Through The Asteroids--To Hell! BY LEROY YERXA Blair Freedman had torn that tunnel through the grinding asteroid wall--with the mighty Cutter ... he'd die readily enough now to keep it open--but not with the girl he loved! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1946. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Blair Freedman pushed the jet control slightly, sending the X26 into a wide slow arc toward the asteroid tunnel. He sighed and glanced at the chart on the desk. Trip number seven thousand twenty-two. For the rest of his life. "Come over here, Jerry," he called. Jerry Graham, short, slight of figure, smiled and left the navigation desk. Graham's face was black where his razor had left heavy hair just below the surface of the skin. His smile was mild and the brown eyes behind heavy spectacles were gentle. "What is it, Blair?" He stood beside Freedman, watching the solid, moving wall of the asteroid belt. Blair Freedman sighed. "Did you ever have the urge to deliberately miss the entrance of the tunnel? To hit full on against the asteroids?" Graham stiffened, feeling ice water sluice suddenly into his veins. "Are you nuts?" Freedman relaxed. His grip on the control lever became lighter, more expert. "No," he said slowly. "No, I'm okay. For a minute I was crazy, I guess. That's why I called you." Graham studied the face of the younger man. Freedman was tall, rather slim. Graham could never decide just what made Blair Freedman attractive to the opposite sex, unless the secret lay in his deep, gray eyes and that shock of alarmingly red hair. "I don't get it," he said. "Sure, the old routine gets tiresome. But it's a job and someone has to do it. We can't _all_ be in the Warrior Patrol." Freedman had seemingly come to his senses now. He sent the ship straight at the dark maw of the tunnel, flashed his colors to the guard ship that hovered near the entrance with its big guns trained on him, and then they were in the darkness. The brilliant lamps of the X26 sent splashes of light along the walls. Blair Freedman shuddered. "Walls," he said idly. "Walls of twisting, gyrating death. I wonder what really happens when a ship hits them?" He was talking half to himself, but Graham shuddered. Blair Freedman needed a rest, he decided. Needed to straighten himself out with the world. "You'd be torn to dust in ten seconds," he said. "That is, if you weren't riding in the Cutter." The Cutter was the huge ship designed by Planet Control, to keep the asteroid tunnel open. Freedman nodded. "And that's _another_ thing I've got on my mind." Graham wanted him to talk, until all the bitterness was out of him. "What's another thing?"