Garth grimaced, remembering the earliest days of these Stations. The few prisoners out here then had at first been sullen, stubborn, unresponding to the occasional messages of salvage work flashed out to them. But there had been no attempt to force the men to do the work. No pretense of discipline. Supply ships had stopped every three months, briefly as possible, then went on their way. Less than a year of this, and the sheer stark ennui of the black outer hell had proved to be the real disciplinary master. There were only three Stations then, a handful of men on each, who soon vied with each other for the too infrequent salvage jobs. Garth had to hand it to the psychological genius who devised the plan!
Prokle brought him abruptly out of his reminiscences.
"What do you say, Hype? Sight for the Lanisar group?"
Garth examined the chart which showed the position and orbit of every known asteroid swarm. He consulted their present position and made swift calculation.
"Sure. Lanisar's coming on fast, but we won't cross it for an hour yet. The baby we want is about two hours behind it, according to headquarters, but on the inside. Remember, that's plenty dangerous territory in the middle of the belt for a flea-cruiser like this, without a repulsor. How does that suit you?"
Prokle revealed how it suited him when he said: "It's an uncharted swarm, ain't it?"
They skirted the edge of the belt, easily avoiding the occasional smaller swarms. The charted Lanisar group, easily recognizable and already thoroughly explored, intersected them in less than an hour.
Prokle turned their tiny craft deeper into the belt. Here there were long stretches of comparative emptiness, but these became ever more infrequent. Dark masses began looming out of nowhere, but luckily they were tinged faintly from the light of the distant sun. Many of these veered crazily, or hurtled across their bow, seeming much closer than they actually were. Some of the larger pieces eventually formed miniature solar systems in themselves.
After more than an hour of this both men were nerve-wracked and exhausted. But they dared not relax for a moment. This was deeper, presumably, into the belt than any men had ever gone with a cruiser as tiny as theirs. They now seemed to be in a veritable sea of leprous light reflecting from the pock-marked masses speeding around them.