The gray metal world suddenly leaped into sharp focus and seemed to rush toward him. It was an optical illusion. The ability of the eyes to perceive depth sharply—the faculty known as depth perception—didn’t appear to operate normally until the eyes were within a certain distance of an object. He knew he was going to hit hard. The way to keep from being hurt was to turn the vertical energy of his arrival into motion in another direction. As he swept down to the metal surface he started running, his legs pumping wildly in space. He hit with a bone-jarring thud, lost his footing and fell sideways, both hands cradling his helmet. He got to his feet instantly and looked for Santos. A good thing his equipment was shock-mounted, he thought. Otherwise the communicator would be knocked for a line of galaxies. "You all right, sir?" Santos called anxiously. "Yes. Are you?" "I’m fine. I think the others are over there." He pointed. "We’ll find them," Rip said. His hip hurt like fury from smashing against the unyielding metal, and the worst part was that he couldn’t rub it. The blow had been strong enough to hurt through the heavy fabric and air pressure, but his hand wasn’t strong enough to compress the suit. Just the same, he tried. And while he was trying, he found himself in direct sunlight! He had forgotten to run. Standing still on the asteroid meant turning with it, from darkness into sunlight and back again. He yelled at Santos and legged it out of there, moving in long, gliding steps. He regained the shadow and kept going. The first order of business was to stop the rock from turning. Otherwise they couldn’t live on it. Rip knew that they had only one means of stopping the spin. That was to use the tubes of rocket fuel left over from correcting the course. They had three tubes left, but he didn’t know if that was enough to do the job. Moving rapidly, he and Santos caught up to Koa and the Planeteers. The Connie prisoners were pretty well bunched up, gliding along like a herd of fantastic sheep. Their shepherds were Pederson, Nunez, and Dowst. The three Planeteers had a pistol in each hand. The spares were probably those taken from prisoners. The Planeteers were loaded down with equipment. A few Connie prisoners carried equipment, too. Trudeau had the rocket launcher and the remaining rockets. Kemp had his torch and two tanks of oxygen. Bradshaw had tied his safety line to the squat containers of chemical fuel for the torch and was towing them behind like strange balloons. The only trouble with that system, Rip thought, was that Bradshaw could stop, but the containers would have a tendency to keep going. Unless the English Planeteer were skillful, his burdens would drag him right off his feet. Dominico had a tube of rocket fuel under each arm. The Italian was small and the tubes were bulky. Each was about ten feet long and two feet in diameter. With any gravity or air resistance at all, the Italian couldn’t have carried even one.