"You're taking it too hard," said Dale Snyder.

Judy shrugged.

Again Dale took in the puffy eyelids showing beneath the makeup, the unfamiliar lines in Judy's pretty twenty-eight-year-old face, the death-grip on her coffee glass, her rigid position in what should have been an easy chair. "Look here," he said. "You've got far too many things working on you. Have you considered- I mean, have you given any thought to invoking your agreement with Larry concerning adultery? At least you could eliminate one of your tensions. And you're not helping him by worrying."

"I know. I've thought about it. But- " she smiled, "not with a friend, Dale."

"Oh, I didn't mean that," Dale Snyder said hastily. And blushed. Fortunately the bandages covered most of it. "What about going to Vegas? The town's full of divorcees of both sexes, most of them temporarily terrified of getting married again. Great for a short-term affair. You could cut it short when Larry comes back."

He may have put too much assurance into the last sentence, because Judy's grip tightened on her glass and relaxed immediately. "I don't think so," she said listlessly.

"Think about it some more. You could even do some gambling."

Two gravities! Twelve hours ago he would have sneered at himself. Two gravities, lying on his back? Luke could have done it on his head. But that was twelve hours ago, twelve hours of double weight and throbbing metal and noise and no sleep. The strap-on fission/fusion motors roared in pairs outside the hull. Two had been dropped already. Ten remained, burning two at a time. It would be a day and a half before ship's weight returned to normal.

The stars were hard, emphatic points. Never had the sky been so black; never had the stars been so bright. Luke felt that they would have burned tiny holes in his retinae if he could have held his eyes fixed on one point. Tiny multicolored blindnesses to add to his enviable collection of scars. The Milky Way was a foggy river of light, with sharp actinic laser points glaring through.

So here he was.

He'd been seventy-two the day they launched the first passenger ship: an orbital craft, clumsy and spavined and oversized by today's standards, nothing more than a skip-glider. They'd told him he was too old to buy a ticket. What was he now? He wanted to laugh, but there was pressure on his chest.

With an effort he turned his head. Anderson was locking a sheet of transparent plastic over part of the complex wraparound control panel. Most of the panel was already under the plastic sheets. He saw Luke looking at him, and he said, "Nothing to do from now on but watch for rocks. I've put us above the plane of the Belt."

"Can we afford the extra time?"

"Sure. If they're going to Neptune." Anderson's voice came cheerful and energetic, though slurred by the extra weight on his cheeks. "Otherwise they'll beat us anyway, to wherever they're going. And we won't know it until they make turnover."

"We'll have to risk that."

The extra weight wasn't bothering Anderson at all.

One gravity is standard for manned spacecraft. Some rescue ships; and a few expresses in the Belt, have attachments for clusters of fusion/fission strap-on engines to cut their transit time. Often it makes sense. More often it doesn't. Given continuous acceleration, the decrease in trip time varies as the square root of the increase in power. Greenberg and the ET should have expected their pursuers, had they known of them, to stay a day and a half behind all the way to Neptune.

A strap-on can only be used once. The smooth cylindrical shell contains only hydrogen gas under pressure and a core of uranium alloy. The fusion shield generator is external; it stays with the ship when the strap-on falls away. The moment the shield forms on the inside of the shell, neutrons from the core begin to reflect back into the uranium mass, and everything dissolves in the chain reaction. As time decreases the pressure inside the trapped star, the tiny exhaust aperture is designed to wear away, keeping the acceleration constant.

This time the strap-ons were vital. The Heinlein would beat the others to Neptune by six hours-

If they were headed for Neptune! But if Diller were wrong, or if Diller had lied- if Diller, like Greenberg, thought he was an alien- if the fleeing ships were en route to some asteroid- then the Heinlein would overshoot. When the others made turnover it would be too late. The Heinlein would be going too fast.

Of course, there were always the missiles. And the Belt would consider it a violation of treaty if the Golden Circle or the Iwo Jima landed in the Belt. They might be persuaded to attack.

But there was Lloyd Masney.

With a full minute's delay in transmission, his discussion with Chick Watson had been both tiring and unproductive. Now Chick knew everything he knew, except for the exhaustive details he'd collected on Greenberg's life.

They'd reached some obvious decisions. They would not send any more ships from Earth, ships which would obviously arrive far too late to help. Earth would fire at sight if either of the target ships reached anywhere and started back. Chick would keep his communications open for Garner, ready to search out any information he might need. And one other decision-

"No, we can't call on the Belt for help." Chick's expression dismissed the idea with the contempt he felt it deserved. "Not with Belt relations the way they are now. They know what they'd do to us with an embargo on uranium, and we know what we'd do to them by holding off their vitamins, and both sides are just itching to see who'd collapse first. You think they'd believe a story like ours? All the proof we can offer is second hand, from their point of view. They'd think we were setting up our own mining operation, or trying to claim a moon. They'd think anything at all, because all they can tell for sure is that three ships from Earth are on their way to Neptune.

"Worse yet, they might just assume that this telepathy amplifier won't reach beyond Earth. In which case they could make a better deal with Greenberg, king of the world, than they can with us."

"I'll never buy that," Garner had answered. "But you're right, there's no point in crying for help. There may be a better answer."

And so they waited. If they were right, if the stolen ships were going to the eighth planet, they would be turning in six days. Luke and Anderson had nothing to do until the ET's gave them their orders.

Luke went to sleep, finally, smiling. He smiled because the gees were pulling on his cheeks. Anderson was sleeping too, letting the autopilot do the work.

At twenty-one hundred the next day the last pair of strap-ons burned out, and were dropped. Now six tumbling pairs of thick-walled metal cylinders followed the Heinlein in a line millions of miles long. In a century all would reach interstellar space. Some would eventually pass between the galaxies.

The ship went on at a comfortable one gee. Luke scowled ferociously to exercise his facial muscles, and Anderson stepped into the airlock to do isometric exercises.

The rocks of the Belt slipped by below, faster every second.

He was a clerkish-looking man with a droning voice, and he called himself Ceres Base. From his appearance he might never have had a name of his own. He wanted to know what an Earth Navy ship was doing in the Belt.

"We have passage," Anderson told him curtly.

Yes, said Ceres, but what is the Heinlein's purpose?

Garner whispered, "Let me have the mike."

"Just talk. He can hear you."

"Ceres, this is Lucas Garner, Arm of the UN. Why the sudden shift?"

"Mr. Garner, your authority does not exist here in-"