He sighed and leaned back in the rolling chair in front of a computer monitor filled with stars and a small dot that was supposed to be an asteroid. Mitchel Harris closed his eyes; dug his knuckles into the sockets and rubbed them. Stars flashed beneath the lids from the pressure -- blue twinkling sparkles.

He was tired. If he stopped just a moment, allowed himself to relax, to doze just a few seconds ...

No! She'd come in and catch him asleep. He kicked up from the warm, overstuffed chair to his feet, paced around the chair twice, lifted his mug from the console, and took a sip of half-hour old coffee. He slapped his face four times and pinched his thigh.

He'd fought the system all evening. Everything that could go wrong had gone wrong, and he'd just now gotten past the network hangups and the broken liquid nitrogen tube and the intermittent power failures that made him redo the pointing calibrations each time, and was just at the point of getting productive data, and Diana would walk in any minute to demand her time on the telescope. Thus it was written in the schedule.

Mitch was more than tired; he hurt. He'd been up since five o'clock the previous morning; his body complained mightily. His back was sore and catchy, as if he'd put a kink in it from moving across the observatory floor all night long. It felt as if it might buckle -- snap and fold like a dry stick -- if he got careless and bent the wrong way. It would be so easy to relax in the chair.

He pushed through the door into the dome, stepped down to the hydraulic platform, and crossed the dark interior, guided by a tiny red light that stared unblinking like an animal eye from the frame of the exit.

Stars hit him in the face when he stepped onto the top of the stairway. He wanted to stand there and suck them down into his center, revel in them, bless them, praise them, worship them.

But first things first. Mitch descended the steps to the ground, shuffled cautiously a few feet down the side of the hill, unzippered, and soon a warm stream of liquid whizzed into blackness while he gently grunted and hummed the mindless little tune he'd been trying to clear from his brain all night long.

The wind had died completely, and the air was cool and still. The smell of pines and aromatic tobacco from Emil Cartwright's pipe blended pleasantly in his nostrils. It was comforting to know that Emil was out there somewhere in the darkness, puttering efficiently to keep the observatory running.

Mitch made his mind quiet.

The Big Dipper lay nearly on its back just above the ridge in front of him, upright to catch the liquid -- hot tea, or coffee, or ice water, or soup -- pouring from its small brother, the Little Dipper, above it. He followed the handle of the larger constellation out past the end, Alkaid, and extended it across the sky in his imagination, arcing around to ... There! Sinking low over the western horizon was a bright topaz gem. Arc around to Arcturus. "Star of Gladness".

To his right, the majestic glowing smoke of the Milky Way climbed almost straight up out of the northeast horizon. He tilted his head back, following it to the brilliant blue giants of Deneb and Vega nearly at the zenith. He sighed, zippered up, then turned to follow the glow down the southern sky through the galactic center, through the Teapot, pouring out steam and stars, and through the tail of Scorpius, whose baleful red eye, Antares, glared at him. The Milky way plunged into the mountains on the southern horizon.

Mitch stepped carefully back up the hill and up the steps to the dome. He stood on the platform at the top of the steps and looked around one more time before going in.

Somewhere out there is my asteroid, he thought, looking toward the Eastern sky. He punched a button on his watch, and the display lit up. Twenty-five minutes after midnight.

Somewhere out there is my wife. Is she still at the party? Or in bed? Whose bed?

Night smells teased his nostrils. The pipe smoke drifted away, leaving behind evergreen and the faintest odor of skunk.

And bacon. Diana. Fixing a midnight breakfast.

"Why, thank you, Mitch." A sarcastically coquettish female voice roused him from his nap. He started awake. Damn! How long had he drifted? Five minutes? Ten?

While he'd snoozed in his chair in front of the console, Diana Muse-Jones had come in to claim her telescope. She'd caught him napping. The scope had finished it's appointed exposure while Mitch had drifted away, nodding, dreaming, finally snoring. Diana had tip-toed to the console and tip-tapped quietly on the keyboard to bring his just-finished image onto the screen.

"Bingo." She tapped a neatly trimmed red fingernail against the glass of the monitor. "Earth crosser."

"What? What the hell are you ... Crosser?" The remnants of a dream clung to his mind like cobwebs. He rubbed the crook of his elbow over his face to brush them away.

"It's so nice for you to help me with my job." Diana leaned over Mitch, both her hands on his armrests, and looked him straight in the eye from a foot away, grinning asymmetrically. Black hair framed her pretty, Asian face. Dark brown, almost black eyes taunted him. She tilted her head. "I guess I'll have to share it with you, though. Technically it IS your frame." She laughed and smiled righteously. A princess. "But I saw it first."

"What? Where?" Mitch jumped up from the chair, rubbed his eyes, and leaned closer to a monitor full of overexposed stars and electronic fuzz.

Diana cocked her head to slide hair away from her eye. "There." A bright red fingernail traced a white streak almost six inches long diagonally across the face of the monitor. "Right there. For anybody who can see."

Yes. For anybody who could see. It almost knocked him down. Serendipity had struck. Snuck up behind him while he snoozed and bonked him on the head.

"What was your exposure time?" Abruptly she was all business.

"Two minutes. It could be cataloged, you know."

"Nope. There was nothing for tonight. I'd know." Her brow furrowed. "Wait, wait, did you say TWO minutes? Only two? Wow! Fast! About three arc-minutes per minute. What's the pointing? Never mind." Diana had already displayed the set-up data and scanned it before Mitch could recall the right ascenscion and declination he'd fed the program. "It's ordinary low inclination, probably less than five degrees."

Mitch marveled that she could integrate the information in her head so quickly.

"Damn, it's close, Mitch. Are you sure it was only two minutes? Look at that streak!"

Mitch watched her excitement mounting. It gave him pleasure to watch her struggle with her composure and lose.

"It doesn't have to be a 'crosser', y'know. It could be just plain old vanilla 'near-earth', y'know." He sank back into the chair. He was tired. He was pushing twenty-four hours without sleep. His eyelids drooped.

"Just my highly educated guess," Diana responded smugly. "Wanna bet?"

Mitch nodded. "Sure. Same as before?" He smiled at the line she'd handed him and waited to see if she'd take his bait.

She didn't even notice. She tapped furiously at the keyboard. "Let's have a closer look." The image jumped out three times larger than before. With the mouse, she drew a box around the streak, tapped, and the image jumped again. "Bigger, bigger."

The streak went across the entire monitor now. She boxed a small segment of it near the middle and tapped again.

"Oh my God."

Mitch's eyes opened wide again. "What?"

Her nose was inches from the monitor. "Mitch, look!"

He reluctantly hauled himself from the chair again and put his face beside Diana's.

"Resolved!" She gave a little squeal of glee, like a teenage girl.

"What?"

"Look, look, you dummy! It's nearly two pixels wide! We can see the diameter!" She danced from foot to foot in excitement. "It's real big and dark, or it's real close. Or both."

Mitch felt heat radiating from her. Diana. Huntress.

"We have to catch it, Mitch! It'll get away if we don't get some more frames right now."

"I'm so tired, Diana." He shook his head and put his hand on her arm.

She glared and pushed his hand away. Then softened. "Mitch." Her voice turned plaintive. "Help me."

He wanted to help her, but his back hurt and he desperately needed to crawl into a warm bed and oblivion.

"Well, I ... Maybe I ..."

At that moment, the image on the monitor distorted and filled with stripes, the lights flickered once, twice, and then the room was plunged into darkness.

"Mitch?" Her voice was vulnerable, pleading. "What happened?"

"Goddamn power has been going out all night."

"Mitch. Help me. We've got to catch it."