Dead Man's Planet: A Ghostly Vigil On A Frozen Asteroid

A drifting asteroid between Mars and Jupiter should have been nothing more than a temporary stop. Instead, it greets two spacemen with fields that glow, buds that fire back, and a path that leads to a sealed door bearing the mark of Earth. Someone has lived here. Someone has farmed this frozen stone. And someone has left a body standing guard in the cold.

Inside the buried cabin, they meet Ghor, a pale, sharp-eyed figure who claims the asteroid as his birthplace. He has shaped alien weeds in...