They sped away into the blackness, Prokle at the controls. Garth looked back at their tiny glass-enclosed world and the wreck of the _Martian Princess_ anchored there, bordering almost one entire edge. She was a rather helpless looking "Princess" now, but her lines were still regal. Garth smiled as he remembered the wreck, three weeks ago. Station M6, with its larger crew, had done most of the rescue work; but the hull of the huge liner had drifted toward M3 and so Garth and Prokle got the salvage job, to the envy of every other Station this side of the belt. But that was the inviolable law of the Stations. The two men were now leisurely engaged in putting the liner back into condition for the inspection crew who would be due out here at the end of the month. Garth grimaced, remembering the earliest days of these Stations. The few prisoners out here then had at first been sullen, stubborn, unresponding to the occasional messages of salvage work flashed out to them. But there had been no attempt to force the men to do the work. No pretense of discipline. Supply ships had stopped every three months, briefly as possible, then went on their way. Less than a year of this, and the sheer stark _ennui_ of the black outer hell had proved to be the real disciplinary master. There were only three Stations then, a handful of men on each, who soon vied with each other for the too infrequent salvage jobs. Garth had to hand it to the psychological genius who devised the plan! Prokle brought him abruptly out of his reminiscences. "What do you say, Hype? Sight for the Lanisar group?" Garth examined the chart which showed the position and orbit of every known asteroid swarm. He consulted their present position and made swift calculation. "Sure. Lanisar's coming on fast, but we won't cross it for an hour yet. The baby we want is about two hours behind it, according to headquarters, but on the _inside_. Remember, that's plenty dangerous territory in the middle of the belt for a flea-cruiser like this, without a repulsor. How does that suit you?" Prokle revealed how it suited him when he said: "It's an uncharted swarm, ain't it?" * * * * * They skirted the edge of the belt, easily avoiding the occasional smaller swarms. The charted Lanisar group, easily recognizable and already thoroughly explored, intersected them in less than an hour. Prokle turned their tiny craft deeper into the belt. Here there were long stretches of comparative emptiness, but these became ever more infrequent. Dark masses began looming out of nowhere, but luckily they were tinged faintly from the light of the distant sun. Many of these veered crazily, or hurtled across their bow, seeming much closer than they actually were. Some of the larger pieces eventually formed miniature solar systems in themselves.