So I was in. Part of a wild scheme of progress--more thrilling and inspiring because it seemed so wild. An asteroid made into a tiny, artificial Earth! A boon to void-weary space men! A source of cheap food supplies, as well as a place to rest up. A new stage of colonization--empire building! And then I thought I heard a sound--a faint clinking outside of the hull of the _Corfu_. At once, I was alert--taut. Maybe half of my sudden worry was intuition, or a form of telepathy. When you've been out in deep space, a million miles away from any other living soul, you feel a vast, hollow loneliness, that perhaps is mostly the absence of human telepathy waves from other minds. But when you have people around you once more, your sixth sense seems keener for the period of lack. That was why I was sure of an eavesdropper, sensing his presence. With proper sub-microphonic equipment, a man outside a space ship can hear every word spoken inside. Nick felt it too. "But we'd better look and see," he whispered. "Norman Haynes keeps spies around. And he may have heard rumors. You can't keep a project like ours secret very long. It's too big." My pulses jumped with fear, as I piled into my space suit. But when Nick and I got through the airlock together, there was nobody in sight. Only some footprints in the faint rocket dust of the ways, covering our own footprints, where we'd passed before, coming to the _Corfu_. Our flashlights showed them plainly. "Having a rejuvenated asteroid in these parts, producing fresh food and so forth, would take a lot of trade away from the Haynes Shipping Company, wouldn't it?" I said when we were back in the cabin once more. "Norman Haynes wouldn't be practically boss of the Minor Planets anymore, would he? He wouldn't like that. He'll fight us." "We need you, Chet," Irene said, her eyes appealing. That was enough for me. "We'd better blast off right away," Nick added. "We're going to asteroid 487, Chet. Its new name is Paradise. It's the one we've picked." II Asteroid 487 was the usual thing. A torn, jagged, airless fragment. It was no paradise yet, unless it was a paradise of devils. Nick had a thousand men hired--space roustabouts, and a lot of mechanics and technicians, mostly fresh from Earth. Sure, it's hard handling a bunch like that, but there was nothing in this difficulty that we didn't know was part of the job. Some of our outfit gave us horse-laughs, but they worked. The pay was good. The ships came through with the packed loads of machinery. Atomic forges blazed, purifying native meteoric iron to complete the vast gravity-generating machine, sunk in a shaft at the center of the planetoid, ten miles down. Geedeh directed most of the work. Nick and I saw that orders were carried out, swearing, sweating, and making speeches intended to inspire. And then the trouble started.