Cold Comfort

By Dean Wesley Smith

A science fiction short story with a Twilight Zone twist by bestselling writer Dean Wesley Smith.

About to die a horrible death alone in the asteroid belt, his crew members already dead, Ben discovers that he might yet have a future. And he might get to see his wife once again.

But it’s not the visit or the future he ever would have imagined possible.

Bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith has written more than one hundred popular novels and well over 100 published short stories. His novels include the science fiction novel Laying the Music to Rest and the thriller The Hunted as D.W. Smith. With Kristine Kathryn Rusch, he is the coauthor of The Tenth Planet trilogy and The 10th Kingdom.

He writes under many pen names and has also ghosted for a number of top bestselling writers.

Dean has also written books and comics for all three major comic book companies, Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse, and has done scripts for Hollywood. One movie was actually made.

Over his career he has also been an editor and publisher, first at Pulphouse Publishing, then for VB Tech Journal, then for Pocket Books.

Currently, he is writing thrillers and mystery novels under another name.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Jul 14, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452321608

Dean Wesley Smith

Considered one of the most prolific writers working in modern fiction, USA TODAY bestselling writer, Dean Wesley Smith published far over a hundred novels in forty years, and hundreds of short stories across many genres. He currently produces novels in four major series, including the time travel Thunder Mountain novels set in the old west, the galaxy-spanning Seeders Universe series, the urban fantasy Ghost of a Chance series, and the superhero series staring Poker Boy. During his career he also wrote a couple dozen Star Trek novels, the only two original Men in Black novels, Spider-Man and X-Men novels, plus novels set in gaming and television worlds.

Book preview

Cold Comfort

Dean Wesley Smith

Cold Comfort

Copyright © 2012 by Dean Wesley Smith

Published by WMG Publishing

Cover Design copyright © 2012 WMG Publishing

Cover art copyright © Luca Ol/Dreamstime

Cold Comfort was first published in the anthology The Future We Wish We Had edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Rebecca Lickiss and published by Daw Books.

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This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Cold Comfort

One

Houston Space Center, do you copy?

I sat in the big command chair, leaning back, listening to nothing as the time lag between the asteroid belt and Earth played out. The time lag wasn’t as bad as it used to be during the early days of the Martian missions, thanks to some new developments in laser communications cutting through close-warp space, but it still took some time. About four seconds each direction from this far out. Nowhere near as slow as the speed of light, thank heavens.

Although, at this point, it didn’t much matter.

I glanced around at the five empty chairs in the big control room of Asteroid Six, code-named Klondike after the gold rush back in Alaska. After all, that was what we had been sent out here to get. Minerals, from gold to anything else worth mining, to make part of this