The psycho came aboard in a straight-jacket and a blank bewildered look twisted his face as he climbed woodenly into the ventral valve. The attendant didn't look a great deal saner. Still, I was supremely confident, and my passenger's afflictions didn't worry me at all. I was busily counting my imaginary profits as soon as we blasted free. To say that I was pleased with myself would be an understatement. Clem sought the sky like the proverbial homesick angel, her atomics throbbing beautifully under the care of Holcomb and his tube gang. Swanson and I set her into a hyperbolic trajectory with a couple of flourishes of the graphites and Jupiter moved into the proper position dead astern. It was all too easy.... A week passed before we crossed the outermost periphery of the Belt. Clem slipped between two small-sized mountains and we were in. For several hours the screens showed clear sky, and then came the deluge! There was no one in a thousand clear channel waiting for us this time. I learned what crossing the Belt really meant, but fast. Swanson and I sat at the consoles, eyes glued to the screens, sweat oozing off our ribs. Icy sweat, smelling of fear. Clem shuddered and jolted as we slammed her about, twisting and dodging as those chunks of rock came hurtling at us out of nowhere. Hour after wrenching hour it continued, until we ached all over from the beating we were taking. We were almost through when the hatch behind us flew open with a crash, and a screeching, wailing mass of humanity threw itself upon us! In a flash I knew what had happened. The jolting of the ship must have knocked the attendant out and the crazy miner had somehow managed to free himself. He'd found his way to the Control deck, sobbing with mixed rage and terror. He connected the gyrations of the ship with the men who were handling her and he was wild with terrified fury. For five hideous minutes Swanson and I struggled with him, trying to protect ourselves and at the same time keep Clem away from those ever-present asteroids that swam continuously into the range of the screens! Finally, Swanson got a clear shot at him with one of those ham-like fists of his and the psycho banged backward across the Control, his head crashing with sickening force into the sharp edge of the pressure-suit lockers. He oozed down to the floor-plates like a sack of wet mush. I knew without touching him that he was dead....