“Something is very wrong,” Doctor Bill claims.

“What’s wrong now?” Haticat asks.

“The records indicate that this star should have a hycean planet around it, not a terrestrial one,” Doctor Bill says.

“Could the other explorers have missed one of the planets?” Haticat suggests.

“Perhaps, but there’s only one planet now. The sensors clearly show a rocky world with a nitrogen atmosphere, not a watery one with a hydrogen-helium atmosphere,” Doctor Bill says.

“Are you sure this is the right star?” Haticat asks.

“Yes. I triple-checked,” Doctor Bill answers.

“Maybe it lost its water due to solar flares or something,” Haticat suggests.

“The records are from thirty years in the future. If this is the same planet, it gained water somehow,” Doctor Bill says.

Not able to resist a good mystery, Nathaniel orders a close flyby. The planet is largely grey rocks and sand. There are numerous glass lakes, perfectly smooth and transparent. One active volcano oozes pink, sparkly lava. “Scans show nothing unusual. It’s just a lifeless, volcanically active world with a thin nitrogen atmosphere,” Doctor Bill reports.

“Keep scanning. Maybe the water is underground,” Nathaniel says.

They are still looking for clues when the ship shudders and starts to fall. “Whoa! Magnetic flux just increased by six thousand percent! We’re losing our antigravity field!” Haticat yells.

“Reestablish!” Nathaniel orders.

“Trying,” Haticat says. “Failing.”

“Fire the proton cannons on wide beam setting,” Nathaniel orders.

“Firing,” Fred replies. The protons superheat the air underneath them, providing enough buoyancy to soften their fall. The ship skips across the rocky surface and finally skids to a stop in a sand dune. The force field holds, protecting the hull from damage.

“I still can’t maintain an antigravity field,” Haticat says. “The local magnetism is too volatile.”

“There might be a way to modify the force field to shield us from magnetism, but it will take a long time to set that up. We might as well go exploring,” Nathaniel says.

He puts on a spacesuit and steps out the door into a forest. He looks around in awe. “Where did all these trees come from?” Not one branch is broken. No leaves lie on the ground. There are no animals. The trees are of identical heights. Everything is too clean. He grabs a frond and turns it over in his hand.

“These trees are not real,” Doctor Bill says, looking at his scanner.

“But I can see them,” Haticat says.

“What I mean is that whatever these structures are, they are not trees. They have no DNA, no cellular divisions, and no active metabolism. They are merely inert masses of cellulose, peptides, and water, nothing more,” Doctor Bill explains.

“How did they get here?” Haticat asks.

“I don’t know,” Doctor Bill says.

Nathaniel walks ahead, trying to see how far the new forest extends. It appears to go on forever. He does his own scanning and discovers the roots do not branch, but instead extend all the way down to the bedrock.

Then he sees the puddles. Here and there are slightly flattened globes of water, some as much as a meter in diameter, yet held in shape by extreme surface tension. A scan reveals the ground to be extremely hydrophobic. He sticks his gloved hand into one and lets the water run off back into the globular puddle. His Gruezhlings walk up behind him. “Hey, the magnetic interference has stopped. Maybe we can take off now,” Doctor Bill says.

“I’m not leaving until I understand how this planet can completely change its whole climate in mere seconds,” Nathaniel declares.

“Could it be some sort of atomic hypercomputer?” Haticat asks.

“To operate on a planetary scale would require a lot of power, roughly equivalent to that of a stellar mass black hole,” Doctor Bill states.

“We could scan for a power source back at the ship,” Haticat says.

“It would also guarantee the existence of multiple ogres as a matter of statistical certainty,” Doctor Bill says.

Fred draws his weapon and looks around. “I hate ogres.”

“Okay, back to the ship,” Nathaniel commands.

The explorers have barely taken three steps when the trees and puddles are sucked back into the ground. They stop and look around at the barren desert – and start to sink. The ground is softening. “Quicksand!” Haticat yells. Six seconds later, the land has completely transformed into seawater. They are tossed about by waves in a choppy ocean as far as they can see. The sky is suddenly overcast and lightning flashes in the distance.

The ship is sinking. “Come on!” Nathaniel yells. He swims as fast as he can, slipping into superspeed. He reaches the landing site moments after the ship disappears from view. He swims downward in the dark sea, guided by the ship’s external lights. He makes it to the airlock. He waits impatiently for the airlock cycle to complete. He gets inside and runs to the controls. Reestablishing an antigravity field, he begins to ascend. Suddenly, the ship comes to a jarring stop as if it hit something. The engines are fine, but it will not move. The external sensors are not working. Nathaniel opens the door and stares into a wall of solid rock!

On the surface, Fred finds his lower half encased in stone. Fortunately, his gun is still in his right hand and he uses it to blast himself out. He blows away chunk after chunk until he can climb out of the hole. He looks around. It is still overcast. There are several large cracks in the ground. Sparks discharge across the gap. Each section of land seems to have a different charge. There is no sign of the others. They must be underground. Fred uses his scanner to find them. Haticat is one meter underground. Doctor Bill is two meters underground. He starts shooting.

Nathaniel tries everything to get the scanners working again. The stone must be pressed against them. Without a clear view of the outside, he dares not use the teleporters or guns, not knowing where his crew is. Then he gets the idea to use his radio. If he can lock onto his crew’s radio communicators, he can teleport them inside. “Is everybody alive?”

“I don’t know. Haticat and Doctor Bill are underground. I’m blasting them out,” Fred reports.

“Okay. I’m trapped in the ship. Let me know when you are all safe and I can teleport you on board,” Nathaniel says.

“Okay,” Fred responds.

Nathaniel continues to pace anxiously. Then he hears cracking. The stone is moving. Pressure on the hull is increasing on opposite sides of the ship. He sees the wall buckle. He turns quickly and sees it buckle on the other side. Then a long, thin crack appears. He tries to activate the force field, but it won’t stay on.

“Captain, we’re all ready,” Fred announces.

Nathaniel teleports them inside and returns to fiddling with the force field. “Yikes! We’re being cracked like an egg,” Haticat exclaims.

“Supernovas!” Fred curses.

Then the ship shakes and they are falling. The artificial gravity and inertial dividers hold steady. They only feel the shakes that deform the ship’s frame itself. Now free of the rock walls, the sensors show the ship tumbling into a deep cavern. It bounces off the sides of the crack. The caverns keep going and going, branching deeper and deeper. “We must be at least fifty kilometers deep by now!” Doctor Bill exclaims.

Finally, the ship falls into a vast, open space. The cracks close behind them. Below are massive spines of some kind of shiny metal. “Aha!” Nathaniel shouts as he finally gets the force field generator running. The field repels the spines and the ship settles safely among them. “What a wild ride!”

Haticat and Fred pan the external cameras around them. The ship’s spotlights illuminate many broken ships. There are several spacecraft of Ninosan design, Hammer-Face freighters, Extolon warships, and Vlymon pleasure cruise ships. “What is this place?” Haticat asks.

“Outside temperature and pressure is in excess of what our spacesuits can handle,” Doctor Bill says.

“Those trees were to lure us away from ship controls. This shapeshifting planet is a ship-eater,” Nathaniel states.

“Ships aren’t food; they have no calories,” Fred says.

“No, but they do have antigravity fuel. That’s the one piece of technology all these wrecks have in common, and every one of them has been drained,” Nathaniel says.

“We need to get out of here,” Haticat says.

“Yes, but we can’t fly through solid rock, and the planet can always just magnet-jam us again,” Doctor Bill says.

“I have some ideas about that,” Nathaniel says.

“Whatever we do, this planet is going to keep trying to eat us,” Haticat says.

“I have some ideas about that, too,” Nathaniel says. “I need to make some modifications.” He begins fiddling with the particle accelerators at the heart of the ion gun assembly, running a magnetic tube from there to the filtered fuel tanks, and then playing around with those.

Minutes later, there is a loud noise. New cracks have opened in the roof of the cavern and large drops of white-hot lava has begun to fall. It pools in a low area several hundred meters from the ship. The dripping increases. Then it starts to pour. “It’s filling fast; we have minutes,” Doctor Bill warns.

“Okay, shut off the force field,” Nathaniel orders.

“Captain?” Fred responds.

“Just for a few seconds. I need to dump some fuel,” Nathaniel says.

“We’re giving it what it wants?” Haticat asks.

“I’ve poisoned the fuel. There are only a few ways to derive energy from antigravity, and all of them are inhibited by antimuons. Once it gets a taste, I’m guessing it will lose interest,” Nathaniel says.

Haticat flips off the force field. “Won’t our engines be inoperable?”

“Yes, but I have some ideas about that, too,” Nathaniel says.

The fuel is dumped. The force field is reestablished. The white lava continues to rise. The expanding ripples lap just thirty meters from the ship. “The outside temperature is now over two thousand Kelvin,” Doctor Bill announces. “If we become submerged, the force field can only handle direct contact with lava this hot and dense for maybe an hour – two at most.”

Suddenly, the lava stops pouring. The explorers look up curiously. Then there is a deep grumbling sound. The ground vibrates. Suddenly, the air pressure outside spikes. Alarms blare. Opaque gas fills the cavern, blocking all light from the lava. The ship shakes violently.

Thirty seconds later, the clouds dissipate and turn into a flurry of snowflakes. “Wow,” Haticat says. Soon, the snow clears to reveal starry blackness.

“It blasted us all the way to the night side of the plan…” Fred starts to say, but stops when he sees the planet itself rushing away from them.

Doctor Bill checks the instruments. “It shot us out of a geyser at escape velocity!”

“Okay, mission accomplished. Now we need to take the next seven weeks to filter the antimuons out of our fuel and hope we don’t hit anything before we have working engines again,” Nathaniel says.

“Seven weeks! That’s boring!” Fred complains.

Haticat just sighs. He is glad to be alive and not buried under white-hot lava. He watches the planet recede in the sky from his perspective. Right in front of his eyes, it transforms from a tan and orange, rocky world to a grey, sandy world with scattered seas of red, sugary syrup, making itself appealing to the next explorers to pass this way.

Nathaniel, Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill explore the surface of an airless, rocky world in bright sunlight. Here and there are pools of molten selenium oozing from below. The rocks come in a variety of shades and textures. Finally, Nathaniel picks up one small pebble with an odd shape. He holds it up in the sun. It is almost a cube. The faces are a little rough and the corners rounded, but it looks almost like a die. “This is the one I want.”

For years, Captain Nathaniel had been keeping a rock collection. He had one small stone from every planet he had visited. Once a day, he would pull open the drawer next to his bed and look at them, reminded of all his adventures at once. His body could only be in one place at one time, but his memories stretched across the galaxy.

The rock collection was also part of a science experiment. Rocks taken from different time periods had the potential to be causally connected in ways other than their direct interaction in his drawer. Most often, their connection was nothing more than their weak gravitational interaction across light years, but this was enough. Nathaniel expected the multiple, interrelated interactions to manifest as an increase in inertial mass without corresponding increase in gravitational mass.

He now had seventy-seven pebbles and this should be enough to generate enough additional mass for his sensitive instruments to measure. Back on his ship now, he gently places the cubic pebble onto the scale/accelerometer with the others and waits for the results.

Haticat enters his bedroom gazebo and looks around. “We’re ready to take off when you are.”
“I’m just waiting for a reading,” Nathaniel says.

Soon, the screen lights up and displays two numbers. “Well, I was right. There’s a discrepancy between the two masses. Although…it is considerable bigger than I predicted. I wonder why…”

“Sounds like a job for new physics,” Haticat says.

“Yes,” Nathaniel replies.

A few minutes later, the ship launches off the planet and speeds away. Nathaniel visits the dining gazebo for some olive loaf on wheat and chocolate milk. He watches the stars drift slowly by on the domed ceiling of the ship. Where to next? There were so many stars with planets to explore. He might never run out.

Then, something in the corner of his eye catches his attention. The light in his bedroom is flickering. “Hmm.”

He finishes his sandwich and walks to his bedroom. For just a moment, he almost stumbles, as if he suddenly becomes lighter. He hopes the artificial gravity isn’t malfunctioning, too.

