Chapter 2

“Professor, are you there?”

“I’m here, Kellie.” The voice came only through her earphones now and sounded out of breath.

“What’s going on?” she wanted to know.

“I’m making my escape.”

Kellie blinked at the news. “Where am I?”

“In my coat pocket.”

“Is that safe?”

“So long as you stay where you are inside that cave.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” Kellie floated, no longer heavy enough, she guessed, for gravity to affect.

“That’s not the case,” Grove advised. “You are being pulled equally from every direction now. That’s why you float.”

“Am I... ?” She wasn’t sure of the phraseology.

“Adrift in molecular space? Not yet. Can you see anything?”

“I’m blind as a bat,” Kellie said. “No light anywhere.” She paused. “Actually, that’s not true. I seem to be shining myself.” A shimmering greenish radiance encircled her arms and hands. “Is that the field?”

“I imagine so, yes.” Kellie heard voices in the background, a man and a woman. “Thank, you,” Grove said. “Thank you very much. No, I’m afraid I haven’t seen anyone. Why?”

“They’re looking for me, aren’t they?” Kellie guessed. “That’s why you left.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Hope you don’t get caught then,” she murmured, surprised to discover she meant it. The only thing keeping her from hysteria was the sound of Grove’s voice--and knowing it would be there in the future, whatever the future held.

Sudden homesickness--powerful as a thrust sword--skewered her heart. Never again would she see her mom and dad, her brother and sister, her friends ... she broke out in scalding hot tears.

“I hate you!” she blubbered. “Why did you do this to me?” A car door opened and then slammed shut.

“Something I didn’t tell you before,” Grove huffed. He was too fat for all this exertion, Kellie thought, another worry. “It’s part of you now-Shrinx. It understands your feelings, and experiences them along with you, Kellie. Shrinx is intelligent and has the ability to halt your shrinkage at any time.”

“What?” Kellie shouted with aching hope. “Are you kidding me? It can reverse this?”

An engine started and for a moment, Kellie heard the faint drone of classical music in the background.

“No. It can’t do that,” Grove said.

Kellie again felt crushed.

“But it can halt your shrinkage, and will--if and when you discover a suitable planet with human-like inhabitants and breathable air. Shrinx has no desire to reduce you for the rest of eternity, Kellie Marie.”

Kellie was immensely relieved. Not that she was joyous at the prospect of spending life among imitation humans, but she certainly didn’t want to shrink into eternity.

“How long ... how long might that take?” she croaked. Anxiety had her around the throat again.

“Based on my calculations, it should occur within twenty-seven landfalls.”

“Twenty-seven landfalls? I have to visit twenty-seven planets before I can stop?”

“Stop screeching! It’s only a calculation, based upon best estimates.” He paused a moment. “There are no certainties here, Kellie. It could happen on your first planet, or never at all. I’m sorry.”

“No!” she cried, bursting into tears again.

“I’m sorry,” Grove repeated.

“Fuck you being sorry!” Kellie screamed and tore the headphones from her ears.

Sometime later, once she’d calmed and become lonely for Grove’s voice, Kellie replaced the earphones. She knew they still worked because she heard Grove yelling at her. He sounded quite frantic.

“Something’s going on,” she said simply. Grove sighed deeply into her earphones.

“I thought I’d lost you, kid.”

“You almost did,” Kellie muttered bitterly. She had very nearly hurled the headphones away into space. “Something’s out here with me, Professor.”

Iridescent patches of light, appearing to be great distances away, surrounded her in all directions. She described what she saw and Grove became excited.

“My God! You’re there! In Intergalactic space, already! How big do they appear to be?”

Kellie found she had better luck observing peripherally. “As big as a walnut, maybe?”

“How many can you see?”

Kellie couldn’t guess.

“On the order of thousands?” Grove asked excitedly.

“Maybe millions,” Kellie whispered. The sight was truly breathtaking.

“Individual stars?” Grove asked.

Kellie shook her head. “No, wait.” In a cluster off to her left, a single point of light blazed intensely for an instant, and then vanished. Un-focusing, she observed the same phenomenon in other clusters, in all directions. Some clusters exhibited multiple flashes, occurring in different parts of the cluster. Jubilant, Grove informed Kellie what she was seeing were supernovae.

“It happens that fast?” she asked doubtfully.

