The fleet had scattered back to the hundreds of hidden berths among the farflung Asteroids. I came awake in a pressurized burrow dug out in the particular rock Thorsten had chosen for himself and his crew. I'd been dropped in a corner and searched down to my shorts. There wasn't anything on me that I could use for a weapon. Except--no, I caught myself before there was even a quiver in my left arm. Now wasn't the time to press against my ribs, to try to feel the almost imperceptible bulge of the singleshot capsule between my ribs. I groaned and let my eyes flicker open. "How's it, Ash?" I looked up. Thorsten was standing a few feet away from me, looking down from under his spreading black eyebrows. I put my hand up to my head. "Crummy. She hits hard." Harry chuckled. He wasn't a specially big man, but he was large enough. He had deep black eyes under his brows, an aristocratic nose that had been broken, a slightly off-center mouth whose lower lip was tighter on one side than the other, and a firm jaw. His hair was black--almost as black as mine, and as short. He hadn't changed much. His voice started in the pit of his stomach, and worked its way up. When he chuckled, the sound was almost operatic, deeper than I remembered it. "Why shouldn't I kill you, Holcomb?" he said. I climbed to my feet, and looked into those probing eyes. "Go ahead. Give me half a chance, and I'll kill you." He laughed. "The old school tie," he said. His voice dropped an octave. "Relax, Holcomb. You're alive, for the time being. Come on, let's get some food." He reached out and slapped me on the back. Thorsten's mess hall was another pocket in the Asteroid. It was connected to the burrow I'd been in by a tunnel in the rock, and as we walked down it, I'd had a chance to get quick looks into branching corridors and other burrows that were machine shops, arsenals, ration dumps, and living quarters. Just before we turned into the mess hall, I caught a glimpse of an airlock hatch at the end of the tunnel. That was where Thorsten's ship had to be--and my own, too, unless I missed my guess. As long as I had a functioning mind, I was going to use it. Automatically, a map of as much of the layout as I'd seen was filed away in my brain. * * * * * The mess hall must have been the largest single unit in the entire chain of burrows that honeycombed the Asteroid. It was lit by clamp-on units, like the rest of the place, but the lamps were spread a little farther apart, so it was darker. Even so, I could see that most of the space was filled with men sitting at the long mess tables. "Quite a setup, isn't it, Holcomb?" Thorsten asked, leading me toward a table that was slightly set apart from the others. "Looks like an improved standard TSN base," I said. Thorsten chuckled again. He must have liked the sound of it. "In many ways, that's more or less what it is," he said, sounding pleased. We got to the table, and stopped.