George and the Blue Moon

by Stephen Hawking

  An automated announcement came over the loudspeaker. “Astronauts! The ascent has begun!” The plane had no windows, so they couldn’t understand what was happening by reference to the Earth below. But they could feel movement—the plane was starting to fly steeply upward. Someone watching from the ground would see an airplane shooting up almost vertically, as though it was trying to fly through the atmosphere and into space itself. If they kept watching, they would see that same plane’s trajectory flatten out as it flew over a long curve and then nose-dived back down toward the ground. It kept on flying like this, in huge great big looping curves—Earth-bound spectators might ask themselves what in heaven’s name was going on up there.

  Inside the plane, the six trainee astronauts had followed new instructions to leave their seats and take up positions at the front of the plane. Flying over the curve, the junior astronauts inside rose from the floor of the cabin where they had been sitting. For all except Annie, this was their first experience of zero gravity and none of them could stifle their laughter! Suddenly, from being competitive, determined participants in what felt like a fight to the end, the young astronauts reverted to being what they really were—kids who loved playing games with other kids. They turned somersaults in the air, they touched the ceiling with their toes, they pushed off the airplane walls and flew across the cabin like superheroes! None of them could stop laughing! Annie and V exchanged high fives in midair as they shot past each other in opposite directions, the matter of the possibly poisoned candy completely forgotten. Then, as the plane started to head toward Earth again, they sank slowly back down to the floor as the G-force took hold. By the time the plane was at the bottom of the curve, they could only lie motionless on the floor, hardly able even to move a finger until it started heading up again.

  This time the astronauts rose faster than on the last curve. Annie shot upward so rapidly that she bumped her head on the ceiling. But no sooner had she adjusted to being in zero gravity, flying around the cabin, than she had the sense that the plane had already started heading back toward the Earth again. She felt gravity grab her, like the diver had grabbed her ankles, and pull her back toward the floor. She lay there once more but almost immediately she felt herself ping up again, heading toward the ceiling of the plane. She looked for Leonia, only to see her teammate signaling her. Annie shot along the plane to the front where Leonia was hovering.

  “Something is very wrong,” muttered Leonia. “We need to get into the cockpit. Try to shield me so the others don’t see what I’m doing.”

  “Do you think this is the challenge?” asked Annie.

  “No idea,” said Leonia as she tried the cockpit door, only to find it was locked. “But we must get in there before we go into high G again!” She sounded as close to panicking as Annie had ever heard her.

  Annie blocked Leonia from view by floating in front of her. V and N tumbled over toward her but the plane shuddered violently and they were thrown back in the opposite direction.

  “Leo, get the door open,” said Annie urgently.

  “I’m trying!” said Leonia. “It’s not budging!” At that moment they felt the plane turn and start back down again.

  Annie felt terrified and nauseous. For a second she froze entirely, unable to move or think. Then, as though her brain had used that tiny pause to change into a higher gear, she became incredibly, unnaturally calm as she realized she had to take charge and she had to do it now.

  “Everyone!” Annie shouted, finding her true voice for the first time since the bullying at school. Face-to-face with true and immediate danger, Annie was no longer cowed or afraid. Her courage burst through and she was ready to act. “Everyone, come here—as fast as you can! We have to get this door open. We need to throw ourselves against it to break through!”

  The other recruits had enough respect for Annie and Leonia’s winning streak to obey.

  “One … two … three!” cried Annie. “Charge!”

  Together, they barged the door and it sprang open, sending Leonia and, behind her, Annie, into the cockpit, where they almost crashed into a figure slumped at the controls.

  “Wake up!” Annie shook the pilot as hard as she could, pulling his head up from the joystick. Looking through the cockpit window and at the multiple altitude dials around the cabin, there was no doubt they were now nose-diving toward Earth and the plane was out of control. “Wake up!” she shouted into the pilot’s face—only to recoil in absolute horror. She screamed—she couldn’t help it—and then quickly managed to take a firm hold of herself. The figure in the pilot’s uniform that they’d all seen climb into the cockpit before takeoff was not, it turned out, human after all.

