He found himself directly facing a hovering camera drone, which immediately relayed the footage it captured—George, with his mouth hanging open—onto all the screens in Mission Control. Switching the image abruptly from the view of an icy moon in the Solar System to a close-up of George’s face didn’t just give George the shock of his life! It caused the speaker in the center of the room to stop very suddenly and give a bloodcurdling screech of feedback, followed by a very loud exclamation from the floor:
“Get him!”
Chapter Eighteen
In the underground tunnel, Annie opened her mouth to scream, but the person behind her was too quick. A firm hand covered her mouth, stopping any sound from emerging.
“Annie!” hissed a familiar voice. “It’s me! Leo! Don’t make any noise!”
Annie sagged in relief. She hadn’t been captured after all. Leonia dropped her hand from Annie’s mouth and Annie turned round to face her teammate. But what was Leonia doing here and how had she found her?
As though she was reading Annie’s mind, Leonia held up her wrist with an identical watch to the one she’d given Annie. “The watch! It’s got a tracking device in it. When you didn’t come back, I decided to follow you.”
“You didn’t tell me there were two watches,” complained Annie, who had got back the power of speech.
“I didn’t know if I could trust you,” said Leonia calmly.
“Charming!” snorted Annie. But she had to admit she had thought exactly the same about the other girl.
“But when you landed the plane like that, I knew you were a force for good,” said Leonia, smiling in the darkness.
“Huh, well, that’s what I figured too—only about you,” said Annie, thinking she might as well come clean now.
“So what is going on?” asked Leonia. “What have you found out?”
“Well, we know something’s wrong,” said Annie, “because no training camp anywhere would let a bunch of kids fly their own plane.”
“Agreed,” said Leonia. “Although it was really fun, so maybe they should.”
“No!” said Annie, amazed that Leonia was being so flippant.
“Only joking.”
“Wow, you’re really making a habit of that,” said Annie.
“It’s kinda fun. I never knew … ,” said Leonia. “And that singing and dancing …”
“Anyway,” said Annie firmly, “I heard the sound of someone crying so I went to check it out. But I think it was a trap—a way to lure any of us who were out walking around at night—because a robot guard appeared and picked up one of the girl trainees who was doing just that.”
“Those robots are everywhere this evening.” Leonia shivered. “I don’t think there are any other humans left in the space facility. Where do you think the robot took the other trainee?”
“Somewhere in these underground tunnels, I think,” Annie hazarded a guess. “Where are we, anyway?”
“Didn’t you know?” Leonia sounded surprised. “Kosmodrome 2 was built on the site of a weapons factory from the last war. It had all these underground tunnels built so that workers could move around without fear of getting bombed. And that’s why this is a secret location—it was given ‘Hidden Status’ back then—the war ended but this place stayed secret… .”
“That’s why it’s not on any maps!” exclaimed Annie. “Do you know your way around underground?”
Leonia hummed and hawed. “Not technically,” she said. “But I have a special gift for spatial thinking. It’s like I can find where I’m going even if I’ve never been there before.”
“Like you swallowed a GPS, basically,” said Annie.
“Basically,” agreed Leonia. “Where do you want to go?”
“Mission Control,” said Annie. “If there’s any place where we can find out what’s really going on here, it will be there. And I’m hoping we might find George there as well.”
Leonia was as good as her word. Soundlessly, she guided Annie through the dank, smelly underground tunnels, somehow knowing which exit to choose so that they popped out into another corridor, this time recognizably in the building that held Mission Control.
“Where now?” asked Leonia as they stood in the corridor. They could hear noise coming from the central well of Mission Control itself.
“Not in there,” said Annie, shaking her head. “I think we’ll walk straight into something. Oh!” she said, remembering the night walk she and George had taken and how they had seen a row of offices to one side of the main concourse. “I know! This way!” And she led on ahead.
This time, when Annie tried the door of Eric’s old office, it popped open. It was dark and cool inside. A desk stood in the middle of the room, no longer covered in sheaves of paper, books, old teacups, and the funny-shaped awards that Eric had won during his long career as a scientist. The blackboard still remained, covered in the chalky mathematical squiggles that Eric used to express his ideas about how the Universe was formed. But everything else was gone—just like at home, all Eric’s artifacts had been removed, taken away somewhere… .
Annie stood in the middle of the room and thought hard. There must be something here that could help them. Flinging open the cupboards, she was dismayed to find them empty.
“What are you looking for?” whispered Leonia.
“Anything!”
“Something like this?” said Leonia, producing a flat silver laptop.
“OMG!” said Annie. “Where did you find that?”
“It was just here,” said Leonia, pointing to a bookshelf.
“OMG,” said Annie again. “This is …” She went to press the power button and realized that Cosmos was already switched on.
“At last.”
Leonia jumped out of her skin as the computer spoke.
“I’ve been wondering how much longer it would take you.”
“WHAT?” said Annie.
“I’ve been sending you messages,” continued Cosmos. “Well, one message at least.”
“I don’t have my phone!” said Annie. “Or a tablet. And they wouldn’t let us have any Internet access.”
