The man in the black suit hung from two hooks like a slab of meat, breathing slowly. The slight pull of gravity stretched his long legs to the floor, elongating his spindly body to even more alien proportions. His face was pale, pocked with brown spots where decades of cosmic radiation had taken their toll. The only light came from the faint strips of luminescence running near the floor. There was no sound.

The man's awakening was an incredibly long, subtle process, beginning with slight twitches in his extremities that slowly became exaggerated shrugs and desperate flailing, His breathing quickened.

His eyes flicked open with a gasp, his back arching and the hooks pressing painfully into the ports on his back. Almost at the same moment, the overhead lights came on, bathing the small room in a sterile light.

The black-suited man breathed deeply, slowly becoming accustomed to the feeling of wakefulness. The last time he'd been lucid was almost two weeks ago. The light stung his weak eyes. He slowly, gingerly pulled out the feeding and waste tubes, shuddering at the wet sound they made as they left the ports in his back.

It took the better part of an hour for Black to regain his senses. He floated slowly and carefully toward the door, which taunted him from a world away. At least the gravity was easy on his joints.

The air outside his room was metallic and stale, from year after year of being recycled through the same aging system. Glass surrounded him on all sides, reflecting his elongated face back at him. Beyond that, there was nothing but dark stones and a grand universe of stars.

The black-suited man gazed out at the galaxy spread out before him from his little box of oxygen. It was like a great cloud, the individual points so numerous that they melded together into a monolithic wall of light, far too large for any human mind to comprehend. Even Black's own brain struggled to come to terms with the sheer distance stretching above him.

The rock underfoot was tiny and pressed close by comparison. The nearby regolith was illuminated softly by the interior lights of the station creating a cramped pool of white in the middle of a bowl of darkness.

It was a confusing contrast, between the endless openness above and the constricting confines of his ability to move freely. Imprisoned by the limitations of his own frail body.

With a disgusted grunt, Black looked at the floor and was whisked away from the station. He felt the pull of acceleration on his gangly limbs. For once, his joints weren't throbbing with pain. He watched the asteroid fly away, its irregular shape appearing only as a ragged hole in the glow of the stars. The sun appeared from behind the rock, momentarily blinding him. When he opened his eyes, he looked out over Tycho Crater on Luna.

Earth watched him from the empty sky. The grey lunar surface and the bright blue-white disk of the planet drowned out all the stars. From this distance, humanity's touch was invisible. It was perhaps more incredible that there was no sign of the starfaring civilization even this close to its home planet. It might as well be a barren ocean world.

But Black had more important things to do than ruminating over mankind's collective footprint. He moved through the near vacuum, down to the peak standing at the center of Tycho. As he approached the surface, he saw the hair-thin tracks of a transport rover leading from the crater rim. Otherwise, Tycho was empty.

The peak rushed toward him, and he passed through it as if it were less than air. He suddenly found himself in another box of atmosphere, deep under the grey stones and seamlessly incorporated into the crater's shattered bedrock. Its walls were pristinely white, the floor carpeted in blue. No other identification was necessary.

The facility was small, about the size of a two-person apartment, and empty but for one woman. She was ancient, though not nearly so aged as Black himself, and sat half-asleep in a chair, arms crossed in her sleep. The black-suited man hovered by her shoulder and touched her.

The woman woke with a jolt, as if electrocuted. She gasped and began breathing heavily, her mouth a wide circle. She came very close to dying in that moment, but the artificial organs refused to let her go under. When she could speak again, she whispered to him.

"You need to stop doing that. One of these days, your contraptions won't work."

"Perhaps. I have work for you."

"I gathered that."

"There's going to be a war. Soon. Maybe in the next few hours. The situation might cause trouble off-world. I need you to be ready."

The woman in grey grew somber. "You know we've never had to use the coils."

"Be ready," Black insisted. He left her to her thoughts and flew back to his tiny rock.

Once his mind was securely lodged in his body, Black creaked back into the physical world, cursing his body as it teetered on the edge of falling apart.

