n't likely to go beyond
the schoolboy stage. Not that he wouldn't keep trying.

As they glided through the refining and synthesizing section, which
filled the broad half of the asteroid, the noise of pumps and
regulators rose until it throbbed in their bones. Ellen gestured at
one of the pipes which crossed the corridor overhead. "Do you really
handle that big a volume at a time?" she asked above the racket.

"No," he said. "Didn't I explain before? The pipe's thick because it's
so heavily armored."

"I'm glad you don't use that dreadful word 'cladded.' But why the
armor? High pressure?"

"Partly. Also, there's an inertrans lining. Jupiter gas is hellishly
reactive at room temperature. The metallic complexes especially; but
think what a witch's brew the stuff is in every respect. Once it's
been refined, of course, we have less trouble. That particular pipe is
carrying it raw."

They left the noise behind and passed on to the approach control dome
at the receptor end. The two men on duty glanced up and immediately
went back to their instruments. Radio voices were staccato in the air.
Blades led Ellen to an observation port.

She drew a sharp breath. Outside, the broken ground fell away to space
and the stars. The ovoid that was the ship hung against them, lit by
the hidden sun, a giant even at her distance but dwarfed by the
balloon she towed. As that bubble tried ponderously to rotate, rainbow
gleams ran across it, hiding and then revealing the constellations.
Here, on the asteroid's axis, there was no weight, and one moved with
underwater smoothness, as if disembodied. "Oh, a fairy tale," Ellen
sighed.

Four sparks flashed out of the boat blisters along the ship's hull.
"Scoopships," Blades told her. "They haul the cargo in, being so much
more maneuverable. Actually, though, the mother vessel is going to
park her load in orbit, while those boys bring in another one ... see,
there it comes into sight. We still haven't got the capacity to keep
up with our deliveries."

"How many are there? Scoopships, that is."

"Twenty, but you don't need more than four for this job. They've got
terrific power. Have to, if they're to dive from orbit down into the
Jovian atmosphere, ram themselves full of gas, and come back. There
they go."

The _Pallas Castle_ was wrestling the great sphere she had hauled from
Jupiter into a stable path computed by Central Control. Meanwhile the
scoopships, small only by comparison with he