t each flitterboat wouldn't do. She could talk her way into the
boat and convince the guard that he really shouldn't tell anyone that
she had gone. By the time he realized he'd been conned, she'd be
thousands of miles away.

And since a boat guard would have to assume that any approaching
person _might_ be the boat's legitimate owner, he'd have to talk to
whomever it was that approached. _Kaput._

But a perimeter guard would be able to call out an alarm if anyone
came from the outside without having to talk to them.

And the guards watching the air locks undoubtedly had instructions to
watch for any female that even vaguely matched Jack's description. A
vac suit fits too tightly to let anyone wear more than a facial
disguise, and Brock probably--no, _definitely_--had his tried-and-true
men on duty there. The men who had already shown that they were fairly
resistant to Jack Ravenhurst's peculiar charm. There probably weren't
many with such resistance, and the number would become less as she
grew older.

That still left me with my own problem. I had already lost too much
time, and I had to go a long way. Ceres is irregular in shape, but
it's roughly four hundred and eighty miles in diameter and a little
over fifteen hundred miles in circumference.

Viking Test Field Four, where McGuire 7 was pointing his nose at the
sky, was about twenty-five miles away, as the crow flies. But of
course I couldn't go by crow.

By using a low, fairly flat, jackrabbit jump, a man in good condition
can make a twelve hundred foot leap on the surface of Ceres, and each
jump takes him about thirty seconds. At that rate, you can cover
twenty-five miles in less than an hour. That's what I'd intended on
doing, but I couldn't do it with all this radar around the field. I
wouldn't be stopped, of course, but I'd sure tip my hand to Colonel
Brock--the last thing I wanted to do.

But there was no help for it. I'd have to go back down and use the
corridors, which meant that I'd arrive late--_after_ Jack Ravenhurst
got there, instead of _before_.

There was no time to waste, so I got below as fast as possible,
repacked my vac suit, and began firing myself through the corridors as
fast as possible. It was illegal, of course; a collision at
twenty-five miles an hour can kill quickly if the other guy is coming
at you at the same velocity. There were times when I didn't dare break
the law, because some guard was around, and, even if he didn't catch