He removes the glass shade and adjusts the bulb, making sure it is tight. It shines steadily for a few seconds, only to start flickering once he reaches for the shade. He retrieves a new bulb from storage and replaces the old one. Then the new bulb starts to flicker. Getting frustrated, he decides it is better to keep the light off than to endure the annoying flickering. He hits the switch and the light goes out. Then it starts to flicker again. “What?” Nathaniel unscrews the bulb and tosses it on the bed. It still continues to flicker.

“Doctor Bill, I need you to run some tests on this bulb. It won’t stop flickering,” Nathaniel says, now in the control gazebo.

“Interesting,” Doctor Bill comments. “I’ll check it out.”

For the next thirteen minutes, Nathaniel monitors their progress through space, dodging asteroids and comets, and planning where to visit next. “What about that red dwarf star? It might have planets,” Haticat suggests.

“Let me see,” Nathaniel says. “The infrared signature implies the existence of a dust ring. That might be worth investigating.”

“Dust is boring,” Fred complains.

“Not always,” Haticat says.

Doctor Bill returns from his tests. “I can’t find anything unusual, and the bulb has stopped flickering.”

“Well, we have a mystery on our hands,” Nathaniel says, taking the bulb from him. “Set a course for the red dwarf.”

Nathaniel walks to the bedroom and sets the bulb on a shelf. Turning to leave, he sees the glass shade where he has left it on his bed, now broken into pieces. “Doctor, come quick and bring a scanner!”

Doctor Bill runs to Nathaniel’s bedroom and scans the glass. “It seems like ordinary glass. Are you sure you didn’t break it when you set it down?”

“On a soft bed with Ninosan ultracomfort technology?” Nathaniel questions.

“It does seem unlikely,” Doctor Bill admits.

“How could this happen?” Nathaniel asks.

“I don’t know, quantum tunneling?” Doctor Bill suggests. Nathaniel gives him a look. “Right, even more unlikely.”

On the way to the next star, Nathaniel cleans up the glass and takes a nap. He wakes to the sound of sirens. There is trouble in the ship. He runs to the control station. Every monitor is blank. The reboot button does nothing. “What’s happening?” Haticat asks, now animated by Nathaniel’s play-energy.

“Nothing’s happening. That’s the problem. We need to rewire the main computer interface. The access post is outside.” Nathaniel quickly climbs over the railing and around the outside of the gazebo. Just above the water level is a metal plate he slides to the side. He crouches on the narrow rim of the station while holding on to the corner of the post with one hand. “Hey, give me one of those…uh…round and around things.”

“A screwdriver?” Haticat asks.

“Yeah.” Nathaniel loosens the screws attaching the wires, transfers them to the parallel server, and screws them in. Then he climbs back inside.

Nathaniel and Haticat reboot each computer submodule until the control station is fully online. Every other system seems fine. Fred and Doctor Bill ask what the problem is.

Very seriously, Nathaniel answers. “We have an…” He pauses. “Ugh! What do you call a person who breaks into your home?”

“That depends on his name,” Haticat says.

“No,” Nathaniel says. “The problems we’ve been having move around. Damage is done in one spot, but whatever caused it is no longer there when we scan for it. We must have picked up some sort of invisible or microscopic aliens from the last planet.”

“So, we have an intruder,” Doctor Bill concludes.

“Intruder! That’s the word I wanted!” Nathaniel exclaims.

The following four hours are filled with tests and scans attempting to locate the intruder or intruders. Three more light bulbs flicker during this time. The engines shut down and it takes ten minutes to get them started again. The ship then changes course to return to the rocky planet. It takes twenty minutes to get control of the ship again. “They’ll bring us back into the arms of their comrades and murder us!” Fred declares.

“Look!” Haticat shouts.

All heads turn to see a bulge in the water level, soon becoming a perfect sphere of liquid a meter across, hovering four meters above the fuel level. Nathaniel fires a laser into it. Nothing happens. Fred fires. Still nothing happens. Then the ball collapses in a great splash.

“We can’t stop them if we can’t find them,” Haticat says.

“Yes,” Nathaniel says. “But…”

“But what?” Haticat asks.

Nathaniel does not answer. He jogs to the control station and begins searching system sensor records. Haticat sees that he looks at the timestamps and power usage, but cannot tell what he is looking for. Slipping into superspeed, his fingers flying across the keyboards. “Everyone grab onto something!”

Not knowing what else to do, Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill hold tightly to the railings nearest them. Nathaniel turns off the gravity and sets the ship spinning. Water climbs up the walls until it forms a liquid belt all around them. Above and below are dry. With centrifugal force less near the center of the ship, the crew are able to crawl around and awkwardly use the controls. Nathaniel then shuts off the engines and fires the downward-pointing proton cannon instead. The acceleration is small, but the velocity is cumulative.

“Is this supposed to rid us of the intruder?” Haticat asks.

“I shut down its energy source,” Nathaniel says. “Each intermittent attack came only after a certain amount of gravitational energy had been removed from the artificial gravity generators, and the energy expended equaled the amount removed. The loss of gravity explains why my time flow experiment came out unexpectedly. The intruder must store potential energy in abstract space. It has no body, no physicality. With the gravity and engines off, we’ll starve it out.”

“Start unplugging the artificial gravity generators before the alien tries to turn one back on,” Nathaniel orders.

Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill climb around the spinning structure, disabling the machines one at a time. Suddenly, Doctor Bill goes flying and lands in the water. Nathaniel climbs down to help him out. “I was thrown! It’s as if something grabbed me,” he says as he climbs up the railings and wrings himself out.

“Let’s hope it used up the last of its energy,” Nathaniel says.

The crew finishes the job. The hours pass without incident as they continue on to the next star. Nathaniel attempts to make a PBJ on the wall and ends up making a mess.

“Look!” Haticat yells. The projector has turned itself on. Across the ceiling are stretched the letters: HELP

Nathaniel climbs to where the others stand so he can get a better look. “What does it want?” Doctor Bill asks.

“I don’t care; I want it to go away,” Fred says.

“Now it knows to take us seriously. I want to negotiate. Reattach the generators to one section only and set it to minimum strength. I want it to have enough energy to communicate,” Nathaniel orders.

It is soon done, and Nathaniel stands on that section of walkway and speaks. “This is Captain Nathaniel. I’m in charge of this spacecraft. I place my body in a gravity field so you can sense the motion of my lips and so you will have enough energy to communicate. If you try anything else, I will shut it off and let you die.”

Nearly a minute later, the projected word changes: THIEF

“Who is a thief? Are you? Do you hope to steal this ship? This is my ship,” Nathaniel responds.

Haticat joins Nathaniel on the platform. “I can’t believe it would try to steal our ship while we are still in it.”

Eventually, the projected word changes again: MY PEBBLE

“Pebble? The cubic pebble? I didn’t know you wanted it. Is it yours? Is it part of your rock collection?” Nathaniel asks.

“There was no name on it,” Fred says, also stepping onto the platform.

“I know. It was just sitting among other rocks,” Haticat adds.

“I think maybe the alien considers the entire planet its collection. It must be the planet guardian,” Nathaniel says.

Eventually, the projected word changes again: BRING BACK

“How can we trust you?” Fred shouts.

“There might be other such beings back on the planet with an entire planet’s worth of gravity to draw on,” Haticat warns.

“Maybe, but we must take the risk. I don’t want to be the bad guy,” Nathaniel says.

“The alien broke your lampshade. That makes it the bad guy,” Haticat says.

Nathaniel thinks for a moment. “We will bring the pebble back to the planet, but we will teleport it to the ground from orbit. In the meantime, we are going to turn off the gravity.”

Doctor Bill then steps onto the platform. “I have a suggestion…”

Bam! All four of them hit the floor hard as the gravity increases a hundredfold. “Ow! Unplug the generator,” Nathaniel sputters. His mouth hurts to move.

“I can’t even move,” Doctor Bill says.

“Me neither,” Fred says.

Nathaniel is pretty sure he has cracked his jaw and sprained his wrist. He will heal, but not if the alien kills him first. He tries as hard as he can to crawl, but he is fixed to the spot. It is hard to breathe.

After building up strength from the one working generator, the alien reattaches the other generators one at a time. Nathaniel can hear them click into place. Then the spinning stops and the water returns to the floor. Then the engines reverse course and return to the planet. An hour later, they land. The door opens. The pebble goes flying outside. Then the gravity returns to normal.

Nathaniel rubs the circulation back into his legs. He is not ready to stand. “That was mean,” Haticat declares.

“It could have killed us or left us here,” Nathaniel says.

“But why did it take over the ship? You were giving it what it wanted,” Haticat says.

“I guess it didn’t trust us any more than we trusted it,” Nathaniel says.

“Let’s get off this planet,” Fred says.

“Agreed. Set a course for anywhere. I don’t care,” Nathaniel says.

“This planet has moderate gravity, breathable air, and… a forest,” Doctor Bill reports.

“Let’s go,” Haticat implores.

“According to the records, this is planet Mochtel. It is home to large worms called Flurbibians. They like to draw. There’s no other information,” Doctor Bill continues.

“I’ve never heard of them,” Nathaniel says.

“Me neither, let’s make some new friends,” Haticat says.

“Take us down,” Captain Nathaniel agrees.

The pool-ship lands in a forest of waffle trees and other plants. The explorers grab their backpacks, scanners, and guns and step outside. Haticat pokes a trunk. “These trees are spongy.”

“They’re some sort of carbon foam,” Doctor Bill reports.

Fred bends over to look closely at some insects on the ground. They are orange and green. “These bugs are cool.”

Nathaniel is already hacking his way through the thick underbrush. His crew follows him. They walk for a couple hours cataloging the plants, bugs, and amphibians until the sun begins to set. “Are we going to return to the ship?” Haticat asks.

“Nah, I want to see what comes out at night,” Nathaniel answers. “It might be like a whole other world.” The sun sets and Mochtel’s large moon rises in the sky, so reflective it almost seems like day. The biting flies appear gradually at first. Their annoying song fills the air. Then they hear a rustling in the brush too big to be an insect. Suddenly, a frog-like animal the size of a bear pushes its way through the leaves. Upon seeing the explorers, it burps – loud. The sound is so intense, they fall over in shock. With his ears ringing, Nathaniel fumbles for his gun and attempts to get back up. The creature steps forward and burps in his face. The vibrations make his jaw hurt and he collapses again. When he looks up, the creature is dead. Fred has shot it.

“What is that thing?” Haticat asks.

“What?” Nathaniel says.

“What?” Haticat says.

“What?” Nathaniel asks again.

None of them can hear the second creature running up behind them. It grabs Fred in its mouth and tosses him into a tree. The other three shoot it.

When they can hear again, they decide to head back to the ship. The biting flies get worse. In the distance, they hear what sounds like more burping. Then they see flashing lights in the sky. Flies with strobing abdomens the size of dogs circle the area. Even far away, they are hard to look at. The contrast of light and dark is even worse than the brightness itself. Minutes later, one slips between the treetops and descends near them. They hide behind a large waffle tree, but the creature follows them. Nathaniel closes his eyes, but the intense light hurts him even through his eyelids. He covers his face in his hands and then turns around. He hears the creature clicking. It gets closer. Then it gets closer. Zap! He shoots in the direction of the sound and the flashing stops. When he opens his eyes, the creature is dead.

“This planet is annoying!” Fred complains.

“Ew, what’s this?” Haticat pulls his hand away from a waffle tree he was leaning on. It is covered with sticky syrup.

Doctor Bill steps away quickly. “It smells like barf.”

Then Nathaniel and Fred smell it too. “Oh!”

Haticat wipes himself on some leaves and they all continue back to the ship. More and more trees begin their nighttime sap secretions and the forest takes on a distinct vomit-like odor. It soon becomes overwhelming. Nathaniel’s stomach churns. He keeps his shirt over his face, but it is not enough. “Just another one hundred fifty meters.” Then he sees another burp monster. He shoots without hesitation. Two others retreat into the jungle. Fred shoots them in the back.

“This planet is dangerous,” Haticat says.

Finally, they reach the ship. At least forty strobing flies sit perched atop it. “Okay, shield your eyes and we’ll just make a run for it,” Nathaniel says. The four of them run for the door and immediately the flies swoop down. Zap! Zap! Zap! Zap! The adventurers fire wildly into the air, missing most shots, but killing enough to scare the rest away. They get inside and lock the door behind them. Haticat washes the sap off his hands and Nathaniel rests his overstimulated eyes.

