A new drive to replace the obsolete one? Order it and with a little switching around in the manufacturing plants, diverting it from other uses, it was delivered tomorrow and completely installed the day after that. The command unit the accidentals had labored so long to alter? Every dinky little office had as good and in many cases all that was required was changing the information spools. And thousands of crews were available, already trained, used to working together. It wouldn't be hard to recruit them and add a few officers at the top and a staff of linguists and scientists. Nona had given them the one thing they needed and now mankind was exploding into space. There was no end in sight. The whole neighboring sphere of space that enveloped the solar system was due for immediate exploration. And the accidentals hadn't been forgotten. They were not the objective, wealth was: planets to be claimed and occupied or mined, civilizations to be contacted with whom products and techniques and entire new sciences could be exchanged. If they were lucky enough to get away from the Centauri system at the next star they'd find other ships waiting, doing business with the natives, if there were any; if not, establishing firm little colonies on everything that was capable of supporting human life. They were surrounded, overwhelmed by numbers. It was no wonder the general hadn't been perturbed at the failure of his plan to land unnoticed on the asteroid. He knew what had been slow in occurring to them. For them there was no next star. Docchi gazed in sick defeat at Jeriann. There was no need to talk. There was nothing to say. The asteroid was rolling toward twilight as Anti came in. "What are we doing about those insolent pirates? They have no jurisdiction here. We ought to aim the asteroid at them. We can smash them." She saw their faces and the words stopped. "I was hoping--but I guess we can't hide it among ourselves," she said. "It's no use," said Docchi heavily. "We'll have to go down and take them off the planet." "How will they know? We can't get a beam down with a whole planet in the way," said Anti. "Let's wait till morning so we can tell them to be ready." "I don't know," said Docchi indecisively. "None of us know anything," said Anti fiercely. "Go home and get some sleep. We'll think of something by morning." After they were gone Anti went outside. Looking up she could see the scout, still visible, glistening in the light of Alpha. It was much brighter than the stars that had been watching them. * * * * * Cameron tried to be detached and objective. "Do they know we're here?" "I don't think so. They'd have been upset if they had any idea." "Seems likely," agreed the doctor. "We left as they were approaching. But we took off from the face nearest the planet and they came in from the opposite side. The asteroid acted as a screen."