"Umhmm. See you soon, though," Gimp answered, grinning. "I'll leave my bubb and my load of supplies up here on Phobos. Be back for it probably in a week. And there'll be a freight-bubb cluster, or something, for me to join up with, and follow you Out..." Nelsen and Ramos left Gimp Hines before he boarded the winged skip-glide rocket that would take him below. Parting words flew back and forth. "See you... Take care... Over the Milky Way, suckers..." Then they were standing off from Mars and its two moons. During the next several Earth-days of time, they accelerated with all the power that their bubb ionics could wring out of the sunshine, weakened now, with distance. They knew about where to find the Kuzaks. But contact was weeks off. When they were close enough, they could radio safely, checking the exact position of Art's and Joe's supply post. And they knew enough to steer clear of Ceres, the largest Asteroid, which was Tovie-occupied. All the signs were good. They were well-armed and watchful. They should have made the trip without trouble. Ahead, dim still with distance, but glinting with a pinkish, metallic shine which made it much brighter than it would otherwise have been, was Pallas, which Ramos watched like a beacon. "Eldorado," he said once, cockily, as if he remembered something from the Spanish part of his background. They got almost three-quarters across that unimaginable stretch of emptiness before there was a bad sign. It was a catcall--literally--in their helmet phones. "Meow!" It was falsely plaintive and innocuous. It was a maliciously childish promise of trouble. A little later, there was a chuckle. "Be cavalier, fellas. Watch yourselves. I mean it." The tone had a strange intensity. Ramos was on lookout, then, with eyes, radar and rifle. But the spoken message had been too brief to get a fix on the direction of its radio waves. Ramos stiffened. With his phone power turned very low, he said, "Frank--lots of people say 'Be cavalier', nowadays. But that includes one of the old Bunch. The voice _might_ match, too." "Uh-huh--Tiflin, the S.O.B.," Nelsen growled softly. For ten hours, nothing else happened. Then there were some tiny radar-blips, which could have indicated meteors. Nelsen and Ramos changed the angle of the ion guides of their ionic motors to move their bubbs from course, slightly, and dodge. During the first hour, they were successful. But then there were more blips, in greater numbers. Fist-sized chunks flicked through their vehicles almost simultaneously. Air puffed out. Their rings collapsed under them--the sealer was no good for holes of such size. At once, the continued spin of the bubbs wound them, like limp laundry, into knots.