As Aspasia, Will, and Raul began setup for a full deep radar run, Ivan and his crewmates jetted back to the Astra. No one said anything, even the normally opinionated Tenn Davies keeping his own counsel.

* * *

“All crew to the common room.”

The unscheduled announcement over the P.A. made everyone look up. Ivan’s stomach clenched. He turned to Seth. “What now? Are they going to extend the tour again?”

“Well, we’ve only scanned the first rock. Okay, the first two, but the runt hardly counts.Normally, they wouldn’t make any pronouncements until we’d gone through this entire group.” Seth paused. “Damn, sprout, could you be right?” His voice rose at the end of the sentence, in a kind of unconscious plea to the gods of chance.

“An unscheduled general meeting is either really, really good news, or really, really bad,” Tenn commented as he walked up to their table. “Nothing’s particularly happened lately that could be bad, so my money’s on a positive scan. How positive is the question.”

Since Ivan and Seth had been in the common room already, they refreshed their coffees and continued what they’d been doing—working on a correspondence course in Ivan’s case, and listening to an audio book in Seth’s.

The rest of the crew arrived in short order, including those who had been asleep. The buzz of conversation and debate rose in volume as each person arrived. Opinions were split on the probable reasons for the summons—about half of the crew shared Tenn’s opinion, the other half speculating that a creditor had panicked and called in their note. A palpable aura of both anxiety and anticipation settled over the crew lounge as they waited for the bridge officers to make an appearance.

Finally, the captain walked in, followed by the first mate, Dante Aiello, and the geologist, Cirila Heinrichs. Although she was technically crew, Cirila’s specialty required her to spend a considerable time with bridge officers.

Everyone looked at Aiello, trying to read his facial expression. But Aiello was paying an extreme level of attention to his slippers, so no help there.

Captain Jennings stepped to the front of the group and surveyed the crew for a moment. Then he did something captains of ships almost never did. He grinned unabashedly. The expression was infectious, and within seconds everyone was grinning back, despite nothing having been said.

“Ahem,” the captain began, “We seem to have some positive results. Rock number one in this group, serial number AN2138.14, has multiple nodes of high density, along with pronounced magnetic reactivity.”

“That means ferrous materials,” Seth whispered to Ivan.

“I will, as is my duty, caution you all not to count your chickens until the samples have been taken and the cores assayed.”

“Assuming it’s positive, what are we looking at?” Raul Alfaro asked.