"I know. That's exactly why we need more information. If, while it is still early in the game, we can find their major bases, capture their leaders, expose their Sirian connections-"

"Well?"

"Why, it's my opinion the movement would be done with. I'm convinced that the average 'man of the asteroids,' to use their own phrase, has no idea he's being made a Sirian puppet. He probably has a grievance against Earth. He may think he's had a raw deal, resent the fact that he couldn't find a job or advancement, that he wasn't getting along as well as he should have. He may have been attracted to what he thought would be a colorfyl life. All that, maybe. Still, that's a long way from saying he'd be willing to side with Earth's worst enemy. When he finds out that his leaders have been tricking him into doing just that, the pirate menace will fall apart."

Lucky halted his intense whispering as the technician approached, holding a flexible transparent tape with the computer's code prickings upon it.

"Say," he said, "are you sure these figures you gave me were right?"

Lucky said, "I'm sure. Why?"

The technician shook his head. "There's something wrong. The final co-ordinates put your rock inside one of the forbidden zones. That's allowing for proper motion, too. I mean it can't be."

Lucky's eyebrows lifted sharply. The man was certainly right about the forbidden zones. No asteroids could possibly be found within them. Those zones represented portions of the asteroid belt in which asteroids, if they had existed, would have had times of revolution about the Sun that were an even fraction of Jupiter's twelve-year period of revolution. That would have meant that the asteroid and Jupiter would have continually approached, every few years, in the same portion of space. Jupiter's repeated pull would slowly move the asteroid out of that zone. In the two billion years since the planets had been formed Jupiter had cleared every asteroid out of the forbidden zones and that was that.

"Are you sure," Lucky said, "that your calculations are right?"

The technician shrugged as though to say, "I know my business.' But aloud he only said, "We can check it by telescope. The thousand-incher is busy, but that's no good for close work anyway. We'll get one of the smaller ones. Will you follow me, please?"

The Observatory proper was almost like a shrine, with the various telescopes the altars. Men were absorbed in their work and did not pause to look up when the technician and the three Councilmen entered.

The technician led the way to one of the wings into which the huge, cavernous room was divided.

"Charlie," he said to a prematurely balding young man, "can you swing Bertha into action?"

"What for?" Charlie looked up from a series of photographic prints, star-speckled, over which he had been bending.

"I want to check the spot represented by these coordinates." He held out the computer film.

Charlie glanced at it and frowned. "What for? That's forbidden-zone territory."

"Would you focus the point anyway?" asked the technician. "It's Council of Science business."

"Oh? Yes, sir." He was suddenly far more pleasant. "It won't take long."

He closed a switch and a flexible diaphragm sucked inward high above, closing about the shaft of "Bertha," a hundred-twenty-inch telescope used for close work. The diaphragm made an air-tight seal, and above it Lucky could make out the smooth whir of the surface-lock opening. Bertha's large eye lifted upward, the diaphragm clinging, and was exposed to the heavens.

"Mostly," explained Charlie, "we use Bertha for photographic work. Ceres' rotation is too rapid for convenient optical observations. The point you're interested in is over the horizon, which is lucky."

He took his seat near the eyepiece, riding the telescope's shaft as though it were the stiff trunk of a giant elephant. The telescope angled and the young astronomer lifted high. Carefully he adjusted the focus.

He lifted out of his perch then and stepped down the rungs of a wall ladder. At the touch of his finger a partition directly below the telescope moved aside to show a black-lined pit. Into it a series of mirrors and lenses could focus and magnify the telescopic image.

There was only blackness.

Charlie said, "That's it." He used a meter stick as a point. "That little speck is Metis, which is a pretty big rock. It's twenty-five miles across, but it's millions of miles away. Here you have a few specks within a million miles of the point you're interested in, but they're to one side, outside the forbidden zone. We've got the stars blanked out by phase polarization or they'd confuse everything."

"Thank you," said Lucky. He sounded stunned.

"Any time. Glad to help whenever I can."

They were in the elevator, headed downward, before Lucky spoke again. He said distantly, "It can't be."

"Why not?" said Henree. "Your figures were wrong."

"How could they be? I got to Ceres."

"You may have intended one figure and put d wn another by mistake, then made a correction by eye and forgot to correct the paper."

Lucky shook his head. "I couldn't have done that. 1

just don't-Wait. Great Galaxy!" He stared at them

wildly.

"What's the matter, Lucky?"

"It works out! Space, it fits in! Look, I was wrong. It's not early in the game at all; it's darned late in the game. It may be too late. I've underestimated them again."

The elevator had reached the proper level. The door opened and Lucky was out with a rapid stride.

Conway ran after, seized his elbow, swung him about. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm going out there. Don't even think of stopping me. And if I don't come back, for Earth's sake, force the government to begin major preparations. Otherwise the pirates may be in control of the entire System within a year. Perhaps sooner."

"Why?" demanded Conway violently. "Because you couldn't find an asteroid?"

"Exactly," said Lucky.

Chapter 10

The Asteroid That Was

Bigman had brought Conway and Henree to Ceres on Lucky's own ship, the Shooting Starr, and for that Lucky was grateful. It meant he could go out into space with it, feel its deck beneath his feet, hold its controls in his hands.

The Shooting Starr was a two-man cruiser, built this last year after Lucky's exploits among the farm boys of Mars. Its appearance was as deceptive as modern science could make it. It had almost the appearance of a space-yacht in its graceful lines, and its extreme length was not more than twice that of Hansen's little rowboat. No traveler in space, meeting the Shooting Starr, would have estimated it to be anything more than a rich man's plaything, speedy perhaps but thin-skinned and unequal to hard knocks. Certainly it would not have seemed the type of vessel to trust in the dangerous reaches of the asteroid belt.

An investigation of the interior of the vessel might have changed some of those notions, however. The gleaming hyperatomic motors were the equal of those on armored space-cruisers ten times the Shooting Starr's weight. Its energy reserve was tremendous and the capacity of its hysteretic shield was sufficient to stop the largest projectile that could be put out against it by anything short of a dreadnought. Offensively its limited mass prevented it from being first-class, but weight for weight it could outfight any ship.

It was no wonder that Bigman capered with delight once he had entered the air-lock and thrown off his space-suit.