“For you, yes. Relative to the rest of the universe, you are aging immensely fast, experiencing thousands of years of evolution per minute. Right now, you are by far the largest, most massive object in this universe. Your presence affects everything else, all other mass. You are something unexplainable to any intelligent species observing you. Impossible, in fact.”

His tone suggested awe, but Kellie was beyond awe. She discerned the iridescent patches as globular clusters, spiral galaxies, oblong shapes that twisted like glowing worms. One particularly odd shape were two galaxies in collision, she realized.

“My, God!” Grove enthused. “I can’t wait to get there! Are they growing larger?”

“Quickly,” Kellie realized. A spiral galaxy similar to illustrations she had seen of her own galaxy caught her eye. She, or it, was closing the distance between them rapidly. The width of an old LP record, individual stars resolved along the long spiral arms. Supernovae no longer popped off like tiny strobes, but appeared, grew in strength and then faded away to nothingness in perhaps five seconds. The approaching galaxy expanded and resolved into thousand of stars, and then millions of stars. Before she knew it, the galaxy was bigger than she was.

“Professor ... this is happening really fast.”

“Tell me about the stars, Kellie.”

Kellie described the different colors, the different apparent sizes, how many of them-most--seemed to be two- or even three-star systems.

“Can you make out any planets?” Grove demanded.

Kellie hesitated. “I’m inside one of the spiral arms, Professor.”

“No! No, Kellie, you shouldn’t be that close!”

“Well, I am,” she muttered defensively. Stars, hundreds, and thousands swept past, many thrown wildly behind her into swirling, smoke like patterns. Kellie remembered his admonitions concerning disruptions, and blurted: “It’s not my fault, Professor! The galaxy just sorta reached out and grabbed me.”

Grove sounded both aggravated and resigned. “Gravitational attraction. Just try to be as non-disruptive as possible, Kellie.”

Holding motionless, Kellie let the stars flow around her as they pleased. Suddenly she was free of the arm and into intergalactic space again, between spiral arms. The oncoming rush of stars gave her a crunch of anxiety. “Professor... ?”

Grove heard the alarm in her voice. “What’s wrong?”

Kellie shuddered and closed her eyes. “Nothing. I’m just freaking out.” She described being between the arms, and how, oddly, the onrushing stars seemed to have put on the brakes.

“You’re reducing in scale. The stars are much bigger now, correct? I’d be surprised if you didn’t experience some warming from their output. Be careful not to let any penetrate your field. It’s virtually impenetrable at your present scale, but that won’t last much longer. Be attentive now.”

Anxious, Kellie watched the spiral arm approach. The stars were much larger, as Grove had predicted, ranging everywhere in color from brilliant, almost unobservable white, to the deepest, darkest red. Those, she noted, were also among the largest stars, and questioning Grove about this, he said:

“Supergiants: stars that have fused the hydrogen in their cores into helium and heavier elements, and are verging on collapse. Keep away from those stars, Kellie Marie! Supergiants are dangerous, red and blues, alike.”

As he spoke, the spiral arm arrived and engulfed Kellie. She nearly panicked as dozens, and then hundreds of stars came within inches of her skin.

“Professor... !” she cried in alarm.

“How close?”

“Like, close enough that I can feel their heat!” she cried. Indeed, each passing star lit a swath across her bare skin or clothing that made her want to jump back. Some passed so close as to feel like a too-close match-head on her skin. On the verge of panic, Kellie wondered if these stars could set her afire; possibly ignite her clothing. Some were the size of marbles now.

“Just relax, Kellie. You should very soon be small enough to-”

“Don’t tell me that!” she cried, barely restraining the urge to swat away a small yellow-white sun brushing past her nose. What saved the errant star and its coterie of tiny planets was her noticing the planets in time. The star had four, no bigger than the size of pinheads. “Oh, my God, Professor...”

“What? What is it, Kellie?”

The planets, too small to distinguish colors, whirled rapidly around the star. The closest was a hands-distance out from the sun, the three outer spheres, one, and half times that distance each. Her impression was the closest planet was second largest; the two outer orbs half the size of the second.

“I have to be really careful,” Kellie said in awe.

“Planets?” Grove guessed. “Be careful, as careful can be.”

