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medal?”
    Pete realized he’d never before known the meaning of pure frustration. How did you argue with a stubborn creature like Jane Barry? The headpiece came up and pushed against his mouth. He jerked it down.
    â€œWhy don’t you get that thing fixed? You look ridiculous pushing it away all the time.”
    â€œWe were talking about your Uncle Homer, not about my oxygen unit. I’ve heard a few things about him.”
    â€œYou mean you’ve heard things about the Barrys. Everybody talks about us.”
    â€œWe were talking—”
    â€œAbout the Barrys,” Jane went on furiously. “You’ve no doubt heard things about Mother and me and my sisters. Tell me—what have you heard about my little sister, Colleen? She’s eight years old. Does she go around jumping claims, too?”
    â€œYou’re—you’re impossible!” Pete muttered through gritted teeth.
    Jane’s glowing eyes reflected pleasure in the light from the monocar’s radar screen. She enjoyed the helpless anger she’d produced in Pete.
    â€œYour headpiece is hitting you in the face again,” she said sweetly.
    Pete jammed the pesky thing back into its tube and when he spoke again it was with grim relief. Gauging himself by the Juno blip on the screen, he’d angled across to nearby Pallas and was finally happy to announce, “There’s the Snapdragon ,” and almost added: I hope it collapses on the next take-off. Then he realized he was being childish and swiftly repaired his manners. “I’ll drop you by the port.”
    â€œThank you,” Jane said icily.
    And on that note, they parted, Pete breathing a deep sigh of relief as he lifted the monocar off Pallas and headed for home. The night had held more excitement than he cared for. He was an orderly, reasonable person, he told himself stoutly, and he liked orderly procedures and reasonable people.
    Therefore, he would send Betcha Jones to the next Brotherhood meeting.
    And he’d definitely avoid meeting Jane Barry again.

CHAPTER FOUR
    CLAIM TO A WORLD
    The next morning Pete slept late. His knowing this was more instinctive than anything else as there were few visible signs to indicate time in the Belt. The light from the sun was of a fairly steady density everywhere on the sunless sides of the largest planetoids. This density would have been considered little more than twilight by the natives of the great inner planets, because the reflective surfaces in the Belt were skimpy and broken—about the same as the Earth’s sun, standing a foot or so above the horizon.
    Chronometers measured the passing hours and days, of course, but Pete knew it was late on the basis that Belt people calculated their days and nights—by merely glancing out the heavy quartz window and thus giving his instincts some scant material to work with.
    He got out of bed and indulged in the luxury of a shower, visualizing Betcha’s objections, had he known. Betcha considered such ridiculous personal sanitation as completely unnecessary. “Nonsense kids learn at them fancy schools,” he’d once snorted.
    After a rubdown, Pete donned his heat unit, another of the personal items vitally necessary in the Belt. This consisted of a light garment worn next to the skin, a tight-fitting union suit that was battery-heated into a thermal shield against the steady zero-minus-one-hundred-degree temperature outside the enclosures. Maximum convenience was achieved by almost instantaneous heating at the simple snap of a switch. Also, the suit had specially constructed collars and cuffs that threw out quick heat to protect otherwise exposed surfaces, although helmets and gloves were not scorned.
    Dressed for the day, Pete passed the kitchen where Betcha had left his breakfast on the stove and went to his father’s bedroom.
    Joe Mason was sleeping, and Pete tiptoed in and looked down at his father. It wasn’t often that