But, as an operations base, Ceres is second to none. Its surface gravity averages .0294 Standard Gee, as compared with Earth's .981, and that's enough to give a slight feeling of weight without unduly hampering the body with too much load. I weigh just under six pounds on Ceres, and after I've been there a while, going back to Earth is a strain that takes a week to get used to. Kids that are brought up in the Belt are forced to exercise in a room with a one-gee spin on it at least an hour a day. They don't like it at first, but it keeps them from growing up with the strength of mice. And an adult with any sense takes a spin now and then, too. Traveling in a flitterboat will give you a one-gee pull, all right, but you don't get much exercise. I parked my flitterboat in the space that had been assigned to me by Landing Control, and went over to the nearest air-lock dome. After I'd cycled through and had shucked my vac suit, I went into the inner room to find Colonel Brock waiting for me. "Have a good trip, Oak?" he asked, trying to put a smile on his scarred, battered face. "I got here alive, if that makes it a good flitterboat trip," I said, shaking his extended hand. "That's the definition of a good trip," he told me. "Then the question was superfluous. Seriously, what I need is a bath and some sleep." "You'll get that, but first let's go somewhere where we can talk. Want a drink?" "I could use one, I guess. Your treat?" "My treat," he said. "Come on." I followed him out and down a ladder to a corridor that led north. By definition, any asteroid spins toward the east, and all directions follow from that, regardless of which way the axis may point. Colonel Harrington Brock was dressed in the black-and-gold "union suit" that was the uniform of Ravenhurst's Security Guard. My own was a tasteful green, but some of the other people in the public corridor seemed to go for more flashiness; besides silver and gold, there were shocking pinks and violent mauves, with stripes and blazes of other colors. A crowd wearing skin-tight cover-alls might shock the gentle people of Midwich-on-the-Moor, England, but they are normal dress in the Belt. You can't climb into a vac suit with bulky clothing on, and, if you did, you'd hate yourself within an hour, with a curse for every wrinkle that chafed your skin. And, in the Belt, you never know when you might have to get into a vac suit fast. In a "safe" area like the tunnels inside Ceres, there isn't much chance of losing air, but there are places where no one but a fool would ever be more than ten seconds away from his vac suit.