The bargain: no masses required
Kepler had no idea why, but he saw it in the data: for everything orbiting one central body, divided by is the same number. Compare two orbits and that shared number cancels, leaving .
The symbols, and the subscript convention stated once and for all: and are the two periods, and the two orbit sizes — the semi-major axis, which for a circle is just the radius. Subscript 1 is the body you are solving for; subscript 2 is the one you already know. Both bodies must circle the SAME central mass, and because every term is a ratio, the units simply have to match each other — days against days, kilometres against kilometres, no conversion required. That is the bargain: you may answer without ever knowing the planet's mass, or G, or anything else.
Working form: , and backwards . Four times wider is eight times slower; nine times wider is twenty-seven times slower. The exponents are the lesson — swap them and the answer is not slightly wrong, it is a different universe.