By Jove, That Hurt!

Jenny was just heading out from Saturn, where she’d gone to get a closer look at the plumes its moon, Encephalitis, was sending up, when she got the Twit. Something big had just slammed into Jupiter!

Jenny hardly ever thought of Jupiter, the planet. It was just a big, gassy thing. “Over-bloated and overdone,” her mom had always said. (Not a single rock to be found, was what she really meant.) No one could live on Jupiter. Not a chance. But on the other hand, no one ever put it down, like poor Pluto. All of Jenny’s life, Jupiter had just been the biggest fuzzy blob they could see in the sky, glowing gently on the horizon like a stove burner and about as interesting. Until now. A giant asteroid had just smashed into it, causing its gurgly side to splash all over space. A gigantic rock hitting a planet-sized puddle. Jupiter! That would be worth seeing.

Jenny slowed her rocketboard to idle and plopped down, her legs dangling on either side of the board, to reset the GPS. She’d made it out to Saturn okay, so she ought to make it on to Jupiter just fine. She checked the fuel gauge. Running a bit low, but she’d brought along a spare can of garbage, so that should be enough. Even if everything they had at home was old, her rocketboard was brand spanking new. Her mom had made sure of that! And its combination refuse converter/yogurt-maker worked great (even if the yogurt had a kind of funny taste. Jenny only ate it in a pinch).

Jenny twisted her body around to look in the direction of Jupiter behind her. This close, Jupiter wasn’t a homey burner flame. An enormous sphere of marbled Vulcan light and color, it rode the vacuum of cold space like a sinister rubber ball. Gently, she nosed the rocketboard around and stared at Jupiter straight on. It looked like a sunset that snarled at you instead of going politely out. Jenny swallowed. On second thought, Jupiter didn’t look that inviting. Reaching into her hyperpak, Jenny pulled out a pair of dark glasses. Adjusting the polarization for red light, she slipped them on and peered harder at the planet. She thought she could just make out the point of impact, an oblong gash like a bruise, darkening the embered surface. She could get closer, couldn’t she? She could slip right up to the gash and poke around the edges, right?

Jenny sat back on the board, slumping against her hyperpak. But would she? The bruise glowered around its edges. The planet glowered at her. She thought of her mom, and how she had been exploring something when she disappeared. Where had she gone? What had happened to her? Fallen into a space crack, was all Jenny knew. Had it looked like that bruise, a slash in space where nothingness glimmered? She would never know, would she? And especially not if she got lost herself. Maybe it was better to head back, before she had to use the last of her garbage.

Jenny jumped up and swung her board back around. For once home beckoned. Maybe she’d make some yogurt. Maybe her mom had come back.

Saturnalia Fireworks

Jenny was on her way back from Pluto, having left some of her dwindling supply of Galaxy Gummies there in remembrance of the lady who’d named the former planet, when she received the Twit: Ice flumes near Saturn! What a show! Kicking her rocketboard to idle, Jenny dropped down to straddle it. Legs dangling to either side, where her sneakers disturbed the cosmic dust her engine hadn’t yet churned up, she pulled out her Galactic Positioning System. It was an old one her mom had given her back when all she’d needed to do was get to and from school and kick around the asteroid belt. Worked pretty well, except that the keys stuck and the battery had a short life. “Saturn,” she punched in (except the “s” kept becoming a “d,” and she got “Daturn” until she gave the thing a good whack). Frowning, she studied the coordinates. Saturn was pretty far away.

Except to go to school (and she wouldn’t be doing that again!) Jenny hadn’t spent much time in the Inner Planets. She supposed that, originally, she and her mom had come from one of them, but she didn’t really know. They’d lived in the Outer Asteroids for as long as she could remember. Scrunching further back into her memory, she thought she could picture a dad there too, once. But his was a very fuzzy figure. She wasn’t sure if she’d imagined him; she’d certainly never really missed him. Until recently. This solstice, she’d suddenly wanted to know all about him. Maybe it had to do with turning 12. Maybe it had to do with getting ready to start at a new school, where all the old questions would come up again. She’d pestered her mom endlessly. “Who was he?” “Where is he?” “The other kids at school have dads, why don’t I?” Why’d he leave? was what she’d really wanted to know. Was it you? . . . . Was it me? But her normally sunny mom had blanched pale as a moon and just as silent. Mouth pinched shut (to cover her guilt at having driven Jenny’s father away? Jenny wondered) she went about collecting her precious rock samples and sending them off to the lab, while Jenny stomped through her vacation and discovered nothing. And now her mom was gone too, leaving Jenny to wonder again, Was it me?