Minutes later, there is a knock at the door. Outside are three Stegosaur-sized creatures. They identify themselves as Flurbibians and Nathaniel lets them in. They are less like worms and more like tailless salamanders with big heads and big, wrinkled butts. “Why are you killing our pets?” the first Flurbibian asks.

“Pets? You mean those wild animals that attacked us?” Nathaniel asks.

“They attacked you? What did they do?” the second Flurbibian asks.

“One burped in my face and another flashed me,” Nathaniel answers.

“You killed them for burping?” the second Flurbibian asks.

“They burped really loud,” Nathaniel clarifies.

“What planet are you from? Is it legal to kill another’s pet for being loud where you come from?” the first Flurbibian asks.

“Sometimes,” Nathaniel answers.

“They hurt my ears,” Fred says.

“You can’t go around killing things you don’t like just because you have sensitive eyes and ears,” the first Flurbibian states.

“What about noses? I still can’t get the sap smell out of my hand. If I can’t get it out, I’ll have to cut off my hand or go crazy,” Haticat says.

“Sap smell? From the waffle trees? What’s wrong with it?” the first Flurbibian asks.

“So, they attacked you? What did they do?” the second Flurbibian asks.

“I told you; they burped,” Nathaniel answers.

“Tell me again. What did they do?” the second Flurbibian asks.

“They burped. That’s bad enough,” Nathaniel says.

“You killed them for burping?” the second Flurbibian asks.

“We went through this already,” Nathaniel says.

“Why not go through it again?” the first Flurbibian asks.

“Again? Why do anything twice? That’s irritating,” Nathaniel says.

“Irritating? How can answering the same question over and over be irritating?” the first Flurbibian asks.

“Are your senses really wired so differently than ours that repetition doesn’t bore you?” Nathaniel asks. Turning to the other, he adds, “And I’ve heard of like-relativity, but I thought every being in the galaxy understood very high levels of light and sound as assault. That’s how flash-bang grenades work.”

“How could light and sound hurt anybody? Do they break your bones?” the first Flurbibian asks.

“I don’t have to break a bone to feel pain,” Nathaniel says.

“What? You have pain receptors outside your bones?” the first Flurbibian asks.

“So, you killed them for burping?” the second Flurbibian asks again.

“Shut up!” Nathaniel shouts at him.

“Would you kill an animal for tickling you?” the first Flurbibian asks.

Nathaniel glares at him. “For tickling, I would leave it stranded in intergalactic space.”

There is a long pause as they all look back and forth at each other. “How can answering the same question over and over be irritating?” the first Flurbibian asks.

“Stop it!” Nathaniel warns him.

Suddenly, the back end of the third Flurbibian explodes. Droplets of fecal matter spray in all directions. Intestines shoot out and stick to the wall. In seconds, the creature has drawn a cartoon face on the inner hull with its intestines. Nathaniel holds his nose as he, Haticat, and Fred back down the walkway, shooting. The Flurbibian collapses.

“You killed him!” the second Flurbibian says.

“He didn’t do anything to you!” the first Flurbibian says.

Nathaniel shoots the other two dead. “Teleport this mess outside and get us off this crazy planet!”

“Gladly,” Haticat remarks, powering up the engines.

Minutes later, they are in the upper atmosphere and speeding away. “We’re being followed,” Fred reports.

Far behind are three extremely long, cylindrical ships leaving orbit to give chase. They turn out to be very fast and quickly catch up. Fred starts to teleport small bombs outside and then detonate them with the particle beams. The closest Flurbibian rod-ship breaks and becomes two. Then, all four ships return fire in the form of lasers. “The force field is holding,” Doctor Bill reports.

“Power up the time machine. We’ll hop forward three days,” Nathaniel orders.

“Got it.” Haticat types in the spacetime coordinates and waits for the time crystals to rotate into position.

“Go!” Nathaniel yells. At that exact moment, as the ship fades from existence, the Flurbibians fire a backenergy pulse. The time machine vanishes first, pulling the force field behind it, pulling the rest of the ship behind that. The ship sits unprotected for only 2.2 microseconds, but this is long enough for all systems to go dead. It is pitch black inside. “What happened?”

“Uh, I’ll find out,” Doctor Bill says.

Haticat finds an emergency light and switches it on, but finds that the switch also pushes back on him enough to push him into the air. “Uh oh.” All of them are weightless.

“We need to get the gravity on, quickly,” Nathaniel says.

“First, we need to get these consoles running,” Doctor Bill says.

Nathaniel takes a nervous look at the pool of water all around him. It is now held in place only by surface tension and inertia. He hears a sound above. The hull blisters. It is expanding under heat from unshielded laser fire. “No, first, we need the force field.” He grabs the railing and pulls his way along the walkway to the generator, his legs flying upwards.

Nathaniel and his crew manage to turn the systems back on one at a time. Finally, all power is restored except for the engines, which remain stubbornly unresponsive, and the time machine. Nathaniel opens the time crystal chamber and finds it empty! “The time machine has left the timestream without us…”

More backenergy shots are fired, but with the force field back up, they are harmless. Then the Flurbibians park the end of one ship against the force field and erect their own force field around both ships, allowing them to drag Nathaniel and company back to Mochtel. After several hours and several attempts to breach the force field, the Flurbibians roll Nathaniels’s ship into a low spot between two hills and begin piling dirt against it. “They’ll bury us alive!” Fred shouts.

Haticat fires the particle beams, but they have already been clogged up with mortar. “We have to do something!”

Nathaniel sits on a railing, calmly watching the sky get smaller as more rocks and dirt are piled up. “I have a plan.”

“What is it?” Haticat asks.

“We wait,” Nathaniel says quietly.

“For what?” Fred asks.

“For the time machine to reappear in three days,” Nathaniel says.

“Oh,” Haticat says.

“You set it for three days, right?” Nathaniel asks.

“Yes,” Haticat answers.

Sure enough, the time machine reappears right on schedule. Nathaniel sets the coordinates for thirty years in the past, jumps there, displacing the dirt when he materializes, thus causing the low spot they were rolled into in the first place, then leaves the planet long before he ever arrives. Haticat finally gets the vomit smell out of his hand.

The iceberg plows through the ocean, propelled by the two large sails sticking from the top. It is a ship. The Nino colonists of Tikan have conquered the planet by mastering its most abundant resource – ice. Tikan was a water world with no dry land. The colonists lived in ships, submarines, and citadels made mostly of ice.

The officers on the upper deck play a game in the shadow of the sails. They take turns running across the deck around obstacles, trying not to slip on the ice. Best time wins. Finally, one slips and slides across the deck into the sunlight where he stays down, laughing, for fifteen seconds.

“Get back here!” another calls.

“I’m coming,” he says, but he slips again and again. Still laughing, he steps back into the shade where the others are staring at him, horrified. “What is it?”

“You…uh…you,” one says.

“Freckles,” another finishes.

“What?” the clumsy officer responds.

Freckles, the most embarrassing of all diseases, are caused by contaminated sunlight. Certain types of space dust alter sunlight passing through it such that it can give most creatures freckles. It is not long before the daggertails, mantis whales, and even the trees of Tikan have freckles. Then the dust cloud passes, but the danger does not. Freckles are also contagious and can be spread by touch. New hygiene laws are passed, requiring frequent handwashing and showers.

Nathaniel’s pool-ship lands in a field of ice in the northern hemisphere. A town sits in the distance. “Why not stay on Tikan? Don’t you want to ride an ice sub?” Nathaniel asks.

“Maybe, but I’d rather explore a forest. Hardly anything grows here,” Haticat complains.

“Fine, we’ll visit a forest on our next adventure,” Nathaniel says. “After we learn to live like the Tikanese.”

Nathaniel, Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill step outside onto the crunchy snow and walk to town. A light breeze pushes frigid air right through their coats. They have not walked far when four fan-propelled hot-air balloons intercept them. “Halt! All visitors are subject to quarantine!”

“Quarantine? What’s going on?” Nathaniel asks.

“You’ll be held and monitored for symptoms,” the Ninos tell him. A heated tent is built around them and they receive regular visits from doctors in space suits. They are held for only two days, but in the meantime Nathaniel gets bored and doodles on the tent walls. Soon the fabric is covered in drawings of animals, molecules, equations, and Feynman diagrams. “We can’t be too careful; there are many diseases going around,” the town chief rep tells them when they are let go.

“Understandable. We came here hoping to join an ice sub crew and learn the ways of Tikan,” Nathaniel says.

“Oh, well there are no ice subs that run out of our port – only surface ships. You’ll want to visit the next town, but you’ll need to be quarantined again,” the rep says.

“Again?” Nathaniel comments.

“There are many diseases of many kinds on this planet,” the rep answers.

“Never mind. What do you do for fun in your town?” Nathaniel asks.

“Ice skating mostly, but you’ll need your own ice skates since we no longer allow rentals,” the rep answers.

Haticat turns to Nathaniel. “We have some back in the ship.”

“If you return to your ship, we’ll have to quarantine you again,” the rep says.

“But there’s no germs on our ship,” Haticat says.

“There’s nothing alive there to keep any pathogens viable,” Doctor Bill says.

“We have to be careful. It’s the law,” the rep says.

The four explorers find a hotel in town to stay at. They are only allowed in and out of their hotel at certain times so that as few people as possible share the halls. Watching the news, they hear rumors of freckles, sneezing viruses, coughing viruses, sleeping viruses, stiff neck viruses, and a stupidity virus. Although none of the symptoms are severe, people wash their hands constantly. “Is there an adultism virus? Even the boys here act like adults,” Haticat complains.

Eventually, the explorers are able to get outside to the ice patch and spend an hour sliding around on their shoes. Actually, they spend only about twenty minutes on the ice because every fifteen minutes they are ordered to stop and shower. Including the time it takes to undress, lather, dry, and dress again, each shower takes ten minutes. “I can’t keep doing this,” Nathaniel complains.

“Me neither. I never fully dry out,” Haticat adds.

“My belly is frozen in the middle,” Fred complains.

“Let’s go back to the hotel,” Nathaniel says.

When they arrive back at the hotel, the staff informs them they can’t go inside until they finish changing all the sheets. “Why? Has someone else used them when we were gone?” Nathaniel asks incredulously.

“Not likely, but we can’t take that chance,” the staff leader says.

“Well now you’re just being stupid,” Nathaniel declares.

“Really?” The staff leader’s eyes go wide. “We’ll all have to be quarantined and checked for symptoms of stupidity virus.”

“Oh no, not again!” Nathaniel tries to leave, but is blocked by security.

“Don’t let him out! He’ll spread stupidity all over town!” the staff leader shouts.

Nathaniel, Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill spend another two days in quarantine, this time with two hotel security guards and half the cleaning staff. No one coughs. No one sneezes. No one is particularly stupid, except they all seem to be obsessed with hygiene rituals. One staff member brushes his teeth thirty-six times in one day. The others change and wash and dry their clothes three times a day, folding and refolding them afterwards until perfect. “I think I figured out what’s going on,” Nathaniel states.

“What’s that?” Doctor Bill asks.

“There is no biological virus here. What we are seeing is a social contagion of obsessive-compulsive disorder,” Nathaniel says.

“How do you know the OCD isn’t caused by a virus too?” Doctor Bill asks.

“Because we don’t have it. We would have caught it by now if it were biological. In contrast, social contagions are contracted when one is surrounded by those displaying symptoms. We have each other, which gives us a certain degree of immunity. It also helps to be aware of it,” Nathaniel says.

“I think you’re right,” Doctor Bill agrees.

Once let out, they visit the library. They are each issued a pair of gloves to touch the books with. Within minutes, Nathaniel confirms that none of the diseases people worry about so much are new to the planet except for freckles, which has already been contained and eradicated. “People are worrying about things they never worried about before,” Haticat says.

“It is hard to not worry when everyone around you worries so much,” Doctor Bill says.

“I’m worried I won’t be able to get these gloves off,” Fred says.

“What do we do?” Haticat asks.

“About the gloves?” Nathaniel asks.

“No, about Tikan,” Haticat clarifies.

