Six Stuffians run through the hallways of an empty building. They carry large bags of unassigned money. Nathaniel, Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill are right behind them. Pew! Pew! The blue one near the rear turns to fire at Nathaniel and misses. Nathaniel ducks behind a wall, returns fire and also misses. This gains some distance for the other fleeing Stuffians, but Nathaniel is fast. “I can’t lose him!” the blue one screams into his communicator.

“We’ll use the roof!” the peach-colored one calls back. “Lure him to the ground.” The blue Stuffian finds some stairs and jumps down them six at a time. Nathaniel is right behind him. The only reason Nathaniel doesn’t overtake him is the sporadic laserfire he throws backwards in Nathaniel’s direction. Pew! Pew!

Nathaniel squeezes behind a railing as the blue one stops to take better aim at him. He peeks out only to be shot at again. Pew! Pew! When he peeks out again, the blue one is gone, having gained a few more seconds of running.

Finally, the blue one stops at the end of the final stretch of stairs with his hand on the metal railing. He takes aim as Nathaniel stops at the top. This time, Nathaniel reaches for the railing and zaps it with his electricity power, sending the Gruezhling reeling. He drops his gun and falls to the floor, unconscious.

In the meantime, the other five have reached the roof. They each extend the antigravity batons they carry and prepare to ride them like broomsticks. Zzrrt! Haticat’s laser burns a tiny hole in one of the money bags. He storms onto the roof followed by Fred and Doctor Bill.

The other Stuffians flee, dropping the burned bag and riding their batons into the sky, as the two groups continue to exchange laserfire.

“They got away!” Haticat yells into his radio.

“I got one of them,” Nathaniel says.

“What do we do now?” Haticat asks.

“Meet me downstairs and we’ll find an apartment,” Nathaniel says. The explorers were on planet Bingo, a Human colony under construction. In expectation of new arrivals, the Humans had built one thousand homes for every person currently living on the planet. These homes were unlocked and ready for use.

Bingo was awash with money. To prevent theft, bills were “locked” with the identification of the owner and could only be transferred with the owner’s permission by recording the identification of the recipient. However, the big banks often held large amounts of unassigned money ready to be loaned out. This practice had encouraged a new strain of bank robbers and Nathaniel had offered his help to catch them.

In an apartment, the Stuffian named Blue Bear is tied to a chair. The money bag next to him squirms. “What is that?” Nathaniel asks.

“Just our pet Blacky. We like having it around,” Blue Bear says.

Nathaniel tentatively opens the sack and a black, ray-like creature flies across the room and attaches to the wall. Fred watches it intensely with one hand on his holstered weapon.

“Who do you work for?” Haticat asks.

“Ha! I’m not going to tell you that,” Blue Bear says.

Haticat unfolds a knife in front of him. “We’ve been offered an incredible sum of reward money to put an end to the theft. If you help us, we can share some with you. Your identity will be secret, and you’ll be able to leave the planet and retire in peace.”

Blue Bear looks indecisive for a moment. “Uh, how much are we talking about?”

“Lots. One million for your cooperation today and another million when our mission is complete,” Haticat says.

Blue Bear furrows his brow. “Twenty million.”

Fred promptly grabs Blue Bear’s head and holds it steady while Haticat grabs his ear and holds the knife against it. “Two million is a good offer. Even better, if you tell us who and where your boss is, we’ll let you keep your ears.”

Blue Bear relaxes a bit and says, “Okay, I…” Suddenly, he looks quite perplexed.

“Okay, what?” Haticat asks.

“I…don’t remember,” Blue Bear says.

“You don’t remember who you work for?” Haticat says.

“I…I want to tell you, but…I can’t remember!” Blue Bear says.

“Try to remember harder,” Fred says.

“I’m trying. I…must have forgotten,” Blue Bear says.

“Help us. The ogre is destroying our village. If anyone is in range, help us.” Nathaniel, Haticat, and Fred listen to the faint signal on the radio.

“It just keeps repeating,” Haticat says.

“What do we know about the planet where it comes from?” Nathaniel asks.

“Almost nothing. It’s supposed to be uninhabitable, with high levels of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, and freezing temperatures year-round,” Doctor Bill replies.

“Interesting. Well, set a course. I want to see this village,” Nathaniel says.

“Setting a course,” Haticat says.

When they arrive on the planet, they find only the remains of a village. There are simple huts and fruit trees smashed and desiccated. There are some signs of fire, but there isn’t enough oxygen in the atmosphere to support fire. “There seems to be nobody here,” Doctor Bill comments.

“We might be too late to help,” Nathaniel says.

“Why not use the time machine?” Haticat suggests.

“Good idea. I want to meet these villagers so they can explain to me how they manage to live on such an inhospitable planet,” Nathaniel says.

The explorers return to orbit, travel backwards forty-eight hours, and land again. They almost can’t believe it. The village is warm and oxygenated. Many people of all ages run to and fro.

The people here have very long noses and purple eyes. They wear long robes and tall hats. “Greetings, visitors. My name is Sivel. Why have you come to Atomica?” an unusually tall resident asks.

“We are explorers and wondered how it was you built such a place on a planet like this,” Nathaniel answers.

“Oh, we are Atom Wizards, masters of Brownian motion. Our nuclear-powered hypercomputers calculate the trajectories of every molecule they encounter. With a few small nudges, we can ensure that warmth and oxygen collect here,” Sivel says.

“Interesting,” Nathaniel says.

