"Could be. Some specimens have been picked up that were definitely sedimentary rock. That was the first proof that the asteroids used to be a planet, you know."
"I thought that Goodman's integrations were the first proof?"
"Nope, you're switched around. Goodman wasn't 'able to run his checks until the big ballistic computer at Terra Station was built."
"I knew that-I just had it backwards, I guess." The theory that the asteroids had once been a planet, between Mars and Jupiter, was denied for many years because their orbits showed no interrelation, i.e., if a planet had blown to bits the orbits should intersect at the point of the explosion. Professor Goodman, using the giant, strain-free computer, had shown that the lack of relationship was caused by the perturbations through the ages of the other planets acting on the asteroids.
He had assigned a date to the disaster, nearly half a billion years ago, and had calculated as well that most of the ruined planet had escaped from the System entirely. The debris around them represented about one per cent of the lost planet.
Lieutenant Thurlow measured the angular width of the fragment, noted its distance by radar, and recorded the result as gross size. The rock, large as it was, was too small to merit investigation of its orbit; it was simply included in the space-drift survey. Smaller objects were merely listed while collisions with minute particles were counted by an electronic circuit hooked to the hull of the jeep.
"The thing that bothers me," went on Thurlow, "about getting out is this- Matt, have you noticed the difference between people in the Patrol and people not in the Patrol?"
"Haven't I, though!"
"What is the difference?"
"The difference? Uh, why, we're spacemen and they're not. I guess it's a matter of how big your world is."