“Sure she’s female,” Pancho said laconically. “You want to dig into her, don’t you?”

Fuchs sputtered and Amanda said, “Pancho, really!”

Dan put on an innocent air. “What a dirty mind you have, Pancho. I admire that in a woman.”

Within three hours they were close enough to Bonanza to see it for themselves: a dark, deformed shape glinting sullenly in the wan light of the distant Sun. The asteroid blotted out the stars as it tumbled slowly end over end in the cold empty silence of space.

“… eighteen hundred and forty-four meters along its long axis,” Amanda was reading out the radar measurements. “Seven hundred and sixty-two meters at its maximum width.”

“Nearly two kilometers long,” Dan mused. He hadn’t left the bridge all during their approach to the metallic asteroid.

“Killing residual thrust,” Pancho said, her attention focused on the control displays.

“Throttling down to zero,” Amanda confirmed.

The asteroid slid out of view as the pilots established a parking orbit around it. Dan felt what little weight remaining dwindle away to nothing. He floated up off the deck, stopped himself with a hand against the overhead. He felt Fuchs come through the hatch behind him.

“Lars, we’re going to be in zero g for a while,” Dan said.

“I know. I think I’m getting accustomed to it.”

“Good. Just don’t make any sudden head movements and you’ll be fine.”

“Yes. Thank — mein gott! There it is!”

The dark lopsided bulk of Bonanza rose in front of the bridge windows like some pitted, pockmarked monster, huge, overawing, menacing. Despite himself, Dan felt a wave of unease surge through him. It’s like confronting an ogre, he thought, a giant beast from a fairy tale.

“Look at those striations!” Fuchs said, his voice vibrant with excitement. “This must have been broken off from a much larger body, perhaps a planetesimal from the early age of the solar system! We’ve got to get outside and take samples, drill cores!”

Dan broke into laughter. Fuchs turned toward him, looking confused. Even Pancho glanced over her shoulder.

“What so funny, boss?”

“Nothing,” Dan said, trying to sober himself. “Nothing.” Inwardly, though, he marveled that the same sight that brought back to him memories of childhood dread stirred Fuchs into a frenzy of scientific curiosity. “Come on,” Fuchs said, ducking past the hatch. “We’ve got to suit up and go outside.”

Dan nodded his agreement and followed the scientist. He’s forgotten about zero-g, Dan realized. He’s not worried about upchucking now, he’s got too much work that he wants to do.

Amanda remained on the bridge as Pancho followed Dan down to the airlock.

“You’re not thinkin’ of goin’ EVA, are you?” she asked Dan.

“I’ve been a qualified astronaut since before you were born, Pancho.”

“You’ve been redlined. You can’t go outside.”

“And rain makes applesauce.”

“I mean it, Dan,” Pancho said, quite seriously. “Your immune system can’t take another radiation dose.”

“Fuchs can’t go out there by himself,” he countered.

“That’s my job. I’ll go with him.”

“Nope. You stay here. I’ll babysit him.”

“I’m the captain of this craft,” Pancho said firmly. “I can order you to stay inside.”

He gave her a crooked grin. “And I’m the owner. I can fire you.”

“Not till we get back to Selene.”

Dan huffed out an impatient sigh. “Come on, Pancho, stop the chickenshit.”

“Your medical records say—”

“Dammitall to hell and back, I don’t care what the medical records say! I’m going out! I want to see this sucker! Touch her with my own hands.”

“No gloves?”

They had reached the airlock, where the spacesuits hung in racks like suits of armor on display. Fuchs was sitting on the bench that ran in front of the racks, already into the lower half of his suit, sealing the boots to the cuffs of his leggings. Dan reached for the suit that bore his name stenciled on its chest.

“I thought you were scared of the radiation,” Pancho said. “I’ll be okay inside the suit,” Dan said. “The weather’s calm out there; no radiation storm.”

Fuchs looked up at them, said nothing.

“The regulations say—”

“The regulations say you’re not supposed to bring pets aboard,” Dan said, grinning again as he pulled the lower half of his suit from its rack and sat down beside Fuchs. “But I’ve got to look into my shoes every morning to make sure your damned snake isn’t curled up inside one of them.”

“Snake?” Fuchs yelped, looking alarmed.

Pancho planted her fists on her hips and glared down at Dan for a long moment.

Then she visibly relaxed.

“Okay, boss,” she said at last. “I guess I can’t blame you. But I’m gonna monitor your vitals back on the bridge. If I say come in, you come in. Right then. No arguments. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Dan replied instantly. A voice in his head was laughing mockingly. Are you satisfied? the voice asked. You’ve shown her that you’re not a sick old man. Big deal. How are you going to feel when the cold clamps down on you and your bones start hurting again?

Doesn’t matter, Dan answered himself. I’m not going to stay cooped up in here like a cripple. To hell with it; I don’t really give a damn. If I’ve got to die, I’d rather wear out than rust out. What difference does it make? “Clear for EVA.” Amanda’s voice came through the speaker in Dan’s helmet.

He was in the airlock, sealed in his suit, feeling like a robot in a metal womb. “Opening outer hatch,” he said, pressing a gloved finger on the red light of the control panel.

“Copy, outer hatch.”

The hatch slid open and Dan felt his pulse start to quicken. How long has it been since I’ve been outside? he asked himself. That sardonic voice in his head answered, Not since you got the radiation overdose, jiggering commsats in the Van Alien Belt.

Ten years, Dan realized. That’s a long time to be away from all this. He pushed himself through the hatch and floated in emptiness. The universe hung all around him: stars solemn and unwinking, staring at him even through the heavy tinting of his fishbowl helmet. Turning slowly, he saw the Sun, strangely small and pale, with its arms of faint zodiacal light outstretched on either side of it. Freedom. He knew he was confined inside the spacesuit and he couldn’t survive for a minute without it. Yet hanging there weightlessly in the silent emptiness of infinity, Dan felt free of all the world, alone with the cosmos, in tune with the ethereal music of the spheres. Glorious freedom. Radiation be damned; he felt he could soar out into the universe forever and leave the petty lusts and hates of humankind far behind. It wouldn’t be a bad way to die. Then the asteroid slid into his view. Massive, ponderous, an enormous pitted dark looming reality hanging over him like an ominous cloud, a mountain floating free in space. Starpower 1 looked pitifully small and helpless alongside the twokilometer-long asteroid; like a minnow next to a whale. Dan suddenly understood how Jonah must have felt.

You can’t scare me, he said to the asteroid. You’re two kilometers of high-grade iron ore, pal. You’re going to look beautiful to a lot of people on Earth. Money in the bank, that’s what you are. Jobs and hope for millions of people. Bonanza: that’s your name and that’s just what you are.

“Ready for EVA.” Fuchs’s voice broke into Dan’s silent monologue.

“Clear for EVA. Lars,” he heard Amanda reply.

Dan squeezed the right handgrip on his maneuvering controls with the lightest of touches. The cold gas jet on the backpack squirted noiselessly and he turned enough to be looking back at the ship. Starpower 1 glinted nicely in the starlight. She still looked brand-new, shining, not a pit or a scratch on her. The airlock hatch slid open and a spacesuited figure stood framed in it.

“Exiting the airlock,” Fuchs said, his voice trembling slightly.