Shrink Wrapped

"Kellie, calm down. You can do this," Grove told her. Underlying the calm in his voice was a tremor of real fear. That made Kellie all the more fearful.

"I'm gonna die out here!" she wailed. "You-" A shudder, not like the shudder she'd just experienced but like being vibrated from the inside out, froze the words in her throat. It was as though...

"What the hell?" she gasped.

"Kellie! What is it?"

"I don't know. Something just happened to me." The receding world was no longer receding but drawing closer again, or she was drawing closer to it, and at a rather alarming rate of speed. "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" she cried, flinching spasmodically as the distance between herself and the planet halved in a matter of seconds.

"Professor, Shrinx is driving me forward now. It's propelling me forward. It felt like..." She struggled to find the right words. "It was like having an engine inside my bones. They started thrumming and a moment later I was moving forward like a motorboat. I don't understand it at all. Is Shrinx helping me with landfall?"

"I guess," Grove admitted. "Don't look a gift-horse in the mouth, Kellie."

She placed two fingers against her neck and counted her galloping heartbeats. It was hard to breath. It was difficult to find her breath. Pulling in a deep, shaky lungful, she slowly blew it back out.

"I'm all right now. I just need to relax a little." Which she did, shaking her hands and stretching her neck and popping her knuckles, which everyone told her was really stupid to do, but there was no one here to tell her how stupid it was now. After a moment, she said: "I'm holding position. I still feel that vibrating in my bones, but its real light, like its idling or something. The planet's bigger, too," she said.

In fact, the planet was the size of a 10-story building and getting bigger by the moment. Features, which hitherto were only blurred glimpses, now resolved into individual mountain peaks, dusty plateaus, crenulated glaciers, cascading rivers, impenetrable green forests and featureless deserts. She made out what appeared to be a hundred mile wide fire burning on the oblong continent north of the equator. Thousands of square miles of blackened woodland lay behind it. A twisting river lay ahead, but even to Kellie's unpracticed eye it was not much of a firebreak. Forest stretched for thousands of unbroken miles, all the way to the coast. Kellie feared for any creatures running ahead of that firestorm.

"Professor, this planet is uninhabited." She explained the forest fire and the absence of any effort to fight it. "I also don't see any signs of habitation, any roads, any man-made structures. No changes to the landscape that could be man-made. I think we're looking at a wild planet here, sir."

Grove pondered her statement before answering.

"That's unfortunate, Kellie, but not every planet will have developed intelligent life. It takes just the right set of circumstances to get it right. Who's to say we'd be here if the dinosaurs hadn't been wiped out all those years ago. Or if man hadn't learned how to harness fire by rubbing two sticks together?"

Kellie remembered the immense crater on the upcoming continent, how imposing a landmark it was. She knew scientists blamed the extinction of the dinosaurs on an asteroid strike millions of years ago. The possible impact crater had only recently been identified, and was still just conjecture. It was so old that only computer mapping by satellite and other means made it identifiable. This crater didn't look nearly so old. It could easily be a civilization killer, she thought, if life had once existed here.

The thrumming in her bones increased and she began to inch forward again..

"Professor, I think it's time."

"How big are you now, Kellie?"

Kellie estimated her size at 100 miles tall, give or take. "I don't think I'll fit entirely inside the atmosphere," she said. Although deeper-looking than it had once appeared, the clear ocean of air was still a shimmering haze over the face of the globe. Like her own, this planet had only enough gravity to keep a vestige of the atmosphere it once had. Billions of years ago, that atmosphere would have been toxic to any living being.

"I'm definitely on the move, Professor." Shrinx spun her a counter-clockwise, orienting her feet-first toward the surface, aligning her straight up and down. The thrumming in her bones increased and the distance to the planet began to close. "Oh, this is so cool!"

"Be careful, Kellie," Grove warned.

'I don't think I have any say in the matter, Professor. I'm on auto-pilot."

"Maybe, but stay alert. Auto-pilot's have been known to fail, and this is the first planet-fall for you both."

"Thanks for the words of encouragement," she said dryly. "I'm beginning to feel a tug." Actually, the tug--certainly that of gravity--seemed to obviate her propulsion system. She realized that Shrinx was holding her back now, the thrumming in her bones stronger.

"Professor?"

"Yes, Kellie?"