  “It’s a robot!” cried Annie, her hair standing on end. “It’s a robot! The plane was being flown by a robot! There are no humans on board—only us!”

  The pilot’s hat fell off, taking the wig and glasses the robot had been wearing with it. The robot’s face had been painted a fleshy pink color with features drawn on. Close up, it was almost unbelievable that they had ever been fooled. But they had only seen the pilot for a few seconds from a distance. They had seen what they had expected to see, not what was really there. Leonia grabbed the robot, which was fortunately smaller than some of the massive bots they’d seen patrolling around Kosmodrome 2, and shoved it out of the pilot’s seat, upending it as she did. “Sit down,” she ordered Annie. Annie climbed obediently into the pilot’s seat.

  “Leo, do you know how to fly a plane?” she asked desperately. They were losing altitude at a terrifying rate. From the cabin came sounds of screaming as the other trainees on board realized what had happened.

  “Only in theory,” admitted Leonia. “This plane should be able to pretty much fly itself.”

  “Theory is better than nothing,” said Annie. “Tell me what to do.”

  “Grab the joystick,” said Leonia. “Raise it, very gently.”

  Annie obediently followed her orders. Slowly she raised the joystick, which was positioned to the left of the pilot’s seat, feeling the nose of the plane rise very slightly. Meanwhile Leonia flicked a series of switches on the many panels surrounding them in the cockpit. The needle on the speed dials left the red bar and headed back to a more normal position as Annie leveled out the plane and it started to slow down.

  Leonia picked up the radio and spoke into it. “Hello, Mayday, Mayday!” She gave the international alert for distress. The radio crackled in reply but no voices were heard. “Mayday, repeat Mayday!” continued Leonia. “I need to land a plane at Kosmodrome 2. Requesting permission to bring plane in to land at Kosmodrome 2.” The radio fizzed and burped, but no human or machine spoke back to them.

  “You’re going to have to land this plane, Annie,” she said to Annie. Outside, it was getting dark. “It’ll be easier after sunset as we can fly in by the lights on the runway.”

  “I’ve got to land the plane?” Annie couldn’t think of anything more frightening.

  “Well, I don’t think any of them are in a fit state,” retorted Leonia. The sound of sobbing from the cabin filled the cockpit.

  “Why can’t you do it?” fussed Annie.

  “I’ll be operating the landing gear and the navigational controls. As much as I can, I’ll make the plane land itself, but I don’t know how to put it on full autopilot so you’ve got to guide it down. Just like driving the Rover with the remote—you were much better at that than I was.”

  “Have we got radar?” asked Annie faintly.

  “Yup,” confirmed Leonia. “The good news is that I’ve found the coordinates for the Kosmodrome 2 runway.”

  “And the bad? Apart from the lack of beverage service or in-flight movies,” said Annie.

  To her surprise, Leonia laughed. And then apologized. “Sorry,” she said. “I don’t always identify the appropriate emotion for the situation.”

  “No, my fault,” said Annie. “It’s really not the moment to make jokes. Tell me the bad news.”

  “You need
to turn the plane around,” said Leonia. “We’re going the wrong way. That’s the bad news.”

  “Oh boy,” said Annie. This was unexpected. Of all the problems they could have, going in the wrong direction wasn’t the one Annie would have guessed.

  “You need to use your feet,” pointed Leonia.

  Annie looked down—there were elephant-sized pedals in the footwell. She placed her sparkly sneakers gingerly on them.

  “Use the joystick to keep the nose steady,” instructed Leonia. “And use the foot pedals to change the horizontal plane of the aircraft.”

  Annie gulped. It was better, she figured, than running out of fuel or flying through turbulence. She wasn’t at all sure she could manage that. But to turn a plane around? It was pretty awesome for someone who had never driven a real car to find herself in charge of a plane. But Annie took a deep breath and told herself that she could do it. Looking straight ahead, through the curved glass of the pilot’s window, surrounded by hundreds of switches and dials, all of which she now hoped had been put on autopilot, she tentatively pressed harder with her left foot. The plane shifted as it slowly began to turn back in the opposite direction. Annie accidentally pressed with her right foot and the plane jumped a little.

