The other nodded. "So they send a Patrol Officer with the papers on a regular liner--and Jovian League spies tip off Kadine to come back from Jupiter and intercept them over the Belt, where he can jump to safety into the Asteroids!" Nord was already searching the view screens. "Better get below and stow that fragment away, Mike," he ordered, quietly, asserting his nominal command for the first time since the two started their initial assignment. "And check pressure in your suit oxygen tank. The Eos Family is right below us in the Belt--and this is where Kadine's heading!" His partner grinned. "Yes, sir!" He clambered through the inner airlock, and squirmed through the narrow space between the hulls. His voice came back over the suit communication unit: "Aren't you going to acknowledge the orders?" "That would warn Kadine," Holber told him. His lips curved in a tight smile that did not soften the long oval of his face. "The Colonel knows we've begun fishing this section of the Belt--but Kadine may have been too busy over by Jupiter's moons to keep track of little details like that." Doren came back into the cabin. "Doubt if the Jovian League spies keep track of routine assignments of rookie Patrol Officers," he agreed. "What's our move?" "We wait." Nord's grey eyes flicked over the top and rear view screens. "Kadine should come from above and behind. We'll let him overtake us. That way we'll stay between him and the Belt, and make him fight!" "He won't get by this heat ray!" Mike promised savagely. His big hands went over the ray tube controls experimentally, and he grinned as he swung the sights across the rear sector. "I'm sick of playing with asteroid fragments!" Holber didn't move his eyes from the rear screen. A faint, distant flicker of red splashed against the deep black of space behind them. The pin point of flame pulsed steadily among the cold stars--it was the rocket wash of a ship, a ship far below the space lanes, a ship too black to be visible against its sable backdrop! "Here he comes!" Mike said tensely. "He's seen us by now." Nord's long fingers brought retarding jets flaming into brief life. Their speed slackened. In the rear screen, the wash of the other ship swelled suddenly, and the outline of its dark hull cut a silhouette across the dying radiance of exhaust gasses. It was Kadine's ship! In it was the secret of safe passage through the Asteroid Belt--a secret that would open a space lane for System Federation ships, give Science access to the guarded secrets of the mysterious Asteroids! In it, too, were the papers which had brought the outlaw back from Jupiter's moons--gambling possible success there to wrest from the Federation itself scientific knowledge that might assure a pirate coup against interplanetary civilization! * * * * *