The tiny building was cramped and uncomfortable, but he rarely ever spent a waking moment there. Eager to get off, he approached the simple airlock and donned his pressure suit. The process was not nearly as arduous as he had predicted it would be. His bones seemed to be getting more used to motion with time.

Once outside, Black savored his new-found mobility. With surprising strength, he launched himself off the surface and into a wide parabola over the asteroid. The dark regolith rushed by, soundless. Black ignored the sharp spires and ridges below him and watched the vaguely circular horizon for the coming sun.

When it came, his ocular sphincters immediately responded and allowed him to gaze at Sol in its full, brilliant glory. With a little help from the chip, the light was dimmed further to reveal the boiling, spotted disk wreathed in fire.

If only he had the time to behold such wonders whenever he wished. It was a problem that graced all humanity, indeed, all animal life, since the beginning. Everyone craved the ability to see the grand universe around them, to witness the natural beauty that went unseen just beyond the horizon. But more pressing matters always got in the way. There wasn't enough food, enough money, enough energy. There was always work to be done, just for the meager privilege of survival. Here he was, the richest person in the solar system, and even he was hard-pressed to find a moment to truly stop and smell the roses.

Well below and ahead of him, Black saw a dark hole in the asteroid, much deeper and smaller than the craters that peppered its surface. It was a launch silo, holding a compact fusion torch ship. There were only nine of its kind, one for each of the planetary overseers, as well as his own. The ship had no name, no need for one at all, because only nine men and women lived to know of its existence. It was designed for speed and stealth.

Black waited for gravity to bring him to the launch silo. Just before impact, he bent his knees slightly and was momentarily blinded by the pain. He came back almost instantly, in time to dig his heels into the rock and bring himself to a halt. He glanced at the silo, failed to find the bottom, and nonchalantly jumped in.

He fell for what seemed like hours, unable to see anything except the shrinking circle of stars above. Eventually, he bounced off the metal surface of the ship and blindly grabbed for a handhold on its surface. He quickly found the door and squeezed his suited bulk through it.

Ten minutes later, the ship was burning silently through the ether, leaving the asteroid 2432 Soomana to its lonely dance around the sun.

To call the cabin cramped would be more than an understatement. Black felt like he was in a coffin, the walls crowding in all around him. The pressure of acceleration flattened his body against the cold metal. It was bearable, as long as he wasn't supporting the weight on pencil-thin bones. The journey would still be a terrible one, if not for the pain, then for the claustrophobia and boredom. Instead of spending the next two weeks locked in a sarcophagus, he flew.

Black quickly outpaced the ship as it burned through space, and watched it diminish into invisibility. The beautiful sphere of Earth appeared in its place. Of course, his consciousness took several minutes to travel from Trans-Martian space to this blue globe. Those minutes were lost to him now, cleanly removed from his personal continuum, but he could afford that.

He decided to skip the approach sequence entirely and cut to the point. He appeared outside the UDS Headquarters in The Volga Administrative District. The sight of the sky stretching above his head gave him pause. He basked in the open beauty of it, and lamented that he would never personally witness it. The landscape surrounding him was just as incredible, a thick stand of trees, swaying in the slight breeze. The building sat amidst the forest, a boring cliff of brown stone and glass. Black strode forth on un-aching legs pushed through the tall, imposing doors.

The building was made to impress, and Black had to admit that it worked. Water fell from the ceiling in a continuous stream, splashing into deep reflective pools. Huge windows on the opposite side of the room let in a glorious view of the forest outside, shining green and yellow in the afternoon sun. The floor was a marble mosaic, clicking loudly beneath his shoes. The tiles made the shape of the UDS symbol, a huge circle containing nine smaller ones. Perhaps the most astonishing part of the whole arrangement was that none of it was virtual.

