"The Connie may be looking us over," Rip added, "but I'll tell you one thing. He knows we've taken the asteroid."
Koa looked wistfully at the atomic bomb which remained. "If we had a way to throw that thing at them...."
"But we haven't. And the thing wouldn't explode, anyway. We don't have the outside casing with an exploder mechanism, so it has to be turned on electrically." Rip could see no way to use the atomic bomb against the Connies. It was too big for use against a landing party. Besides, it would put the Planeteers themselves in danger.
"Ever have trouble with the Connies before?" he asked Koa.
"More'n once, sir. Sometimes it seems like I'll never get a job where I don't have to fight Connies."
Rip was trained in science and Planeteer techniques, and he didn't pretend to know the ins and outs of interplanetary politics. Just the same, he couldn't help wondering about the strange relationship between the Consolidation of People's Governments and the Federation of Free Nations.
Connies and Feds, mostly Planeteers but sometimes spacemen, were constantly skirmishing. They fought over property, over control of ports on distant planets and moons, and over space salvage. Often there was bloodshed. Sometimes there were pitched battles between groups of platoon size.
But at that point the struggle ended. The law of the Federation said that no spaceship could fire on a Connie spaceship or on Connie land bases, except with special permission of the Space Council. The theory was that brief struggles between men, or even between small fighting craft like the snapper-boats, was not war. But firing on a spaceship was considered an act of war, and the first such act could mean the beginning of a war throughout the entire solar system.
It made a sort of sense to Rip when he thought about it. Little fights here and there were better than a full war among the planets.
Koa suddenly gripped his arm. "Sir! Look up!"