The four explorers are given a tour of the town, which is less than half a kilometer across. Fruit trees grow throughout, but most grow in the town center. They have been bioengineered to grow fruit that doesn’t necessarily grow on trees, and things that aren’t necessarily fruit. The most common “fruits” are acorns, dates, apricots, blackberries, strawberries, peas, watermelons, lemons, bananas, pecans, potatoes, and eggs.

They stop in a restaurant for a snack. Nathaniel has plain bran donuts and milk. Sivel eats bark chips and cinnamon-rosemary bread with allspice-honey tea. “We control the way smells mix, preventing nasty combinations from interfering with the enjoyment of your meal. It’s called antimix. That’s why you can’t smell the turnip stew they’re making right now so long as you stay near your donuts. This ability even allows us to make things like chocolate-covered chicken nuggets.”

“Ew!” Nathaniel exclaims.

“You don’t taste the chocolate and the chicken at the same time. They alternate,” Sivel explains.

“The amount of precision you manage is astounding. My scanner tells me the average temperature in this room is negative sixty degrees Celsius, but right against my body it rises to twenty-two degrees,” Doctor Bill says.

“Yes, and it can be adjusted for each person so that everyone is comfortable in the same room. We also direct carbon dioxide away from you and oxygen and nitrogen towards you,” Sivel says.

“You must be able to extinguish any fire instantly and automatically, then,” Nathaniel says.

“Of course,” Sivel responds.

“Is there any way the system could go wrong?” Nathaniel asks.

“It’s hard to see how. Our hypercomputers are redundant and correct each other’s mistakes. They are extremely sophisticated – as much as any biological system. They rival our bodies in complexity. One might even say they are alive. Only another hypercomputer of equal or greater mass could ever be a threat to us,” Sivel says.

“Biological systems sometimes succumb to cancer or autoimmune disorders,” Nathaniel mentions.

“Yes, but we perform periodic flushes of faulty elements before they reach critical mass,” Sivel says.

“And where do you put them?” Nathaniel asks.

“The sewers,” Sivel answers.

“Can I see them?” Nathaniel asks.

“Um, I’m not sure. What are you looking for?” Sivel asks.

“Do you have ogres on this planet?” Nathaniel asks.

“Ogres?” Sivel laughs. “No, there is no life on this planet we do not control. There is another Dinosaur here who crash-landed last year that we cared for, but no ogres.”

“Another Dinosaur?” Haticat says.

“Can we meet him?” Nathaniel asks.

“Um, sure. Why not?” Sivel says.

“Here they come!” a Human soldier shouts as several towers appear over the top of the blue hill. In seconds, the battle platforms are visible. They resemble mug racks, but each peg is actually a laser cannon. Down below, the bases hover on a cushion of antigravity. On the bases at the controls are three Anterines each. Resembling wolverines with ant-like heads, the Anterines have claimed this world for their own.

“Fire!” comes the order. The Humans fire bullets and small rockets. What advantage the Anterines have in weaponry, they lack in defense. A rocket or two is all it takes to disrupt their force fields, leaving them exposed. One after the other dies and falls from their platforms. However, the battle continues. A second wave of battle platforms shoots through the first, carving up the Human fort and explosively disassembling their vehicles. As many Humans die as Anterines.

From one hundred million kilometers away, Fred and Haticat watch the flashes through their telescope. “I think it’s a battle,” Haticat says.

“Well let’s figure out who the good guys are and help out!” Nathaniel says.

Pop! The ship reenters the time stream. Haticat scans the surrounding area. They are near a planet completely covered in trees. It doesn’t even have an ocean or ice caps. “Where are we?” Nathaniel asks.

It takes a minute for the computer to find the local constellations in its database. “The computer recognizes this system as one settled by the Zleesnits and Nops. Its designation is Deros,” Haticat reports.

“Well, let’s visit. Descend,” Nathaniel orders.

They soon discover the colony is in chaos. Giant black worms as long as three school busses began arriving three weeks ago, eating up all the soft, juicy trees and pooping out ash. The Zleesnits and Nops reacted by shooting them to bits, but this only created more worms.

“So the worms were here, too,” Nathaniel says.

“They’re smaller than the ones on planet Halpile. Do they get bigger with every planet they visit or is this a new species?” Haticat asks.

“It doesn’t matter so long as they react the same way to salt,” Fred says.

The explorers convince the Zleesnits and Nops to collect saltwater to drop on the worms and on their food sources to kill the worm’s spores. Unfortunately, Derosan trees have very large stomata on their trunks as much as a centimeter across. They inhale spores inside of them where they develop into worms that eat the trees from the inside out where they are protected from the salt. From inside the trees, the worms produce more spores that are exhaled and travel through the air to other trees. A fence of force field generators is set up to protect uninfected groves.

Meanwhile, the giant worms are dying from the salt. Nathaniel surveys the area in his ship. When seventy percent of them have died, ten percent of them start to stand on end. “What are they doing?” Nathaniel asks as he looks through his binoculars. Suddenly, one worm blasts off like a rocket! It is followed by two more and then two more. “Follow those worms!” The explorers follow them into space where they gradually accelerate above light speed. They travel in a perfectly straight line for three hours and fifty-five light years until they suddenly disappear.

“What just happened?” Haticat asks.

Another worm vanishes into the void in the same spot – then another and another. Nathaniel zooms in on the spot. The background stars seem distorted around it. “I think we’re looking at a worm hole.”

Haticat looks at Nathaniel quizzically. “Is that a joke?”