Kellie spotted another, slightly larger yellowish star with a blue-white companion half its size, sporting a planetary system. A dozen large orbs and half a dozen smaller planets, barely distinguishable against the blackness, orbited the binary parents. Unlike the four siblings of the solitary yellow-white, however, this system orbited in different planes. It reminded Kellie of animations she’d seen depicting electrons circling an atomic nucleus. Grove ate up the news in jubilation.

“I knew it! Didn’t I tell you! Star systems, just like our own!”

Kellie counted two dozen or more systems with planet-counts ranging from two to fifteen. A few stars were single like the first system she’d observed; most accompanied one or more companions. An especially odd aggregate, composed of five wildly mismatched stars, performed a wobbly dance of gravitational attraction. A single, very distant satellite orbited this group. She described the anomaly for Grove.

“Incredible! I can’t imagine the complexity of their interactions. Keeping an eye out for black holes?”

Kellie snorted. “Like I could really spot one, Professor!”

Grove disagreed. “A black hole would be surrounded by an accretion disk the width of a solar system, with no star visible in the center. Alternately, pulling gas off a companion star. Or the remains of a supernova, with gas and dust expanding outward from an invisible center point. One way or the other, you’d recognize it, I think. So keep your eyes open, kiddo.”

Kellie did, and spotted nothing like Grove’s examples until just before exiting the spiral arm: a glowing ball of gas unraveling even as she watched. Passing the news along to Grove, she jumped and cried out when a star, two hundred feet off to her right, exploded into incredible brightness.

“What? What is it?” Grove demanded.

“A fucking supernova!” Even between fingers and barely cracked eyelids, Kellie could look nowhere near the intense explosion. She gasped. “What if that was closer to me?”

“You were lucky,” Grove agreed. “But novas are few and far between. You should be okay if you keep an eye out for candidate stars.”

“Right,” she grumbled. “Like I inspect every one.”

Free of the spiral arm, she watched the next approach with trepidation. A hundred feet in its sweep outward from the galactic center, the wall of stars advanced toward her at walking speed. Insertion wasn’t nearly as traumatic as before, however, owing to her greatly reduced size. She slid right in amongst the stars.

“I’m in the third spiral arm now, Professor. Either I’ve slowed the galaxy’s rotation, or its gravity is dragging me along. I’m hardly moving at all now, in relation to the stars. In fact...” She eyed a bright yellow star with a dozen orbiting planets approaching off to her left. “I think I better start looking around for possible places to land.” She hesitated. “Professor... ? Once I select one, how do I get to it?”

Grove chuckled.

“I hope that means you’ve already thought this out and are laughing at my naiveté.”

Grove chuckled again.

“Come on, professor ... a little help?”

Grove said: “Try swimming.”

“Excuse me?”

“Swim. You are immensely large, interstellar-wise, and interstellar space is packed with residual dust and gas. It should be enough to act as a friction source. Dog paddle, Kellie. When you’re small enough not to interact with any nearby stars, of course. Don’t do it until then, please.”

Frustrated and antsy, Kellie waited until shrinkage placed her equidistant from her quarry, and the next closest system in her longitudinal plane. So long as she didn’t kick, she’d be okay, she thought. A system was five feet directly below, a double star with three planets. She’d stick with her yellow-white sun.

“I’m gonna try it,” she said.

“Use your arms, Kellie. Dog paddle.”

Mimicking his words and mouthing a few insults to boot, Kellie set off swimming. Grove’s concept worked surprisingly well; watching in fascination, she watched the yellow-white star system slowly approach. She halted when she’d closed to within two meters.

“Not too close,” Grove warned. “Your mass could throw the system completely out of whack. You’re a hundred times more massive than the entire solar system. You’d eject the outer planets and disrupt the inner.”

Grunting agreement, Kellie slowly backed away. “You know, I hate you, Professor.”

Grove acknowledged that fact. “Sorry for doing this to you, Kellie. I truly am.”

Kellie eyed the outermost planet, a frozen chunk of ice the size of a marble. “Are you serious about me holding up on some livable planet?”

“Completely.” In the background, a door opened and closed. “I’m home,” he informed her.

“You promise me that? You won’t let me keep shrinking and shrinking and shrinking forever?”

“Of course not. You know--”

“Because I’d probably commit suicide, if I had to face that, Professor.”

