The Belt was a circle about eight hundred yards wide, a chain of battered dwellings and work places connected by ropes and tubes. At the center of the Belt was the mine itself, a cooled-down star kernel a hundred yards wide; lifting cables dangled from the Belt to the surface of the star kernel, scraping the rusty meniscus at a few feet per second.

Here and there, fixed to the walls and roofs of the Belt, were the massive, white-metal mouths of jets; every few minutes a puff of steam emerged from one of those throats and the Belt tugged imperceptibly faster at his heels, shaking off the slowing effects of air friction. He studied the ragged rim of the nearest jet; it was fixed to his neighbor's roof and showed signs of hasty cutting and welding. As usual his attention drifted off into random speculation. What vessel, or other device, had that jet come from? Who were the men who had cut it away? And why had they come here…?

Again the whiff of fire. He shook his head, trying to concentrate.

It was shift-change time, of course, and there were little knots of activity around most of the cabins in the Belt as workers, grimy and tired, made for their sleep nets — and, a quarter of the Belt's circumference from him, a haze of smoke hovered around the foundry. He saw men dive again and again into the grayish fog. When they reemerged they tugged limp, blackened forms.

Bodies?

With a soft cry he curled, grasped the rope and sprint-crawled over the diffuse gravity wells of cabin roofs and walls to the foundry.

He hesitated on the edge of the sphere of smoke. The stench of burnt meat-sim made his empty stomach twist. Two figures emerged from the haze, solidifying like figures in a dream. They carried an unrecognizable, bloodied bundle between them. Rees anchored himself and reached down to help them; he tried not to recoil as charred flesh peeled away in his hands.