FOR A DAY AND A HALF, ship and attached asteroid pursued a slow, unpowered orbit around Earth. For a day and a half, Bob Parker hardly slept. He gave Queazy charge of the ship entirely, had him send an ethergram to Andrew S. Burnside announcing that his asteroid would show up in time for the wedding, and that the bride would be there too.
Most of Bob’s time was spent on the surface of the asteroid. He took spectroscopic readings from every possible angle, made endless notations on a pad. Sometimes, he worked in his cabin, and Queazy, ambling puzzledly into Bob’s presence, could make nothing of the countless pages of calculation strewn about the room—figures which dealt with melting points, refractive indices, atmospheric velocities.
And finally, when Bob tore the ship and prisoned astero
