He walked among the stars. On the cold and minty smooth surface, it was not unlike strolling through the great wastes and unknowns of the vast and visible sky. Mercury in '03, Jupiter in '07, Saturn, Phoebe… Earth seemed but a scene from a play that flirted with reality on and off again.

Where was that fool Maners? His mind seemed to jump out and disperse with the sickly greens and blues of jagged ice which reflected the warm cradle of the sun, years away, the wrong way. The tiny crystals twinkled in vain to the vanquished ruler of the solar system, barely perceptible against the backdrop of the inner planets. He almost felt sorry for the billions that would never relish this true rare sunlight and ensemble of muted solitude. If the sun was a glorified star, then what of Earth? He scanned the horizon for the familiar blue-tinted star. People, continents, forests, rain storms and the very nature of time distorted by the expansive realities of distance, the orb simply an ambiguous haze of pulsating light.

Sometimes the conglomeration of a cloud of gases roughly ten feet in height hid the iceforms like a slow and terrestrial tide and gave the tiny cold world the illusion that it supported life. Almost with a purpose and semblence of order the gases would remain stable for a few days with a climax of brillance, the petals of color sprinkled with yellows, like a jeweled fog. However, the majority of the time they dispersed quickly into vacuum, for Pluto's weather without the support of a substantial atmosphere had precious little time.

James knew that if there had been life here, it had flickered and finally extinguished with the brilliance and indifference of a dying star. He felt the twinge of recognition behind his neck as he recalled the meeting 14 hours ago with Polk of the Terraform team.

"The possibilities for life as we know it in the universe is directly proportional to amount of stars in our galaxy," Polk's robust face filled the monitor, the friendly but intense eyes moving from side to side. "However, this number exponentially increases with our knowlege of the billions of galaxies and trillions of stars moving away from us at high velocities."

James remembered his imagination populating the surface of the planet. Would not the extreme conditions select for a lifeform with properties similar to the construct of a personal computer's hard drive at a quantumn level? Conduction of electromagnetism and the exchange of electrons was not a problem and the lattic work of crystal structures existed in the ice and the rocks.

Life would either perpetuate in a state of suspended animation, droning on and on through out the eons, or thirty generations would be condensed into a precious second, the surrounding topography resembling a mass mind. He almost spoke out loud.

"Jesus," he thought "What I wouldn't do for a juicy steak." "Not just the rich and smoky taste of the tender meat, but seeing the brilliance and beauty of orange and white hot coals, showing their colors."

His interlude was interrupted by a silver suited Jack Maners, back from the landing sight and maneuvering the small surface crawler to a virtual stop. "We have to vacate in one hour," uttered the crackle of the small speaker in James's helmet.

"What's going on, another meeting with the geological team?"

"Get in the crawler." Maners was a man of few words, "This time it is for good."

The two men sat silent on the trip back to the shuttle, over the jagged hills and scattered clouds of gases. For three years they had been visitors and at the same time prisoners of what writers and humanity had labeled "deep space", yet none of these people had ever traveled outside of the cozy confines the Martian orbit and could never really know without the experience.

The crawler bounced along with the simple elegance of a dancer and the horizon slowly changed as the terrain became worn. Soon the wondrous array of the emerald hills, a few unexplored and unspoiled would be acceptable memories only in the brains of machines. The silence and purity of the mind and the soul, the icy grip on the heart from loneliness and yearning for the vibrancy of Earth mere after thoughts.

Maners was the first to break the silence, "Will we ever come back" Both men knew the answer, that there was no answer, at least in their lifetime.

"My stubborn old grandfather used to mutter at night in the mountains of Venus that Pluto is just there for us to gaze to at, to remind us of how slow and ancient time really is, compared to what is valued now with the hastiness and clutter, and everyone trying to get from point to a to point b as quickly…"

Before James could finish his thought, the ghastly tower of the shuttle pad appeared just below the horizon in the small valley, dwarfing every natural feature, shape and form within proximity. Maners cut the power on the vehicle and the tires beneath began to rotate slower and slower, until the sensation existed that they were floating.

In the sea of space above the two men Charon wavered, Pluto's inexplicable moon. James didn't look up at the aqua tinted orb if he could, everything about the celestial body was just too eerie and out of place, like finding a thriving palm tree in the heights of the Himalayas.

"About ten minutes and we will reach the shuttle," said Maners with hidden anxiety.

"Sure", James thought, "He wants to go home, to the warmth, the colors, the chaos, to mark his twelve year old son Ben's growth with a scratch of the pencil on the kitchen wall." "Doesn't he realize that society has lost touch with its roots, its purpose?"

For the first time in his life, James truly realized who he was. Thirty nine years, and in the most confusing and alien environment, and he was complete. The ache of lonliness, unwritten letters, abbreviated tele-calls, now meaningless as the explanation of Pluto.

Five minutes to go and already the dazzling mists and icy questions marks of the other side of the planet, a daydream in James's head. The continuing opal hue of the sharp and young mountains so crisp in the phantom atmosphere and the cherished silence so intoxicating the sound of the soul only burdened by the beating of the heart. The black silhouette of permanent night with the ever-changing shine of the stars pulsating and dripping with the evervesance of existence. James was almost sickened that he would have to turn his head and heart around to witness the grand exit and harsh realities.

One minute left until the arrival and depth of the valley increased and the shuttle tower grew higher and higher like a black serpent. He thought of the implied desolation of the frozen wasteland, the guise of the retched landscape simply too obvious to be ignored. In reverance to chaos theory, less is truly more. A sickening feeling shot through his mind as his eyes panned the empty rocks and ice as he thought about Polk's hypothesis.

Seconds now until the glint of the sterile white shuttle should come into view. Comfort, flames, strength, relief, The reinforcement that a single man can make such generalizations about humanity and not be crucified or torched into dust by the universe itself.

The final slope, and Maners applied the reverse thruster jets and the vehicle appeared almost motionless. Lights, efficiency, security.

Two seconds, almost to the bottom and to see the familiar shuttle.

One.

The top of the shuttle would almost be visible. Already the rare topographical gems of reality and the empty plains just a backdrop, a hazy drunkenness and fog in the extremities of the mind. What if they are alive?

Zero. Maners gasped.

James dared to look up at the ghostly appearance of Charon, for it might be a familiar sight for eternity. "Hell, the old sonofabitch was right," James muttered, as the two men looked upon an empty shuttle tower freshly glowing from the shuttle, their shuttle, its light clearly visible in the star filled sky heading home. Slowly, a dazzling and rare tide of gases, with its majestic and surreal appearance, rolled to the bottom of the crater and covered the two forgotten men for the last time. James actually smiled, as the blinding blue-green wall, made it all so clear.

Back on the warm planet snuggled by the blanket the of the evening Sun, a twelve year old boy gazed with wonderment and innocence at a breaking news report on the television. The boy cried for the last time in his life and ran to comfort his mother.