Dangers abound in deepspace. Hell, there's plenty of danger even at home in Earth orbit. The ever-present threat of death is something every spacer has to come to grips with. It's either that or find another line of work.

I'd worked in space long enough to know all the ways the universe could kill me: searing heat, freezing cold, loss of atmosphere, explosion, implosion, radiation, impact--you name it. There were more ways to die than I had the fingers and toes to count.

I knew all that, and normally it didn't bother me. Just as an airline pilot knows in the back of his mind that his plane might crash on any given day, or a police officer knows that the next call he responds to might be his last, the thought of death was always in the back of my mind. For the most part, I didn't think about it. I certainly didn't dismiss it; but I didn't obsess over it, either.

For some reason, though, this day was different. I couldn't seem to shake the feeling that something bad was about to happen. I felt exposed out there on the asteroid, as if I had a big red fluorescent bullseye painted on my back. The whole time I worked, the muscles along my spine twitched, as if even they knew something unpleasant was imminent.

I reached down to secure my safety tether to the cleat anchored in the rock, when it happened. Something struck me from behind and threw me off-balance. My boot slipped on the thin layer of asteroid dust and I missed the cleat. I froze. Was this the moment I'd been dreading? Was this when it all ended?

It was almost a relief to get it over with.

Almost.

I was an old hand at this; I should have just relaxed and tried again. Instead, I overreacted and scrabbled for purchase in the microgravity. I tried to grab the cleat, but my wild lunge did nothing but push me in the opposite direction. Within seconds, I was meters from the rock and drifting away. Stifling a fast-growing sense of dread, I triggered my suit's maneuvering thrusters. Nothing--the thrusters were dead.

Crap.

"Sparks!" I hollered into my radio. He was only a few meters away, his back to me as he worked on the extractor. The nickel-iron asteroid was a stark tableau of deepest ebony and slate and steel gray. Against this backdrop, his white EVA suit shone like a beacon in the distant sunlight.

"Sparks!" I hollered again. Still no reaction. Why didn't he hear me?

"Sparks!" Again nothing.

I checked my radio. It should have been working, so why no response from Sparks? All the while, I continued to drift ever farther from safety. I strained to look over my shoulder. The only thing standing between me and the primary of this system was 134 million kilometers of cold, dead, stark, nothingness.

"Sparks! Cap! Tom! Guido! Anyone!" Still no response.

It finally dawned on me that whatever fleck of space debris had smashed into my backpack and knocked me off my feet must have disabled both the radio and the thrusters. I checked the gear in my EVA suit pouches, but there was nothing that would help me get back to the asteroid. Nor was there any way to fix the radio on my back.

I knew I was taking a chance, but I pulled a wrench from a pouch and threw it at Sparks, hoping he'd see it and look back.

I willed the wrench to fly true. "Come on, come on!"

No joy.

I'd overcompensated for my awkward angle and the wrench merely glanced off the rock, well to Sparks' right. Out of line-of-sight, and in a vacuum, he didn't see, hear, or feel it strike. Worse, my throw set me tumbling.

"Sparks!" Why didn't he turn around? Couldn't he sense me behind him?

Sparks and the asteroid flashed in front of me, over and over as I tumbled, like some flickery old black-and-white silent film. I continued to drift farther and farther from the asteroid and any hope of survival.

"Sparks! Turn around, damn you! Sparks!"

It wasn't long before the asteroid dwindled to fist-sized, and then marble-sized. Finally, it merged with the other remains of a planet that existed once, but no longer. Was that to be my fate as well?

I cursed the fates that had led me to this, until the hiss of oxygen in my EVA suit sputtered and died.

Then I cursed the friends who didn't come for me.

"Spa-a-a-rks!"

I sat up abruptly, wild-eyed and heart pounding. Sweat beads meandered down my chest. I was dripping wet--yet again. It was the same nightmare. Always the same.

The wall chrono showed 8:43 a.m. I'd overslept. I had to hurry if I was going to catch my flight.

After a three-minute shower, I dressed in the kitchenette while waiting for the cooker to spit out my breakfast.

"Screen on. GNN."

The holoscreen snapped on at my command. It occupied the entire wall opposite the sofa and was visible from both the kitchenette and the living/sleeping area. That was about the only advantage of such a minuscule flat.

