Emperia IV-a is a small rocky moon orbiting a gas giant out in the Aurora Subsector. No air, no water, low gravity, and a surface temperature of -240 C. Not exactly the garden spot of the universe, but the company geologists thought it might have enough uranium to be worth mining, so my team and I went down to see if we could locate it. Ours were the first human boots to touch the ground. The eight of us spent nearly four standard months hiking over that rock taking samples, and in the end, we found what we were looking for. We all got a nice bonus out of that job. That was five years ago. Today there are more than 9,000 people living on that little moon, which I hear they're now calling Travaliu. The whole place is one big company town. Nothing there for me. I'll be heading out for a new assignment soon. Some ice ball in the Orlando Subsector that the company thinks might have useful deposits of frozen hydrocarbons. It does't really matter; I just like going places where nobody's ever been.