“A lot of things, sprout. Get’cher knickers under control. Deep radar isn’t foolproof, or they wouldn’t need us. Plus it was Robinson running the gear, and he’s not very good.”

“Oh, hah hah, Davies.” Even Tenn couldn’t ruin the air of celebration. And truthfully, his tone was lacking the usual hectoring. It was almost as if he considered it his duty to throw an insult or two.

“Transuranics, she said,” Ivan replied.

“Instrumentation error, I say. Tell you what, sprout, let’s put some money on it. I say it’ll be some castoff piece of human equipment, maybe with a shielded casing. How much are you willing to put up?”

Ivan chuckled. “Fine, Tenn. You’ve been trying to get me to gamble this whole trip. Today’s your lucky day. But money’s irrelevant, now, so how about you taking kitchen duty the whole trip back against my desserts the whole trip back?”

Tenn hesitated for a moment. When he replied, his voice was friendlier than Seth could remember ever hearing. “Well, okay then. Turns out the sprout has some balls. You’re on, Ivan.”

The crew had been gathering around during this exchange, sensing the drama. The collective mood, already euphoric from the impressive core samples, continued to spiral upward, fed by the friendly competition.

“Well, let’s go look then,” Tenn continued. “I have to admit, I’m curious too.”

There were mutters of agreement from the other crew members.

Seth shook his head slowly. “Damned party crashers.”

He waited for everyone to get ready, then said to the group, “Follow.” With that, he activated his jet pack and headed for where his heads-up indicated the Baby Rock should be.

The group got to the rock in less than a minute. It was barely twenty meters across, vaguely lentil-shaped, and virtually motionless in space.

“Weird that it has hardly any rotation,” Ivan said.

Seth agreed, but knew that orbital mechanics produced many odd situations. This was no worse than most, and convenient, truth be told. They wouldn’t have to worry about being tossed off the rock by centrifugal force.

“So now that we’re here, what are we looking for?” someone asked.

“Good question. Is Cirila’s scan online?” Seth flipped through the available images on his suit’s heads-up display even as he asked the question. It took only a moment to find the right graphic. “Should be right at the bend in the lentil shape. The lowest point, gravitationally.”

“Probably not a coincidence,” Tenn replied.

Ivan jetted over a few meters. “That’s about here.” He unhooked his collapsible shovel and assembled it. Without waiting for consultation, he began digging.

“Whoa, pardner,” Seth said. “You sure you want to dig down to a lump of uranium?”

“Transuranics, she said.” Ivan looked up at Seth, emphasizing the first word. “Which is patently impossible. So I want to see what we—hello…” Ivan looked oddly at his shovel.