"Sure," grumbled Mike, watching the ascending magnet. "Maybe the Federation'll have the Patrol go all out after that pirate, Kadine. He's got the only ship in space that can navigate the Asteroid Belt! Get his secret—and liners can go right through the Belt without bothering about asteroids or fragments!
"If they'd tried that before, Nord, we wouldn't waste our Patrol career with this blasted 'asteroid fishing'."
"The secret's in the steel hull of his ship," Holber agreed, firm jaw tightening. Dhain Kadine, he remembered, had been a brilliant physicist before he turned to space piracy. Now his ship, the only steel-hulled vessel in an age of plastics, operated from a base deep within the Asteroid Belt itself—sailing untouched where other daring craft had been battered to wreckage!
"We can't go in after him," Nord added, "and he picks his own time and place to come out. But—"
The visaphone on the instrument panel before him jangled a sudden warning. His grey eyes widened. A glowing disk indicated general communications wavelength, but the jangling meant a rider that stamped the communication; urgent!
He snapped the instrument on, and tuned in the length. The screen glowed, and blurred, vague images appeared. Broken, unintelligible words poured out.
Mike Doren glared at the instrument savagely, and glanced quickly to the lower view screen. The asteroid fragment was still a few feet below. "Static from the cable," he growled. "Wait! We don't want to lose this thing."
"That's a Patrol Officer on the screen," Holber said doubtfully, and smiled. "But I can't make out enough to tell his rank, so it's not insubordination if we wait."
The current flowing through the cable to the magnet was the same high frequency used in the ship itself—there was no space in a compact Patrol vessel for unnecessary converters. But, inside, the current was screened against interference with visaphone reception; while outside, pulsing through the cable, it set up an interference field.
In a matter of seconds, the magnet and its captive were inside the hull, and the bay doors closed. Mike jabbed off the magnetizing current, and the two heard the heartening thump of the asteroid fragment against the outer hull.