Act 1, Scene 8

A picture of Mary Jane. A finger touches it. We follow the finger along the hand until we see the touch belongs to John Jameson. He's floating in the shuttle, looking at the picture with anger and longing. His fellow astronaut –Richard Stevens– notices this.

STEVENS: (makes the 'Psycho' stabbing noise) Colonel sir, with all due respect – get over it!

JOHN: I'm sorry – how many beautiful girls have jilted you at the altar again?

STEVENS: Blah blah. Get your mind back on the mission, superstar.

Chang, a pretty Asian female and the third astronaut, floats into the chamber.

CHANG: Loverboy pining again?

STEVENS: As per.

CHANG: Who'd she dump you for anyway? I mean, who the hell does a girl dump a millionaire underwear model astronaut for? Superman?

We see John frown slightly at this, as if a new thought has occurred to him.

JOHN: She didn't 'dump' me 'for' anyone. She just wasn't ready. She needed some distance.

STEVENS: Well buddy, you're a hundred thousand miles from her now. If that doesn't qualify as 'distance', then maybe it just wasn't meant to be…

A light begins to flash on the console.

CHANG: We're coming up on the asteroid.

JOHN: Light the fires. I'll raise Houston.

STEVENS: If MJ calls, what should I tell her?

JOHN: How about go to hell?

We leave the shuttle and fly ahead to the asteroid. It's your usual asteroid terrain; pitted, volcanic, steam and vapours rising, the whole massive rock tumbling through space. But in one pitted depression on the surface, something incongruous bubbles; it resembles a small reservoir of black tar, and most worryingly of all, it pulses from within, as if shaken by an interior heartbeat.

As if it's hibernating…