“I spy with my little eye something gray and blobish!”

“Rocks again?” replied the comms, hissing out the question.

“Correctomundo! But you don’t answer in the form of a question,” I teased, bouncing along in trillion-dollar equipment. As fancy as the suit was, the color was a bright dentist white. It was disgusting to glance at in the hallway before the mission. In the black sands of SIDO-SOVIET36, I stood as a complete photo negative.

“I literally did—” I cut Wallace off.

“What is rocks.” He didn’t find me funny. The loathing was mutual. Well, maybe I disliked him more. Worthless pencil pusher brought to the frontier to nag like a repressed housewife. He never had the balls to step into a vacuum launch, go near a dark matter converter, land from orbit on a dead planet, or talk to Susy from HR.

Wallace fizzed in. “Just get the samples.” His tone had hit a wall.

With him fed up with me, I pushed: “Which would you like from tonight’s menu, sir—an eggshell pebble or a nice juicy boulder?”

Silence. Victory was mine. The time had come to be a sore winner.

“Wally? Come in, Wally?” Nothing. Barely any bullshit got him heated, so this was a treat. I wasn’t cruel. I just required anything—and I do mean anything—to get my mind off the thin geo-scanner in my left hand. Pick up a rock, scan rock, toss rock. Eight years at the academy to lift stones like my dad. Alien rocks. But rocks.

After twenty minutes of dead air, my best friend came back on. “Hey, command wants you to press fifty meters ahead.”

“What’s the magic word?”

“Do your fucking job.”

“Bingo!” I skipped the flat plate of black rock and rattled up the ridge. Wind came overtop to greet me. I doubled back, but the heel hooks planted me in the soil.

Matching up the summit, a deeper yet feminine voice hit my comms. “Barnes!” Flabbergasted by the rude hello, I reacted firmly while struggling my way up.

“Wally—this new sex change doesn’t make me love you less—I will always—”

“Enough, Lieutenant.” Commander May Reeder’s voice crackled through the headset. “The Second Lieutenant is relieved for the hour. Status on habitability?”

“Congrats, ma’am. Thanks to the kindness of Uncle Sam, you are the proud owner of a floating shit ball. Truly it is, if I dare say, the peak—no—the zenith of shit.” I reached the hilltop.

“Does the soil hold life, Barnes?”

“No,” I sighed. “It could support an ecosystem, but as is—sterile. Not a single microscopic swimmer in sight.”

“Structures?” she asked bluntly. I paused.

“Huh—” It felt like she meant aliens. Not germs like we’d found on other planets, but intelligent life. She repeated:

“Built structures.” Her question formed more boldly. I looked ahead.

“Not a brothel in sight.”

I could hear her teeth grinding. I admit, it was a small dig. Rumor has it Commander FunBags had worked weekends at the gentlemen’s club The Little Green Man in New Boston. For large tips, she’d “probe” unsuspecting clients with a “laygun.” The full picture could be explained once you added her extra-tight uniform, illegal blonde curls for a commander, and lewd photos of her in her off-duty birthday suit circulating the barracks. Allegedly, she’d slept her way through all of high command.

“Our readings indicate an object of unusual shape.” Her grimace grew.

I snickered. “Unusual size, you say?” If miles of space didn’t separate me from the ship, she’d strangle me. I wondered—if she did, would I have to pay full price?

“Barnes!” she snapped. “Get the fucking scan.”

“No please?”

Silence. Victory over my boredom once more. Step by step, I went over the black dunes toward my target. The three moons above shone a reddish haze against the night sky. It gave me the strangest sense of vertigo. Being professional, I pressed on. My heart rate, however, was sent over to the ship.

“Why has your breathing changed?” Reeder barked.

“It’s not every day my date and I are on a Xeon planet a galaxy over from our own, darling. Call it the jitters.”

She huffed. “Another comment and we leave you.” She sounded more like a Martian stripper than a fleet commander. We’re all just people, after all.

“Like daddy?!” I wailed in mockery, finally making my way to the object. It hid under a small oyster shell–shaped stone. Picking up the hiding place to toss aside, I gazed down. From jolly ribbing, my veins ran cold. Tilting my helmet, I figured my visor was smudged. Perhaps my childhood trauma had just snapped me mentally in two.

“Yes?!” She barked, realizing my breathing had heightened. Leaning down, I gripped the object in my glove, passing it through my fingers. Real. As real as me. Calming thoughts raced against my existential panic.

In a galaxy over, on a planet where only I had walked, I held in my hand the tiny red beads of a necklace. At the end, a tortured man hung. As if torn from my grandmother’s study, I held a rosary. No markings or other landmarks. Just me, a vast black wilderness, and a crucified savior in miniature.

“Just gravel,” I replied. “That’s all there ever is.”