It took Black a few minutes to find the Secretary General's office, as the building did not lend itself to ease of access. When he did, he stepped in without acknowledging the intricate security system built into the door. The office was an uninteresting affair, Spartan in its decoration and hardly worthy of being the one seat of power from which all mankind was ruled. The SG himself was working diligently, clacking away at a physical computer with a physical screen. It was laughable, but Black put on a grim, serious face.

He made himself visible and strode menacingly into the office. The Secretary General let out a startled gasp and stood up straighter in his chair. Black loomed over him, standing at an imposing two and a half meters.

"Greetings, sir," said the SG, his voice firm.

"The same to you, Anatol. How have you been?"

"Uh..." the Secretary General faltered in the face of the unexpected cordiality.

"That's wonderful. Do you know what day it is, Anatol?"

"No, sir."

"Today is the day that the Facem completes its mission. We won't get the radio confirmation for another twenty years, but if our predictions are correct, the ship will have arrived today."

The SG was taken back. "Sir, that's...wonderful news, but..."

"Why did your predecessor order the construction of that ship?"

Anatol Slusarski settled back into his chair, beginning to see where the conversation was heading. "It was on your order, sir. Mr. Kasreh was just following it."

"Yes, Anatol, we both know that. But for what purpose was the Facem built?"

"There were two reasons, to the best of my knowledge, sir. To advertise the power of the company and to extend the survivability of the human species."

"Both very noble goals. Do you want me to tell you the true reason?"

"Certainly, sir."

"The Facem is primarily a scientific vessel. It was built to provide a safe distance between the testing laboratory and civilian populations. The subject of testing is an unknown substance brought back by the Conqueror spacecraft two hundred years ago. That was the primary objective of the project."

Slusarski took the new information in stride. "That seems like an unusually large expenditure for such a modest goal, sir. Why did you choose to do it?"

"The substance has been shown to be dangerous, and the circumstances of its discovery convinced me that it may be able to end our civilization. We began testing on Triton, but the experiments ended in tragedy, and the project was shut down. Then I found another way. Do you know what the substance is, Anatol? Though I can't know the full extent of its abilities, I have reason to believe that it could be the best manufacturing tool imaginable. It can extract resources, process them, and assemble units all at once. Not to mention how effectively it gathers and uses energy. With it, we could speed up the colonization of space tenfold. We could solve the overpopulation problem on Earth, decommission the orbital farms, truly rebuild mankind."

What Black neglected to mention was now crucial the substance would be to his other brainchild. The Equites was merely a proof of concept. To travel among the stars, he would need thousands of them, each much bigger than those currently under construction. The substance could be the only way to do it.

"That's a noble mission, sir, but why are you telling me now?"

"Consider it an invitation. When the Facem comes back, it will bring a complete change to our civilization. I plan to welcome it with open arms. I invite you to join me."

It was, of course, a test, to see what the Secretary General would choose to do with the information. Studying Anatol's calm, unflinching face, he decided the man wouldn't prematurely go crying to the citizens of the UDS. He would, eventually. Perhaps as his final statement upon ceding his position to whomever came next, so that he could slip into retirement without unnecessary trauma. Black appreciated predictability.

"I hope I will have the honor to do so, sir."

"It's been wonderful, Mr. Slusarski," said Black.

He blinked and suddenly lived in his own mind again. The pains of flesh returned soon after, crashing over him in waves of sensation. Perhaps he should go slower? No, there were things to attend to in person, and he needed to hurry.

For a time, Black sat still in the darkness, feeling the unfamiliar sensations coursing through his nerves, feeling the reactor roar and thunder beneath him. He closed his eyes, let his mind wander.

What was he? The question of self-identity was one that he often returned to in moments like these, devoid of business or directed thought. He was mostly human. He was the founder of the Exonavis Company. He held the combined will of a million people in his hands, but none of them knew his name.

One of the more perplexing traditions of the company was that every spacecraft it produced was named in Latin. The practice was difficult to rationalize, but he refused to christen his creations any other way. It lent them a sense of ancient greatness, of immortality. And it was true. Without sails, without wind, without water, there can be no rust.

Outside, the sun burned and the asteroids spun.