"Nothing useful. A bunch of equipment came aboard, but it was in plain crates. I couldn't tell what it was." Acceleration pressed them against the chairs. Rip sighed, picked up an audio-circuit set, and put it over his ears. Might as well listen to what the circuit had to offer. There was nothing else to do. Music was playing, and it was the kind he liked. He settled back to relax and listen. _Brennschluss_ came some time later. It woke Rip up from a sound sleep. He blinked, glancing at his chronometer. Great Cosmos! With that length of acceleration they must be high-vacking for Jupiter! He waited until the ship went into the gravity spin, then got out of his chair and stretched. He was hungry. Koa was still sleeping. He decided not to wake him. The sergeant major would see that the men ate when they wanted to. In the messroom only one table was occupied--by Commander O'Brine. Rip gave him a civil hello and started to sit alone at another table. To his surprise, O'Brine beckoned to him. "Sit down," the spaceman invited gruffly. Rip did and wondered what was coming next. "We'll start to decelerate in about ten minutes," O'Brine said. "Eat while you can." He signaled, and a spaceman brought Rip the day's ration in an individual plastic carton with thermo-lining. The Planeteer opened it and found a block of mixed vegetables, a slab of space meat, and two units of biscuit. He wrinkled his nose. Space meat he didn't mind. It was chewy but tasty. The mixed vegetable ration was chosen for its food value and not for taste. A good mouthful of Earth grass would be a lot more palatable. He sliced off pieces of the warm stuff and chewed thoughtfully, watching O'Brine's face for a clue as to why the commander had invited him to sit down. It wasn't long in coming. "Your orders are the strangest things I've ever read," O'Brine stated. "Do you know where we're going?" Rip figured quickly. They had accelerated for six and a half hours. Now, ten minutes after _Brennschluss_, they were going to start deceleration. That meant they had really high-vacked it to get somewhere in a hurry. He calculated swiftly. "I don't know exactly," he admitted. "But from the ship's actions, I'd say we were aiming for the far side of the asteroid belt. Anyway, we'll fall short of Jupiter." There was a glimmer of respect in O'Brine's glance. "That's right. Know anything about asteroids, Foster?" Rip considered. He knew what he had been taught in astronomy and astrogation. Between Mars and Jupiter lay a broad belt in which the asteroids swung. They ranged from Ceres, a tiny world only 480 miles in diameter, down to chunks of rock the size of a house. No accurate count of asteroids--or minor planets, as they were called--had been made, but the observatory on Mars had charted the orbits of thousands. A few were more than a mile in diameter, but most were great boulders of irregular shape, from a few feet to several hundred feet at their greatest dimension.