Anderson shrugged dismissively. “Who cares?” He gestured at the sea-green dome of sky overhead. “Look at this perfect day. We’ve got sun, fresh air, our health, and a colony full of women less than a kilometer away. Gamma Tauri IV is our oyster, and you’re worried about a…” He paused and squinted at the oddly shaped device. “What is that thing?”

“I don’t know,” O’Halloran said defensively. “I thought you knew what it was.”

“And to think, we both have engineering degrees,” Anderson deadpanned. “We should be ashamed of ourselves.”

Circling the device again, O’Halloran wondered aloud, “How are we gonna move it? It’s gotta weigh a few hundred kilograms, at least.”

Folding his arms across his chest, Anderson replied, “What’re you asking me for? You’re the one who dropped it.” O’Halloran lunged at his partner, who lifted his hands and backpedaled quickly out of reach. “Whoa! Hang on there! Just calm down, and I’ll help you.”

“Right,” O’Halloran snapped. “I wouldn’t be in this mess if you’d helped me like you were supposed to.” He lifted his arms in frustrated surrender. “Why’d I let Parsons talk me into taking her shift? I’m not even supposed to be here today!”

“I know why you took her shift,” Anderson said. “You’re sweet on her and thought you could score some points.”

“That’s not true,” O’Halloran protested.

Anderson nodded knowingly. “Yes it is. Four weeks we’ve been on this dirtball, hooking up sewers, digging ditches, and laying cable—and the whole time you’ve been mooning after her. It’s pathetic, really. I’m almost ashamed to know you.”

O’Halloran shook his head. “No, no, no.”

“Yes, yes, yes, my friend. Which, incidentally, is what I think you’re hoping to hear lovely Lieutenant Parsons shouting from your bunk one of these nights.”

Trying again to lift the deadweight widget, O’Halloran said through clenched teeth, “You really have a one-track mind.”

“Untrue,” Anderson said. “Sometimes I think about hockey.”

A sickening pain bloomed in O’Halloran’s gut. He was fairly certain that he’d burst an internal organ through sheer effort. Slumping forward onto the gigantic gadget, he mumbled, “Good luck finding enough ice for hockey on this dustball.”

“Oh ye of little imagination,” Anderson replied. “Four years of engineering classes at Starfleet Academy, and that’s the best you can come up with? ‘Good luck finding enough ice’? When we have eighty-five thousand liters of the most advanced commercial refrigerants known to man at our fingertips?”

Rolling his eyes, O’Halloran said, “Those are for the food warehouse. I don’t think they’d appreciate us using them to make a hockey rink.”

“Only because they lack the proper appreciation for the sport,” Anderson said as he slumped down next to O’Halloran, who had seated himself against the side of the massive machine. “We could fix that.”

Knocking on the device to hear the hollow echo inside, O’Halloran said, “We have to get this thing hooked up first.”

Anderson scrunched his face into a grimace. “Says who?” O’Halloran was aghast. “Says Lieutenant Commander al-Khaled. It was a direct order.”

“And you’re going to let that stand between you and what might be one of the most amazing afternoons of hockey in your entire life? That’s no way to live, my friend.”

Ahead of them, sparsely vegetated rolling hillsides shimmered under a brutal summer heat wave. O’Halloran squinted into the glare. “How long do you think the ice would even last?”

“I don’t know,” Anderson said. He counted on his fingers for a few seconds and mumbled under his breath before coming up with an answer. “About twelve minutes.”

“Hardly seems worth it,” O’Halloran said.

“Story of my life, pal. Story of my life.”

Minutes melted away into a hazy afternoon, and the two young officers had almost begun to doze off when a deep voice boomed from above and behind them. “Break time, gentlemen?”

Both men scrambled to their feet and turned about-face toward Lieutenant Commander Mahmud al-Khaled, the recently promoted second officer of the Starship Lovell and their S.C.E. team leader. The swarthy man looked immaculately put together and completely unfazed by the dry, sweltering heat that had settled over the New Boulder colony for the past several days.

O’Halloran spoke first, stammering all the way. “I—that is to say, we—we were working on the, um, on this, and we had a bit of trouble connecting the, uh, that, to the other, um—”

Al-Khaled asked Anderson, “Care to step in here?”

“I think what Ensign O’Halloran is trying to say, sir, is that this…thing…is really unbelievably heavy.”

The lieutenant commander glanced at the device, then back at the two junior officers. “Of course it is, Anderson. That’s why I told you to bring a couple of antigravs.”

O’Halloran turned his head very slowly toward Anderson and whispered with genuine menace, “I am so going to kick your ass.”

“I’d pay to see that,” al-Khaled said with a smirk. “Later. I want this filtration unit running by 1800. Both of you double-time it back to camp, get that load-lifter, bring it back here, and get this done. As in immediately. Dismissed.”

“Aye, sir,” O’Halloran said with a nod. He grabbed Anderson’s sleeve and pulled him along as he began jogging back toward camp, where the rest of the S.C.E. team’s equipment was stored. For once, Anderson cooperated and jogged along.

The heat was merciless, and the fact that they had been ordered to jog back to camp made it seem even more brutal.

“Filtration unit,” Anderson said, with a glibness that O’Halloran had always envied. “At least now we know what it is.”

Between huffing breaths, O’Halloran gasped out, “I’ll get you for this.”

“Sure you will,” Anderson said.

“I hate you,” O’Halloran said.

Anderson took a deep breath while running, let it out slowly, and smiled at the sky. “Lovely day.”

“Why does nothing bother you?”

As if perplexed by the question, Anderson replied, “Why should it?”

“Must be nice to be a sociopath,” O’Halloran said.

“It has its moments,” Anderson said. “So, seeing as we’re running all the way back to camp—”

“No,” O’Halloran said preemptively.

“—and we’ve already got all the refrigeration coolant—”

“No,” he insisted again.

“Don’t you want to teach the natives how to play hockey?”

Venting his irritation, O’Halloran snapped, “There are no natives here, you moron. This is a colony. These are colonists.”

“See?” Anderson shot back. “This is why you never have any fun. You turn everything into a semantic argument.”

“Those antigravs better be fully charged,” O’Halloran grumbled.

His sarcasm still sharp, Anderson asked, “Yeah? Why?”

“ ’Cause after we hook up the filtration unit, I’m gonna use ’em to haul your body out to the desert.”

Lieutenant Commander Mahmud al-Khaled walked between the rows of prefab colony structures and tried to tell himself that the help he and his team were providing to the colonists of New Boulder made up for the danger that he wasn’t telling them about.

All the buildings on this dusty main street looked alike. Built from identical kits and powered by a common generator, the drab gray boxes had been arranged in neat, orderly rows. Anything for the illusion of order coming to chaos, al-Khaled figured. Each of the shelters was numbered, with three leading digits to indicate the closest numbered cross-street and two more digits after a hyphen indicating the lot number. A few industrious souls had taken the added measure of hanging makeshift signs in front of their doors, announcing their trade: Hardware. Dentist. Plumbing. Mechanic.

The colony had grown quickly. Despite the generally arid equatorial climate on Gamma Tauri IV, its soil was quite rich; with proper irrigation it held substantial promise as an agricultural resource. As an engineer, al-Khaled knew the value of dilithium crystals, but he also appreciated that sometimes people needed fruit, grain, or vegetables even more than another load of crystals to run a warp drive.