"There's always enough para-magnetic stuff in them," his partner commented bitterly. "That's what makes this blasted assignment possible!" His blue eyes brightened. "That's one more toward a full cargo--a trip back to Mars Base, and some planet leave. Hope I don't dream about these dirty rocks!" The brightness hardened in his eyes, as they dropped to the Asteroid Belt below. "I'll start hunting another one," Nord said wearily. "You haul this one in!" He took Mike's chair before the drive controls, and his long fingers made deft, swift adjustments. Their little ship nosed upward toward a safer cruising area. The other jabbed the winch control studs. The winch began to turn again, drawing the cable taut. Their ship lurched momentarily, as the cable tugged against the orbital inertia of the little mass at the end of the magnet; but winch and ship were built for the struggle, and the asteroid fragment swung from its course, starting upward on the magnet. * * * * * Now Mike stores it away in the outer hull with the rest, Nord thought glumly, and the whole weary routine starts over again. Three days it took to find this last one--three days of monotonous search just above the Belt! He forced his slim, wiry body erect, and straightened his shoulders. "They're getting scarcer, Mike. Before long, the System Federation can lower the safe traffic lanes down to here--that's the closest to the Belt that'll ever be practical. Maybe the next batch of Patrol College grads will get a different initiation." "Sure," grumbled Mike, watching the ascending magnet. "Maybe the Federation'll have the Patrol go all out after that pirate, Kadine. He's got the only ship in space that can navigate the Asteroid Belt! Get his secret--and liners can go right through the Belt without bothering about asteroids or fragments! "If they'd tried that before, Nord, we wouldn't waste our Patrol career with this blasted 'asteroid fishing'." "The secret's in the steel hull of his ship," Holber agreed, firm jaw tightening. Dhain Kadine, he remembered, had been a brilliant physicist before he turned to space piracy. Now his ship, the only steel-hulled vessel in an age of plastics, operated from a base deep within the Asteroid Belt itself--sailing untouched where other daring craft had been battered to wreckage! "We can't go in after him," Nord added, "and he picks his own time and place to come out. But--" The visaphone on the instrument panel before him jangled a sudden warning. His grey eyes widened. A glowing disk indicated general communications wavelength, but the jangling meant a rider that stamped the communication; _urgent!_ He snapped the instrument on, and tuned in the length. The screen glowed, and blurred, vague images appeared. Broken, unintelligible words poured out.