“I’ve heard of it,” Kip admitted, “but I don’t really know what it’s doing out there. I mean, what’s so interesting about the asteroid belt? Are there no more intriguing destinations than that?”
Jake found Kip’s attitude disappointing. While he was not an astronomer, he could not imagine any location or object in space to be less than fascinating. Feeling the time had come to spill the truth, Jake reached into his backpack and produced a copy of an eight by ten photograph. It depicted a spherical planetary body with the blackness of deep space behind it. Enormous craters pockmarked its surface and small mountains speckled it. It could have passed for scores of heavenly bodies photographed over the decades – except for two things: gigantic reflective circles that shone like the nearest sta
