Thin Edge

Thin Edge is a book by Randall Garrett. An introductory line says there are inventions of great value that one type of society can use, and that would, for another society, be most nastily deadly. The man at the pickup controls of tugship 431 notes in a log book that an asteroid has been found and set with anchor by a Captain Jules St. Simon.

The text calls an asteroid fairly large as such planetary debris went, some five hundred meters in diameter, with a mass of around one hundred seventy-four million metric tons. Morgan, answering a recorded voice, says he is Commodore Jack Latrobe and that if he is not let out he will blow the whole place to Kingdom Come. Latrobe had been empowered to discuss business with several corporations when he was sent to Earth by the Belt Corporations Council. A speaker describes something that can cut through steel, as fine as cobweb, almost invisible, and so fine it can be hidden inside an ordinary thread.