It wasn't long in coming. "Your orders are the strangest things I've ever
read," O'Brine stated. "Do you know where we're going?"

Rip figured quickly. They had accelerated for six and a half hours. Now,
ten minutes after _Brennschluss_, they were going to start deceleration.
That meant they had really high-vacked it to get somewhere in a hurry. He
calculated swiftly.

"I don't know exactly," he admitted. "But from the ship's actions, I'd
say we were aiming for the far side of the asteroid belt. Anyway, we'll
fall short of Jupiter."

There was a glimmer of respect in O'Brine's glance. "That's right. Know
anything about asteroids, Foster?"

Rip considered. He knew what he had been taught in astronomy and
astrogation. Between Mars and Jupiter lay a broad belt in which the
asteroids swung. They ranged from Ceres, a tiny world only 480 miles in
diameter, down to chunks of rock the size of a house. No accurate count
of asteroids--or minor planets, as they were called--had been made, but
the observatory on Mars had charted the orbits of thousands. A few were
more than a mile in diameter, but most were great boulders of irregular
shape, from a few feet to several hundred feet at their greatest
dimension.

"I know the usual stuff about them," he told O'Brine. "I haven't any
special knowledge."

O'Brine blinked. "Then why did they assign you? What's your specialty?"