In it I was among a party of travelers. I don't think we were actually scientists or explorers, but accidentally ended up at our destination ala LOST.
We "landed" (more like just instantly ended up) on a dwarf planet/large asteroid. The thing apparently could be circumnavigated on foot in 2 days so it mustn't have been more than say 25 miles in diameter. It was bleak and gray like the moon but there were large patches of green "forests?" on the sides of the mountains.
And this place indeed had some huge mountains. The surface was littered with massive cliffs and crags spiraling, in some cases, to almost a mile in height. Yeah! It must have looked like the spiked ball on a ball and chain mace from just beyond its orbit.
We had to decide where we were going to camp (or perhaps permanently live since I think we'd all abandoned any hope of rescue). Oh, I forgot to mention...the planetoid had gravity and an atmosphere equal to that of Earth. Oh, I know that doesn't make sense but it's true. 'Cause, well, after all, it was a fucking dream!
I wanted to live in a nice comfortable valley but as the vegetation (and, I guess, water) was on the hillsides I couldn't. What's more the bottoms of the lowest valleys filled each night with a deadly greenish gas (chlorine, perhaps?). So living on the "sea level" of this place was out.
Well, there was no "sea", so I guess that wouldn't be sea level, maybe "lowest latitude of exposed crust" would be more like it. But would the top layer(s) of dirt be called "crust"? I mean this thing was too tiny to have a molten core and mantle like Earth. It must have been a solid cold hunk of rock throughout. Would it be defined as just a solid cooled core, or would its assumed former layers still be so if just in name only? (These questions keep me up at night folks...I'm such a hopeless geek!)
So I agreed to live on one of the least lofty slopes. And all was good.
Until one day when someone suggested we all gather in a hidden elevator they found. It was built into the interior of the tallest mountain and went straight to the top! We did as they suggested much to my dismay. The elevator shot up like a bullet and before long the silvery doors opened up and we were above the atmosphere on the summit of this rocky crag amidst the stone cold, dead silence and darkness of space.
As we each stepped out of the elevator we were slowly swept away, up and out into deep space. For here, our distance from the "core" of our new home world was too great to sustain gravity's hold on us and the centrifugal force of the dwarf planet's spinning on its axis propelled us on our way.
As I woke, I was slowly drifting in the vast vacuum of space, unaffected by temperature or lack of oxygen, etc. Just peacefully and aimlessly drifting...
Drifting...
Drifting...
Forever.