With a sigh, the valve slid open and Aram and the girl dropped to the frozen volcanic soil. The air smelled bitter, and the cold was intense. Kaidor V was more than twenty-four light-minutes from its primary, and warmth was slight. It had been chosen for the center of Kaidor Province rather than a more hospitable world because of the richness of its radioactive ores and immense nitrogen yielding deposits.

The starship had landed in a small ravine, and there, Aram decided, it could stay relatively safe from discovery. Aram marked the spot on his chart and etched it into his brain. It was hard to leave the tiny Serpent. It represented all the security they could expect on this unfriendly world.

They climbed to the crest of the ridge and dropped down onto a flat plateau, striking out across it toward the spot where Jerrold estimated they would intercept the line of the conveyor.

They walked along in silence under a canopy of oddly unfriendly stars. Presently the faint sound of machinery warned that the conveyor was near. In the darkness, they almost ran headlong into it. The light of Deve's small pocket torch revealed two belts. One bounced along empty, speeding back toward the mines in the hills; the other groaned under a heavy loading of metallic ores bound for the smelters and steel converters of Astrel.

"It's moving fast, but we'll have to jump it anyway," Aram said softly.

"Don't worry about me," replied Deve stoutly. "Just give me a hand."

Aram grinned in spite of himself. Deve's courage and resolution were a boon on this quixotic mission.

He picked her up and began to run along the uneven soil parallel to the racing conveyor. With an effort he heaved her up on to the pile of ore. He heard her give a little cry of pain as she landed among the sharp shards, and then she was gone into the blackness. Without pause, he leaped onto the belt himself, skinning his hands and legs on the rocky cargo.

For a moment he stopped to catch his breath, and then began to crawl forward toward Deve Jennet. It took him a long while to reach her, and when he did, they found that she had dropped her gun in the scramble to board the conveyor.

The thought of facing a hostile city with one small pistol did not please; but Aram realized that under no circumstances could he have hoped to out-gun the combined forces of the Thirtieth Decant, so the 

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