“To reverse the trend, we need to start another social contagion – one of irresponsibility. We need to isolate OCD people among those less affected until they turn. Then we just keep repeating the process. Unfortunately, to keep them together long enough requires something like a quarantine, which itself promotes the obsession,” Nathaniel says.

“There’s also the law to take into account. Too much irresponsibility will be shut down,” Doctor Bill says.

“Right, and the fact the law even exists also helps to fuel the obsession,” Nathaniel adds.

“What if new laws were passed prohibiting the enforcement of certain hygiene measures?” Haticat proposes.

“Maybe,” Nathaniel says.

“These gloves should be illegal,” Fred says. He has completely rotated the glove on one hand without removing it. His furry, fingerless hands fumble with them.

Ding! Just then, an announcement is made through the intercom system. “Shift B is over. All patrons must immediately leave the library through the rear exist so that shift C can begin. Remember, your safety is our priority.”

“I wasn’t done reading,” Doctor Bill says.

“Me neither,” Haticat says.

“I hadn’t started,” Fred says.

Back at the hotel, Nathaniel eats a plate of mixed seaweed, the only food on Tikan. It is actually pretty tasty and quite filling once he rinses some of the salt off. “What we need to do is create a game that rewards collecting the most viruses,” Nathaniel says.

“That does not sound healthy,” Doctor Bill comments.

“Won’t that make everyone sick? And won’t they spread those diseases to us?” Haticat asks.

“No. There is no reward for second place. That means that while everyone is trying to catch viruses, they will try not to give any away, lest someone else win. Those already sick will stay away from others, but those not sick will refuse all these stupid precautions imposed on us,” Nathaniel explains.

“Genius!” Fred remarks.

“We’ll name the game Top Sick,” Nathaniel declares.

“Sounds like fun,” Doctor Bill says. “I suggest we make the size of the reward contingent on the size of the lead of first place over second place. We should also give a tiny reward for second so long as it is far above third. That way, those with no hope of reaching first place will not give up. I’ll run some game theory models and continue to refine the details.” He uses his radio to contact the pool-ship and make use of its computing power.

“I forgot you were originally a fun scientist,” Haticat says.

Soon, they decide that a new game be started whenever a minimum of six people agree to join a competition. Each player violates hygiene rules yet keeps away from others in the game. Each player puts money into a pool to be paid out to the winners. The game spreads like a contagion. The legal restrictions lift under political pressure from players, and Nathaniel, Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill finally do two tours on an ice sub, followed by three on an ice ship.

Eventually, some players get the idea to forge their diagnosis documents to make it look like they have more diseases than they have. Other players get the idea to bribe officials to increase restrictions on others while giving themselves a pass, but this merely spawns an increase in anti-bribery police action. New games are invented, and people gradually lose interest in Top Sick. They look back on that time as one dominated by silliness – the silliness of avoiding disease at any cost and the silliness of trying to collect multiple diseases at once. Only one person dies.

The explorers prepare to leave the planet, but first they make a stop in an uninhabited area to watch an erupting water volcano. It is made of ice. “This is so scenic I almost don’t mind there being no forest,” Haticat says.

“It is interesting,” Nathaniel agrees.

“Agreed,” Doctor Bill says.

“It’s cold out here,” Fred says.

“Yes, it is cold,” Nathaniel says. “Let’s go find that forest.” Then they all step into the space ship and leave.

Bright stars sit scattered across empty space. Nothing happens here and there is nothing here for it to happen to. Then, there is a distortion of light. The background stars seem to shift. It’s a wormhole and something is coming through. Suddenly, hundreds of straight, segmented rockets burst into the emptiness. Each is fifteen school busses long. For a time, they fly in all directions. Then, they regroup and point themselves in the direction of a bluish white star. This is the sun of the planet Xirl, a jungle world valued by many. In two days, it will be visited by the giant worms that eat trees.

The planet Xirl has a highly eccentric orbit that takes it around its star once every twenty-two Earth years. For four of those years, it is dominated by lush jungle. It is home to “tutu palms” that sport a second crown of leaves around their middles. These trees grow fruit resembling hanging chains of sausage links. They taste like sausages, too. It is also home to Xirlian lions, which resemble Earth lions, but without heads or tails. For the remaining eighteen of those years, it is winter. All life sleeps. The plants and animals alike freeze solid to protect them from the wind and glaciers. At this time, the first snow is already starting to fall, and the wind is picking up.

Nathaniel, Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill are on the planet making preparations for the worm invasion. They are not going to let them ruin this world. However, they must be discrete; the time cops are also on the planet. “Happy evening, sentient beings. What is your purpose on planet Xirl?” a time cop asks, huddled in a thick jacket.

“Oh, we’re historians here to document the seasonal transition. This device here is a multiscanner. We’ll be collecting data from the whole planet,” Nathaniel says, slapping the large machine in front of him with gloved hand.

“Very good. We detected time travel technology on board your craft. Have you made any recent time trips?” the time cop asks.

“Well, that depends on whether three hundred forty years ago is recent,” Nathaniel says, then laughs. The time cop also laughs, a good sign. “Like I said, we’re historians. We were sent by the Documentary Society. We visit special events to observe for the official records.” Nathaniel hands him a card.

The cop looks over Nathaniel’s DS card and puts it in his pocket. “Good, good, we need more people like you to help us preserve the timeline.”

“Just doing our part,” Nathaniel says.

“That’s right,” Haticat agrees.

“So, which special event are you here to observe?” the time cop asks.

“Well, as you know, I can’t tell you the future or it might pollute the timeline,” Nathaniel answers.

“Okay, I think we’re both here for the same reason. Good luck with your observation,” the time cop responds and then walks away.

When the BTJ agent is finally out of earshot, Haticat whispers, “I don’t believe that worked.”

“It’s not like we’re lying. We’re going to join the DS once it exists,” Nathaniel says.

“We are?” Haticat says.

“Probably,” Nathaniel replies.

Doctor Bill walks around the device and scans it carefully. “The false image is holding. From the outside, scans will show this to be an ordinary multiscanner except for the size.” The real reason the machine is so large is to make room for the teleportation beamers and the salt. The device scans for worms, recording their exact position and timestamp. That way, at some future time, the same device can send teleportation beams back in time, injecting the worms with small amounts of salt, their greatest weakness. Since the salt will be materializing from the future, there will be nowhere to track it back to. The time cops won’t know what’s going on. In the meantime, Nathaniel takes a walk and explores the jungle.

When the worms finally land, two of them land barely four hundred meters away. They immediately soften as they transform from rocket mode to eating mode. They eat tree after tree, faster than the explorers have seen such worms eat trees before. Ash spews out their back ends. “There’s still seventy stragglers out of range,” Doctor Bill reports.

“Wait until they all land to take our snapshot scan. That will be the moment we send the salt to,” Nathaniel orders.

“With the time cops watching, we’ll probably only get one chance,” Haticat adds.

They wait for an hour while one of the nearby worms begins to munch in their direction. They don’t notice it until it knocks a tree over onto the ship. “Hey!” Fred shouts, attempting to deter it with laser blasts.

The worm reacts by thrashing and then races straight for the multiscanner. The four explorers barely jump out of the way in time as the worm knocks over the machine and then slides past it into the forest on the other side.

“Oh, no,” Nathaniel grumbles. In the time it takes to right the machine and repair it, the remaining worms land and the rest start spawning larvae. They begin a new scan. Finally, they are done, but the teleporter won’t engage. “Now what’s wrong?” When he opens the panel to the time crystal assembly, he is immediately concerned. Time crystals are supposed to be blue, but these are green.

“What does it mean?” Haticat asks.

“I don’t know,” Nathaniel answers.

Solving the mystery takes hours. Finally, Nathaniel announces, “The time cops have erected a chronometric barrier that disallows traveling back in time; we can only go forward.”

“If that’s the case, we won’t be able to teleport the salt back in time, either,” Doctor Bill responds.

“And we won’t be able to bring the teleporter back in time to aim the beams forward in time instead,” Nathaniel says.

“Can we send the salt forward in time from now and then entice the worms into the right places?” Doctor Bill suggests.

“No, there are already too many worms for the amount of salt we have now,” Nathaniel answers.

“Why don’t we just leave the planet and go back in time? What’s the range on this energy field?” Haticat asks.

“Unfortunately, the barrier not only disallows backwards time travel, but any influence from the future. It prevents paradoxes,” Nathaniel says.

“We need to shut down that barrier,” Fred declares.

The source of the energy field is one hundred kilometers away where three Bureau ships are parked. The four time criminals ride antigravity rods most of the way there, braving the wind and the snow. They see several giant worms in the frozen forest, munching away.

While Fred and Doctor Bill sneak into one of the ships to shut off the barrier, Nathaniel and Haticat approach the time cops to ask them to drop the barrier temporarily. “We missed part of the invasion because a worm knocked over the multiscanner, so we need to go back and start over in a safer location.”

“You want to change history?” the time cop says.

“We wouldn’t be changing anything, just scanning,” Nathaniel answers.

“You’d be undoing your failure to scan,” the time cop explains.

“Is it in the history books that we failed to scan?” Nathaniel asks.

“They don’t say that you succeeded,” the cop says. “In fact, there’s no record of you at all. The Documentary Society has never heard of you.”

“They haven’t heard of me yet. They don’t exist yet,” Nathaniel counters.

“Tell me, what kind of multiscanner contains two hundred fifty thousand kilograms of salt?” the cop asks.

Nathaniel opens and closes his mouth. He has no good answer for that. Just then, Fred and Doctor Bill are escorted out of the ship. “We caught them in the act, boss – just like you predicted.”

Nathaniel is dumbfounded. “How did you figure it out?”

“We waited for you to leave your ship. When you flew your rods here, my officers were able to look inside your device. We saw the time crystals and the teleporter assembly,” the head cop explains.

“Oh,” Nathaniel says. Soon, Nathaniel and crew are disarmed and placed in a cell on one of the other two ships. He gives up on saving Xirl and instead thinks up ways to escape.

Hours pass. Then they hear gunfire and shouting. Then there is silence. The guard watching them looks nervous. He unholsters his sidearm and approaches the doorway. Suddenly, there is a flash of light and he disappears. Around the corner walks Nathaniel, in sunglasses. He is followed by Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill. They stop and look at themselves through the cell door.

“Hi, you must be me from the future,” Nathaniel in the cell says.

“Nope,” the other Nathaniel says. “I’m you from the past.”

“Then why don’t I remember this?” Nathaniel in the cell asks.

“You will later,” past Nathaniel in sunglasses says. “A while back, I hacked into BTJ records to see what they had on me. I discovered events in both my past and future. With advance knowledge of these events, I was able to intervene and rescue myself – sometimes in person, sometimes from behind the scenes.” As he talks, Haticat opens the cell and lets Nathaniel, Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill out.

“But then how did you get through the barrier if you are carrying future knowledge and influence?” present Nathaniel asks.

“Simple. The barrier wasn’t erected yet; that information was already in the past,” past Nathaniel answers.

“Oh,” present Nathaniel remarks. “So you aren’t me yet, but you will have already been me in the past at some time in the future.”

“Exactly,” past Nathaniel says. The two of them continue to talk about things that have been, will be, will have been, would have been, and had will will have been. There is a lot of information to cover.

“Well, I guess we need to shut that barrier off now so we can use the multiscanner,” present Nathaniel says.

“No, if you do that, the police will immediately be back. With the barrier up, they won’t be able to bother you and you can take all the time you want to defeat the worms.” Past Nathaniel holds up his rifle. “These are temporal teleporter guns. I zapped the time cops one century into the future.”

“Oh, great idea. I wish I had thought of it,” present Nathaniel says.

“You just did,” past Nathaniel answers.

After exploring several planets, Nathaniel parks his ship in the middle of a dust cloud where he can perform necessary repairs away from prying eyes that might attempt to take advantage of a stalled craft. Although the dust is thinly spread, the size of the cloud completely blocks view of the stars. He and his crew would be in absolute darkness if not for the ship’s lights.

“Um, you, the round one,” Nathaniel says.

“I’m Fred,” Fred says.

“Right, shut down the engine and pump out the fuel collector so you can remove the regulator and give it to the, uh, yellow one,” Nathaniel says.