Still! Jenny shook herself back into the present, where two small meteorites were slowly crashing and a old stell phone tumbled slowly past, rusting peaceably. Saturn called! Or rather, one of Saturn’s moons: Encephalitis. It was shooting up ice plumes, punctuating the Rings with regular toots of salty phosphorescence. The Cateeny probe was going to swing close and get a good look at it, but Jenny was going to get there first. Never mind that she’d never been so far from home. Never mind that the Galactic Positioning System wasn’t all that galactic. . . . let alone solar.

Jenny jumped up and checked the fuel store on her rocketboard. The gauge said it was nearly full (although that didn’t always work so well either). She’d filled up at the atomic composter back home before leaving for Pluto, she should be able to make it to Saturn and back. Stepping down on the back pedal, she revved up the board, and proceeded. But slowly, for once. Even though the Inner Planets were far better lit than she was used to, they seemed a lot more alien. And besides, she hadn’t headed back that way since she’d left school, and they might still be looking for her.

A Planet By Any Other Name

Jenny hadn’t planned to mourn her. Jenny hadn’t even heard of her, let alone known her, until she read the article on Giggle News. But suddenly, Jenny couldn’t eat anything more. Not even Galaxy Gummies. Sighing, she withdrew her hand from the opened bag (a fresh one) and stared at the screen.

The lady who had named Pluto when she’d been a little girl (younger, even, than Jenny), just died. Sure. She was old. Probably at least 30. Sure, looked like she’d had a pretty good life. But had she known her planet had gotten demoted to a “dwarf planet”? Jenny almost wished she’d died before that had happened. Had it made her sad, this Venetia (funny name!) Phair?

Propping her chin up on her hands, Jenny leaned on her elbows and looked closer at the picture in the article. It was faded, as if the effort to get all the way to the Outer Asteroids had made it tired. The girl looked like the type who always did her clonework and never annoyed the teacher. Unlike Jenny. But under the prissy hair and clean blouse with no tears in it, Jenny could almost see her surfing the solar waves in pants cut off beneath the knees. After all, she’d only been a kid, and she’d named a planet! And the whole world, all of earth, had listened to her! Jenny closed her eyes and tried to imagine what it would be like to have a planet full of grownups pay attention to what you said. She couldn’t. But Venetia—Ven, she already thought of her—had done it!

What an accomplishment! The rest of it, growing up and all the other stuff, paled in comparison. And she named the planet (Jenny refused to think of it as anything less than that) without ever having been off of her own. Had she even seen pictures of space? Jenny ran over to the portal. Squinting, she tried to peer past the gently floating asteroids of her own backyard to imagine the earthbound view of a girl who had never stepped off her own rock. Imagine that! Never having seen space, but yet picturing it so perfectly that a name you came up with lasted long past your own life.

Jenny jumped up, and reached for her rocketboard. She was going to Pluto to put up a--what was it called? memorial--for Ven. But what to leave there for her? Jenny glanced around the house, emptier each day as she used pieces of furniture to patch up the hole in the roof. Her eye fell on her desk. Her hesitation lasted only a nano: Ven, she was sure, would have loved Galaxy Gummies, if only she’d been born in the right century to enjoy them.

And now she was gone. Jenny revved up her rocketboard and scooped up the half-eaten bag of Galaxy Gummies. She would take it to Pluto and leave it there. As a remembrance for Ven. Even though it was her fourth-to-last bag.

My Favorite Martian

Phoenix is dead! The mars rover had coughed up its last bit of data, drawn its last electronic breath, and stopped transmitting. Not enough sunlight to keep its solar powered batteries going, the bulletin on Giggle News said. First there’d been a big dust storm. Now the approaching Martian winter wouldn’t let through enough solar waves to keep Phoenix powered. It would be cold there. And dark. Jenny Vesta shivered. Possibly darker than the Outer Asteroids, where the drifting old satellites at least emitted faint, industrial light from their leds, and sent off the occasional beacon for a rescue long past happening.

