Bewilderment

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I TOOK HIM TO THE PLANET DVAU, about the size and warmth of ours. It had mountains and plains and surface water, a thick atmosphere with clouds, wind, and rain. Rivers wore the rocks into great channels that ran the sediment down to rolling seas.

My son jittered, taking it in. It looks like here, Dad? It looks like Earth?

“A little.”

What’s different?

The answer wasn’t obvious, on the reddish rocky coast where we stood. We turned and looked. Across the entire landscape, nothing grew.

It’s dead?

“Not dead. Try your microscope.”

He knelt and scooped some film from a tidal pool onto a slide. Creatures everywhere: spirals and rods, footballs and filaments, ribbed, pored, or lined with flagella. He could have taken forever, just sketching all the kinds.

You mean, it’s just young? It’s only getting started?

“It’s three times older than the Earth.”

He looked around the blighted landscape. Then what’s wrong? For my boy, large creatures wandering everywhere were a God-given right.

I told him Dvau was almost perfect—the right place in the right kind of galaxy, with the right metallicity and low risk of annihilation from radiation or other fatal disturbances. It revolved at the right distance around the right kind of star. Like Earth, it had floating plates and volcanoes and a strong magnetic field, which made for stable carbon cycles and steady temperatures. Like Earth, it was showered with water from comets.

Holy crow. How many things did Earth need?

“More than a planet deserves.”

He snapped his fingers, but they were too rubbery and small to make a sound. Got it. Meteors!

But Dvau, like Earth, had large planets in a farther orbit shielding it from extreme bombardment.

Then what’s wrong? He seemed about to cry.

“No large moon. Nothing nearby to stabilize its spin.”

We lifted into near orbit and the world wobbled. We watched as the days changed chaotically and April blinked into December, then August, then May.

We watched for millions of years. Microbes bumped up against their limits, like a float thumping a dock. Every time life tried to break loose, the planet twirled, beating it back down to extremophiles.

Forever?

“Until a solar flare burns away its atmosphere.”

His face made me kick myself for telling him this one too soon. It’s cool, he said, faking bravery. Kind of.

Dvau ran barren all the way to the horizon. He shook his head, trying to decide whether the place was a tragedy or a triumph. He looked at me. When he spoke, it was the first question of life, everywhere in the universe.

What else, Dad? Where else? Show me another one.