“Well, I knew that,” said Cosmos. “I am the world’s most intelligent computer, after all. Or I was until recently, when I had much of my capability downloaded to an inferior machine. That’s why I tried to send you some vital information through a different means so that it wouldn’t be lost to us forever.”
“How did you send it?” said Annie. “And where?”
“I sent you a ‘family’ message,” said Cosmos. “While you were at space camp.”
“Oh!” said Annie. “So you did!” She dug in her pocket and brought out a very scrunched piece of paper. “Here it is! What do you mean”—she suddenly realized what her supercomputer had said—“that you’ve been downloaded to an inferior machine?”
“I,” her supercomputer said dramatically, “am Cosmos no more!”
“Yes you are!” said Annie. “Look—you’ve still got the flower-power stickers that I gave you when I was in year six!”
“Technically speaking, I am the same piece of hardware,” agreed the computer. “But like your esteemed father, I too have been retired, outpaced by the march of technology. I am Cosmos no more!”
“I don’t understand,” said Annie. “How come you are just sitting in here, switched on and alert and yet saying you’re not Cosmos when you obviously are? If you’re not Cosmos, who or what are you? And where is Cosmos if it’s not you?” Annie felt entirely bewildered.
“There is a ‘new Cosmos,’ ” said the great and venerable supercomputer. “But the one who has taken my place, who has received the “Cosmos” mantle of honor, is a … tablet.” Cosmos said the last word in a tone of total disgust. “A ridiculous piece of technology, without the storage or operational capacity that would befit the upstart to be the true holder of the ‘Cosmos’ legacy.”
The version of the computer in front of them was the latest of several Cosmos models built through the a
ges of computer history. The original Cosmos was so large that it took up a whole basement in the university where Eric had been a professor! Over the years, Cosmos had been refined and reduced in size until it had reached the proportions and look of an ordinary laptop. But as Annie well knew, Cosmos was no ordinary laptop.
“Don’t worry,” continued Cosmos, or the computer that Annie would always think of as Cosmos, sarcastically. “Tablet Cosmos can’t do very much.”
“Can Tablet Cosmos take you to space?” said Annie.
“Theoretically,” sniggered Cosmos, “yes. In reality—no. That’s why old poo-face is so angry.”
“Who is poo-face?” said Annie. But she already knew.
“Rika,” spat Cosmos. “That evil being pretending to be a scientist, who fired Eric and destabilized my operating system by attempting to transfer it to her own version of ‘Cosmos.’ She was in here earlier, trying to force me to open up a doorway to space.”
“What do you mean?” said Annie. “Pretending to be a scientist! Rika is a scientist, you know—she’s very distinguished!”
“Oh, yeah,” said Cosmos. “The real Rika Dur is a very eminent scientist. But are you sure that the person you have seen is really Professor Rika Dur?”
“Well, she looks like Rika Dur!” Leonia threw in. “At least, she looks like the Rika Dur I’ve seen on the Internet. Sort of.”
“Is she someone else?” asked Annie. Was this the meaning of her growing dislike of Rika? “Is she a Rika-like?”
“Who else could she be?” said Leonia in amazement. “And why?”
Annie felt a cold chill run through her blood. “And you say she was in here, trying to make you open up the portal to space?”
“Affirmative,” murmured Cosmos.
Annie flicked through the logs of activity, desperately looking for a clue. It showed up red bar after red bar: ACCESS DENIED.
“So you wouldn’t let Rika go out into space!” exclaimed Annie. “Look,” she said, reading the lines of code she had brought up on screen as easily as if it were a story unfolding. “So Rika came in, tried to force you to open a portal, and then stormed out, leaving you active …”
“But,” the supercomputer added in a much more urgent voice, “we have no time to spare.”
“Time to spare for what?” asked Leonia, who seemed to have recovered from her shock at the talking computer.
“The reason Rika wanted me to open the portal to space is because the version she has developed herself is faulty.”
“So?” said Annie. “If she tries to go to space through a nonfunctional portal, is that our problem?”
“Rika has been using a different method to send robots out into space—not a computer-generated portal like the one you know so well, but a form of quantum teleportation,” continued Cosmos. “She has been imprinting robots onto entangled atoms previously dumped via Tablet Cosmos. And now she wants to duplicate alien DNA by mixing it up with organic matter …”
“So she wants to see if it works for living beings,” finished Annie, feeling the full force of that ominous statement.
“Exactly,” confirmed Cosmos. “She wants to try bringing life back from other locations in the Solar System… .”
“Life! In the Solar System!” said Leonia. “But we haven’t found any!”
“That’s as may be … ,” said Cosmos darkly. “And,” he added grimly, “she wants to try sending a life-form—a human life-form—from here out into space using quantum teleportation.”
“But she didn’t want to travel via QT herself, in case something went wrong!” said Annie, catching on. “So she wanted you—or tablet you”—Cosmos snorted—“to take her to space while she sent someone else via quantum teleport-thingy. Am I right?”
