Chris paced through the ship. "Alright, the things we know for sure. One: someone or something is causing planets and entire systems to collapse. Second of all: something unexplainable, for me and the robots, is going on with this process. Even when compressed, the materials should've remained at their standard mass. Entire solar systems of mass are heaps on a small planet and they're practically weightless. It just...", he shrugged, "it just doesn't add up."

He sat back down in his chair and opened the command center on his screen.

"I need more information. And even though I have no idea if this is going to be of use, I have to try it. Give me a moment."

He disappeared out of sight. A few minutes later he walked past the camera with a drone the size of a small bike. Ten minutes later he returned in front of the camera. "It should be operational now. I've brought it with me in the case that I'd had to explore areas I couldn't reach on this planet. So far I haven't run into any issues, so I'm taking a gamble here." He rapidly hit keystrokes as he started a simulation of a wormhole.

"Alright, so according to this thing, combined with the data I've received from C-7 and C-8...", he inserted the findings into the simulation, "it should take the drone... come on... load... 16 hours to travel through the wormhole. One directional. Assuming it's able to return, on top of the scanning it has to do... it would return in 38 hours." He rested his head on the palm of his hand as he absently scratched his forehead with his fingers.

"I'd like to think I still have all the time in the world, really, I do, but... since those test results came back... every hour that I waste planets and stars collapse. Who knows if life existed on any of these planets. I can't help but wonder not only why I am the only exception to this time stop. The time stops itself, I don't know. Immense black holes on the other side of the wormholes could create such an unstable gravitational pull that an entire time stop could be possible... but that doesn't explain why I'm not frozen. Was I picked by someone or something? Or is there a different reason for the exception? The answers could've been found in any of the solar systems that are now nothing but dust."

A beep from C-7 interrupted his musings. The drone was ready for launch.

Chris took it to the second closest wormhole he could find. The other wormhole had stopped spitting material, and Chris feared the odds were against him if he wanted the drone to return from there. "It might be there's nothing left."

The drone had been instructed to fly in the hole, maintain speed for the 16 hours of the journey, run tests and when completed, it should return through the hole. The drone slowly rose from the ground, it's small engine growling softly as it took off from the ground. It gained speed as it flew into a direct line away from the hole. It then turned, and in one clean motion the drone flew into the hole and disappeared.

Chris instantly went back to the ship. He could've sat there and wondered what it would return with, but there were some other questions left unanswered. Regardless of the outcome of the scouting mission, he needed to figure out how to get rid of the planet packed with wormholes. He booted up multiple simulations, opened the important theorems on his screen and started thinking.