[Illustration: “Nuke Moon” © 2006 by Tracy Dilorenzo.]
Maxwell was in the middle of the first steak he had seen in almost a year when the communicator holstered at his waist began to beep. Maxwell sighed and closed the lid of his magnetized plate so the medium-rare ribeye wouldn’t float away, and answered the call. The mid-watch duty officer appeared on the device’s tiny screen.
“What can I do for you, Commander?” Maxwell said, idly using a fork to pry a piece of gristle from between two molars.
“Haystack has picked up a sizable object headed our way,” the officer said. Maxwell locked the fork into a slot on the table.
“How long?”
“We’ve got 372 minutes before it enters the exclusion zone. I’d say you should get a move on it.”
Maxwell passed his steak to the surprised maintenance tech sitting across the table and headed for the door. Eleven months off-planet had taught him to use the handholds lining the station’s walls with the agility of a hyper-adapted space monkey. The launch bay containing the only two Catfish class spacecraft in existence and their control apparatus was on the opposite end of the linked-globe structure that made up Platform Alpha.
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