"Hey, Mick! Are you still on the bridge?"
Alf Rankin was calling from the charting room.
"Yes, Alf. What's the trouble." Mick Conner was sealing his space suit.
"This isn't an ordinary asteroid, Mick. It isn't barren. There's stuff growing on it."
"That's nothing to get goggle-eyed about, Alf. There's moss on Eros which is smaller than this. And there are 142 different kinds of plants and one intermediate—animal-vegetable—organism on Juno."
"Hm-m!"
Of course this was a surprise to Alf, who had never made a landing on the asteroids before. Science had rather neglected the asteroids during the rapid development of interplanetary flight, yet there were many interesting sights to be seen on the 4,000 minor planets that floated between Jupiter and Mars.
"Get on your space togs and oxygen helmet and we'll fix that broken jet," Mick said. "We'll be ready to go in three hours."
Mick sealed his helmet and stepped into the automatic lock leading from the control bridge to the roof of the streamlined rocket.
He held tightly to the rail of the observation platform, knowing that the gravity of this nameless planet was next to zero. A man might jump one thousand feet into the sky without exertion and, if he wasn't careful, he might fling himself so high that he would be unable to land—he might become a satellite of this grain of cosmic dust.