“Kellie...” The sound of jingling keys and a deadbolt being unlocked, and then the unmistakable sound of a front door opening, seals breaking loose from the metal surface. “Remember,” he said, closing the door again. “I’m doing the same thing as you. I have no intention of shrinking forever, either.”

Kellie heard keys drop onto a hard surface, probably a foyer table. Then a shuffling as Grove likely removed his coat. Then an almost reverential silence as Grove held the cube in the palm of his hand.

“How deep into that cube, am I, Professor?”

Grove’s voice sounded startled. “Oh. I wouldn’t suppose more than a few millimeters at best. Why?”

“Just curious,” she said.

An aquamarine giant approached, melon-sized with cloud layers probably thousands of feet thick, great bands of swirling, green and blue that Kellie guessed--from her stupid science class--was methane. Encircled by a gaggle of pea-sized moons, varying in color and reflectivity from jet black, to iridescent white (the two largest moons had moons of their own, Kellie noted), this planet looked totally foreign to life. She described the passing globe to Grove.

“Inhabitable planets will reside in the inner solar system, in the bio-zone, like our own planet. Something like ninety to one hundred million miles out from the sun.”

Kellie snorted at the concept of determining one hundred million miles of distance. She was millions of miles long herself, though, wasn’t she. “I’m moving in, Professor.”

“Take your time, Kellie. You’re still quite large.”

Fear of growing too small had her stomach in knots and chest feeling like someone knelt on it. She constantly worried about running out of air. Could the shimmering green liquid generate oxygen from nothing?

“Any suitable prospects?” Grove asked.

Kellie sensed the tightness in his voice. She loathed thinking what might happen if she shank out of existence in the void of interplanetary space. Could she nuzzle up to a dust particle, she wondered, a molecule of gas? The question sent a shudder down her spine.

“Still too far out. Another gas giant is on the far side of the sun, and a third is just inside that, about three-quarter’s the second one’s size. Both are bigger than the planet that passed me by, but I can’t be certain how much. What if the planet I want is over there with the others? What do I do then?”

“You wait,” Grove said. “The planet will come to you eventually.”

She gulped audibly. “You’re certain of that?”

“The closer in the planet, the faster the described arc. In the bio-zone, any planet should orbit four or five times about the sun as you reduce to proper size. Coincide your approach like a runner making a handoff, Kellie. Swim along its orbit, letting it catch up and capture you gravitationally. Make landfall at approximately half the thickness of the atmosphere. The best scenario would be coming in feet first, landing on your toes. You’ll just have to improvise. And Kellie... ?”

“What?” she grumbled, eyeing an approaching planet.

“Going in too large would be catastrophic: devastating, worldwide earthquakes; tsunamis thousands of feet high. Any structure within half a continent of you would be destroyed. Your mass could theoretically alter the planet’s rotation and orbital velocity. You might even eject the planet from the solar system.”

“What?” Kellie’s mind reeled. Immediately, she back-paddled to a dead stop. To her right, the approaching planet caught up and barreled past her at the speed of a racehorse. Softball-sized, rocky, cratered, and utterly barren, she watched it shrink away in horror. If that thing had hit her...

“You okay?” Grove asked.

“Fuck no, I’m not okay!” Describing the near miss, her heart hammered and her breathing refused to slow.

“Drop below the orbital plane and wait. Get out of immediate danger, Kellie. Right now.”

“No shit!” she shouted. Heart pounding, breathing still ragged, she paddled as though trying to touch bottom in a swimming pool. A dozen feet above, and forty feet inboard, another planet appeared. Half-again the size of its outboard neighbor, its coloration made Kellie’s heart skip a beat and the breath lock in her throat. She unconsciously began to paddle upward again--the planet looked promising.

“Professor!”

“Go, Kellie, go!”

Rotating so rapidly that Kellie could discern no clear detail, the planet was a blue-white blur. The South Pole-south from her vantage point, anyway-was startling, glistening white snow. Despite the fast spin, she glimpsed a number of large continents as the planet neared, ranging in color from dark green to sunburned, desert brown. The globe swept past, speeding away with two small moons in tow.

“Holy shit!” she whispered in awe.

“Tell me in detail!” Grove ordered.

Kellie recalled whatever detail she could from her quick glimpse. “This is the place,” she whispered hopefully.

“Go then. And Kellie... ?”

