of their
respective bubbs, which were also hauling big bales of supplies, were
part of the trans-spatial conversation, too. There was enough leakage
from Ramos' tightened beam, here at its source, for them to hear what he
said.

But when, after a moment, Paul Hendricks answered from the distance,
"Easy with the talk, fella--overinterested people might be listening,"
they suddenly forgot their own enthusiasms. They realized. Their hides
tingled unpleasantly.

Ramos' dark face hardened. Still he spoke depreciatingly. "Shucks, Paul,
this is a well-focused beam. Besides it's pointing Earthward and
sunward; not toward the Belt, where most of the real mean folks are..."
But he sounded defensive, and very soon he said, "'Bye for now, Paul."

A little later, Frank Nelsen contacted Art Kuzak, out in the Asteroid
Belt, across a much greater stretch of space. He thought he was cautious
when he said, "We're riding a bit heavy--for you guys..." But after the
twenty minute interval it took to get an answer back over ten
light-minutes of distance traversed twice--186,000 miles for every
second, spanned by slender threads of radio energy which were of
low-power but of low-loss low-dispersal, too, explaining their
tremendous range--Art Kuzak's warning was carefully cryptic, yet plain
to Nelsen and his companions.

"Thanks for all the favors," he growled dryly. "Now keep still, and be
_real_ thoughtful, Frankie Boy. That also goes for you other two naive
boneheads..."

Open space, like open, scarcely touched country, had produced its
outlaws. But the distances were far greater. The pressures of need were
infinitely harsher.

"Yeah, there's a leader named Fessler," Gimp rasped, with his phone
turned low so that only his companions could hear him. "But there are
other names... Art's right. We'd better keep our eyes open and our
mouths shut."

Asteroid miners who had had poor luck, or who had been forced to kill to
win even the breath of life; colonists who had left Mars after terrible
misfortunes, there; adventurers soured and maddened by months in a
vacuum armor, smelling the stench of their own unwashed bodies; men
flush with gains, and seeking merely to relieve the tensions of their
restrained, artificial existences in a wild spree; refugees from rigid
Tovie conformism--all these composed the membership of the wandering,
robbing, hijacking bands, which, though not numerous, were significant.
Once, most of these men had been re