Each of a thousand thousand tiny motes in the asteroid belt caught the sun’s light, unshielded by any intervening atmosphere, and reflected it back at Pete. Each one shone like an individual jewel, and this close, Pete could detect their swirling, chaotic movement. Each looked like a gleaming jewel—but each could be a deadly missile of destruction.
His guess about the spaceship’s speed had been correct. For three weeks the void around him had seemed changeless, but he had maintained a speed of one hundred miles a second, until, this “morning,” the asteroids had swept up in the forepart. Naturally, morning and evening, day and night, held utterly no meaning in changeless space, yet you had to consider them; you had to sleep a certain eight hours of every twenty-four; you had to eat a morni
