Shrink Wrapped

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

"Planets?" Grove guessed.

"Yes," she confirmed breathlessly.

"There are many of them?"

Kellie stared at another, slightly larger yellowish star with a blue-white companion half its size, and made out another planetary system. This one had half a dozen large orbs and half a dozen smaller ones, barely distinguishable against the blackness, even when squinting. Unlike the planets of the yellow-white star, these orbited the binary system in different planes. It reminded her of animations she had seen on TV or in class of an atom.

"Wow. This is really cool." She described what she saw and Grove ate up the news in jubilation.

'I knew it! Didn't I tell you! Star systems, just like ours!"

Kellie counted two dozen or more systems with planet counts ranging from two to fifteen. Some of the stars were single; most had one or more companions. One system she observed had an impossible five stars, caught in a wobbly dance of gravitational attraction. This group had only one large, very distant satellite. That didn't surprise Kellie at all. She described the anomaly for Grove.

"Incredible. Simply incredible. I can't imagine the complexities of their interactions. Keeping an eye out for black holes?"

Kellie snorted. "Like I could really see one."

"You would. There would be an accretion disk the width of a solar system with no star in the middle. Or 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. Keep your eyes open, kid."

Kellie did. And saw nothing like that until just before exiting the second spiral arm, spotting a glowing ball of gas that expanded minutely even as she watched. She started to pass along the news to Grove when a star, twenty feet off to her right, exploded into incredible brightness.

"Holy shit!" she cried. Mercifully her head and shoulders were already free of the spiral arm and the instinctive sheltering of her eyes caused only minimal disturbance. Even through fingers and squinted lids, Kellie could still not look anywhere near the intense explosion.

"That was close!" she gasped. "What if that had been closer?"

"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."

She was now completely free of the spiral arm and watched the next approach with the same trepidation. It wasn't nearly so bad this time, however, not with her earlier experience, the fact that she was smaller now and not such a huge target. The wall of stars, nearly thirty feet long in its sweep outward from the galactic center, moved toward her at no more than walking speed. It was ten minutes before Kellie encountered the first stars. She slid right in among them.

"I'm in the third arm now, Professor. Either I've slowed the galaxy's rotation, or its gravity is dragging me along. I'm hardly moving at all, 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 a possible landing site." She was quiet a moment. "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 ignorance?"

Grove chuckled again.

"Come on, professor...a little help?"

Grove said: "Try swimming."

"Excuse me?"

"Swim. You are immensely huge in interstellar terms and interstellar space is jam packed with residual dust and gas. It should be plenty enough to act as a friction source. Dog paddle. When you get small enough not to interact with any nearby stars, of course. Don't do it until then."

Irritated, antsy, Kellie waited until her shrinkage had placed her equidistant from her chosen solar system, and the next closest in her longitudinal plane. As long as she didn't kick, she'd be okay. The closest system was five feet directly below her, a double star with three plants. She'd stick with her yellow-white star.

"I'm gonna try it," she said.

"Use your arms, Kellie. Dog paddle."

Kellie mimicked the words silently and mouthed a few insults to boot. But the concept worked surprisingly well and she watched in fascination as the chosen solar system slowly approached. She halted her motion when she'd approached to within two feet.

"Not too close," Grove warned. "Your mass could throw the system completely out of synchronization. You're a hundred times as massive as the entire solar system. Getting too close this soon could eject the outer planets and disrupt the inner."

Grunting agreement, Kellie slowly backed away. She was still the length of the system's orbital plane and her presence, even though she couldn't verify it with her bare eyes, was causing fluctuations in the orbits. She knew it instinctively, and settled down to wait.

"You know, I hate you, Professor."

Grove acknowledged that fact. "I'm very sorry for doing this to you, Kellie. I truly am."

Kellie eyed the outermost planet, a frozen chunk of ice the size of a baseball. "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 you know I'd probably commit suicide, if I had to face that, Professor."