I scanned the major news of the morning, hoping for something cheery to start my day. But it was the usual depressing stuff: a skirmish between India and Pakistan over water rights, famine in Africa, and the aftermath of widespread flooding in parts of Southeast Asia. With more than 43 billion mouths to feed, and every last one of them consuming raw materials and contributing to global warming, humanity continued to stress Mother Earth to the limit. If we couldn't find a way to reverse the effects of overcrowding, pollution, ozone depletion, and so on, we'd eventually break something irreparably.

I shrugged. There was nothing I could do about all that. I consoled myself with the thought that every ton of refined iron, copper, aluminum or other minerals I helped bring to Earth pushed back the day when the machinery of civilization finally broke down under the press of humanity.

I poured myself a second cup of coffee and five minutes later I was out the door, heading for the airport.

The suborbital took me to the space elevator platform in the Indian Ocean. From there it was a pleasant, though long, two-day ride up to ODF Odyssey, the orbital docking facility that SI and many of the other deepspace exploration and mining outfits used. Odyssey was one of the five space stations built as counterweights for Earth's giant elevators.

I met up with the rest of the crew and we spent the next few hours inspecting the work the refit crew and the cargomaster had done on Shamu--so named, I was told, due to a vague resemblance in shape to a certain 21st century whale. We were in high spirits--certain, as always, that this mission was The One: the one where we strike it rich and retire to a life of luxury.

Yeah, it was only a dream. But without dreams what's the point?

"Are we all secure below, Swede?" Cap inquired. His clipped British enunciation tended to make even his queries sound like orders.

"All secure, Cap," I replied. "Ready when you are."

My name is Jan Johansen, but between my name and my stereotypically Nordic white-blond hair and pale complexion, almost no one calls me that. Among the ranks of spacers, I'm known as Swede. The fact that I'm from Denver is irrelevant.

"Odyssey Control, SI ship Shamu requests a departure slot." Sparks spoke without emotion: the tone of a professional who has done something so many times he no longer has to think about it. His voice wafted from the intercom in Engineering, where I was strapped in for the initial stages of the trip. Jeremy Clinkscales was our Communications and Sensor Officer, or CSO. Because he hated the name Jeremy we all called him Sparks, following the hallowed tradition of radio officers.

A moment later, the husky disembodied contralto of Odyssey's traffic controller replied, "It'll just be a few minutes, Shamu, until we get a ship docked."

"Acknowledged, Odyssey; Shamu standing by."

Four minutes later, Odyssey's traffic controller reported, "You're cleared for departure, Shamu. Good hunting!"

"Thanks, Odyssey. See you in a few months." Sparks' professional mien gave way to playfulness. "When I get back, Marilyn, what do you say we go away together somewhere for a few days and get to know each other better." Flirting with Marilyn was de rigueur for all departing CSOs when she was on duty--even though everyone knew she was married and a grandmother. It was all part of the routine.

"You wish!" she retorted, chuckling, and thereby completed the ritual.

Hers was the last female voice we would hear for many weeks. We had nothing against women in space--hell, we'd love to have had women in the crew. But hard experience had shown what could happen when you put a mixed crew in tight quarters for months on end. The bloody lesson of the Spry Wanderer twenty-three years earlier was one that no one needed to see repeated. As a result, deep-space vessels always carried same-sex crews, including more than a dozen ships crewed by women.

Cap released the docking clamps and used the maneuvering thrusters to gently ease Shamu's bulk away from the immense docking facility and into a position where we could engage the starflight drive. It would be an embarrassment to the Company and a professional stain on Cap's record if he damaged his ship before even leaving Earth orbit. But Cap was every bit the professional that Sparks was, and in his many years at the helm nothing like that had ever happened. Captain Tyrone Gilroy, our mission commander and pilot, was the Company's senior captain, and not one to make careless errors.

As the Refinery and Cargo Officer, or RCO, it was my job to watch over whatever supplies we were carrying: mainly food, medical stuff, and other consumables, as well as spare parts for some of the essential equipment onboard. I was also in charge of processing whatever crude ore we might find into as much refined minerals as we could squeeze into the cargo holds. I was part chemist, part metallurgist and part mining foreman.

The rest of the time I was chief cook and bottle washer. I spent most of my time cleaning up, making minor repairs, keeping the other guys fed, and doing whatever else needed to get done to make sure the rest of the crew wasn't disturbed from their labors. Someone had to act as mother hen for the crew, and that someone was me.

After a few minutes of thrust we were in position. "Get ready, lads," Cap announced as he engaged the starflight drive. "Next stop, Richelieu. Make yourselves comfortable; it's gonna be a long trip!"