ht had just struck him. The
_Scorpius_ had trouble finding the asteroid because it was just one of
many sailing along through the belt. But now the asteroid was the only
one traveling _across_ the belt. It would make an outstanding blip on any
radarscope. It wasn't possible that the Connie cruiser had missed the
blip and its significance.

"The Connie may be looking us over," Rip added, "but I'll tell you one
thing. He knows we've taken the asteroid."

Koa looked wistfully at the atomic bomb which remained. "If we had a way
to throw that thing at them...."

"But we haven't. And the thing wouldn't explode, anyway. We don't have
the outside casing with an exploder mechanism, so it has to be turned on
electrically." Rip could see no way to use the atomic bomb against the
Connies. It was too big for use against a landing party. Besides, it
would put the Planeteers themselves in danger.

"Ever have trouble with the Connies before?" he asked Koa.

"More'n once, sir. Sometimes it seems like I'll never get a job where
I don't have to fight Connies."

Rip was trained in science and Planeteer techniques, and he didn't
pretend to know the ins and outs of interplanetary politics. Just the
same, he couldn't help wondering about the strange relationship between
the Consolidation of People's Governments and the Federation of Free
Nations.

Connies and Feds, mostly Planeteers but sometimes spacemen, were
constantly skirmishing. They fought over property, over control of
ports on distant planets and moons, and over space salvage. Often there
was bloodshed. Sometimes there were pitched battles between groups of
platoon size.

But at that point the struggle ended. The law of the Federation said that
no spaceship could fire on a Connie spaceship or on Connie land bases,
except with special permission of the Space Council. The theory was that
brief struggles between men, or even between small fighting craft like
the snapper-boats, was not war. But firing on a spaceship was considered
an act of war, and the first such act could mean the beginning of a war
throughout the entire solar system.

It made a sort of sense to Rip when he thought about it. Little fights
here and there were better than a full war among the planets.

Koa suddenly gripped his arm. "Sir! Look up!"

The short hairs on the back of Rip's neck prickled. Far above, blackness
in the shape of a spaceship blotted out stars. The Connie had arrived!

Rip ordered urg