Syrtis Fever," a recruiting physician told
him. "But you know the Belt. That makes a big difference... All
right--you're going..."

Nance Codiss didn't have that experience. Her lab background wasn't
enough. So she was stuck, on Mars.

Nelsen had been pestering her to marry him. Now, in a corner of the
crowded lounge, he tried again.

She shook her head. "You'd still have to leave me, Frank," she told him.
"Because that's the way strong people _have_ to be--when there's
trouble to be met. Let's wait. Let's know a little better where we're
at--please, darling. I'll be all right. Contact me when you can..."

Her tone was low and tender and unsteady. He hugged her close.

Soon, he was aboard a GO-rocket, shooting up to Phobos to join the
assembling rescue team. He wondered if this was the beginning of the
end...

VIII

Frank Nelsen missed the first shambles at Pallastown, of course, since
even at high speed, the rescue unit with which he came did not arrive
until days after the catastrophe.

There had been hardly any warning, since the first attack had sprung
from the sub-levels of the city itself.

A huge tank of liquid oxygen, and another tank of inflammable synthetic
hydrocarbons to be used in the manufacture of plastics, had been
simultaneously ruptured by charges of explosive, together with the
heavy, safety partition between them. The resulting blast and fountain
of fire had jolted even the millions of tons of Pallas' mass several
miles from its usual orbit.

The sack of the town had begun at once, from within, even before chunks
of asteroid material, man-accelerated and--aimed, had begun to splatter
blossoms of incandescence into the confusion of deflating domes and
dying inhabitants. Other vandal bands had soon landed from space.

The first hours of trying to regain any sort of order, during the
assault and after it was finally beaten off, must have been heroic
effort almost beyond conception. Local disaster units, helped by hoppers
and citizens, had done their best. Then many had turned to pursuit and
revenge.

After Nelsen's arrival, his memory of the interval of acute emergency
could have been broken down into a series of pictures, in which he was
often active.

First, the wreckage, which he helped to pick up, like any of the others.
Pallastown had been like froth on a stone, a castle on a floating,
golden crag. It had been a flimsy, hastily-built mushroom city, with a
beautiful, tawdry