  “Tell them to strap themselves in—this could be a bumpy ride.”

  “Astronauts!” Leonia shouted back into the cabin. “Stop crying and get back to your seats. That’s an order.” She returned to Annie. “Did I do that okay?”

  “Perfect,” replied Annie. “Hold tight!”

  Leonia grabbed onto the nearest thing she could find to steady herself, which turned out to be the leg of the robotic pilot who had now toppled upside down and was wedged between the cockpit seats, his feet in the air.

  Annie slowly swung the plane around, causing a huge outcry from the back cabin. The kids cried or groaned as the plane dipped and bucked. Annie went as steadily and as cautiously as she could, but even so she couldn’t keep the plane level for the whole turn. After a few minutes of mayhem, the plane straightened out, and when Annie looked at the computer display in front of her, she could see it was now guiding her toward the runway at Kosmodrome 2. She exhaled a massive sigh of relief, bigger than when she and George had stopped the Large Hadron Collider from exploding, greater than when they had escaped from a madman and his quantum computer, but not quite as huge as the time they had rescued her father when he fell inside a black hole.

  “Listen up, kids,” she said, taking the microphone that Leonia passed to her. Her voice echoed down the plane, completely clear and steady, not a wobble to be heard. “I’m going to try and land now—so buckle your seat belts and please don’t scream if you can help it. It’s really uncool and it doesn’t help.”

  Leonia nodded as Annie steered the plane so it was in line with the computer diagram on the screen in front of her. She was amazed by how natural and easy it felt. Leonia flipped a few switches and they heard the noise of the landing gear lowering in preparation for landing.

  Twenty … nineteen … eighteen. The computer screen gave the number of seconds to landing.

  “Annie,” said Leonia as the countdown continued.

  “Yes,” said Annie, with a tiny gulp.

  “If I do go into space,” continued Leonia as the computer read out fifteen … fourteen, “I’d want you with me. You’d be the best astronaut of all of us.”

  “No I wouldn’t,” said Annie firmly. The landing lights along the runway now looked very close indeed, and she could only hope they were going to glide onto the runway and not crash right into it. “It’s you. You should go to Mars. I think I might stay at home after this anyway.”

  Ten … nine … eight …

  “You’re not serious?” said Leonia. “You can’t do that! One bad experience doesn’t mean anything. You’ve got to keep going.”

  Four … three … two … one … said the computer as the wheels touched down on the tarmac of the Kosmodrome 2 runway. The plane was still going a bit too fast to land, so it bumped back up again, causing another wave of groans and screams from the back. But the wheels came back down, and apart from veering off to one side and ending up more on the grass than on the runway itself, Annie brought the plane to a standstill long before they had got close to the buildings that housed the Kosmodrome 2 airport.

  “This is your captain speaking,” said Annie, addressing her passengers. “Thank you for traveling on the Air Martian Express, and we do hope you will fly with us again in the future.”

  ZERO-GRAVITY FLIGHTS

  A zero-gravity flight is a way to experience microgravity or the same kind of gravitational conditions as the astronauts on the International Space Station! That means being able to push off the ceiling with your feet or throw droplets of water around and see them float!

  There is a serious point to zero-gravity flights—NASA and other space agencies use zero-gravity flights to train astronauts so they can be better prepared for their work on the space station.

  But in 1994 a man called Peter Diamandis decided to offer flights to ordinary passengers as well. He wanted to open up the space travel experience to everyone, not just professional astronauts. He has flown lots of famous people on his zero-gravity flights, including the second man on the Moon—Buzz Aldrin—and Stephen Hawking, one of the authors of this book!

  When you go on a Zero-G flight, your plane doesn’t leave the Earth’s atmosphere! You don’t actually go into space.

  When taking a Zero-G flight, everyone gets on a normal-looking plane, like the sort of plane you might board to go on vacation. But this plane doesn’t fly like a normal plane! Instead, it flies in long curves called parabolas.

