The Planeteers were all waiting for instructions now. In a few moments the equipment was ready, fuel and oxygen bottles attached.
"Who's the champion torchman?" Rip asked.
Koa replied, "Kemp is, sir."
Kemp, one of the two American privates, took the torch and waited for orders. "We need a hole six feet across and twenty feet deep," Rip told him. "Go to it."
"How about direction, sir?" Kemp asked.
"Straight down. We'll take a bearing on an overhead star when you're in a few feet."
Dowst inscribed a circle around the X he had made and stood back. Kemp pushed the striker button and the torch flared. "Watch your eyes," he warned. The Planeteers reached for belt controls and turned the rheostats that darkened the clear bubbles electronically. Kemp adjusted his flame until it was blue-white, a knife of fire brighter by far than the light of the sun at this distance.
Koa stepped behind Kemp and leaned against his back, because the flame of the torch was like an exhaust, driving Kemp backward. Kemp bent down, and the torch sliced into the metal of the asteroid like a hot knife into ice. The metal splintered a little as the heat raised it instantly from almost absolute zero to many thousands of degrees.
When the circle was completed, Kemp adjusted his torch again, and the flame lengthened. He moved inside the circle and cut at an angle toward the perimeter. His control was quick and certain. In a moment he stood aside, and Koa lifted out a perfect ring of thorium. It varied from a knife edge on the inner side to eighteen inches on the outer side.
In the middle of the circle there was now a cone of metal. Kemp cut around it, the torch angling toward the center. A piece shaped like two cones set base to base came free. Since the metal cooled in the bitter chill of space almost as fast as Kemp could cut it, there was no heat to worry about.