osition and see the operations from the start.

We had one of the observation flitters. I took it about twenty
thousand miles out from the area of operations and parked with the
forward port facing the area. I said:

"We'll watch from here, Mr. Goil. You can see the debris floating down
there." I pointed, and Goil looked at the little pin points of light
reflecting from a great volume of dust, nebula-like in its dim
luminosity. "When the crew starts actual operation, we will turn on
the magnification screens and get some close-up views of the process."

"Please explain this to me," said Goil. "I've never seen an asteroid's
operation before."

"Of course, Mr. Goil. I didn't know. This asteroid patch, or vein, as
we like to call it, has a better than average content of metal ores
and compounds. As you can see, we have swept the loose ends, so to
speak, together. And there you see the result. In the center of that
nebulous sort of mass is a large asteroid. There is at least one in
almost every patch. We use that as the core, and by planting a large
gravity generator on it and feeding it a great deal of power, it and
the asteroid attracts most of the nearby debris. The gravity generator
has been souped up tremendously. It burns out rather quickly, but it
operates long enough for our purposes. There is a respectable layer of
assorted sizes of asteroids hugging the core. And there are several
miles of dust surrounding everything. After the gravity generator has
burned out, the big attraction dies out, of course. But the
proximity of the debris is still enough to hold them together for some
time."

[Illustration]

"What is that stray body off to one side?"

"That is the trigger asteroid," I answered.

A couple of minutes before triggering time, I reached over and punched
the channel button on operations frequency. Immediately the usual
operations chatter came rushing out at us from the speaker. Suddenly a
voice blasted out saying, "Ready, Sam? Clear, everybody! Eyes off! Ten
to go!" A countdown was started.

I had switched on four screens, each a different magnification. I
pointed to a spheroid on one of the screens and said, "There's the
trigger body. It's equipped with a sub-space energizer big enough to
get it into sub-space and return it to normal. Then there is a small
propulsor unit with just enough energy to send it to the center of
that mess. Then it returns to normal space smack dab in the center of
the co