"Kellie..." Kellie heard the sound of jingling keys and a deadbolt being unlocked, and then the unmistakable sound of a front door opening, the seals breaking loose from the metal surface. "Remember," he said, closing the door again. "I'm making the same trip myself. I'm no more enthused by the thought of forever shrinking than your are." She heard keys dropping to a hard surface, probably a foyer table. Then a shuffling sound 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 in. If that. Why?"

"Just curious," she said. An aquamarine giant approached, basketball-sized with discernable cloud layers thousands of feet thick, great bands of swirling, green and blue that Kellie guessed was methane from her science class, encircled by a gaggle of marble-sized and smaller moons that varied in color and reflectivity from jet black, to iridescent white. The two largest moons had moons of their own, she noted. She wondered if life existed on the larger moons. The others looked quite dead. She described the passing globe to Grove.

"Forget it, Kellie. It's a gas giant: totally unacceptable. Inhabitable planets will reside in the inner solar system, in the bio-zone, like our planet. About 90 million miles out from the sun."

Kellie snorted at the concept of determining millions of miles of distance. She was millions of miles long herself, wasn't she? The concept rattled her. "I'm moving in then, Professor."

"Take your time, Kellie. You're still quite big."

Kellie guessed her length as a quarter that as the star system now. She couldn't wait any longer; fear of growing too small to successfully navigate the system and find an acceptable planet had her stomach in knots and her chest feeling like someone was kneeling on it. She constantly worried that she'd run out of oxygen and suffocate. Could the shimmering green liquid generate oxygen from nothing? She was too afraid to ask.

"Any suitable prospects?" Grove asked. Kellie sensed the tightness in his voice, knew he was worried about this too. She didn't want to consider 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? That likelihood sent a shudder down her spine.

"Still too far out. There's another gas giant on the other side of the sun, and another one just inside that, about three-quarter the other one's size. I think they're both bigger than the planet that passed me by, but I can't be sure. What if the planet I want is over there with the others? What do I do then?" She gulped audibly.

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

"You're sure of that?"

"The closer the planet, the faster its described arc. Once you get within the bio-zone, the planet should orbit four or five times around the sun as you shrink to proper size. Just coincide your approach like a runner making a handoff. Swim along its orbit, letting it catch up to you, slowly, and capture you gravitationally. Try to make landfall when you are approximately half the height of its atmosphere. The best scenario would be coming in feet first, landing on your toes. You'll just have to play it by ear. And Kellie...? If you're too big, your approach and the impact of your feet will cause catastrophic damage. Coming down on land, there'll be devastating, worldwide earthquakes. A water landing will cause tsunamis thousands of feet high that will rush hundreds, perhaps even thousands of miles inland. Any structure within half a continent of you will be completely destroyed. Cities will disappear. Civilizations will vanish. Your mass will most likely alter the planet's balance, its rotation, and its orbital velocity. There's a good chance you might eject the planet from the solar system."

Kellie's mind reeled. She immediately paddled to a dead stop. To her right, a planet appeared, approached at alarming speed, making Kellie backpedaled again. It barreled past her at the speed of a racehorse. Basketball-sized, rocky, cratered and utterly barren; she watched it shrink away horror. If that thing had hit her...

"You okay?" Grove asked.

"Had a scare," Kellie admitted. She described the near miss, how she'd only just gotten her legs tucked in time. Her heart hammered and her breathing refused to slow. "That would have been bad, Professor."

"Bad," Grove agreed. "You should probably drop below the orbital plane. Get out of immediate danger."

"Good idea." Heart still pounding, breath still ragged, she paddled as though trying to touch bottom in a swimming pool. She even extended her toes in unconscious search of a hard surface. It made her want to laugh. Above, a hundred feet distant and forty feet inboard, another planet had appeared. This one was half-again as large and possessed of coloration that make Kellie's heart skip a beat and the breath lock in her throat. She unconsciously began paddling upward.

