The colony on the rock simply named EE-17 — named after the section of a map grid where it was discovered — was a small community made up mostly of scientists and their families. So much remained to be learned about the galaxy since faster than light travel had been established as safe, reliable, and cost effective that there was always room in the economies across the stars for more academics. What had once been a vocation with limited potential for success had now become the most common career path for human beings anywhere, and still the demand for thinkers, designers, engineers and studiers could never approach being met.
On EE-17, a good deal of the people living there spent their time trying to understand and reproduce the way the planetoid’s various components interacted with each other to create the energy fields which allowed it to maintain its shape and mass through the dozens of kinds of space hazards which accosted it constantly. no amount of debris or extreme temperatures had any effect on this asteroid, and a lot of people were living there and trying to figure out why.