"She's built for speed," Gramps told us. "In the old days there was no such thing as gravity-equalizers anyhow. This soft new generation...."
I winked at Clair and said, "Go on. Go play your fiddle, Gramps, and leave astrogation to the soft new generation."
"It's a banjo," he said. "I mean a gui-tar!"
Through the fore-port there was a haze of milky white which in a few hours would separate out into the thousands of little planetoids, each a tiny mote following its predestined course around the sun. Actually, some weren't so small. There was the big bulk of Ceres, with a diameter close to five-hundred miles, Vesta, and some of the other big babies, but for the most part the asteroids were tiny cosmic specks, less than a mile across.
"Okay," Clair said, "which one?"
That was a good question. You had to consider several things. First, some ships sped through space faster than our Karden, and they'd claim the really first-rate asteroids before we even reached the Belt. Of the second-raters, you had to consider what sort of mineral deposits they had, which would be the simplest to mine, and so forth.
"How's about 4270?" I said.
She checked the charts. "Ummm-m. Diameter, half a mile. Eccentricity of orbit, .17. Tilted to the ecliptic, .08. Two deserted mining domes, excellent condition. High-grade copper ore, no power tools needed. Sounds swell, Jerry."
Gramps stopped tuning his guitar. "Copper? Did I hear you say copper?" He snorted. "In my day men went prospecting for diamonds and other precious stones. Or for gold or pitchblend...."
"Ever find any?" I wanted to know.