"I see something, Professor."

"Habitable?" Grove asked excitedly.

Approaching at 30 miles per hour, rotating rapidly so that Kellie found it difficult to discern clear details, the planet was a blue-white blur. The South Pole-south from her vantage point, anyway-was the startling, glistening white of ice and snow. Despite the fast spin, she glimpsed a number of large continents as it neared, ranging in color from dark green to sunburned, desert brown. Two continents had large inland seas, or giant lakes. And then the globe was past, speeding away with its two small moons in tow.

"Wow!" she whispered in awe.

"Describe it please! Tell me in detail," Grove ordered.

Kellie did, recalling whatever detail she could remember from her quick glance. "I think this is my world," she breathed hopefully.

"I think so too. And Kellie...?"

"Yes?"

"Be careful."

"Really?" Kellie answered scornfully. "Will I be graded on my technique? How many earthquakes I don't cause? The number of tsunamis avoided? Think I'll get a better score than I did in your class, Professor? Let's hope so, because I don't want to repeat it in summer school."

She sensed his disapproval, and didn't care. Destroying this beautiful world would destroy her. Better to dwindle away into nothingness, or-God help her-end it all in the fiery orb of the star. She squinted at it now, glowing merrily at the center of the solar system. She guessed she and it were of comparable size, height-wise, anyway. They wouldn't be for long.

The planet returned surprisingly fast. It was now beach ball size, and moving noticeably slower. Its revolutions had slowed so that Kellie identified not only continents, but a scattering of large islands. It was nothing like her own world; no continent extended north and south through both hemispheres; all were above and below the equator, the largest, a green and brown monster occupying a third of the north hemisphere, was bisected by rugged mountain ranges and crisscrossed by long, meandering rivers, most flowing southward into the sea. The northernmost part of the continent projected into the arctic and was heavily glaciated. Kellie counted three--no four--huge inland lakes. She guessed this continent outsized all the landmass of her own world by a good percentage.

Two smaller, mid-sized continents completed the topography. Both were eroded desert with sparse vegetation, green only along the coastlines. The smaller continent sported a pair of large volcanoes on its northern coast, spewing smoke into the atmosphere. This continent was below the equator, and roughly X-shaped. Kellie eyed a meteor crater on the northern arm of the X, dwarfing anything back home. She estimated its size as five hundred miles across. Water reflected from numerous small lakes at the bottom. Up-thrust rock at the center rose as high, or higher than the crater walls. And then the planet sped away out of sight.

"This is definitely it!" she exclaimed. She described everything she'd seen, working hard not to embellish the description with youthful exuberance. Even so, her account was littered with huge this, and awesome that, and the most incredible thing you've ever seen. Grove chuckled in her ear.

"You just wait," she complained. "You'll be a flabbergasted teenager too."

Grove laughed and Kellie heard the sound of ice tinkling in a glass and the pop-fizz of an opening soda can. She realized how thirsty she was. That, in turn, made her think of the blue-green oceans of the vanished world.

"Professor, how do I know the ocean I'm seeing is really water? Or the atmosphere breathable? What if I splash down and the water is really sufuric 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. Please?"

A universe away, Grove filled his glass with soda. She wondered how many times she'd done exactly the same thing, yakking with her friends on the phone. How terribly long ago and unimportant that all seemed now. But she'd give her right arm for a soda and her cell phone.

Grove said: "I think we can assume, given the apparent similarity between our universe and theirs-" Kellie sensed his uneasiness using those words. "-that physical law dictates any planet forming in the bio-zone would possess water oceans, a nitrogen rich atmosphere, and chlorophyll based vegetation. You should be okay, Kellie."

