Captain Rick quickly surveyed the bridge. "Report!" he barked at the astrogator, Velma Spheroid.
"We're approaching a small, uncharted planetessimal."
Captain Rick took his seat behind the command console. "How strange... No one's ever run across an asteroid out here before."
Bunky looked up from his post at communications. "That's pretty much the definition of 'uncharted', sir."
"Is it? Of course it is, yes. Hmm."
"If someone ran across it, but never bothered to mark it down," continued Bunky, "then technically I suppose it would still be uncharted, but that would --"
Velma cleared her throat. "Captain Rick?"
"Yes?"
"Should I change course to avoid it?"
Captain Rick stood up and jutted his jaw even more than usual. "No," he said slowly. "Match velocity, trajectory and rotation. We're going to chart this asteroid."
"Great," sighed Bunky, rolling his eyes. "I had a date on Marsopolis tonight."
Velma smirked. "Don't worry," she said. "The ejacubots will still be there when we're done."
Captain Rick clapped them both on the back. "That's the spirit," he said. "Now I've got some important business down in the lab." He left the bridge.
Bunky and Velma watched as the hatch dogged shut behind him.
"It just gets worse and worse," said Velma.
"Yeah," said Bunky. "Sad, really."

Captain Rick strode into the ship's laboratory manfully. "Greetings, Professor!" he boomed.
"Ach!" yelped Professor Perihelion, dropping a vial of hydrochloric acid. The corrosive liquid began eating into the deck. "Mein Gott! You startled me!"
"Sorry, Professor." Captain Rick leaned over and looked at the bubbling, steaming hole. "What are you working on?"
The Professor shrugged. "Just playing with some dangerous chemicals. Nothing specific. What may I do for you, Captain?"
Captain Rick leaned in close and whispered, "I wanted to know if you'd finished that little, um, device for me."
"Ah, yes. It is finished." The Professor opened a drawer and withdrew a soft plastic cylinder with a tube at one end running to a squeezebulb. "To operate it, apply lubricant to the interior surfaces, then place it on your--"
The hole in the deck began making a high-pitched whistling sound as the ship's atmosphere squirted out into the vacuum of space.
Captain Rick held up his hand. "We can continue the demonstration later, Professor. Right now, I think we'd better find some duct tape."

"Have we matched orbit with the asteroid?" asked Captain Rick as he returned to the bridge.
"I'm making the final calculations for rotation now," said Velma.
"The ship sensors noticed a drop in air pressure on the lab deck a few minutes ago," said Bunky. "What happened?"
Captain Rick shrugged. "Nothing important."
"I've got the coordinates," said Velma. "The thing's tumbling pretty rapidly, so this may get a little complicated." She moved to push the 'commit' button.
"Space Custodians thrive on complications," Captain Rick said. "Complicated is what we do. Complicated for us is like simple for -- urk!"
"Oh, my God!" shrieked Bunky, trying to simultaneously hang on to the ceiling and dodge a flying chair.
Velma clawed her way back to the command console. "I'll... try to... turn off the... rotation... lock..." she gasped.
"You do that!" yelled Captain Rick, who was plastered against the main viewscreen. A heavy wrench landed inches from his head, cracking the glass.
Velma hit the switch. Everything and everyone thudded to the deck.
Bunky staggered to his feet, walked over to Velma, grabbed her by the shoulders and began shaking. "Can you explain to me how that can happen on a ship equipped with artificial gravity?" he shouted, red-faced.
"I hate to interrupt," said Captain Rick, pointing, "but look at the viewscreen."
A small red light flashed from the pockmarked surface of the asteroid.

Professor Perihelion, head bandaged, helped Captain Rick and Bunky prepare for their spacewalk. "I wish you'd warn me when you're going to throw the ship around like that, Captain."
Bunky wrinkled his nose. "What is that smell?" He turned his spacesuit around, finally sniffing the inside crotch. "Oh, man! Don't these suits ever get washed? Who last used this thing?" He squinted at it, looking for vermin.
"Um? I did, I guess," said Captain Rick, preoccupied. "Imagine, that asteroid has been traveling through the trackless void for eons, and now we'll be the first to unravel its secrets."
"Whatever," said Bunky. He held the suit crotch out for the Professor to smell. "If I wear this, you don't think I'll get root-rot or something, do you?"
The Professor recoiled. "I'd be unwilling to answer without doing some tests first."
Captain Rick drew himself up to his full hyper-caucasian height. "Get in that suit right now, mister!" he bellowed, "And that's an order! We have an appointment with history!"
Bunky grimaced and zipped himself into the spacesuit. The Professor helped him latch the bulky helmet in place.
"Don't worry," the Professor whispered. "I'll have some ointment waiting for you upon your return."
Bunky gave him the thumbs-up sign.

