Questions and Answers

Anjali held the binoculars to her eyes. "I'm sure," she said, firmly.

"Let me see."

She handed me the binoculars, and I peered, too. "You're right."

There was another moon. An eighteenth moon. We looked at each other. Then we grasped hands as best we could with our spacesuits on, and ran, or rather, bounced, to where the rest of the group was.

"We just came from the other side of the planet," Anjali gasped. "There's another moon there. That brings the total number of moons up to eighteen."

"This is insane," Dr. Uma stated. "It defies all logic. How does this tiny planet, with hardly any gravity, attract so many satellites?"

There was a beeping sound. It was coming from the pocket of Dr. Uma's spacesuit.

"My mobile phone? How does it even work, out here?"

She reached in to her pocket and took the phone out. "A message." She peered at the phone, blinked, looked at us, and read out, in a quavery voice, "You have asked a question. Press 1 to receive the answer."

She looked at the five of us in turn. Each woman nodded silently. Dr. Uma pressed the '1' key on her phone.

Immediately, a voice spoke from the phone. "This is not a mere planet. Those are not ordinary moons."

There was a flash, and the mobile had disappeared from Dr. Uma's hand. All of us screamed, we couldn't help it. We heard laughter somewhere. "Earth women," a voice said from nowhere. Always screaming at the slightest thing."

"Excuse me," Anjali protested. "We're on a new planet and keep discovering all these moons and there are strange messages and voices, and the phone disappears. That's not slight, that's a lot to scream about."

The laughter rang out. "I like your spirit, young lady. Okay, Dr. Uma. You, as the leader of this expedition, have asked how our planet attracts so many satellites, when it doesn't have the necessary size or gravity."

"I have," Dr. Uma replied.

"Well, you Earthlings have your own ideas of what planets and satellites are. That doesn't hold true for the rest of the universe. This planet is, in fact, the planet of questions. And the satellites are the answers. Each question has eighteen answers. Or wait. Maybe it's the other way around. Maybe the planet is the answer, and the satellites are the questions. Maybe each answer has eighteen questions. I forget."

"I don't understand, exactly."

"What are eight times two?"

"Sixteen," Anjali said, "What's that got to do with ..."

"What is ten plus six?"

"Okay," Anjali retorted. "I get it. Sixteen. You're going to make the answer sixteen eighteen times over."

"I really do like your spirit, young lady. But no, that's not what I'm going to do."

"Then what ..."

"I'm going to stop talking to you now, I'm tired."

"Wait!" Dr. Uma yelled. "You can't leave us like this."

Anjali's phone beeped.

"That's a brand new phone, and now it's going to disappear," she sighed, as she pulled it out.

There was a message on it. "Go back to Earth. Each time you think of a question, think of eighteen answers. Each time you think of an answer, get eighteen questions to go with it. That's the meaning of life. And no, your phone isn't going to disappear. And Dr. Uma's phone is back in her pocket now."

We bounced around the planet for a few more hours, but found nothing else. Eighteen moons circled the planet, some following an orbit, others zig-zagging wildly.

Finally, it was time to go home.

There were crowds at the space station, including TV Crews and other media folk. The first to get to us was a young lady wearing a silver blouse and bright red trousers.

"How long did the journey take? What did you find there? How long did you spend there? Could you breathe? Could you speak normally? Could you walk normally? Was there life there? Was there day and night, as we know it? Was it hot or cold? Were there clouds? Were there moons? Were you scared? Did your mobile phones work? Did you stick together all the time? Are you planning to go back? Will you take more people with you? When? How many questions have I asked, including this one?"?

The young lady gave a high-pitched laugh, and then vanished. There were recordings of the encounter, and we counted the number of questions.

She had asked us eighteen questions.