Against that possibility, they wore space suits, and, under his transparent helmet, Nord's grey eyes swept the side view screens for any fragments they'd missed on the way down. Mike was at the drive controls, his gaze on the lower screen, watching their prey, an ugly, angular mass, hardly larger than a man's head, two hundred feet below.
"O.K.," Mike said, his big mouth curving in a wry smile. "Let go with the hook."
Nord pressed two control studs before him. Their ship was standard except for the little bay that now opened aft, the heavy electro-magnet that shot downward under tiny automatic jets, and the power-driven winch that paid out flexible, heavily insulated cable to hold the magnet captive and carry the current.
"Sunspot!" Nord said, as the magnet struck the little asteroid fragment squarely and clung.
"There's always enough para-magnetic stuff in them," his partner commented bitterly. "That's what makes this blasted assignment possible!" His blue eyes brightened. "That's one more toward a full cargo—a trip back to Mars Base, and some planet leave. Hope I don't dream about these dirty rocks!" The brightness hardened in his eyes, as they dropped to the Asteroid Belt below.
"I'll start hunting another one," Nord said wearily. "You haul this one in!" He took Mike's chair before the drive controls, and his long fingers made deft, swift adjustments. Their little ship nosed upward toward a safer cruising area.
The other jabbed the winch control studs. The winch began to turn again, drawing the cable taut. Their ship lurched momentarily, as the cable tugged against the orbital inertia of the little mass at the end of the magnet; but winch and ship were built for the struggle, and the asteroid fragment swung from its course, starting upward on the magnet.
Now Mike stores it away in the outer hull with the rest, Nord thought glumly, and the whole weary routine starts over again. Three days it took to find this last one—three days of monotonous search just above the Belt!
He forced his slim, wiry body erect, and straightened his shoulders. "They're getting scarcer, Mike. Before long, the System Federation can lower the safe traffic lanes down to here—that's the closest to the Belt that'll ever be practical. Maybe the next batch of Patrol College grads will get a different initiation."