"Wish me good luck."

Below, a continent slid from beneath her feet and water stretched for thousands of miles ahead. Kellie had faith that Shrinx wouldn't put her down in the middle of an ocean. What she wanted was to land on the west coast of the largest continent, preferably mid-point between the snowy upper latitudes and the deep, lush forests of the south. She wasn't crazy about either cold or hot. She didn't, under any circumstances, want to land on the continent with the forest fire or the x-shaped meteor target.

You got that? she asked Shrinx mentally. Shrinx continued lowering her toward the atmosphere.

"If this doesn't work, Professor, better luck on your first touchdown." Kellie thought what she ought to be saying was, I hope you burn up in the atmosphere, you son of a bitch, but she couldn't bring herself to voice it. For one thing, she was petrified and Grove was her only source of companionship. For another, she was not testing the effect of karma.

"I'm almost in the atmosphere," she advised. Indeed, her boots were already immersed in its upper reaches. The dissimilar velocities set off eddies that probably constituted upper altitude hurricanes. Over the far horizon, land appeared and began to displace the ocean from the equator to the far artic reaches. As the continent approached, Kellie realized its rate of advancement was slowing.

"Professor, I think Shrinx is matching my speed with the planet's and intends to set me down right on the coastline." She told him breathlessly about her earlier mental appeal.

"Shrinz is proving more versatile than I ever hoped," Grove enthused. "This is just wonderful!" She heard him clap his hands together joyfully.

"I'm glad you engineered it so will," she commented dryly. "Or him, maybe I should say. I have a hard time thinking of it as it, when it's part of my body now." She grinned, embarrassed slightly at the use of the male pronoun. Michelle and Tommie would tease her about that mercilessly. And that made her laugh.

"Something up, Kellie?"

"No, Professor," she said brightly. "Everything's fine." Below, the continent's edge crept into place below her boots and suddenly she was lowering into the atmosphere, the thrumming in her bones steady, varying only in minute degrees as Shrinx tuned her descent. A movement, far out to sea, caught her eye and Kellie was elated to see dozens, maybe as many as a hundred, whale-like creatures break surface and blow geyser-like umbrellas of air. The creatures grouped in pairs and Kellie thought maybe she was also seeing calves. She told Grove about it excitedly.

"Wonderful, Kellie! Wonderful! My hypothesis was right, then. Life exists on these worlds, after all. What other signs can you see?"

Kellie scanned the approaching surface, concentrated on smaller, more well defined parcels. Nothing leapt out at her and she reported her bad news.

"No worry," Grove said dismissively. "The important thing is, life exists in some form, and in a larger, mammalian species. I wonder what the evolutionary pattern is for these whales?" he mused.

If she could see them from 10 miles up, Kellie thought the creatures must be much larger than whales. She continued to descend.

Her touchdown, when it occurred, went almost unfelt. The thrumming diminished slowly until it faded away entirely, and only then did Kellie feel the effect of gravity. She seemed to compress, joints popping in her back, the weight of the backpack suddenly registering, her entire body sagging a little. She stretched experimentally and twisted at the waist.

"I've landed, Professor."

"Excellent! Excellent, excellent, excellent." He paused a moment. "Damage?"

Kellie shook her head. Except for whatever lay trampled beneath her boots, she registered no immediate effects of her presence. She was, maybe, a mile tall.

"My God," Grove said in astonishment. "That is so amazing. Absolutely amazing. I wish so much that I could be there with you right now. I-"

"Professor--?" Kellie cut in.

Grove picked up her alarm. "What is it, Kellie?"

"I'm not alone. Something is coming at me. Really fast."

* * *

Frozen in shock and fear, Kellie eyed the two red globes. They had appeared over the distant horizon and covered half the distance to her position in seconds. Now, as she watched, their speed dropped off precipitously, impossibly fast, from thousands of miles per hour to maybe a hundred. As they approached, they separated, flanking her either side, making Kellie even more fearful.

"What are they, Kellie? What do they look like?" Grove's voice cracked with strain.

"I don't know. They're blood red, and about the size of a big house. They move really quick. And they stop really quick, too," she whispered breathlessly. "I'm scared, Professor."

"Just hold still, Kellie. Don't offer any aggressive behavior."

She gulped. 'I don't think I could move if I wanted to. They just circled around me from opposite directions and stopped side-by-side about a mile away."