Doctor Bill takes the regulator, plugs it into the diagnostic terminal station, and reboots it. In the meantime, Nathaniel and Haticat put on spacesuits and go outside to test and straighten the ion accelerator guns. The outside of the ship has many handles to hold and each space suit comes with a single cable ending in a clip. They detach and reattach their clips as they move. The first three of six guns are tested and adjusted as necessary and they slowly make their way over to the fourth. “Hey, what’s that?” Haticat asks.

“I don’t see anything,” Nathaniel says.

Haticat pulls down his magnification visor and Nathaniel follows suit. There is a tiny pink speck in the distance and it seems to be wobbling. “I still can’t tell what it is.”

“Go back in the ship. We’ll put the ship scanners on it,” Nathaniel says.

Once inside, they study it intensely. “It’s some sort of giant polychaete and it’s coming this way,” Haticat says.

“It travels by means of a gravitational dipole, but I don’t understand how it generates it,” Nathaniel says.

“Look at the way it dances. It’s writhing all over the place,” Haticat says.

“Let’s put up the force field just in case,” Nathaniel says. “Doctor Bill, how long until we have engines again?”

“Without cutting corners on repairs, two hours. If I put everything back right away without repairs, thirty minutes,” Doctor Bill says.

“We might not have thirty minutes. Hurry,” Nathaniel says. Doctor Bill and Fred scramble to insert every part back into place while Nathaniel watches the monitor closely. The movement of the creature’s parapods is mesmerizing, but something about it makes him feel uneasy. “There is definitely something weird about that dipole.”

“I’m reading paraentropic action; it’s some sort of psychotrophic organism,” Haticat reports. “I’m also reading supersymmetric particles, mostly photino radiation.”

Fifteen minutes later, the creature collides with the force field. It scrapes its parapods over its surface. Power levels fluctuate across the ship, but the force field holds. Nathaniel is surprised to find himself gasping. He feels so strange. “You feel that too?” Haticat asks.

Nathaniel struggles for words. “It’s like…It’s like…”

“It’s like being tickled without being touched,” Haticat says.

Just then, Fred starts laughing and falls into the fuel collector. He is spasming so hard that he can’t stand. Sparks of purple energy run back and forth from station to station. It seems to come from the force field generator. One pulse of energy briefly touches Nathaniel as it passes by, causing him to convulse as well. Tickling was supposed to be psychological rather than physical, but this tickling was manifesting as visible discharges. “It’s transferring energy through the force field!”

He switches the generator off and runs to where he can jump up and grab onto one of the six particle accelerators connecting the weapons reactor to the guns on the hull. He then pours his electricity power into the tubes, electrifying the outside of the hull and shocking the creature as it tries to get in. “Fred! I need those engines!”

“The being has moved away from the hull. I am opening fire.” Haticat hits it with a beam of protons travelling over 99.9999% the speed of light. The creature squirms.

“We still need five more minutes!” Doctor Bill yells.

“Haticat, rotate the ship so we can hit it with three beams. Don’t let it recover,” Nathaniel says.

“Got it!” Haticat reorients the artificial gravity holding down the water, shifting its weight to provide the necessary torque. He hits the worm with repeated ion pulses from three directions. It continues to squirm and moves away from the ship.

At last, the engines are online. The ship begins to accelerate away and Haticat stops firing. The worm gives chase. “Faster!” Nathaniel orders.

The ship speeds out of the dust cloud and the stars reappear. The creature is right behind them. In fact, it gradually closes the gap. “I can’t lose it,” Haticat states.

“I have an idea. Creatures of the void are rarely capable of landing or taking off. Find a planet with strong gravity and land on it,” Nathaniel says.

Haticat scans the three thousand closest star systems. “I found a terrestrial planet with surface gravity nine times that of Gruezhe. It’s three minutes away.”

“We don’t have bones. We won’t be able to stand,” Doctor Bill says.

“At nine times gravity, I won’t be able to stand even with bones,” Nathaniel says. “Land us there.”

The creature continues to get closer. Finally, they arrive at the planet and enter the atmosphere. It is a transparent, breathable mix of oxygen and nitrogen, that reaches the perfect density just above ground level. The planet is dominated by flat plains of magenta stone and it is on one of these the ship lands. The internal artificial gravity compensates for the external gravity automatically. “The creature has slowed. It seems to be circling,” Haticat reports.

“It doesn’t dare enter such a strong gravity well not knowing if it can leave again,” Nathaniel says.

“Wait, it’s moving away now,” Haticat says.

“Can we finish repairs?” Doctor Bill asks.

“Sure,” Nathaniel agrees. While Fred and Doctor Bill finish the engines, Nathaniel and Haticat step outside to finish straightening the ion channels. They wear antigravity belts to negate some of their mass, allowing them to stand in the planet’s strong gravity. Once finished, they take a short stroll across the plain. There is some movement up ahead. It is a blob the size of a bus, the same shade of magenta as the rock around it. “It blends in so well,” Haticat says.

Nathaniel pulls out his scanner. “There are hundreds of them, spaced about eighty meters apart on average.”

Haticat looks around. “You’d never know it.”

“Hold on, what’s that? There’s something large and warm. That way,” Nathaniel comments. They look to see something pale pink in the distance scurrying along on parapods. “It’s using its gravitational dipole to protect it from the planet’s gravity.”

Haticat is already on his radio and running back to the ship. “Guys! It’s here. How long on repairs?”

“We’re almost done,” Doctor Bill replies.

“Prepare to take off,” Nathaniel orders.

Nathaniel and Haticat run toward the ship. The creature closes the gap and would have caught them if it didn’t stop to tickle the magenta blob. The blob convulses and then wiggles free. Due to its highly flexible morphology, the worm can’t seem to keep a grip on it. Nathaniel locks the door as Haticat runs for the controls. “I’m still rebooting the computer,” Doctor Bill informs him.

Haticat holds his hands over the controls ready to start the takeoff sequence the moment they become active. Then the screen flashes: BOOT ERROR. “What? What does that mean?”

“Let me try again.” Doctor Bill flips a bunch of switches, pulls out a knob and slams it in again. The screen flashes a series of colored shapes.

“What’s going on?” Nathaniel asks.

“Just having some trouble rebooting the engine computer,” Doctor Bill answers.

Just then, there is a thud at the door. Everyone’s hair stands on end. Purple sparks begin to dance along the walkway. “Hurry up,” Nathaniel says.

Then, to everyone’s surprise, the door opens and in slithers the worm. Haticat and Fred immediately have their laser pistols out and fire at it. It jerks and coils up slightly. Then it starts to move down the walkway. Nathaniel joins the other two and they sustain continuous laser fire. Wounds open up in its skin. It stops, but the tickle energy doesn’t. Fred is overcome first, dropping his gun into the water and laughing like a maniac as he writhes on the floor. Haticat cannot hold his gun steady and the beam scratches the inner wall of the ship. Nathaniel can hardly catch his breath; he is laughing so hard. “Stop. Stop it.” Back in the control station, the computer has successfully restarted, but Doctor Bill is on the floor, rolling back and forth.

The worm moves forward slowly, stepping over Fred, Haticat, and Nathaniel, brushing its parapods against them. Now the real tickling begins. What was mere psychological projection is now physical. The being draws energy from the interaction, storing it away in memory cells for later. Gathering together what is left of his will, Nathaniel grabs the body of the worm with both hands and delivers his best shock. The tickling immediately stops and the worm freezes in place. Nathaniel pours even higher voltage into it, damaging its nervous system.

Fred retrieves his gun floating in the reservoir and the three of them start to cut the worm up. “Take off now?” Doctor bill asks.

“Yes, we’ll teleport the tickle monster into the sun,” Nathaniel answers.

Doctor Bill launches the ship and steers it toward the planet’s star. They have to get close to use the teleporter, which only works over distances shorter than two thousand kilometers. They all crowd into the control station as the ship flies. Finally, they arrive in the star’s chromosphere. “I can’t get a link on the worm matter. There’s too much photino interference,” Doctor Bill complains.

“We’ll have to put a force field around the door and eject it,” Nathaniel says.

As he speaks, the worm’s parapods begin to wiggle. One section of worm finds another and they start to fuse. “Whoa! Get back!” Haticat shouts as he opens fire on the fusing parts.

Nathaniel reaches for the gravity controls. Each section of the ship is on its own artificial gravity circuit. He reverses the generators under the walkway where the worm is located. It flies up and slams into the domed ceiling, where it slowly brings itself together as they watch. It finishes pulling itself together and the purple sparks begin again. The tickling is just beginning and Nathaniel fights the urge to laugh. “Open the door!” Doctor Bill pulls a lever and the door opens. The air rushes out, pulling the worm with it. “Close it!” Nathaniel yells. Doctor Bill closes the door and Nathaniel resets the gravity. “Now get out of here!”

Doctor Bill accelerates the ship and leaves the solar system. The creature follows. Doctor Bill pushes the engines harder and harder. At the risk of damaging the engines, he alters the mix of particles to get more speed. “How does it keep up?” Fred asks.

“I knew there was something odd about that gravitational dipole,” Nathaniel mutters.

“Hmm?” Haticat says.

“When we were stationary, the creature approached very slowly. When we fled, it kept up. When on the high-gravity planet, the creature had no problem taking off,” Nathaniel says, skimming through the sensor logs as fast as he can. “I think the tickle monster discriminates between gravitational forces by direction and chooses whether to respond with positive or negative acceleration.”

“What?” Haticat says.

“It’s drawing on our own antigravity flux to follow us. We need to find an empty patch of space as far from stars or other sources of gravity as we can get,” Nathaniel says.

“We’re only three hundred light years from the edge of the galaxy,” Doctor Bill says.

“Go!” Nathaniel orders.

The ship continues to stay just ahead of the monster for the next twenty-one minutes until it plunges into blackness. Only a few stars are visible. “Shut the engines down,” Nathaniel orders. The ship drifts forward at sublight speeds as the creature follows. “Now fire one of the lateral guns – maximum momentum.”

Doctor Bill fires one of the guns pointed at right angles to their direction of motion. Slowly, but surely, the ship moves in the direction opposite the stream of protons. The creature has no way to follow. It gets farther and farther away. Thirty minutes later, when the distance between ship and creature is fifteen kilometers and growing, Nathaniel finally deems it safe to turn the engines back on.

“Take us back inside the galaxy, and keep an eye out for psychoparasites,” Nathaniel orders.

“I will do that,” Doctor Bill replies. They return to the Milky Way and the worm is left far behind.

The planet Axhashtkat gleams like a jewel in the blackness of space. In the cold, shallow waters, nine-legged crab stars stand in the sand, absorbing food through their feet by osmosis. On the plains, radio-dish-head Ceratopids roam, pinging each other at long distances. The forests are nice, with broad, yellow leaves providing much shade. In scattered villages throughout the forest are blobby beings resembling fried eggs. Having great respect for their environment, they put all their roads underground, so that the forests will not be subdivided. According to their code of ethics, Hashites, as the egg-blobs are called, only eat creatures that themselves eat other creatures, not innocent herbivores. The forests of Axhashtkat are sought out by nature lovers from around the galaxy and across history.

One day, there is a meteor shower. Several meteorites make it to the ground. One meteorite cracks open, revealing a stack of papery films. The top one peels off in the light breeze and lands a meter away. Its outline resembles an ant the size of a rat. As the next film and the next one peel off, the first gradually puffs up with air. Soon, there are hundreds of ants. One of them manages to start a fire with its mouthparts somehow. With its mouthparts aflame, it proceeds to light the rear ends of the other ants. The other ants pass the fire around, back to front and front to back, until every ant carries a flame on each end. Then they start to light the forest on fire.

“Look at that forest fire; it’s huge,” Haticat says as the ship flies by, looking up at the projection on the domed ceiling.

“Wow,” Captain Nathaniel says. “Let’s see if we can help.”

First, they land just beyond the wall of expanding flame and begin repurposing their antigravity-powered uranium mining beams to move water into and out of the ship. Several Hashite blobs arrive and inquire what they are doing. Nathaniel steps outside to talk to them. “I’m going to put out the fire.”

“What about the fire ants?” the Hashites ask.

“Fire ants?” Nathaniel asks.

“The fires are caused by an invading army of ants. They keep restarting the fires after we put them out,” one blob explains.

