ranges of almost pure iron ore that helped
give the planet its dull red appearance from outer space. And behind
him, near the horizon, the tiny sun glowed orange out of a blue-black
sky.

Tom fought the wheel as the Sloppy Joe jounced across a dry creek bed,
and swore softly to himself. Why hadn't he kept his head and waited for
the mail ship that had been due at the Lab to give him a lift back? He'd
have been in Sun Lake City an hour ago ... but the urgency of the
message had driven caution from his mind.

A summons from the Mars Coordinator of the U.N. Interplanetary Council
was the same as an order ... but there was more to Tom's haste than
that. There was only one reason that Major Briarton would be calling him
in to Sun Lake City, and that reason meant trouble.

Something was wrong. Something had happened to Dad.

Now Tom peered up at the dark sky, squinting into the sun. Somewhere out
there between Mars and Jupiter was a no-man's-land of danger, a great
circling ring of space dirt and debris, the Asteroid belt. And somewhere
out there, Dad was working.

Tom thought for a moment of the pitiful little mining rig that Roger
Hunter had taken out to the Belt ... the tiny orbit-ship to be used for
headquarters and storage of the ore; the even tinier scout ship, Pete
Racely's old _Scavenger_ that he had sold to Roger Hunter for back taxes
and repairs when he went broke in the Belt looking for his Big Strike.
It wasn't much of a mining rig for anybody to use, and the dangers of a
small mining operation in the Asteroid Belt were frightening. It took
skill to bring a little scout-ship in for a landing on an asteroid rock
hardly bigger than the ship itself; it took even more skill to rig the
controlled-Murexide charges to blast the rock into tiny fragments, and
then run out the shiny magnetic net to catch the explosion debris and
bring it in to the hold of the orbit-ship....

Tom Hunter scowled, trying to shake off the feeling of uneasiness that
was nibbling at his mind. Asteroid mining was dangerous ... but Dad was
no novice. Nobody on Mars knew how to handle a mining rig better than
Roger Hunter did. He knew what he was doing out there, there was no real
danger for him or was there....

Roger Hunter, a good man, a gentle and peaceful man, had finally seen
all he could stomach of Jupiter Equilateral and its company mining
policies six months before. He had told them so in plain, simple
language when he turned in hi