“You are excellently correct as usual,” confirmed Cosmos. “But we must hurry because the quantum teleportation transfer is about to begin. And although the outward journey should be straightforward, the return is likely to be extremely dangerous, not only for the traveler concerned but also for all human life on Planet Earth should the alien life-form molecules arrive here with no precautions being taken.”
“OMG!” said Annie. “But who—who is she sending into space? And where?”
“I believe she may have just found her ideal traveler,” replied Cosmos, shooting out the beams of light that he used to draw a doorway to space.
Leonia’s mouth fell even further open as a door shape emerged, at first painted in shimmering light, and then quickly solidifying to form an actual doorway. The door swung open and beyond it lay a misty, swirling, pale blue world with an icy landscape as far as the eye could see. Leonia’s silver eyes reflected the spooky glow coming from the frozen landscape as she stood, agog at what she was seeing.
Annie was much quicker to process the sight that lay before them. “Cosmos,” she said urgently, “I can see movement on the surface. It’s Europa, yes? And lights. What’s happening out there?” In the distance, she could make out what looked like an encampment around a large circular hole. Figures seemed to be purposefully striding about, some of them carrying mechanical heaters that they were pressing down onto the thick icy crust.
In response, Cosmos shifted the doorway a little closer and both Annie and Leonia got a clearer view.
“What are they doing?” Annie asked, squinting her eyes to try to see better.
“They’re making holes,” said Leonia quietly at her side. “Look! It’s like the holes the Inuit use to fish in the Arctic!”
“You’re right!” breathed Annie. “Leo, they’re fishing! They’re fishing for aliens in the underwater ocean beneath the icy crust …”
“On Europa,” finished Leonia. “And those are the same robots as the ones at Kosmodrome 2. They’re attempting to catch an underwater alien.”
“Trying to find samples for the humans on Artemis to work on when they arrive!” said Annie, slapping her forehead.
“I don’t understand,” said Leonia, surprised to hear herself say those words. “I thought you just said Rika was trying to bring life back by using QT.”
“Yeah, but she knows that probably won’t work,” said Annie. “Or not the way she wants it to. So she’s got a backup plan, called ‘Artemis.’ It’s a super top-secret mission to find life on Europa—but it’s not just that. It’s also the name of the spacecraft on the launch pad, the one that’s getting ready for takeoff. I reckon that Rika is trying to find life on Europa using her robots, but at the same time she knows she needs human subjects to study the life-forms in their natural habitat. And she knows that her stupid space portal device won’t do the job properly so she’s had to go old-school and send out a spacecraft as well.”
“To Europa?” Leonia thought fast.
“I’ve got that bit. But which humans is she sending? I’m starting to suspect,” said Annie, “that she meant to send … us.”
“Us?” said Leonia. “What? But we’re supposed to be going to Mars—but not yet, not for years! That’s why we’re here, that’s what we’re training for.”
“I think space camp was just a ploy to get lots of clever kids to come together for a training program.”
“Huh, devious,” muttered Leonia. “She got a load of high achievers to spend the summer learning about space flight.”
“She found the smartest kids in the world, the ones who would be most likely to survive on another planet. And she wants to send kids because …”
“She believes that young people like yourselves,” said Cosmos, “are better at dealing with the new technology, being, as she calls it, ‘digital natives’ as opposed to those who did not grow up with technology as powerful as myself.” He gave the equivalent of a computer sniff. “Apparently you can adapt to dangerous situations quicker, especially those of you familiar with virtual reality, as used in computer gaming. I believe some of the tasks you have been set recently used virtual reality headsets—”
“So she’ll send kids off on a spacecraft with a set of spare h
uman beings in suspended animation,” cut in Annie grimly. Leonia’s eyebrows shot up at that. “In case the live astronauts don’t make it. I’ll explain—but later.”
As Annie spoke, she and Leonia saw a ghostly shape materialize just next to the encampment. Annie clapped her hand over Leonia’s mouth to stop her from screaming. It was very obviously a real human being, not a robot. As they watched, the figure got clearer and clearer until it seemed to be standing right on the surface of Europa, on the other side of the largest hole in the ice and next to the robot drilling camp. It was a human being wearing a space suit, but even so it was creating a form that Annie had seen plenty of times on Earth and in space.
“Nooo!” she cried, quite forgetting to keep quiet herself. “It’s George!”
Is There Anyone Out There?
To understand the Universe, you must know about atoms. About the forces that bind them. The contours of space and time. The birth and death of stars, the dance of galaxies. The secrets of black holes …
But that is not enough. These ideas cannot explain everything. They can explain the light of stars. But not the lights that shine from Planet Earth.
To understand these lights, you must know about life. About minds.
Somewhere in the cosmos, perhaps, intelligent life may be watching these lights of ours, aware of what they mean.
Or do our lights wander a lifeless cosmos? Unseen beacons, announcing that here, on one rock, the Universe has discovered its existence?
Either way, there is no bigger question. It’s time to commit to finding the answer, to search for life beyond Earth.
We are alive. We are intelligent.
We must know… .
Stephen
Chapter Nineteen
George and the Blue Moon Page 17