“Where did they invade from?” Nathaniel asks.

“We don’t know, but they showed up right after a big meteor shower,” he replies.

“Interesting,” Nathaniel says.

Haticat suddenly sticks his head outside the door. “We have visitors. Six ships just entered the timestream.”

“Time travelers?” Nathaniel asks.

“Yes,” Haticat answers.

“Well, that can’t be a coincidence,” Nathaniel says. He looks at the ships through the telescope. They are shaped like spoked wheels. “Time cops.”

Mere minutes later, one of the ships lands next to Nathaniel’s and out climb ten Humanoids of mixed races in time cop uniforms. Among them are Ninos, Humans, Hammer-Faces, ape-like Meekons, and bird-like Zooks. “Good day, can I ask your business on this planet?”

“Just stopping to check the scenery,” Nathaniel answers.

“Good, right at the last minute before it all burns down. Some people might be tempted to try to stop it – to change history. Have you encountered anyone with firefighting equipment?” the front time cop says.

“Um, no,” Nathaniel says.

“Mind if we take a look inside your craft?” the time cop asks.

“Actually, there’s a lot of delicate scientific instruments in there…” Nathaniel says.

The time cop stares at him for a few seconds, then turns and walks back to his ship. “Good day.”

“Are you going to help us?” one of the Hashite blobs finally asks.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Nathaniel responds.

The time cops continue to monitor the planet as the fire gets bigger and bigger. Other time travelers blink into and out of existence, not wanting any scrutiny from the BTJ. “It’s not fair. Stopping us from helping those in distress is evil,” Haticat opines.

“I know,” Nathaniel says.

“So what are we going to do about it?” Haticat asks.

“I’m not sure yet,” Nathaniel says.

“We can kill the time cops first,” Fred suggests.

“Too many. We can’t fight the whole bureau,” Nathaniel says.

“We could go back in time and redirect the meteorites,” Haticat suggests.

“They’ll be watching for that, too,” Nathaniel says.

“Perhaps we can rescue a number of people too small to have been recorded in the history books. The time cops wouldn’t know for sure that we weren’t always supposed to do it,” Doctor Bill says. “We could still make a small difference.”

“Maybe,” Nathaniel says.

Just then, there is a knock at the door. Weapons in hand, they check who it is. It is Mister Dinosaur! “I had to make sure it was you before I came out of hiding,” he says.

“Are you here to stop the fire?” Nathaniel asks.

“Not exactly, I’m moving the forest – teleporting it into the future under cover of the fire. It looks like the trees are burning up, but they’re actually disappearing,” Mister Dinosaur explains.

“But we’ve seen the ash from the leaves. We’ve seen the wood melting and sagging,” Nathaniel says.

“That’s because the tree atoms have been replaced by trash – mostly plastic. I started a recycling program on this planet one thousand years ago. Why do you think it’s so clean? Because the Hashites dump their trash into teleporters that send it to this time period. Everything is run through my satellite in orbit about thirteen years from now,” Mister Dinosaur says.

“So, you send the teleporter beams through time? How do you regulate the Minkowski-Doppler distortion?” Nathaniel asks.

“I use directional shrink-ray technology on the time crystals themselves,” Mister Dinosaur answers.

“Oh, that makes sense,” Nathaniel comments.

“Unfortunately, I don’t have it all under control yet. I have a problem you could help with,” Mister Dinosaur says.

“What’s that?” Nathaniel asks.

“Some of the fire ants were teleported into the future along with the forest. They are very difficult to kill, regenerating rapidly and immune to fire,” Mister Dinosaur says.

“And you want me to figure out how to exterminate them?” Nathaniel says.

“Yes,” Mister Dinosaur says.

“With my crew’s help, I’ll get you a solution faster than you can count the acorns in your tree,” Nathaniel says.

“Well, no rush, I won’t need the answer for thirteen years,” Mister Dinosaur says.

“Oh, of course,” Nathaniel says. After some additional socializing over a shared snack of smores, Mister Dinosaur goes on his way. Then, Nathaniel and his crew get to work.

The fire ants are terraformers. They burn native ecosystems to rid themselves of dangerous fauna and to predigest their food for them. Then they eat the partially combusted material and complete the oxidation process inside their bodies. When there is no more usable biomass, they move on the next planet. Doctor Bill quickly realizes that their weakness is sugar. Sugar sticks to their skin and clogs the millions of pores they breathe and fuel their twin flames through. Nathaniel builds a prototype syrup gun and tests it on a few ants. It stops them in their tracks immediately. Next, they build several mines made to look like ants. When a real ant comes along and attempts to share its fire by lighting either end, the mine explodes with syrup. “Now, all we need is ten thousand more mines,” Haticat comments.

“And for that, all we need is more time,” Nathaniel says. He takes the ship back one hundred years and convinces the Hashites to construct a mine factory. Then he picks up the finished product fifty years ago and brings the mines thirteen years into the future when he meets up with Mister Dinosaur. They stand between their two ships.

“Inside my ship are ten thousand mines only detonated by fire,” Nathaniel says.

“Good, we need them. I’ll get some Hashites to help us distribute them,” Mister Dinosaur says.

“Or you could freeze and put your hands up instead.” One time cop steps from behind Mister Dinosaur’s ship, carrying a cramp gun. He is followed by five more, holding laser rifles.

Nathaniel, Haticat, Fred, Doctor Bill, and Mister Dinosaur raise their arms. “Hey, we didn’t change the history books. They don’t specify whether the forest actually burned or was teleported away. I checked,” Mister Dinosaur protests.

“True, dematerializing the forest is not a time crime,” the front time cop says.

“So why are you here?” Mister Dinosaur asks.

“Rematerializing the forest thirteen years later is a time crime,” the time cop says.

“Oh,” Mister Dinosaur says.

“You boys are going to T-Omega,” the time cop says.

“No, you can’t arrest us; we’re already there,” Nathaniel says.

“Hmm?” the time cop mutters.

“Check your records. We’ve already been arrested and convicted for future crimes. If you bring us in now, we won’t have committed all the crimes we’re supposed to and you’ll be changing history,” Nathaniel says.

The time cop seems confused and quickly logs into the BTJ system through his pocket computer. “Here it is: Nathaniel, Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill currently serving life sentences on T-Omega.”

“I told you,” Nathaniel says.

“Well, sorry to have bothered you. You four are free to go for now; we’ll catch you later. However, Mister Dinosaur is scheduled to be arrested today, according to history,” the time cop says.

Nathaniel catches Mister Dinosaur’s eye and says, “spin,” before running to his ship.

“What?” Mister Dinosaur says.

Once Nathaniel and his crew are inside their ship, they power up the time machine. “Are we going to rescue him?” Haticat asks.

“Yep,” Nathaniel answers.

They travel back to when Mister Dinosaur first landed on the planet, meeting up with him. “I have important news. You’re going to be arrested by the time cops and sent to T-Omega, but I know how to escape,” Nathaniel says.

“I’m listening,” Mister Dinosaur says.

Nathaniel explains about the complex spin of the planet and how the world-line torsion keeps time machines from materializing. “If you can keep track of the sun and rotate your body in opposition to it, I can pick you up.”

“Okay,” Mister Dinosaur says.

“You’ll see me materialize soon. Wait a little bit before approaching, and then tell me you had to make sure it was me,” Nathaniel says.

“Got it,” Mister Dinosaur says.

Nathaniel drops off the mines in the future, defeats the fire ants, travels to T-Omega to pick up Mister Dinosaur, and then returns him to his ship. Then they go their separate ways.

“I think I’m going to start a rock collection,” Nathaniel says.

“Like agates and obsidian?” Haticat says.

“No, just one stone from each planet to remember it by,” Nathaniel explains. “You know, the girls on Ninosa believed that stones held luck. Some combinations were good; others were bad.”

“That’s stupid,” Fred says.

“I know, right?” Nathaniel says.

Nathaniel, Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill explore the forest of Lastiana. There are trees evergreen and deciduous. Boulders and lichens are abundant. They walk through the woods for a long time, examining every tree. Nathaniel loves the forest. It is artistically exciting, yet calming. Sunshine is annoying, but shade is relaxing. “Where are we going next?” Haticat asks.

“I don’t know, maybe Molkonia, to see the great yogurt river,” Nathaniel suggests, placing his left hand on a nearby trunk. Planet Molkonia is another Earth-like planet. Just one of its major rivers is made of white, bacteria-rich sludge. It is a bit of a tourist attraction. People bathe in it.

“Well, I don’t want to leave Lastiana just yet, even if nothing exciting has happened,” Doctor Bill says.

“Yeah, me neither,” Nathaniel says, shifting his weight onto the tree he is touching. It suddenly moves – and then flies away rapidly through the trees. Instantly, all four explorers have their guns out and aimed at it. It appears as a simple, straight trunk tapered at both ends with no roots or branches, remaining perfectly vertical as it slips through the forest. A bulge near its middle fires green beams in their direction, burning whatever it touches.

“What was that?” Haticat asks.

“Not a tree,” Nathaniel says.

“Whatever it is, it doesn’t show up on scans,” Doctor Bill says. “The energy weapon seems to cause some sort of ionic damage.”

“Well, now something exciting has happened,” Fred says.

“I don’t think it’s part of the native wildlife. We need to talk to the Lastianites,” Nathaniel says. The Lastianites are Humanoids with bark-like skin and grass-like hair who wear baskets for clothes and live in giant basket-houses. They eat mashed squash and squash chips. All their roads are one-way and returning to where one came from can sometimes require looping back for over two kilometers.

The natives tell him that they never spend any time in the forest and have not seen any unusual activity, except for the appearance of a new hill last year. “A new hill?” Doctor Bill repeats.

“Yeah, that one.” The Lastianite points.

It looks just like an ordinary hill, covered in trees and grass. The four explorers go to investigate. On the way, Nathaniel starts to notice things he had not noticed before. There are clusters of leafy branches in the treetops without trunks to support them. There are stumps sitting next to drag marks as if they crawled on their roots to their present locations. There are floating, branchless trunks, each with a slight bulge in the middle. Thirty percent of the forest is fake. He pretends not to notice and signals for his crew to do the same.

Over the course of three hours, they walk all the way around the hill, doing deep positron scans. The hill is made of dirt and rocks and seems entirely ordinary in every way. “Too ordinary,” Doctor Bill comments. “Look at this ordinary fissure in the rock – and this one – and this one.”

Nathaniel stares intently at the digital map. “They’re all the same shape.”

“A projected scanning image to cover what’s really there,” Doctor Bill says.

“We need to get inside,” Nathaniel says.

“Without a known empty space to aim at, we can’t teleport in. We might end up inside a wall,” Doctor Bill says.

“Right, but we have a machine that can displace matter,” Nathaniel says.

“You’re not going to time-skip the whole ship inside are you?” Haticat asks.

“We don’t have to. We can set the force field small enough to contain only the one gazebo,” Nathaniel explains. “Alright everybody, grab some scanners and …uh …shooty things; we’re going in.”

Pop! The gazebo appears inside a warehouse filled with clear, spherical containers of fluid. With the coast clear, they shut off the force field and step down. Doctor Bill is already scanning. “The content of the spheres is mostly lipids. It’s probably food.”

Nathaniel sniffs the air. “Antigravity byproducts. This is a spaceship.”

The hallways are very tall and shaped like the letter I, wide on the top and bottom and narrower in the middle. They explore much of the inside of the structure without ever being seen. There are very few beings around.

They pass a room filled with large, humming machinery. “I smell matter crystals,” Nathaniel says.
“It looks like they use these machines to direct the matter crystals into growing different materials,” Doctor Bill says. “Lipids, ship parts, more matter crystals.”

“This looks like a lipid furnace. They must use their food as fuel to power the ship and keep the lights on,” Haticat suggests.

“They make everything they need,” Nathaniel says.

Finally, they arrive in a room full of pots, each with a huge seed half-imbedded in the soil. Dimly-lit screens cover each wall. Nathaniel, Haticat, and Fred look over these while Doctor Bill examines the growing plants. “I found a timeline,” Nathaniel states. Haticat joins him. “They’ve been here for ninety-nine years. This isn’t the first ship to be built. They’ve been replacing the forest on this planet this whole time.”

