"Wait a minute," Bob Parker begged nervously. "I want to make some conversation, lady. I'm sure you don't understand the conditions--" The girl turned and drew a gun from a holster. It was a spasticizer, and it was three times as big as her gloved hand. "I understand conditions better than you do," she said. "You want to move this asteroid from its orbit and haul it back to Earth. Unfortunately, this is my home, by common law. Come back in a month. I don't expect to be here then." "A month!" Parker burst the word out. He started to sweat, then his face became grim. He took two slow steps toward the girl. She blinked and lost her composure and unconsciously backed up two steps. About twenty steps away was her small dumbbell-shaped ship, so shiny and unscarred that it reflected starlight in highlights from its curved surface. A rich girl's ship, Bob Parker thought angrily. A month would be too late! He said grimly, "Don't worry. I don't intend to pull any rough stuff. I just want you to listen to reason. You've taken a whim to stay on an asteroid that doesn't mean anything to you one way or another. But to us--to me and Queazy here--it means our business. We got an order for this asteroid. Some screwball millionaire wants it for a backyard wedding see? We get five hundred and fifty thousand dollars for it! If we don't take this asteroid to Earth before June 2, we go back to Satterfield City and work the rest of our lives in the glass factories. Don't we, Queazy?" Queazy said simply, "That's right, miss. We're in a spot. I assure you we didn't expect to find someone living here." The girl holstered her spasticizer, but her completely inhospitable expression did not change. She put her hands on the bulging hips of her space-suit. "Okay," she said. "Now I understand the conditions. Now we both understand each other. G'bye again. I'm staying here and--" she smiled sweetly "--it may interest you to know that if I let you have the asteroid you'll save your business, but I'll meet a fate worse than death! So that's that." Bob recognized finality when he saw it. "Come on, Queazy," he said fuming. "Let this brat have her way. But if I ever run across her without a space-suit on I'm going to give her the licking of her life, right where it'll do the most good!" He turned angrily, but Queazy grabbed his arm, his mouth falling open. He pointed off into space, beyond the girl. "What's that?" he whispered. "What's wha--_Oh!_" Bob Parker's stomach caved in. A few hundred feet away, floating gently toward the asteroid, came another ship--a ship a trifle bigger than their own. The girl turned, too. They heard her gasp. In another second, Bob was standing next to her. He turned the audio-switch to his headset off, and spoke to the girl by putting his helmet against hers.