Kellie wasn't convinced. "What about animal life? What if this planet is in the Age of Dinosaurs? Do I eat the tyrannosaurs before they eat me? Or will they go extinct shortly after my arrival?" She stopped to consider something. "You know, each revolution around the star is a year, their time. I've been out here, in their immediate neighborhood, for a couple of years now. Before that, in the outer solar system, for hundreds of year. Thousand of years when I was going through the spiral arms, right? Millions of years when I was in intergalactic space. How many years have gone by on this little planet since I first came into existence?" Kellie shivered at the consideration. She didn't want to know.

"It's back, Professor. It's a lot bigger now, too."

"How much bigger?"

"Bigger than me. Big as a car, maybe."

"Oh, my," Grove said. "You'd better get moving, Kellie."

Startled, filled with anxiety, Kellie began to dog-paddle again. When it became apparent dog paddling wouldn't do the trick, she broke into a full-fledged breast-stroke, kicking madly with her feet. Lacking water to resist her movements, progress was maddeningly slow and the planet swept by even before she gained the orbital plain again. It would be twice the size, three times the size, maybe, on its return. She had to get herself out front and close to a matching speed. Otherwise it would pass her by again...or run her down.

What if...what if it didn't come back in time? She started swimming, desperate to catch up.

"Professor!" She was beginning to pant, wearing out. The planet continued to pull away, twenty yards, thirty, forty...Kellie stopped her struggles and cried: "Dammit! I didn't stand a chance. This isn't working for shit, Professor! And the smaller I get, the less efficient I am." She swished her hand angrily through the vacuum and it made no change in her position at all. She no longer offered enough surface area to effect the dust and gas.

"Take it easy, kid. You're still too large to attempt a landing anyway. I urged you into action only to get you moving again."

"Well, thanks a lot for that!" she cried indignantly. "You asshole."

Grove laughed at her. She raised both hands with extended middle fingers. "Too bad you don't have a camera in this thing," she said, tapping the headphones.

"I considered that, but video eats up too much bandwidth. You'd better get moving, girl. You're running out of time here."

"Asshole," she muttered again.

But she did start paddling, frantically at first, but slowed as she realized her efforts were taking her in a straight line, not along an arc, along with the planet. This was just bullshit, she told Grove.

"Kellie, Kellie, Kellie. What am I gonna do with you, huh?" He sighed dramatically. "You're orbiting the sun. You may not realize it, but you are. Keep the sun at right angles to you and you'll continue along the same orbit transcribed by the planet. It's the law of angular momentum, Kellie."

Grumbling, Kellie started swimming again. She soon fell into a natural, though odd feeling rhythm, keeping a close eye behind her, anxious at being overtaken. Or not being overtaken, as the case may be. The planet's velocity had diminished exponentially since first being spotted, and that worried her greatly. Her constant vigil was rewarded, when, half an hour later, a spec of light resolved itself into a disk, and then, the gradually approaching world. It was big as a house and frightening in its immensity. When it swept by, Kellie was tugged along behind, like a leaf caught in the slipstream of a passing car. Instinct told her this was critical juncture; had she been smaller, the planet may have slung her out of its orbit like a stone; just a little larger, and the tug of gravity might not overwhelm her mass. She was just the right size now, she thought. Even so, it was like that leaf caught in the slipstream behind the car, sucked along, battered by the maelstrom. In the end, it was again Shrinx that steadied her motions.

"Are you okay?" Grove wanted to know.

"I think so. The planet has me in tow." Try as she might, Kellie could not position herself feet-first toward the surface. She was also not gaining, but falling gradually behind. She prayed her continually diminishing size would reverse that situation. She didn't understand physics at all.

"Professor? Will the planet grab me as I get smaller?"

Grove hesitated.

"It won't, will it? I'm getting left behind and my speed will make it almost impossible to be caught up to again. I'll be tiny when it finally does get back and I'll burn up in the atmosphere, won't I?" Panic choked her voice and threatened to overwhelm her mind. A huge shudder shook her head to toe and she began to keen wildly and look in all directions, as though help might come from an unexpected corner.