The Trojan Belt

Joe ran his fingers over the seals on his suit as he looked out into the Trojan asteroid belt.  His ships AI voice, reciting safety procedures in the background, droned on about things that Joe had listened to a thousand times—procedures for micro-meteor strike, low oxygen and water, low temperature alarms, always the same.

The sparkle of the tumbling stones had a hypnotic effect in him.  Joe had a lust for treasure and he was in the most treasure filled region of the Solar system.  It was his second year prospecting and his lust for treasure was the only human passion that he had left—everything else was just memories.  His girl left him, family was uninterested—even his dispatcher back on Mars only wanted the numbers off of his ships log.  Joe was alone; alone as any human had ever been.  His ship, The Barney Rubble, drifted slowly among the ancient stones of the Trojan belt, scanning for precious metals and interesting objects.

Joe looked at his latest find as his AI maneuvered the ship closer in order to park it upstream of the great stone in the safe “shadow” of the stone as it was more common to expect the faster objects—the ship killers to be traveling in the same direction as the bigger, mostly slower stones.

This object was of the interesting variety because it was partly hollow.  He was unable to see into the shadows and couldn’t wait to get outside and have a close-up look.  First the Rubble reached proximity to the object, and then it matched its multi-axis spin.  Joe purposely avoided looking at the wildly gyrating star field and focused on the shadowy details of the object.  He could see a twinkle here and there but no definition.

“Mona, what do you make of this stone, I don’t recall seeing anything like it before—is it solid, or composite?”

“The object is of composite construction and contains four thousand metric tons of mass.  The components include a wide assortment of aggregate, including eight hundred tons of water.”

“Bingo! We’ve got water!  Deploy the water recovery hose and prepare for EVA.  The suit checks out, I’m donning my helmet now, switch to EVA channels and set the watch.”

“I relieve you captain.”

         Joe stepped out of the airlock into weightless vacuum and pushed himself towards the ancient stone.  His headlamp revealed flashes of unusual shapes and unusual scars on the rocky walls of the hollow.  He used the tiny thrusters on his suit to orient himself to the direction that his brain wanted to call “up” and settled on to the multi-billion year-old dust.  He scanned the hollow area slowly with his headlamp watching the sharp definition of the circle of light as it passed over the rough “floor”.

         He gasped when the polished metal spherical objects came into view.  He moved forward, towards the pile of spheres—they were stacked in a pyramid shape.  He reached out and took one into his hand, though it was weightless he could feel its mass by the inertial resistance as he pulled it to him—it was incredibly dense.  It was the size of a softball yet had a density way greater than lead.  By its color, he guessed that it was made of platinum—pure platinum.  He touched it with his analyzer and it concurred—he was looking at tons of pure platinum.  Then his analyzer chirped—it was hollow; it had a roughly egg shaped hollow at its center.  Joe could feel the welling in his chest, his quest for riches was over.  He could leave for Earth as soon as the objects could be loaded into his Cargo bay.  His target ranging lasers measured the pile and the analyzer estimated that over two metric tons of platinum lay before him—for the taking.

“Mona!  We’ve hit the jackpot—platinum, lots of it!  Open the cargo bay doors and orient the ship into my line of site; I’m moving the platinum as soon as you are ready.”

“…understood captain…”

         Joe could hardly contain himself and almost forgot to search the rest of the cave…  When he came upon the creature, it looked like a pile of gemstones at first—until it opened a large green eye.  Its eye had a ring of gold light around the inner edge.  Joe became motionless—he was stunned.  He had never seen such a beautiful thing in his life.  It began to uncoil its…eight tentacles; kind of like an octopus and it blinked as if it were an effort.  The light in its eyes dimmed and it shrugged, then became motionless again.  He advanced slowly and touched the creature with the long probe on his analyzer.  The analyzer became powerless and the creature awoke, the eyes were brighter and it slowly reached out to the spheres—tenderly it fetched one of them and coiled the tentacle around it while it closed its eyes.  In a moment there was a piercing flash of light and the…the egg split apart revealing a miniature version of the bejeweled creature which spun and flashed and danced away into space.  This time the creature became completely motionless.  Joe feared the worst and called Mona.

“Mona, rig out the shore power cable...”

Mona did not answer, it was the first time he didn’t hear her answer since he left Mars over a year ago and the feeling was enormous.  Joe turned towards the cargo bay and leaped across the opening, and that was when he realized that the power unit in his suit was failing.  He drifted with agonizing slowness into the small cargo bay and finally touched the far wall.  He struggled through the air lock and plugged his suit into the emergency power coupling on the bulkhead.  He called out to Mona again.

“Mona rigout the shore power cable through the cargo bay and check the power couplings on this suit.

“Have you been watching, I found a life form…and I think she’s dying—we’re going to help if we can, she seems to have an appetite for pure energy.”

“The suit was just drained of energy Joe—all seven hundred KVA.”

“OK, Mona I want you to isolate the engines and life support, we are going to couple the starboard fusion generator to shore power and give her as much as she needs.  I’m taking the other suit, and going EVA immediately, are you ready?”

         Mona opened the bay doors again and Joe snaked the big cable over to the asteroid.  The creature was still motionless and not emitting any light.  Joe moved closer and closer with the shore power coupling and gently nudged the creature.  She…it cracked one eye and tenderly explored the cable end.  It sparkled and flashed as the creature awakened.  It drew a full five megawatts in less than ten minutes.  When the creature released the cable, its eyes were glowing with a rainbow of light.  It hovered over the platinum eggs, coiled each one into a tendril and began to spin.  When she stopped, the eggs were split open and the baby creatures were dancing about the cave like fireflies, then they left one by one leaving Joe alone with the creature.  It was clearly looking at him now and it moved, ever so gently toward him, reaching out tenderly with just one tentacle, it stroked the side of his helmet and was gone in a flash!  Joe stood there in wonder until Mona asked him if he was OK.  He looked at the empty shells of pure platinum ay his feet and said:  I’m OK Mona—I’m really OK."