The asteroid was a child of the maelstrom: a rough nugget of nickel-iron with some stony strata, three miles along its long axis.
The asteroid was a child of the maelstrom: a rough nugget of nickel-iron with some stony strata, three miles along its long axis.
No man had ever seen a mastodon when the passing of mighty Jupiter plucked the nugget from its orbit and flung it out toward interstellar space.
It was on the second lap of its long, narrow elliptical orbit. The iron surface was frosted with strange ices now, as it passed the peak of the curve and began to coast back toward the Sun.
And the black giant was there. Its ring of cometary snowballs glowed broad and beautiful in starlight. Infrared light traced bands and whorls in its stormy surface. It was the only major mass out here between the stars, and the asteroid curved toward it and increased speed.
Infrared light bathed and thawed the frosted iron. The ringed planet grew huge.
The asteroid plunged through the plane of the ring at twelve miles per second. Battered and pocked with glowing craters, it receded, carrying in its own small gravitational field a spray of icy masses from the ring. They came like attendants, ahead and behind, in a pattern like the curved arms of a spiral galaxy.
The asteroid and a score of comets pulled free of the black giant and began their long fall into the maelstrom.
