Salvage in Space

His "planet" was the smallest in the solar system, and the loneliest,
Thad Allen was thinking, as he straightened wearily in the huge,
bulging, inflated fabric of his Osprey space armor. Walking awkwardly
in the magnetic boots that held him to the black mass of meteoric
iron, he mounted a projection and stood motionless, staring moodily
away through the vision panels of his bulky helmet into the dark
mystery of the void.

His welding arc dangled at his belt, the electrode still glowing red.
He had just finished securing to this slowly-accumulated mass of iron
his most recent find, a meteorite the size of his head.

Five perilous weeks he had labored, to collect this rugged lump of
metal--a jagged mass, some ten feet in diameter, composed of hundreds
of fragments, that he had captured and welded together. His luck had
not been good. His findings had been heart-breakingly small; the
spectro-flash analysis had revealed that the content of the precious
metals was disappointingly minute.[1]

[Footnote 1: The meteor or asteroid belt, between the orbits of Mars
and Jupiter, is "mined" by such adventurers as Thad Allen for the
platinum, iridium and osmium that all meteoric irons contain in small
quantities. The meteor swarms are supposed by some astronomers to be
fragments of a disrupted planet, which, according to Bode's Law,
should occupy this space.]

On the other side of this tiny sphere of hard-won treasure, his Millen
atomic rocket was sputtering, spurts of hot blue flame jetting from
its exhaust. A simple mechanism, bolted to the first sizable fragment
he had captured, it drove the iron ball through space like a ship.

Through the magnetic soles of his insulated boots, Thad could feel the
vibration of the iron mass, beneath the rocket's regular thrust. The
magazine of uranite fuel capsules was nearly empty, now, he reflected.
He would soon have to turn back toward Mars.