Ian's Interstellar Wandering Diary

The normal communication channels had not been removed.

So Batman and Superman could hear Ian. To be fair, dull space travel was not exactly Ian's idea of a vacation.

Finding a little fun for himself did not seem like a problem to him.

The ship flew through the stars for three days.

Over those three days, aside from occasionally adjusting the course, Ian did almost nothing. Black Box took over most of the operations, its voice sounding from time to time as it reported all kinds of information in that lazy, punchable tone.

"There is an asteroid belt three point five light-years ahead. Large amounts of metal signatures detected. One asteroid, approximately thirty kilometers in diameter, has a surface that is seventy percent pure gold."

Ian sat up straight in his chair. "Pure gold?"

"Pure gold. By Earth's market price, the gold on that asteroid would be enough to buy the entire solar system."

Ian was silent for one second. "—Stop for a moment."

Black Box laughed—a very artificial-intelligence kind of laugh.

It carried the smugness of "I knew you were going to say that." The ship slowed and hovered beside that asteroid. Ian looked out through the porthole and froze completely.

It was a golden planet. Not large, only about thirty kilometers in diameter, a tiny thing by cosmic standards. But it was golden from end to end, glittering under the light of the star like a carefully polished jewel. Ian stared at it for a long time, then said, "Can I move it?"

"You can't move it. But you can dig out a little," Black Box said. "There's a set of mining equipment in the cargo hold. Batman prepared it. He probably guessed you would do something like this."

Ian raised an eyebrow. "He guessed?"

"He guesses everything."