Captain Rick hated spacewalks on a profoundly biological level, but the adrenaline rush of exploration eased his customary nausea. "Isn't this amazing, Bunky?" he asked as they approached the dusty, cratered asteroid.
"Mmhmm," said Bunky, doing his best not to breathe inside his fetid suit.
"The light came from just over that horizon," said Captain Rick, pointing ahead and to the right. He aimed his backpack steering jets carefully, and within minutes they were hanging mere feet away from their goal.
It was an airlock, ancient but apparently active.
Captain Rick almost quivered with joy. "This is stupendous! Astounding! Incredible!"
"Are you going in, or are you just going to float around hurling superlatives?"
Peering inside, Captain Rick said, "I can make out the controls. They seem to be much the same as a Terran airlock." He flipped a switch, and the interior of the airlock lit up with a diffuse blue glow. He pulled himself in, and turned. "Are you coming with me?"
Bunky shook his head inside his helmet. "I think one of us had better stay out here just in case. You go make history, Captain."
Speechless with emotion, Captain Rick snapped Bunky a smart salute, sending himself pinwheeling into the airlock wall. "Microgravity is tricky," he chuckled, and pulled the lever to cycle the airlock.
After the door shut, Bunky wondered idly if he would be able to make it back to the ship and get out of the system before the Captain reemerged.

"I don't remember a thing from the time the airlock closed behind me, Professor," said Captain Rick, attempting to sit up. "How long was I inside the asteroid?"
Professor Perihelion pushed the Captain back onto the sickbay bunk. "You came floating out the airlock about 45 minutes after you went in. Bunky brought you back." He cast a reproachful glance at Bunky, who shrugged and looked uncomfortable.
"It was the right thing to do, I guess," he said lamely.
"You've earned my eternal gratitude this day, my friend," said Captain Rick. He extended his hand. "Put'er there, pal."
Bunky stepped back. "Uh, no thanks. You've got some weird kind of rash and I'm not going to touch you."
Captain Rick held his hand up in front of his face. It was covered with furry white patches laced with tiny red filaments. "Now that you mention it," he said, "my skin itches something fierce." He moved to scratch it.
"Gott in Himmel, don't!" cried the Professor, stopping him with a rubber-gloved hand. "This is an alien organism. We don't know anything about it. Scratching it may cause it to mutate into some horrible oozing amoebae or worse."
The Captain squirmed. "Well, what do you expect me to do? It's darned uncomfortable. Can you apply a salve or something?"
"Not until I've studied it more closely." He trundled a large scanner to the bedside. "Now be stoic while I get to work."

The Professor sat back in his chair and whistled.
"What is it, Professor? Am I going to die?"
Shaking his head, the Professor stood up and rubbed the back of his neck. He looked stunned. "No," he said at last, "you're not going to die. Not from this, at any rate."
"Whoo!" breathed the Captain. "Great! So bring on the ointment, doc! Let's get rid of this rash!"
"Alas," said the Professor, "that is exactly what we cannot do."
"What? Why not? Is it incurable?"
The Professor sat back down. "No. I could remove every trace of your discomfort with a simple bar of soap. But that is beside the point. You must live with this for the rest of your life."
"I don't understand."
Turning the scanner monitor so that Captain Rick could see it, the Professor said, "You must live with it because it is not a rash. It is a civilization."
"What?"
The Professor adjusted the scanner focus. A vast alien cityscape was displayed on the monitor. "The white patches are urban areas, as you can see. I believe the red filaments are some kind of mass transit system."
Captain Rick stared at the monitor incredulously. "You're kidding."
"No. It's quite remarkable. Look closely, at that old acne scar. They've turned it into some kind of stadium for sporting events."
The two men watched quietly for several minutes. Captain Rick broke the silence. "Oh, my God," he said. "I've been colonized."
"Yes."
"But the itching..."
"You'll have to get used to it. Anything we do to stop the itching would result in the death of hundreds of billions of sentient creatures."
Captain Rick contemplated this. "Even if I scratched just a little?" he asked hopefully.
"The fingernail on your pinkie finger spans five or six alien cities. Are you willing to destroy that many lives?"
"Anti-itch drugs?"
"They'd change your basic body chemistry, and wreak havoc with the ecosystem of the colony. Face it, Captain. In order to stop the itching, you would have to become the worst mass-murderer in history."

"Jeez, the Captain looks bad lately," said Velma. She reached across the table for another serving of beetloaf. "That crazy stare of his gives me the creeps."
Bunky pushed a forkful of algaeroni into his mouth. "Last night I caught him talking to his arm."
"What was he saying to it?" asked the Professor. "Just out of professional curiosity, of course."
"Of course. I'm not sure, but I think he was trying to convince his little guests he was God."
Velma looked at her plate sadly. "I never really liked the Captain, you know? I always thought he was a big jerk. But the torture he's going through..."
"I know," said Bunky. "I feel the same way."
Captain Rick bounced into the mess hall jauntily. "Hiya, troops!" he said. "What's for dinner?"
"Captain?" said Velma. "You look... great..."
He thumped his chest. "I feel great, too. Took a little shower a few minutes ago. It's amazing how much brighter the world looks after a good, brisk shower!"
The crew stared at him.
"Oh, no," said Velma.
Professor Perihelion buried his head in his hands and shuddered.
The Captain sat down and grabbed a plate. "Y'know, Bunky, I've been thinking that we probably don't need to mark that asteroid on the charts after all." He served himself two slices of beetloaf and covered them with gravy. "The paperwork would be horrendous."
"Whatever you think is right, sir," said Bunky, looking away.
Velma stood up. "I'm not very hungry anymore," she said. "I think I'll go erase the ship's logs for the last week or so."
"That's probably a good idea," said Captain Rick. "Just forget that the last week ever happened." He scratched himself and sighed.