Exoplanetary Safety

“So you’re the new kid, huh?” Gemma said to the shy girl next to her as they walked to school. “I’m Gemma.”

“Tilly,” came the quiet reply.

“Nice to meet you, Tilly. Where are you from?”

“Cincinnati.”

Gemma screwed up her face in thought. “Is that on Titan or something?”

“No,” was the incredulous answer. “It’s Ohio.” Tilly finally faced Gemma, and when she saw the other girl’s expression, she giggled. “On Earth, silly.”

Gemma’s jaw dropped. “You mean you’ve never been on an exoplanet before?”

“No. Why?”

“’Why?’ She asks! Did your parents not tell you about the dangers of Io before you came here?”

“Well, yeah,” Tilly responded. “And they also said there’s a lot of ice. I like ice. We used to skate a lot back home.”

“A lot of the ice here is sulfur dioxide, and you can’t tell which is the normal kind at a glance. Not a good idea to go skating at all.”

“We have a frozen pond in our new backyard. You mean I can’t of even skate on that?”

“Nope. Because even if it’s water ice this season, that could change. You really don’t want to skate anywhere on this moon.”

By this time, the girls had arrived at school, so they ended their conversation and got down to the business of learning.

“Right,” Ms. Drapes said. “Before we get into our regular lessons, does anyone have any questions?”

Gemma saw Tilly slowly raise her hand.

“Yes, Tilly?” Ms. Drapes prompted.

“Can we go over exoplanet safety again, please? I think I might need a refresher,” came the nearly whispered response.

The rest of the class, minus Gemma, groaned. But all of them had been born here on Io. The safety rules were second nature to them all by the first grade, and this was a fifth-grade class.

“Now, now, class,” Ms. Drapes chided, “I think we all could stand a reminder about the unique safety concerns we have here every now and then. It certainly could not hurt anything, and we can all be sure that none of us are doing anything dangerous because we forgot.”

An hour passed, students and teacher volleying back and forth with ideas, reminders, admonishments, and a surprising amount of fun as the class learned about each other’s at-home doings.

Bobby, for example, had forgotten that he needed to stay out of the ice caves behind his house because of the possibility of SO2 ice as well as dangerous native wildlife. And although Katie hadn’t been doing anything dangerous, she thought of something she needed to remind her parents about: always taking their breathers with them, even just for short hops to the small garden dome in their front yard; they often left them on the kitchen table when they went for vegetables.

Eventually, the class had exhausted their safety discussion topics, and Ms. Drapes called everyone to order once more, another groan signaling the class’s reluctance to end the surprisingly fun exercise.

“No,” she insisted, “we really must be getting on with today’s lesson on Ionian geography, and then we have a short mini chemistry experiment to do before we finish today.”

“Do we get to blow something up?” one kid asked.

“Or set something on fire?” chimed in another.

A third said, “Is it is something we can eat after?”

“Yeah, can we lick the science?”

And then, the whole classroom devolved into cacophony. It took Ms. Drapes half an hour to regain control of her classroom, and by then, it was time to clean up and prepare to go home.

Gemma and Tilly didn’t mind though; they were just glad to have a chance to talk on the way home.