Lines were taken from a locker and secured to the equipment. As the Planeteers worked, the ship’s spinning slowed and stopped. They were in no-weight. Rip grabbed for a hand cord that hung from the wall and hauled himself out into the engine control room. The deputy commander was at his post, waiting tensely for orders. Rip thrust against a bulkhead with one foot and floated to his side. "I need two landing boats, sir," he requested. "One stays on the asteroid with us." "Take numbers five and six. I’ll assign a pilot to bring number five back to the ship after you’ve landed." "Thank you." Rip would have been surprised at the deputy’s quick assent if Commander O’Brine hadn’t shown him that the spacemen were ready to do anything possible to aid the Planeteers. He went back to the supply room and told Koa which boats were to be used, instructed him to get the supplies aboard, then made his way to Commander O’Brine’s office. O’Brine was not in. Rip searched and found him in the astro-plot room, watching a ’scope. Green streaks called "blips" marked the panel, each one indicating an asteroid. "All too small," O’Brine said. "We’ve only seen two large ones, and they were too large." "Space is certainly full of junk," Rip commented. "At least this corner of it is full." A junior space officer overheard him. "This is nothing. We’re on the edge of the asteroid belt. Closer to the middle, there’s so much stuff a ship has to crawl through it." Rip wandered over to the main control desk. A senior space officer was seated before a simple panel on which there were only a dozen small levers, a visiphone, and a radar screen. The screen was circular, with numbers around the rim like those on an earth-clock. In the center of the screen was a tiny circle. The central circle represented the Scorpius. The rest of the screen was the area dead ahead. Rip watched and saw several blips on it that indicated asteroids. They were all small. He watched, interested, as the cruiser overtook them. Once, according to the screen, the cruiser passed under an asteroid with a clearance of only a few hundred feet. "You didn’t miss that one by much," Rip told the space officer. "Don’t have to miss by much," he retorted. "A few feet are as good as a mile in space. Our blast might kick them around a little, and maybe there’s a little mutual mass attraction, but we don’t worry about it." He pointed to a blip that was just swimming into view, a sharp green point against the screen. "We do have to worry about that one." He selected a lever and pulled it toward him.