The globes looked eerily like water-filled balloons. They had flattened and elongated along the north south axis from the g-force of their turns. Their color graduated subtly rom mud-brown, to fire engine red. Undulated was maybe a better word, Kellie thought. She moved only her eyes in reaction to their reconnoitering.

"Oh, oh," she whispered.

"What's wrong?"

"They stopped." In fact, they had advanced and then stopped directly ahead of her at twenty-foot distance. They vibrated, as if powered internally by some unseen engine. There was no apparent method of propulsion that Kellie could see. They just floated in the air, eyeing her. Of that, she was certain.

"Professor...?"

"Yes, Kellie? Kellie?" Grove hollered in reaction to Kellie's shriek. The globes, in tandem, had rushed forward and beelined at her eyes. She reacted with a scream and threw up her hands and twisted and ducked away, loosing her balance on the edge of the shoreline. She pinwheeled a moment, and then stepped back into the ocean with a splash, inundating the surrounding coastline.

"What is it, Kellie! What's wrong?"

Kellie was panting. Her arms were up defensively but the globes had retreated to their former distance; they sat throbbing, and Kellie felt, rather than heard a vibration in the air. Their colors shifted rapidly through the spectrum. They looked angry.

"They just made a feint at me, Professor. I overreacted." Kellie brought her right foot back onto land. "They do that again, I swear I'm gonna smack the shit out of them." This was pure bravado, and she knew it. The globes had darted forward and withdrawn before she'd even moved. She had no chance in hell against their speed. What if they wanted...what if they wanted to...?

"Professor...could these things be...carnivorous?" Kellie shuddered, hard enough to make the globes pulsate harder in reaction.

Grove didn't answer.

"That's what I thought," she moaned. Like humans had done since the beginning of time, Kellie hoped for the best, and refused to consider the worst. She jerked as a beam of iridescent white light shot from the center of the left globe and speared her chest. It was gone in an instant and left no discernable impact. Kellie reported the contact.

"Did you feel anything?"

"No," she admitted. "It was just a light." She double-checked her shirtfront to confirm this. She'd felt nothing but fear. "Uh-oh," she croaked.

"Now what?"

Kellie watched the globes disappear into the distance and wink out of sight over the horizon. "They're gone. Just like that. Like a million miles per hour. You know what? I'm heading north, Professor."

"Good idea, Kellie. Keep an eye out. They might not be the only hostile life forms about, it they were life forms at all. They could be drones of some kind, remotely controlled robots."

Great, she thought sourly: more good news.

Stepping away from the water, Kellie carefully placed one foot in front of the other and walked parallel to the shoreline, toward the invisible glaciers to the north. She couldn't know for sure, but Kellie had the impression these were warm weather creatures that wouldn't take kindly to the cold. Covering half a mile per stride, she began to put distance between herself and her touchdown site. Maybe she'd shrink down below their radar, she thought, if and when they returned. And she sensed they would.

"Just my luck, huh? Run into hostiles on my first try?"

"You don't know that," Grove said. "Other than one sudden dash forward--and that could be a ritualistic greeting on their world for all we know--the globes did nothing more than check you out."

"Let them check out somebody else," Kellie grumbled. Glancing back, seeing the footprints trailing away behind her, she quickened her stride and shot continual glances east, at the horizon line. She guessed her height at three-quarters of a mile now. The quicker she got to the surface, the better she'd like it. She hated being the tallest landmark in sight.

Out to sea, a huge something broke surface, something almost Kellie's size, something humpbacked like a whale, yet thick-skinned like an alligator. Something else had left an immense, jagged-toothed bite mark on its flank. Kellie shuddered and quickened her stride almost to a jog. "I hate this place," she muttered.

The globes reappeared, a huge, V-shaped formation. The two in the lead were bright red, the others every color of the rainbow. As before, their speed seemed impossible.

"Professor, they're back," Kellie said breathlessly.

"How many?"

"About a hundred."

"Oh, God."

Oh, God, indeed, she thought miserably.

The formation flew straight to her landing site and then swung north along the shoreline. In a moment they were upon her, so Kellie halted, letting her eyes follow their apparently random examination. The two red globes, the same two as below she imagined, took up position just out of reach, hovering at chest level.

