f they knew they'd eventually have to take second
best.

It took the Yale Space Foundation a long time to pick the right man.

No, I'm not the guy who tested the McGuire.

I'm the guy who stole it.

* * * * *

Shalimar Ravenhurst is not the kind of bloke that very many people can
bring themselves to like, and, in this respect, I'm like a great many
people, if not more so. In the first place, a man has no right to go
around toting a name like "Shalimar"; it makes names like "Beverly"
and "Leslie" and "Evelyn" sound almost hairy chested. You want a dozen
other reasons, you'll get them.

Shalimar Ravenhurst owned a little planetoid out in the Belt, a hunk
of nickel-iron about the size of a smallish mountain with a gee-pull
measurable in fractions of a centimeter per second squared. If you're
susceptible to spacesickness, that kind of gravity is about as much
help as aspirin would have been to Marie Antoinette. You get the
feeling of a floor beneath you, but there's a distinct impression that
it won't be there for long. It keeps trying to drop out from under
you.

I dropped my flitterboat on the landing field and looked around
without any hope of seeing anything. I didn't. The field was about the
size of a football field, a bright, shiny expanse of rough-polished
metal, carved and smoothed flat from the nickel-iron of the planetoid
itself. It not only served as a landing field, but as a reflector
beacon, a mirror that flashed out the sun's reflection as the
planetoid turned slowly on its axis. I'd homed in on that beacon, and
now I was sitting on it.

There wasn't a soul in sight. Off to one end of the rectangular field
was a single dome, a hemisphere about twenty feet in diameter and half
as high. Nothing else.

I sighed and flipped on the magnetic anchor, which grabbed hold of the
metal beneath me and held the flitterboat tightly to the surface. Then
I cut the drive, plugged in the telephone, and punched for "Local."

The automatic finder searched around for the Ravenhurst tickler
signal, found it, and sent out a beep along the same channel.

I waited while the thing beeped twice. There was a click, and a voice
said: "Raven's Rest. Yes?" It wasn't Ravenhurst.

I said: "This is Daniel Oak. I want to talk to Mr. Ravenhurst."

"Mr. Oak? But you weren't expected until tomorrow."

"Fine. I'm early. Let me talk to Ravenhurst."

"But Mr. Ravenhurst wasn't expecting you to--"

I