he
noticed it. "Shoo," she said. "Your guests will be here any minute.
You're to meet them in Jimmy's office."

* * * * *

Blades ducked into the tiny washroom. He wasn't any 3V star himself,
he decided as he smeared cream over his face: big, homely, red-haired.
_But not something you'd be scared to meet in a dark alley, either,_
he added smugly. In fact, there had been an alley in Aresopolis....
Things were expected to be going so smoothly by the time they
approached conjunction with Mars that he could run over to that sinful
ginful city for a vacation. Long overdue ... whooee! He wiped off his
whiskers, shucked the zipskin, and climbed into the white pants and
high-collared blue tunic that must serve as formal garb.

Emerging, he stopped again at Avis' desk. "Any message from the
_Pallas_?" he asked.

"No," the girl said. "But she ought to be here in another two watches,
right on sked. You worry too much, Mike."

"Somebody has to, and I haven't got Jimmy's Buddhist
ride-with-the-punches attitude."

"You should cultivate it." She grew curious. The brown eyes lingered
on him. "Worry's contagious. You make me fret about you."

"Nothing's going to give me an ulcer but the shortage of booze on this
rock. Uh, if Bill Mbolo should call about those catalysts while I'm
gone, tell him--" He ran off a string of instructions and headed for
the door.

Chung's hangout was halfway around the asteroid, so that one chief or
the other could be a little nearer the scene of any emergency. Not
that they spent much time at their desks. Shorthanded and
undermechanized, they were forever having to help out in the actual
construction. Once in a while Blades found himself harking wistfully
back to his days as an engineer with Solar Metals: good pay,
interesting if hazardous work on flying mountains where men had never
trod before, and no further responsibilities. But most asterites had
the dream of becoming their own bosses.

When he arrived, the _Altair_ officers were already there, a score of
correct young men in white dress uniforms. Short, squat, and placid
looking, Jimmy Chung stood making polite conversation. "Ah, there," he
said, "Lieutenant Ziska and gentlemen, my partner, Michael Blades,
Mike, may I present--"

Blades' attention stopped at Lieutenant Ziska. He heard vaguely that
she was the head quartermaster officer. But mainly she was tall and
blond and blue-eyed, with a bewitching dimple