"I'm not dangerous," she said. "If you'll leave me alone, I'll be gone in a couple of minutes, just like that." She snapped her fingers for emphasis, startling a dozen of the nearer globes, making them buzz away angrily. The two red globes did nothing but float there. "Please?" she implored. "I'm not gonna hurt you. I couldn't if I-Eeeeeeiiiiiiii!" she squealed.

"Kellie! Kellie, what's wrong!"

Kellie continued to shriek as a hundred beams of light stabbed from the globes and lifted her off her feet. "Professorrrrrrrrrr!" she wailed. Grouped about her protectively, the globes sped her away eastward at a speed fast enough to whip her hair and make it difficult to breath. Hysterical, she wheeled her arms and kicked and twisted in panic. And then a voice said in her mind: Please relax, Kellie. We won't harm you in any way You were in danger along the shoreline. A kecklemonster--Kellie was unable to exactly interpret the word used to describe the beast she'd seen at sea--will attack anything up to and including its own size. One was paralleling your retreat up the coast so we moved you before additional beasts could arrive and attack. Look back, if you wish to reassure yourself.

The procession halted and Kellie was spun to face the coast. A jumble of huge shapes had come ashore and writhed angrily on the spot where she had last stood. Although miles away, she could hear angry trumpeting as the creatures protested the loss of their dinner.

"Oh, my God," she muttered. "Thank you." She filled in Grove in a soft, urgent whisper. "These things just saved my life, Professor. I was a goner."

"It would appear so," Grove agreed. "Thank them for me, as well."

Tell the professor we acknowledge his gratitude, the voice said deep in her mind.

The globes turned her east again and proceeded, this time at a more reasonable speed. After a moment, she asked: "Where are you taking me?"

To our home.

When she mentally asked where 'home' was, she received no answer. She asked the question verbally.

It is some miles distant. The city is light-scanned to be invisible from space. We were unsure of your intentions and of course took precautions. All indications of our civilization were eliminated centuries ago, before you entered our solar system. It took many years to accomplish this. We were happy to discover that you had no hostile intentions toward us. We found it quite amazing that you caused so little damage during your touchdown. Again, we were very happy.

Kellie could imagine. It wasn't every day that a mile-tall alien set down on your shoreline.

We have observed you for eons. We did not understand where something as massive as yourself could come from in our universe, or how you could shrink at such a phenomenal rate. Obviously, the diminution to your present state would seem like only hours to you. For us, it took many millions of years.

Kellie nodded, remembering the professor's words. "Thank you for not killing me," she said humbly. "Or shooting me out of the sky, or something."

The globe told her matter-of-factly: That option was considered. Fortunately, it was set aside pending scrutiny of your actions. Although you caused great chaos to the structure of our galaxy, and to that of our neighboring solar systems when you first arrived, it was determined these events were caused more by your great mass and clumsy attempts at physical propulsion, than by any malicious intent. When you made an obvious choice of our world, it was decided to let you land. We are curious why you did not employ your propulsion system hitherto. It is obviously quite efficient.

Kellie answered in embarrassment: "I didn't even know I had it." She felt something akin to a nodding in her head.

My colleagues wonder from whence you came. Although communication is effected by push technology, we are unable to receive your thoughts in return. We wish to know as much as possible before you leave us, Kellie. Does your kind normally shrink?

Kellie laughed bitterly. She recounted her run-ins with Professor Grove.

He is not your mate, then, this Grove?

Kellie laughed again. "He was my biology teacher. In high school. He taught us about life, and living organisms."

You are very young then, the globe observed. A child.

Kellie shrugged: "I'm a teenager. Part of the age group between a child and an adult. I am 18 of my years old. Almost 19."

What is the average life span of your species? the Globe asked.

"Approximately 75 years," she answered.

The globe, when it answered, seemed uncertain. Is 75 years a long time? On what basis do you determine the length of your year?

Kellie told the globe one revolution of her planet around their sun.

The globe was stunned. That can't be correct!

"It is," Kellie assured him.

The globe on the right changed colors from mud-brown to brilliant red and back again in an instant, and then degenerated in multi-hued madness. Based on its color activity over the last few minutes, she had begun to suspect this was her confidant. Now she was certain of it. She wondered how long the globe's life span was. Based on its reaction, she guessed in the thousands of years. The globe changed the subject.