e felt as
free and easy as a hobo with cosmic dust in his hair.

Blastoff from Serene's port, even with three heavily loaded trader
rockets, was comparatively easy and inexpensive.

Out in orbit, three reunited Bunch members inflated and rigged their
bubbs. For Nelsen it seemed an old, splendid feeling. They lashed the
supplies from the trader rockets into great bundles that they could tow.

Before the rockets began to descend, the trio of beautiful, fragile
rings, pushed by ions streaming from their centers, started to
accelerate.

V

"It's the life of Reilly, Paul," Ramos was beaming back to Jarviston,
Minnesota, not many hours after Frank Nelsen, Gimp Hines and he started
out from the Moon, with their ultimate destination--after the delivery
of their loads of supplies to the Kuzaks--tentatively marked in their
minds as Pallastown on Pallas, the Golden Asteroid.

Ramos was riding a great bale, drawn by his spinning and still
accelerating ring, to the hub of which it was attached by a thin steel
cable, passed through a well-oiled swivel bolt. One of his booted feet
was hooked under a bale lashing, to keep him from drifting off in the
absence of weight. He held a rifle casually, but at alert, across his
knees. Its needle-like bullets were not intended to kill. They were tiny
rockets that could flame during the last second of a long flight, homing
in on a target by means of a self-contained and marvelously miniaturized
radar guidance system. Their tips were anesthetic.

The parabolic antenna mounted on the elbow of Ramos' Archer, swung a
tiny bit, holding the beam contact with Paul Hendricks automatically,
after it was made. Yet Ramos kept his arm very still, to avoid making
the slender beam swing wide. Meanwhile, he was elaborating on his first
statement:

"... Not like before. No terrestrial ground-to-orbit weight problem to
beat, this trip, Paul. And we've got some of about everything that the
Moon could provide, thanks to Gimp, who paid the bill. Culture steak in
the shadow refrigerators. That's all you need, Out Here, to keep things
frozen--just a shadow... We've got hydroponic vegetables, tinned bread,
chocolate, beer. We've got sun stoves to cook on. We've got numerous
luxury items not meant for the stomach. We're living high for a while,
anyhow. Of course we don't want to use up too much of the fancy stuff.
Tell Otto Kramer about us..."

Frank Nelsen and Gimp Hines, who were riding the rigging