He sat back and watched their reactions. At first they were stunned. Trudeau, the Frenchman, muttered to himself in French. Dominico, the Italian, held up his hands and exclaimed, "Santa Maria!" Kemp, one of the American privates, asked, "How do we do it, sir?" Rip grinned. "That's a good question. I don't know." That stopped them. They stared at him. He added quickly, "Supplies came aboard at Marsport. We'll get the clue when we open them. Headquarters must have known the method when they assigned us and ordered the equipment they thought we'd need." Koa stood up. He was the only one who could have moved upright against the terrific deceleration. He walked to a rack at one side of the squad room and took down a copy of _The Space Navigator_. Then, resuming his seat, he looked questioningly at Rip. "Anything else, sir? I thought I'd read what there is about asteroids." "Go ahead," Rip agreed. He sat back as Koa began to recite what data there was, but he didn't listen. His mind was going ten astro-units a second. He thought he knew why he had been chosen for the job. Word of the priceless asteroid must have reached headquarters only a short time before he was scheduled to leave the space platform. He could imagine the speed with which the specialists at Terra base had acted. They had sent orders instantly to the fastest cruiser in the area, the _Scorpius_, to stand by for further instructions. Then their personnel machines must have whirred rapidly, electronic brains searching for the nearest available Planeteer officer with an astrophysics specialty and astrogation training. He could imagine the reaction when the machine turned up the name of a brand-new lieutenant. But the choice was logical enough. He knew that most, if not all, of the Planeteer astrophysicists were in either high or low space on special work. Chances were there was no astrophysicist nearer than Ganymede. So the choice had fallen to him. He had a mental image of the Terra base scientists feeding data into the electronic brain, taking the results, and writing fast orders for the men and supplies needed. Work at the Planeteer base had probably been finished within an hour of the time word was received. When they opened the cases brought aboard by the Martians, he would see that the method of blasting the asteroid into a course for Earth was all figured out for him. Rip was anxious to get at those cases. Not until he saw the method of operation could he begin to figure his course. But there was no possibility of getting at the stuff until _Brennschluss_. He put the problem out of his mind and concentrated on what his men were saying. "... and he slugged into that asteroid going close to seven AU's," Santos was saying. The corporal shrugged expressively. Rip recognized the story. It was about a supply ship, a chemical drive rocket job, that had blasted into an asteroid a few years before.