  What happens is this:

  • The airplane, flown by special, highly qualified pilots, ascends sharply upward. But then it nose-dives back to Earth again.

  • While the plane is going “up and over the hump,” it puts you into “zero gravity.” At that point, you are in freefall, just as you would be inside the International Space Station. It’s pretty exciting!

  • To get you used to the sensation of weightlessness, the first few parabolas—or curves—that the plane flies over are not too steep. This means you have the feeling of reduced gravity, the same conditions you might experience on Mars or the Moon. Mars has 40 percent of the Earth’s gravity so you can bounce around in big leaps. The Moon has less gravity than Mars and so, on the “lunar parabola,” you can do a push-up with one finger!

  • When the plane goes into descent again, you experience “high G,” strong gravitational forces that pin you to the floor. Lying on the floor, you can’t even pick up one finger to move it! As the plane ascends once more, you gently start to float away from the floor once more.

  During the Zero-G parabolas, you experience complete weightlessness. You can do a somersault in the air or walk on the ceiling! These Zero-G parabolas are over too quickly—everyone says, “Again! Again!”

  But what goes up must come down—and eventually your plane must land and bring you back to Earth once more… .

  Chapter Fourteen

  Annie thought the runway would be thronging with Kosmodrome 2 staff, ready to greet them after their ordeal. But the tarmac was empty and quiet. It felt wrong after the huge excitement and tension of the airborne emergency they had just successfully navigated their way through. At the very least, they expected blue flashing lights and crowds of Kosmodrome 2 staff. But there was no one, no support vehicles rushing out, no mobile staircase or bendy bus turning up to guide them back to the spaceport.

  “Was that really the challenge?” said Annie to Leonia as they sat in the cockpit together. “Landing the plane. Or was that all an accident?”

  “Unless … ,” said Leonia. And then she shook her head.

  “What?” questioned Annie. “Tell me.”

  “Have you noticed anything weird about ‘the process’?” asked Leonia slowly.

  “I just landed a plane!” exclaimed Annie. In her head she said to he
rself, I just landed a plane! Take that, Belinda and all you others. Bet you couldn’t do that! And stay calm. And not cry. “And you’re asking if I’ve noticed anything odd!”

  “Apart from today,” persisted Leonia.

  “I just thought training to be an astronaut—especially when we have to compete with the others—would be tough,” Annie mused as they looked out over the deserted runway. “But I’ve got to say, no way was I prepared for this. This is literally incredible.”

  “I didn’t actually think it would be fun,” said Leonia. “But I didn’t think they’d put us in danger.”

  “Was that deliberate?” Annie asked. It was a shocking thought, but after what had just happened … Her thoughts shot back to her nighttime meeting with George in Mission Control. Had they been spotted? Were they deliberately trying now to kill her? Even if it meant killing five other kids too? She swallowed hard. Was George in danger too?

  “Annie, I don’t think they meant to kill us. But they put a load of kids in an airplane flown by a robot,” said Leonia. “And then the robot malfunctioned—and there was no backup, no emergency procedure, nothing. If it hadn’t been for you, we would have crashed.”

  “Us,” said Annie. “That wasn’t all me.” She gazed out of the cockpit window. “Leo,” she said slowly, noticing something. “This isn’t the runway we took off from, is it?”

  “Nope,” said Leonia. “Must be another part of the campus.”

  “OMG!” said Annie. “Look, it’s that spaceship again, the one they drove away from on the Rover challenge, so we couldn’t see it.”

  “So it is,” said Leonia. In the distance they could make out a spacecraft, held vertical by complex machinery in preparation for launch. They were too far away to see it clearly—but the spaceship appeared to be lit up and to have tiny black objects, like flies, crawling all over it.

  “They’re getting ready for takeoff!” said Leonia. “But where’s it going? And who is on it? There are no live missions listed for launch. I don’t get it.”

  At that moment V and N popped their heads into the cockpit. “Hello, heroes!” they cried cheerily. Any idea of competition had vanished now—everyone was just so relieved to be alive.