“Here’s a map,” Fred says. Nathaniel and Haticat join him. The map shows seventy-seven hill-ships spread around the world.

“What is their plan?” Haticat asks.

“There are three different kinds of seeds – three different species working together. None of them are photosynthetic, but require a diet of lipids,” Doctor Bill announces.

Nathaniel starts to pace. “They’re replacing the forest and the Lastianites don’t notice because they keep close to their houses and roads. The real trees are crowded out and die. Eventually, every tree is a composite of three aliens that provide nothing to the ecosystem. The ecosystem collapses. Everybody dies. It’s an invasion. It’s a very slow invasion of one biome by another.”

“Well, that’s normal. On such timescales, people don’t normally notice or care,” Haticat says.

“Yes, but we are not normal people,” Nathaniel says. “We can do something about this.”

All looking at the potted seeds, they do not see the stump crawl through the doorway. “Stop!” it utters in a very buzzy voice. “How did you enter the ship?”

“That’s top secret,” Nathaniel stammers out.

“Wait here for apprehension,” the stump orders.

Nathaniel waves for the others to follow him and runs right over the stump. Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill run around it. It chases them down the hallway, but is quite slow. The explorers are almost back to the warehouse when four flying trunks speed around a corner after them. Phoo! Phoo! Green energy ionizes the surface of the walls next to them. Nathaniel and Fred spin around and fire their laser pistols, forcing the trunks to retreat.

They round the corner into the warehouse, ducking behind the food containers. The trunks are behind them, firing wide beams that cause the air to crackle and surfaces to sizzle. Nathaniel provides laserfire to give the others a chance to reach the gazebo unit. Then he slips into superspeed, runs to the control panel, erects the force field, and leaves the timestream while the trunks again open fire. Pop!

Safely back in the pool-ship, the explorers start to hatch a plan. It only takes an hour to prepare. When finished, Nathaniel materializes his ship on top of the alien hill and steps outside. His crew follows behind. He sets his radio to broadcast on all channels. “Attention three species invaders, I know your plans and I will now negotiate your surrender.”

Soon, two trunks and three treetops fly up the hill and meet them at the top. “Who are you?” they buzz.

“Captain Nathaniel, explorer, adventurer, warrior, and the last thing you’ll ever see if you don’t leave the planet,” Nathaniel answers.

“We do not take orders,” the aliens buzz.

“Maybe not before, but you do now. In one instant, I can materialize bombs in every one of your ships, but I’m willing to let you go if you leave right away,” Nathaniel says.

“And how will you do that? Teleporters can only reach so far,” the aliens ask.

“Oh, I don’t need a teleporter. I can leave space and time itself and set down anywhere I want, displacing any matter in my way. There is nowhere safe,” Nathaniel says.

“I don’t believe you. That’s impossible,” the aliens respond.

“Not with time crystals it isn’t. Used correctly with the right machinery, time crystals can speed up, slow down, and even reverse time. See, your invasion takes too long. I can speed myself up and destroy your entire organization in seconds. You are outmatched,” Nathaniel claims.

“Really? In that case, you will teach us how to use them,” the closest treetop buzzes.

“What? I’m not teaching you anything. Leave the planet,” Nathaniel demands.

“We do not take orders; we give them,” the treetop replies.

“I told you…” Nathaniel says, but he is cut off by a shot of green energy landing right next to him. He is knocked over and all his hair stands on end.

“Teach us this technology,” a trunk demands.

Nathaniel takes the aliens inside the ship and shows them the time crystal assembly, carefully explaining how it works. “Are you going to take all my time crystals? Then I’ll only be able to traverse normal space.”

“Yes, then you’ll be no threat to us,” a treetop replies.

“There’s only eighty. That’s only enough for one ship of this size. You’ll need much more to speed up one of your hill-ships. I can show you where to find more time crystals, but only if I’m alive,” Nathaniel says.

“We don’t need you. We can grow more by using our matter crystals,” the treetop says.

Nathaniel looks frightened for the first time. “What? Are you telling me you only need one time crystal per ship to grow a whole set and speed up your invasion to finish by nightfall?”

“Yes, exactly,” the creatures buzz. “And now we are finished with you.”

All at once, Nathaniel and his three Stuffians leap into the water reservoir as the beings open fire. The fluid protects them and they surface under the walkways and gazebos.

“Never mind them. They aren’t important. Deliver the time crystals to every hill in the invasion force. We’ll be finished before they can stop us.” As they exit the doorway, one of them fires into the control station.

Haticat climbs onto a walkway and wrings himself out. Then he checks the controls. “There’s minimum damage. I can have us running in five minutes.”

“Good,” Nathaniel says, pulling fresh time crystals from the hidden safe and resetting the time machine.

“For a moment there, I thought you had lost control of the conversation,” Doctor Bill says.

“I never doubted the captain,” Fred says.

“The plan worked flawlessly. They’ll be really surprised to discover that time crystal radiation poisons matter crystals. The whole operation will shut down,” Nathaniel says.

“What if they bring the time crystals back together to build a time machine? They might be able to figure it out without you,” Doctor Bill says.

“They’ll be able to make one short trip at most. Those time crystals were worn to the point of collapse.” Nathaniel stands up and smacks the force field generator. It hums to life. Lights blink around its perimeter. “When to next?”

“Anywhen!” Haticat shouts from the control station.

Nathaniel steps around the purple ferns sticking out of the black volcanic soil. He has lived on this planet for several years now, mining uranium. The original miners had reached the limits of their technology and left the planet a century earlier. Nathaniel now took their place with some tech bought from the future. With the treasure he was digging up, he could power his ship and finance his travels for millennia. “I love the smell of neutrons in the morning.”

He then walks around one of the uranium piles left on the surface. His healing power makes him immune to the radiation’s long-term effects. As long as he doesn’t touch it, he’s fine. His plan was to prepare uranium in concise piles for easy pick up later. Although they tended to heat up and deteriorate lumped together in such large amounts, his future self could always pick them up yesterday before they had gone too far. This planet was to be his secret stash to be harvested as long as he wants.

He steps over some scat. There were animals here that excreted Prince Rupert drops of glass. One bad step and they would explode. He sees the animals among the ferns foraging for their nuts. They could be predatory at times, but their coal-like, infrared eyes could not see anything as small and cold as Nathaniel. Finally, he gets to one of the main entrances and climbs down the ladder. He meets up with Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill underground. “This vein is almost depleted,” Doctor Bill reports.

“Good. Just two more months of this and we are back in the exploring business,” Nathaniel says.

“Yes, mining is fun but I miss the variety of seeing a new planet every week,” Haticat says.

“And we’ll never have to stop for fuel again,” Nathaniel adds.

“Captain, the antigravity beam has been running slow today,” Fred announces.

“It just needs to be re-tightened until it has enough twist to shear the rock apart,” Nathaniel says.

“Oh,” Fred replies.

Nathaniel takes a walk through the mines. He will miss this place. He and his Stuffians built these tunnels. They had lived and worked here. He turns down a tunnel he rarely travels anymore just for old time’s sake. He takes in every curve and bump in the rock. “Hey, what’s this pickax doing here?” He bends down to look at it. It is not one of his. There are foot prints nearby – sneakers. He follows them for a while to a hole in the wall he does not remember. Holding up the radio to his face, he says, “Haticat, we have intruders.”

Soon, Nathaniel, Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill explore new tunnels they didn’t know existed. Doctor Bill scans the walls. Oxidation rates show this rock was exposed between nine and twelve months ago. “So, someone else was on this planet all this time, mining a mere kilometer away,” Haticat says.

“They must have discovered the equipment left by the original miners after we had moved west,” Nathaniel says.

“These footprints are recent,” Fred says with infrared goggles on his face. “They’re still warm.”

The four spread out and ready their laser pistols. They enter a roughly spherical cavern where equipment is stored. There are packages of drill bits and packages of tiny robots. “Who are you?” a voice demands. Haticat and Doctor Bill turn to see a Nino behind them holding a dual-aim laser pistol pointed at both of them. It is bigger than theirs.

“Who are you?” Nathaniel asks. He and Fred step out from behind a pallet of boxes behind the Nino, their guns aimed at him.

The Nino drops his gun and raises his arms. “If you try to take the mine without learning the equipment, it will collapse on you.”

“I can’t take it; it’s already my mine,” Nathaniel says.

“It’s mine!” the Nino replies.

“Mine!” Nathaniel yells.

Eventually, it is learned that the Nino’s name is Androw. He has been on the planet for two years and they have each been using the tunnels of the other, believing them to be part of the original structure. They reach a tentative agreement to share the mine, pending a more permanent arrangement that will divide it into two zones. Then they go their separate ways.

Unfortunately, they make lousy neighbors. Androw digs beneath one of Nathaniel‘s antigravity beam platforms and it falls into the chasm. They reach a truce, but then Nathaniel discovers Androw’s prospector bots using his water supply. It is only a small amount, but Nathaniel reacts by diverting an entire stream away from Androw’s zone. Androw shows up at Nathaniel‘s home with a drill truck, screaming and swearing. They reach a truce again, but five days later Nathaniel finds one of his screens that he uses to keep out animals has been cut. “Why did you cut it without asking me?” Nathaniel asks.

“You’re hard to talk with,” Androw replies.

“That’s not the point. Why did you cut it at all?” Nathaniel asks.

“Why not? It was in my way,” Androw replies with a snort.

“Do you know what’s in my way? This whole operation!” Nathaniel yells, then turns and fires a laser into Androw’s main control panel. Sparks fly. Alarms blare.

“Wait, what did you do?” Androw runs over to the control panel. “No, no, no, the robo-jacks need constant feedback from the seismometers. The whole system is collapsing!”

“Is that bad?” Nathaniel asks.

The cavern begins to shake. Hot gas hisses ominously from holes in the ground and then a bit of lava squirts from one of the holes. Nathaniel, Haticat, Fred, Doctor Bill, and Androw run through a tunnel, but eventually find their way blocked by a growing river of molten, radioactive metal. They take a zip line across, but the river is rising fast. Androw crosses first and throws the handle back to Nathaniel, who crosses second. Androw runs ahead while Nathaniel throws the handle back to Haticat. While Haticat is crossing, a sudden surge of lava catches his legs and pulls him downstream, bursting into flame. Then the stream rises even higher, blocking Nathaniel‘s view of Fred and Doctor Bill and forcing him back as it starts to flow down the tunnel he is in. He runs.

With all walkable tunnels blocked, Androw and Nathaniel resort to climbing up a vertical shaft one hundred meters deep. They push their hands and feet against the sides for enough friction to keep from slipping. Minutes later, glowing lava appears below them and the temperature slowly rises. When they finally reach the top of the shaft, they are still not in the clear. Androw’s stored uranium piles at this level have also collapsed and melted. There are already rivers. He accesses a terminal that still works to ascertain the damage. “The east side is completely blocked. I can’t get to my ship.”

“We’ll go to my ship,” Nathaniel says. The pathway west is not easy. The two Ninos must work together, hop across rivers on projecting stones, climb on walls, catch rides on floating islands of rock, and plan ahead their routes, sometimes jumping from sloped surface to sloped surface with no time to stop and catch their balance. It is the most physically and mentally taxing obstacle course Nathaniel has ever run. As they run through Nathaniel’s side of the mine, some of the support pillars sink when their foundations soften. Tunnels close in front and in back of them, causing them to change course three times. Boulders fall from the ceiling all around them.

Only at this point is Nathaniel able to take advantage of his super speed, but he feels bad leaving Androw behind. He has lost three friends today. Maybe he can make a new one. Nathaniel helps Androw climb up a wall and they are finally twenty meters from an exit. They can see the purple ferns blowing in the breeze. They run all the way to Nathaniel’s ship parked some distance away. The nearby volcano is wrapped in rivers of lava streaming across the plain the mines lie underneath.

At last, they enter Nathaniel’s ship, breathing heavily and drenched in sweat. “Can you give me a ride back to my ship?” Androw asks.

“Sure,” Nathaniel says. He starts the takeoff sequence and lands next to Androw’s ship on the other side of the plain.

“That’s two years of work lost. It’s too bad we can’t go back in time,” Androw says.

“Well,” Nathaniel says, looking toward the force field generator station. “Yeah, it’s too bad.”

