us Long John, he
started down the corridors.

Now that the first stage of burrowing within the asteroid had been
completed, most passages went through its body, rather than being
plastic tubes snaking across the surface. Nothing had been done thus
far about facing them. They were merely shafts, two meters square,
lined with doorways, ventilator grilles, and fluoropanels. They had no
thermocoils. Once the nickel-iron mass had been sufficiently warmed
up, the waste heat of man and his industry kept it that way. The dark,
chipped-out tunnels throbbed with machine noises. Here and there a
girlie picture or a sentimental landscape from Earth was posted. Men
moved busily along them, bearing tools, instruments, supplies. They
were from numerous countries, those men, though mostly North
Americans, but they had acquired a likeness, a rangy leathery look and
a free-swinging stride, that went beyond their colorful coveralls.

"Hi, Mike.... How's she spinning?... Hey, Mike, you heard the latest
story about the Martian and the bishop?... Can you spare me a minute?
We got troubles in the separator manifolds.... What's the hurry, Mike,
your batteries overcharged?" Blades waved the hails aside. There was
need for haste. You could move fast indoors, under the low weight
which became lower as you approached the axis of rotation, with no
fear of tumbling off. But it was several kilometers from the gas
receptor end to the people end of the asteroid.

He rattled down a ladder and entered his cramped office out of breath.
Avis Page looked up from her desk and wrinkled her freckled snub nose
at him. "You ought to take a shower, but there isn't time," she said.
"Here, use my antistinker." She threw him a spray cartridge with a
deft motion. "I got your suit and beardex out of your cabin."

"Have I no privacy?" he grumbled, but grinned in her direction. She
wasn't much to look at--not ugly, just small, brunette, and
unspectacular--but she was a supernova of an assistant. Make somebody
a good wife some day. He wondered why she hadn't taken advantage of
the situation here to snaffle a husband. A dozen women, all but two of
them married, and a hundred men, was a ratio even more lopsided than
the norm in the Belt. Of course with so much work to do, and with
everybody conscious of the need to maintain cordial relations, sex
didn't get much chance to rear its lovely head. Still--

She smiled back with the gentleness that he found disturbing when