and within an hour after their arrival the Planeteers were surrounded by spacemen, cadets from the platform, and officers and men wearing Planeteer black. A cadet approached Rip and looked at him with awe. "Sir, I don't know how you ever did it!"
As the safety lines tightened, the Planeteers were pulled after the boat. Rip left his feet with a little spring and shot through the door. Directly below him, the asteroid gleamed darkly in the light of the tiny sun. His first reaction was "Great Cosmos! What a little chunk of rock!"
The Connie cruiser decelerated, went into reverse, and came to a full stop about a mile from the asteroid. The Planeteers saw fire in two places along the hull, marking the exhausts of two small craft. "Snapper-boats," Koa said tonelessly. "Five men in each, if those are the regular Connie kind." Rip made a quick decision. With only one launcher they couldn't guard the whole asteroid.
Or, if they had noticed it, the astronomers probably decided it was just a very tiny sunspot. The Planeteers worked with increased speed. Kemp welded the final plug into place, then hurried to the crater from which they would set off the charge. Dominico and Dowst connected wires from the rocket head to a reel of wire and rolled it toward the crater.
As he did so, Sergeant-major Koa let out a whistle of surprise. "Lieutenant, look at this!" Corporal Santos exclaimed, "Well stonker me for a stupid space squid! Do they expect us to find any people on this asteroid?" The object was a portable rocket launcher designed to fire light attack rockets. It was a standard item of fighting equipment for Planeteers.
Equipment sealed in the stern, next to the rocket tube, supplied light, heat, and air. It was a simple but necessary arrangement. Without it, the Planeteers could not have eaten. There was no air lock for the compartment.
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