Jenny slumped back in her chair, crushed. She’d related to that little rover crawling over the tough Martian land, scooping it up, tasting it, digesting it and looking for . . . ice. Ice, of course, would mean water. And water would mean lots of those organisms that squirmed around and led to life. Jenny’s pet starmots squirmed around a lot too. They were alive. But she sure didn’t know what kind of life they were.

She jumped up from the chair. Plunking her elbows down on the shelf, she gazed into the cage she’d made for the starmots. They were getting bigger. When she’d first found them, they’d fit on the tip of her finger. Now they filled her palm. She opened the cage door and they tumbled out, squirming bits of fur and light and slobber. Grinning, she let them run up her sleeve, finding their respective resting places. Siri, the one she thought of as a girl, liked to settle herself in Jenny’s hair. Furu, the “boy,” liked to perch on Jenny’s shoulder. They were her friends. Her only friends these days, but what were they?

Deep in thought, Jenny went back to her computer screen, and punched up the now-dead data stream from Phoenix. She’d been following its transmissions back to earth. (She wasn’t much of a tech wiz, but even with old Outer Asteroids technology, it was pretty easy to hack into earth-based systems.) She’d been waiting to hear exactly what the ice held. So had everyone else, apparently, but for her it was personal. Maybe her starmots had come from those same organisms. Maybe what was in that ice could tell her what they were. Even her mother hadn’t been able to identify them. And now she’d never know. Or would she?

Jenny sat up straighter. She’d never been as far into the Inner Planets as Mars and certainly never alone, but her rocketboard could make it there. Definitely. Only intergalactic travel was too much for it. She checked on the board hibernating over in the corner. It was nearly fully charged. She’d just swing by Mars and pick up that rover for herself. She could strap it on her board, bring it back here, and take a look herself at whatever it contained. Or better yet, keep Phoenix safe until her mom got back. Whenever that would be.

Jenny jumped up, put her starmots into her hyperpak, grabbed some cold roboroast and nanotwine, unplugged her board, and jetted out the door. The Solar Positioning System on her rocketboard should be able to set her a course to Mars. Provided it was still working.

Bang A Few Atoms Together

Jenny was thrilled that they turned on the beam last week at the Large Hadron Collider in a country called Swifterland. Jupiter, what a great place for it! With a name like "Swifterland," everyone’s gotta go real fast all the time. It would be the perfect spot to whiz a few protons around a track and watch what happens when they crash. Jenny read a little further, then leaned her chin on her elbows and closed her eyes, imagining what they might see there, racing around beneath the planet called Earth:

The Big Bang all over again (from a safe distance this time).

Higgs bosons. These are particles that give everything else their weight. (Although based on the complaints she heard from her mom, Jenny wasn’t sure why that would be good.)

Dark Matter. On the other hand, that would be handy. Vaypa was always whipping out her dark matter poncho whenever she didn’t want anyone to detect her atoms. Jenny grinned. She’d love to see the look on Vaypa’s face when she pulled out some dark matter of her own. Or rather, the look on Vaypa’s face, as Jenny disappeared.

SuperSillySymmetry. Whatever that was, it sounded more fun than lining things up.

Why the galaxies are all racing away from each other like one of them let out a bad smell.

Formation of black holes.

Wait a minute! Jenny’s eyes flew open. Black holes! That didn’t sound good. Her friend, Drooge, was once trapped in one, and he didn’t like it one bit. It had been very dark, he’d told her afterwards, and there’d had been nothing to eat. Jenny squinted at the screen. Yep. Some of the scientists said this Collider might make minuscule black holes that would grow inside the earth until they ballooned out and swallowed the whole thing. Jenny glanced around her, wondering how safe it was for her in the Outer Asteroids. Earth was at least a bajillion miles away, she was sure of it.

Just to be safe, though, she’d go munch a few Galaxy Gummies. It’s best to face a black hole on a full stomach.

In Space, No One Can Hear You Flush

Jammin’ Jenny couldn’t believe what she’d just read on GIGGLE NEWS: the toilet on the International Space Station was broken. Bad enough that it was an international space station, and not intergalactic, but a broken toilet? Jupiter! Hadn’t they heard of recycling? Didn’t they know about crystallizing poop down to the size of freeze-dried pea, and then dropping it off at the nearest terrarium center for deep-soil fertilization? Or as Jenny sometimes did, shooting it from a nano-tube out into space.