Don’t tell me to be careful, she thought sourly.

“Be careful.”

The planet returned surprisingly fast. Now beach ball-size, and rotating noticeably slower, Kellie identified not only continents, but a scattering of large islands. No continent extended north and south through both hemispheres as on her own world; all were situated above the equator, the largest, a green and brown monster occupying a third of the northern hemisphere, bisected by rugged mountain ranges and crisscrossed by long, meandering rivers. A sizable portion extended into the arctic sea, and was heavily glaciated. In all, Kellie spotted three--no four--large inland seas. This continent outsized any landmass of her world by a good percentage.

Two smaller, mid-sized continents completed the topography. Both offered eroded desert with scarce vegetation, green only along the coastlines. The smaller continent sported a trio of active volcanoes along the northern coast, spewing ashen smoke. Roughly X-shaped, Kellie eyed a meteor crater on the northeast arm, estimating its width at five hundred miles, and fifty miles deep. Water reflected from numerous small lakes at the bottom.

“This is definitely it!” she exclaimed, watching the planet recede. Describing everything in detail, Kellie worked hard not to embellish the description with her youthful exuberance. Despite this, her account became littered with ‘huge this’, and ‘awesome that’, and ‘the most incredible thing you’ve ever seen, Professor!’.

Grove chuckled in amusement.

“You just wait,” she complained. “You’ll be a flabbergasted teenager too.”

Listening to the tinkle of ice in a glass, and the pop-fizz of an opening soda can, Kellie realized how thirsty she was.

“Professor, how do I know the oceans I’m seeing are water? Or the atmosphere breathable? What if I splash down and the water is really sulfuric acid and the air cyanide gas? How do we know anything’s what it looks like down there? And please don’t tell me I’m taking my chances, okay?”

A universe away, Grove filled his drink glass. How many times had she done exactly the same thing, yakking with friends on the phone? How terribly long ago and unimportant that all seemed. Still, she’d give her right arm for a diet soda. The craving was frightful.

Grove said: “I think we can assume, given the apparent similarity between our universe and theirs-” Kellie sensed his uneasiness using those words. “--physical law dictates any planet forming in the bio-zone would possess water oceans, a nitrogen-rich atmosphere, and chlorophyll based vegetation. Everything you’ve described describes our own solar system to a T: the icy outer planets, the gas giants, enlarging in size and density toward the inner solar system, the graduation to smaller, rockier planets close to the sun. A planet’s distance from the sun dictates its physical characteristics. You should be fine, Kellie.”

“What about wildlife? What if this planet is in the Age of Dinosaurs? Do I eat the tyrannosaurs before they eat me? Will they go extinct shortly after my arrival?” She stopped to consider something. “How many years have gone by on this little planet since I first came into existence?”

Grove answered slowly. “I would guess, two billion years. Possible double that. I don’t know, exactly.”

Kellie gasped. “Two Billion! In less than two hours? How is that possible?”

“It all boils down to mass, Kellie. The more massive you are relative to the surrounding galaxies, the slower you age. It’s relativity at work.”

“But... ?” God, was it possible to outlive a universe, she wondered? She didn’t want to find out. The planet was approaching again.

“It’s back, Professor. It’s a lot bigger now, too.”

“How much bigger?”

“Bigger than me. Big as a car, maybe.”

“OK,” Grove said. “You’d better get moving, girl.”

Startled, Kellie began to dog paddle again. When it quickly became apparent that dog paddling wouldn’t do the trick, she began a full-fledged breaststroke, kicking wildly. Without water to resist her movements, however, progress was maddeningly slow. Before she regained the orbital plane, her planet had swept past.

“Fuck!”

“Take it easy, Kellie.”

“You take it easy!” she hollered. “Back in your fucking living room with your fucking idiotic drink!”

When the planet returned, it would be twice, possibly three times its present size. The velocity would slow, true, but not so much that being hit wouldn’t be fatal to her and the planet both. She had to get out front, and close to a matching speed. She started swimming, desperate to accelerate. It was hopeless.

“God damn it, Professor!” Swishing a hand angrily through the vacuum, she found it caused a barely discernable change in her position. She no longer offered enough surface area to effectively disturb the dust and gas.

“Take it easy, Kellie. You’re too large to attempt a landing anyway. I urged you into action only to get you moving again.”