Nathaniel and Androw say their goodbyes and Androw’s ship accelerates into the sky. Nathaniel stays. He has one last thing to do before he leaves the planet. He rubs his fingers through his hair and walks to the gazebo where the time crystals are stored. He has to go back in time and rescue his crew. Pop!

“What’s happening?” Nathaniel shouts over the deafening sound.

“There’s a rupture in the antigravity pump,” Doctor Bill yells. The fluid level surrounding the gazebos drops visibly. One spot near the wall churns violently.

“We are re-entering the time stream!” Haticat yells. Pop! The ship appears in empty space and immediately begins to dump fuel. Still reacting, the fuel expands space around it. The ship is jerked this way and that and finally thrown back towards the center of the explosion by different bubbles of expanding space. The explorers slide across the floor and struggle back to their stations.

“Why aren’t the inertial dividers operating?” Nathaniel says. Some of them are. The water does not slosh, yet the spacemass tech that divides the physics on the bridge from the physics of the outside universe has failed.

“I got it,” Haticat says, flipping a blue switch on the edge of the control station. “The electrical surge from the pump malfunction flipped the polarity of the bridge and bedroom divider.” Nathaniel looks across the way to his bedroom gazebo and sees his bed leaning up against the railing.

“The automatic patching mechanisms have kicked in,” Doctor Bill says. The noise and shaking start to subside as the fuel dissipates and quits reacting.

“Captain, we’re very close to a planet,” Fred says. “And on a collision course! There isn’t time to divert.”

“Can we land safely and take off again?” Nathaniel asks.

“Yes,” Fred says. “The damage is small.”

“The planet is a terrestrial silicate planet of moderate gravity and breathable air,” Haticat reports.

“Okay, slow us down. We will worry about repairs after we land,” Nathaniel orders. The ship sets down in a forest of gigantic trees. They have smooth, brown bark and red leaves resembling wigs or clumps of hair. “Okay, now can someone tell me where and when we are?”

Doctor Bill struggles with the navigation computer for a moment. “It looks like we’re on the planet Demanda sometime during the boy-girl war. There may be girls around.”

“Oh no,” Nathaniel says, scratching his head. “All right, let’s do repairs as fast as possible and hope we weren’t noticed. No time to explore.”

“It should only take three hours,” Haticat says.

“Good,” Nathaniel replies.

Fred and Doctor Bill step outside the ship and start welding the hole while Nathaniel swims to the bottom of the water reservoir to repair the pump. Haticat feeds him a breathing tube. He resurfaces and hands him back the prybar. “Now I need a wrench.”

“What size?” Haticat asks.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s one of those bolts that shrinks and grows to match any wrench around it,” Nathaniel says.

“Here you go,” Haticat says. Nathaniel grabs the wrench and submerges again.

Outside the ship, Fred holds the permanent patch steady while Doctor Bill controls the laser welder. “There, that looks better,” Doctor Bill says.

They walk around the perimeter of the ship to the door, but stop when they see a Humanoid figure. She wears a tube-like dress up to her armpits and has wild hair. The creature looks away from the ship wall and sees Fred and Doctor Bill for the first time. “Eww! Boys!” she screams and runs away. “Captain, we have to hurry,” Fred speaks into the radio. “The girls found us.”

“Yikes!” Haticat comments.

They hurry inside and are doing a last-minute safety check when there is a loud bang and a new hole opens in the hull. The metal turns to flakes and falls into the water. Before they can take off, two girls in tube dresses fire glitter plasma into the control station and it explodes. The boys surrender soon afterward. “Take them to the questioner!”

Half an hour later the boys are in a cage in the forest surrounded by girls. “Why did you come here?” a girl asks.

“It was an accident; our ship is broken,” Nathaniel answers.

“Wait,” the girl says, handing him a notepad and pen. “Write it down.” Nathaniel writes his answer while the girls wave their hands at each other in what must be some sort of code.

“And what do you know about our secret weapon?” the girl asks.

“Until two seconds ago, nothing,” Nathaniel writes.

“What do you know now?” she asks.

“Only that it’s secret and that it’s a weapon,” he writes.

The girls wave their hands even more animatedly. “He knows too much!” a girl screams.

“Next, he’ll learn it’s from the future!” another says.

“He can’t be allowed to tell others! We need to keep him here!” another says.

“What if he escapes? We need to kill him!” another says.

“Wait, we still need to test the weapon on a person. We can test it on them,” another girl says.

“Yes, that’s a good idea. All your ideas are cute and pretty,” another says.

“You’re cute and pretty,” the previous girl says.

“We are all cute and pretty together,” another girl says.

“Oh, shut up!” Haticat yells, but no girl can hear him. They are all deaf.

Ten minutes later another girl in a green tube dress is escorted in front of the cage. She stands silently as she is introduced. “Here is our new weapon.”

Nathaniel looks her over. “What are you going to do? Catapult her at the boys?”

No one hears him. “Since you are going to die anyways, I’ll describe her power. On Demanda, we have long perfected surgery to give us prettier lips and better singing voices. Then Meleana arrived from the future with the power to scream and the surgical technique to give others this power. Her screams can travel in compacted form as soliton waves for ten kilometers or more and shatter stones. Once enough of us have been converted into screamers we will drop into the atmosphere of the nearest boy planet and scream them all to death.”

“You monsters! Fred yells.

The new girl in green waves her hands around. “You’re right, he is comically ugly,” the girl beside her agrees.

“You’ll lose. Boys are more resilient than you think,” Nathaniel says.

“Whatever you just said will be your last words!” the girl says before waving for the one in green to begin the screaming. What comes out is more of a screech. It is horrific. It is the most annoying sound Nathaniel has ever heard. It gets inside his ear canals and bounces around until his eardrums burst. Then he gets a headache. Then his nose bleeds. Then he blacks out.

When Nathaniel wakes it is dark. Everything hurts. Wait, why is he still alive? Oh, the girls wouldn’t have known about his healing power. He tries to move and finds he is very weak. He has lost a lot of weight. He must’ve been healing for weeks. Dragging his limbs around, he finds that the reason it is so dark is because he is inside a box. It takes hours to cut his way out of the box, dig his way out of the ground, rescue his Stuffian friends in the box with him, flattened by the sound waves, and then find something in the forest to eat. Not having not having a working scanner, he risks eating some red berries. Another couple days pass as he regains his strength and figures out where he is relative to his ship. He tries soaking Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill in the creek to loosen up their fibers so he can stretch them back into shape. It works and by nightfall they are at least conscious if lethargic.

Finally, they re-enter the pool-ship. Birds have built nests atop the gazebos. Daggertails swim in the water. They patch up the hole in the hull and make the other necessary repairs. Nathaniel gobbles down a peanut-butter-bologna-carrot sandwich and drinks a liter of milk.

“A sound-based weapon could change the course of the war. If the boys can’t hear each other to communicate, how will they be able to counterattack?” Haticat asks.

“Right,” Nathaniel comments. “We need to stop Meleana from changing history before she teaches the rest of the galaxy to do the enhancement surgery.”

The girls are relatively easy to track. Their ships leave particularly messy antigravity wakes even when diffused by several days of time, leaving their mark of polarization on the background radiation. They are followed to planet Dishma, an Earth-like boy planet occupied mostly by Ninos. The boys are nearly wiped out. A few hundred survive on submarines that dive anytime girls are detected. Thousands more wander the land alone with no way to understand each other. It is too late to teach them the handwaving code of the girls since they will not understand what they are being told. Some hide in soundproof bunkers underground while they slowly run out of air. Teams of Banshees wait outside for them to open the doors. One ship remains safe in orbit, the crew too scared to get involved.

When they arrive in orbit, Nathaniel is already writing a program to hack every view screen on the planet. He sends the boys messages on where to go and what to do. They are skeptical at first but have no better ideas. Eventually, they get the idea to text each other and learn to hit the buttons rapidly.

At the same time, Doctor Bill sends the girls messages to confuse them. They soon learn to ignore all unknown numbers and eventually track the signals to Nathaniel’s ship. They send six ships to attack. Haticat pilots evasively while Fred fires the laser cannons and muon accelerators. The ship veers right, left, up, and down. The girls finally score a direct hit, weakening the hull by five percent. Fred returns fire.

Although their futuristic ship has stronger shielding, more powerful guns, and Fred has better aim than the girls, the girls outnumber them six to one – and two more girls ships are approaching. Seeing what is happening and already having figured out who had been sending the texts, the lone boy ship in orbit comes to help. Their programmed smart missiles destroy one of the already weakened girl ships, but it is still seven against two.

Nathaniel’s spaceship has six guns equally spaced around the surface of the ellipsoid. The girls have been systematically destroying them, forcing Haticat to re-orient the ship to keep at least one gun pointed at the girls. Finally, they destroy the last gun. “Doctor Bill, take over troop commands!” Nathaniel yells just before he runs the walkway to the force field generator station. “Let the girls get close.”

“I know you must have a good plan,” Haticat says. “Right?”

“Oh, it’s fantastic,” Nathaniel says. “Project their positions.” Haticat projects a view of the outside onto the inner hull of the ship so Nathaniel can see what’s going on. Five girl ships get closer and closer. Then they all open fire. Nathaniel asserts a second force field about two kilometers outside the first. It cuts the farthest ship in half. “Evasive flying!” Nathaniel orders. Haticat swerves the ship randomly, causing the girls to miss most of their shots. Any laser passing by the ship hits the inside of the outer force field and reflects multiple times until hitting one of the girl ships. Every time Haticat moves the pool-ship, the perfectly spherical force field follows it so that they are always in the exact center. Because light travels so fast, the crisscrossing network of lasers practically follows them, never touching the pool-ship, but traveling through every other point in space inside the sphere. The girls make a few direct hits, but with every miss they are hitting themselves. Two more of the ships are immobilized. The remaining two cease firing and retreat. Nathaniel shuts off the field so they will not collide with it and cause his generator to explode.

“Chase them!” The girls speed into the dust ring around the planet, perhaps looking for cover. Nathaniel turns the field back on and spins the generator. He even finds a drill to spin it as fast as mechanically possible. When they follow the girls into the dust ring the spinning ball of energy around the ship catches grains and tosses them at a tangent to its rotation. A ring of plasma forms around the ship and it is gaining on them. Finally, the girl ships split up. Haticat chooses one to chase down until all of its electrical systems are fried to a crisp. The high-velocity plasma melts away at the hull on one side and breaches several windows.

Haticat then pursues the other ship. This last girl ship leaves the ring and returns to the site of the battle between the boy ship and the other two girls ships, one of which has already been neutralized. The boy ship is leaking air and fuel but still fighting. Haticat hangs back. “Yikes times infinity!”

Nathaniel looks up to see forty more girl ships leaving the atmosphere. They are five minutes away. “Yikes times infinity.”

“What do I do?” Haticat asks.

“Prepare to dump the anti-gravity fuel,” Nathaniel says.

Haticat flies toward the oncoming fleet. Just outside the ship where the fuel is dumped, space expands violently, knocking the pool-ship clear from the battle – and the solar system. Most of the girl ships are caught between the two streams of fuel traveling one-sixth the speed of light and are crushed. The rest are thrown in the opposite direction, some crashing into the planet.

Several hours later, Nathaniel and crew are adrift in interstellar space. They have too-little fuel to sustain a reaction. They have enough stored electricity to run most systems but not the time machine or force field. They call for help, but no one arrives. “We can still use the time crystals to slow ourselves down, experiencing only days during the two hundred thousand years it will take to reach the next inhabited planet,” Nathaniel says.

“No good, the Marthon will find us,” Fred complains.

“Maybe not, we can always turn on stealth mode,” Nathaniel suggests.

“Two hundred thousand years from now there might not be anyone left to help us,” Doctor Bill points out.

“Nathaniel, there’s a ship approaching!” Haticat announces.

“Show me,” Nathaniel orders.

Finally, one of the boy ships has found them. They are towed back to Dishma, refueled, and given a heroes’ welcome. “With your help we were able to defeat the Banshees of Demanda and drive them from our planet.”

“Well, I felt it was my job,” Nathaniel says.

“Wait,” the boy says, handing him a notepad and pen. “Write it down; I can’t hear a thing.”