She’d ride out on her rocketboard to a quiet back eddy, where the solar winds wouldn’t backwind her, and the space current was definitely moving away, and take out the nanotube she’d sneaked into her last school for shooting saliva wads at the teacher. She’d found a better use for it. Perhaps she’d try it next year. In middle school. Taking a deep breath, she’d drop a pea into the tube, then blowing hard, watch it shoot into space and then drift away. She liked the idea of it zinging around in orbit, until some distant day when that orbit itself decayed and what was left of the pea burned up in a flash. Or collided with an asteroid. Or got caught up in a comet’s tail. At any rate, it would probably long after she herself was gone. And until then, a little piece of her would be dashing around space.

Jenny sighed and pushed herself away from the pandora. Outside the portal, the dishwater light of the Outer Asteroids softened the rough edges of the nearby asteroids and meteorites that bobbed silently past her. Another day had passed. There was no sun for her to judge by, but the astrometer (and her body) told her so. And still, there was no sign of her mom. Maybe her mom was out there floating in pieces too. Jenny had heard of people surviving getting sucked into space cracks, but it was rare. Sometimes they were shot clear across the galaxy—or even the universe—and spent a big chunk of their lifespans trying to get back, or at least send a message. (That was why Jenny kept checking the pandora.) But sometimes they just disappeared in a cosmic flash, and that was all to be known of them. Sadly Jenny pulled out the stardrop that hung around her neck and peered at the nacreous gas swirling gently inside. Was that really all that was left of her mom?

It wouldn’t do to sit here. Jenny jumped up and grabbed her rocketboard. She’d just have to go out and look for her mom again. She eyed the peas rattling around in the waste dehydrator, and picked up her nanotube. Maybe, while she was at it, she’d do a little recycling as well.

The Pluto Disillusionment

Jenny was pretty upset over what she’d just picked up on GIGGLE NEWS. Sure, it had happened months ago, but since she hardly ever checked in on the “outer world” as her mom had called it—and had, in fact, just been looking at vacation packages on DizzyWorld—it was new to her. How could they do it?

Slowing her rocketboard as she approached the icy atmospheric edge, she punched at the space around her. “Planet!” she shouted into inky gloom. “Don’t you get it?! It’s a planet!” Slumping down, legs dangling over either side of her rocketboard, she paused to look at Pluto which had just been downgraded.

Living in the Outer Asteroids was one thing. Having its only landmark downsized by a bunch of grownups who had never even been there, was another.

Jenny had only actually visited Pluto once, back in its glory days of higher celestial body identification. It was small. It was boring. There was nothing to do there, signified by the only thing that might have been a plus anywhere else: there were no lines. (Now if only that were the case at DizzyWorld—not that she’d ever been there at all!) No. Jenny’d only been to Pluto, dragged by her mom. “It’s famous!” her mom had said. More like, boring, Jenny had muttered, as hustled onto the back of her mom’s battered cosmic ray, she’d made the bumpy trip there—the bumps being the best part. “It’s our nearest planetary neighbor,” her mom had whispered, linking arms with Jenny and standing, chummily, on its surface. Now it was just the biggest rock around, according to them. And her mom wasn’t even there to argue, with them. With Jenny.

As far as Jenny was concerned, being a planet had never ranked with being an asteroid. You couldn’t move them around and had to avoid getting sucked in the gravitational pull when you were solar surfing. Asteroids, you could line up in obstacle courses. Use as ambushes. Stash a couple of books and some Galaxy Gummies there, and you had the perfect hideout when you were supposed to be taking out the debris instead. But a planet? Too big to do anything with (other than “visit”), and, with an atmosphere like that, too inhospitable to house any other kids anyway. What was the point? But Pluto had not even made it all the way down to asteroid status. No. Jenny pulled out a handful Galaxy Gummies out of her pak to munch on, and looked at it sympathetically. Pluto was just a dwarf. Did that hurt? she wondered. To go from something normal-sized to dwarf? She closed her eyes and tried to imagine being squeezed back to the size of her five-year-old self, a reasonable approximation of dwarfdom, she figured. But no, Jenny, just kept getting bigger—something her mom had always complained about.

Popping the last of the Gummies into her mouth, where they stuck gooily to her teeth, Jenny stood up. She would, she’d determined, steering the board with her feet, visit Pluto all the time. Just to show she didn’t care what they called it. She’d come by every day. Well, at least once a week.