“Well, fucking thanks a lot for that! You asshole!”

Grove chuckled and Kellie thrust up both fists with middle fingers extended. “Too bad you don’t have a camera attached to this thing,” she huffed, tapping the transmitter.

“Video eats up bandwidth. With the low wattage involved, I couldn’t afford video. Better get paddling, girl.”

“Asshole,” she muttered again.

Before long, she fell into a natural, though odd feeling rhythm, keeping a close eye behind, anxious at being overtaken. The planet’s velocity had noticeably diminished since the last pass, which worried her. What if she was too small when overtaken, the size of a breadcrumb? Being unable to gauge her reduction rate in relation to the local environment was life threatening.

The planet returned, big as a mansion, terrifying in its immensity. Kellie was tugged along behind as it passed, a leaf caught in the slipstream of a passing car.

“Are you okay?” Grove wanted to know.

“The planet has me in tow.” Try as she might, however, Kellie could not align herself feet-first toward the surface. In addition, she was not drawing closer, but following a football field’s-distance behind. Would her continually diminishing size remedy that situation? She didn’t understand physics at all.

“Professor? Will the planet pull me in as I get smaller?”

Grove hesitated.

“It will, won’t it? If I get left behind, there’s no chance of getting clear of its path next time. I’ll be tiny when it comes back. I’ll burn up in the atmosphere or impact like a meteorite.” Panic choked her voice. “Tell me what to do! I’m starting to fall behind now! The planet isn’t holding me any more! I don’t want to die out here!”

“Kellie, calm down. You can do this,” Grove soothed. Underlying the calm in his voice was a tremor of anxiety that made Kellie panic.

“This is why you sent me first!” she screamed. “To see how difficult it was to land. To see if I could manage it without killing myself, or miss altogether and shrink away into nothingness. I hate you, you coward! You--” She yelped, jerking spasmodically. “What the hell?” she gasped.

“What is it, Kellie?”

“I don’t know. Something just happened to me.”

The planet no longer receded. She drew closer, in fact, and at an alarming rate of speed; the distance between she and the planet halved in a matter of seconds.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!”

“Kellie! What’s wrong? Are you injured?”

“Shrinx is driving me forward somehow! Propelling me forward, like...” She struggled to find the right words. “Like an engine started up inside my bones. A thrumming, and now I’m catching up really fast. I don’t understand, Professor. Is Shrinx helping me make landfall?”

“It would appear so,” Grove confirmed.

“It would appear... ? You fuck! You knew this would happen and you didn’t tell me?”

Grove answered tritely: “I suspected it might, yes. Without knowing for sure, however, I couldn’t risk getting your hopes up. You handled the interim maneuvers just fine on your own, Kellie Marie. Shrinx stepped in only when it became evident you were in serious trouble.”

“You cock-sucking, mother-fu--”

“Don’t look a gift-horse in the mouth, Kellie Marie.”

“Fuck you in the mouth, you piece of horse-shit!”

Placing two fingers against her neck, she counted her galloping heartbeats. It was difficult to breath. Blood pressure made her temples pound. Hauling in a deep, shaky breath, she slowly blew it back out.

“I’m all right. I just need to relax,” she muttered. Which she did, shaking her hands and stretching her neck and popping her knuckles, which everyone told her was a really stupid thing to do, but no one was present to scold her now. After a moment, she said: “I’m holding position. I still feel the thrumming in my bones, but it eased up, like it’s idling or something. The planet’s bigger, too,” she added.

The planet was stadium-size now, and growing larger by the moment. Features, hitherto unseen, resolved as individual mountain peaks, dusty plateaus, crenellated glaciers, cascading rivers, impenetrable green forests and featureless deserts. A hundred mile wide fire burned on the oblong continent north of the equator. Behind the blaze lay thousands of square miles of blackened woodland. A twisting river lay ahead, but even to Kellie’s unpracticed eye, this would prove a poor firebreak. Pristine forest ahead stretched for thousands of unbroken miles. Kellie feared for any creatures running ahead of that firestorm.

“Professor, this planet looks uninhabited.” Explaining the fire and absence of any effort to fight it, she continued, “I also spot no signs of habitation, any roads, any man-made structures. No changes to the landscape that could be fabricated. I think we’re looking at a wild planet here, doc.”