position and cranked up enough rotation to give me a few pounds of weight. That made a mess out of the visual screens, but the radek would still let me know if anything came close enough to worry about, and this way a cup of coffee would at least stay in the cup. I brewed a pot of it, stuffed a pipe full of tobacco, and started to settle down to do my time.

I don't know how many days later it was that the radek began to groan. I quit counting days after the first week—if I needed the date I could get it off the chronograph. The signal was feeble, but I took the twist off her to get a fix on what it was. The radek gave the range as extreme—nearly a million miles—and anything that would trip the relay at that range must be big. After a few sweeps I found it in the scope, and it showed a perceptible disk. That meant an asteroid. I didn't know which one—the General Emphemeris of the asteroids hasn't been published yet.

During the next day or two I spent a good deal of my time at the scope, and most of the rest figuring orbits. It was pleasant to have something to do to keep my mind off my predicament. I hardly minded even when it became obvious that I would come so close to the asteroid as to be perturbed out of all possibility of making the contact with Mars that I had projected. I hadn't really believed in that anyway. And, when I discovered that I was in a collision orbit, it was more of a relief than otherwise. Get it over with in a hurry. Starvation is a slow and tedious way to blast off. A short life and a merry one, Denby, that's what you always said. Or did you? Well, it doesn't matter, you're going to get it anyway.

It was a fine sight. I don't know anything more impressive to watch than a planet, even a little two-hundred-mile chunk of rock like this one, swinging up out of empty space and taking on size and form. White and round as a snowball, and spinning lazily like a snowball thrown through the air. This one was going to hit me right on the knob.

The twelve-hour rotation of the asteroid must have swung the spot past me three or four times before I paid any attention to it. A black smudge it was, round, but with ragged edges like a starfish. A jet scorch if I ever saw one. I swallowed my stomach on the third gulp, and as soon as I stopped being dizzy I looked again. A jet scorch it was, and a few hundred yards away the sunlight glittered on a round lump that couldn't be anything but a Mitchell blister. Of all the rocks in the Belt, I would bump into one with a station on it. Nice catch, Denby!

I crawled 

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