"You may as well know tonight. Vestena didn't wait for us to make plans. It tried to destroy the tunnel today. Sabotage, with a few suicide ships.

"A few men were killed but the attempt failed. That is all. Proceed to base."

The screen was empty again, and Blair Freedman was cussing and wondering if maybe Jerry Graham had been right.

He could fight now. He had the best equipment in the planetary system.

A few men were killed....

He remembered Van Nordast's words. Grim words that probably applied to the boys he had known since childhood. Maybe Jerry was one of them. Jerry Graham with his gray-black hair, wrinkled kindly face and gentle eyes peering from behind his specs.

The Lieutenant hadn't spoken since the message flashed off. Now he said:

"Well, you're going to get your baptism of fire sooner than I expected."

"Yes," Freedman said. "Yes, that's right."

He was wondering if it made any difference. If Jerry was dead, he'd have to kill a couple thousand soldiers to revenge that one kindly man.

The guard ship on the outer end of the Asteroid Tunnel was anchored in space a short distance from the tunnel itself. It had to carry its own supplies, heavy armament and ammunition. Normally, it was capable of holding off a dozen space fighters, sending them reeling back with the heavy punches from its cannon.

The Warrior Patrol came in on a sweeping arc, and slowed to circle about and finally hide the rugged, stocky mother-ship that guarded the tunnel. Orders were given. Ships and pilots were warned not to fly too close to the heaving mass of asteroids. They looked solid. Actually, they were in motion every second, tons of ragged, grinding metal and stone, heaving a few inches this way or that, destroying anything that touched their surface.

It was through this terrifying belt of death that Blair Freedman had first dared point the prow of the "Cutter" and had, by sheer guts, torn a tunnel through the asteroids that served to demolish the thousands of miles of impossible flying by the outside route to Parma.

In peace, the asteroid belt had been pierced by the needle-like tunnel and through it commerce poured to the other 

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