by Lucy Hawking
“That depends!” said Eric cheerfully. “Maybe I’ll hitch a lift on the next mission into space and go out there forever.” He caught sight of George’s desolate face. “No, no, I don’t mean that,” he added hastily. “I couldn’t leave you all behind. I’d make sure I had a way back to planet Earth.”
“But will you come back and live here?” persisted George. “In your house?”
“It’s not really my house,” said Eric. “It’s just a place I was given, where I could work on Cosmos without anyone finding out. But unfortunately, someone—or rather, Graham Reeper—was here already, lying in wait for me.”
“How did Doctor Reeper know that you’d come here?” asked George, wrapping up an old telescope.
“Ah, well, looking back, of course I realize this place was a far more obvious choice than I realized,” replied Eric. “You see, this house belonged to our former tutor, one of the greatest scientists who ever lived. No one knows where he is right now—he seems to have disappeared. But before that happened he wrote me a letter, offering me this house as a safe place to work on Cosmos. It was so important to keep Cosmos away from harm, but in the end, I just couldn’t do that.” He looked really sad.
George put down the telescope and reached for his schoolbag. He got out a package of sandwich cookies, ripped them open, and passed them over. Eric smiled at the sight of his favorite cookies. “I should really make us a cup of tea to go with your cookies,” he said. “But I think I’ve packed the kettle.”
George crunched the cookie between his teeth. “What I don’t understand,” he said, realizing this might be his last chance to ask, “is why you don’t just build another Cosmos.”
“If I could,” said Eric, “I would. But my tutor, Graham Reeper, and I built the prototype of Cosmos together, many years ago. The modern version of Cosmos still has some of the original features from that first computer. That’s why it’s not possible for me to simply build another one. Without the other two, I’m not sure I know how. One of them has vanished and the other, Reeper—well, we know all about him. In a way”—Eric licked the cream out of the center of the cookie—“Cosmos breaking down has changed all our lives. Now that I don’t have him, I have to look for other ways to continue my work on space. And it means I’m not always worrying that someone will find out about my supercomputer and try to steal him. We moved so many times in order to keep Cosmos out of danger. Poor Annie, she’s lived in so many different houses. But this is the one where she’s been happiest.”
“You wouldn’t know it,” said George darkly. “She doesn’t seem sad to be going.”
“She doesn’t want to leave you. You’re her best friend,” Eric told him. “She’s going to miss you, George, even if she doesn’t show it. She won’t find another friend like you in a hurry.”
George gulped. “I’ll miss her, too,” he muttered, turning bright red. “And you. And Susan.”
“We’ll see one another again,” said Eric gently. “You won’t be missing us forever. And if you ever need me, you know that you just have to let me know. I’ll do anything I can for you, George.”
“Um, thanks,” murmered George. A thought struck him. “But is it safe for you to go?” he said, clutching at a ray of hope. “Shouldn’t you stay here? What if Reeper follows you to the United States?”
“I don’t think there’s much poor, old Reeper can do to me now,” said Eric sadly.
“‘Poor, old Reeper’?” exclaimed George hotly. “He tried to throw you into a black hole! I don’t understand why you feel sorry for him! I don’t get it. Why didn’t you do something about him when you had the chance?”
“I’ve ruined enough of Reeper’s life already,” said Eric. George opened his mouth to speak, but Eric cut him off. “Look, George,” he said firmly, “Reeper’s confronted me already, and I expect that’s enough for him. He’s had his revenge, and I don’t think I’ll be hearing from him again. Anyway, Cosmos doesn’t work anymore, so I don’t have anything that Reeper would want. I’m safe, my family is safe, and now I want to go to the Global Space Agency. They’ve offered me the chance to work on finding signs of life on Mars and in other places in the Solar System. You do understand I couldn’t refuse?”
“S’pose so,” said George. “Will you tell me if you find anyone out there in space?”
“I most certainly will,” promised Eric. “You’ll be among the first to know. And, George…I want you to keep this telescope.” He pointed to the bronze cylinder that George had been carefully wrapping in paper. “It’s to remind you to keep looking at the stars.”
“Really?” said George with wonder, unwrapping the telescope again and feeling the cool, smooth metal under his hand. “But isn’t it very valuable?”
“Well, so are you. And so are the observations you’ll make when you use it. To help you, I’ve got another special good-bye present for you.” Eric dived into a nearby pile of books and finally—triumphantly—came up with a bright yellow volume that he waved in the air at George. On the front in big letters it said: The User’s Guide to the Universe.
“Do you remember,” he asked George, “when I asked all my science friends at the party to write a page for me, answering some of the questions you posed? Well, I made their answers into a book—one for you and one for Annie. Here it is! When you read it, remember that I wanted you to understand something about being a scientist. I wanted to show you that me and my friends love to read one another’s work and talk about it. We exchange our theories and our ideas, and that’s one of the really important—and fun—parts of being a scientist: having colleagues who help, inspire, and challenge you. That’s what this book is all about. I thought maybe you’d like to look at the first few pages with me. I wrote them myself,” he added modestly.
Eric started to read.
* * *
THE USER’S GUIDE TO THE UNIVERSE
WHY DO WE GO INTO SPACE?
Why do we go into space? Why go to all that effort and spend all that money just for a few lumps of Moon rock? Aren’t there better things we could be doing here on Earth?
Well, it’s a bit like Europe before 1492. Back then, people thought it was a big waste of money to send Christopher Columbus off on a wild-goose chase. But then he discovered America, and that made a huge difference. Just think—if he hadn’t, we wouldn’t have the Big Mac. And lots of other things, of course.
Spreading out into space will have an even greater effect. It will completely change the future of the human race; it could decide whether we have a future at all.
It won’t solve any of our immediate problems on planet Earth, but it will help us look at them in a different way. The time has come when we need to look outward across the Universe rather than inward at ourselves on an increasingly overcrowded planet.
Moving the human race out into space won’t happen quickly. By that I mean it could take hundreds, or even thousands, of years. We could have a base on the Moon within thirty years, reach Mars in fifty years, and explore the moons of the outer planets in two hundred years. By reach, I mean with manned—or should I say personed?—flight. We have already driven rovers on Mars and landed a probe on Titan, a moon of Saturn, but when we’re dealing with the future of the human race, we have to go there ourselves and not just send robots.
But go where? Now that astronauts have lived for months on the International Space Station, we know that human beings can survive away from planet Earth. But we also know that living in zero gravity on the Space Station doesn’t just make it difficult to have a cup of tea! It’s not very good for people to live in zero gravity for a long time, so if we’re to have a base in space, we need it to be on a planet or moon.
So which one shall we choose? The most obvious is the Moon. It is close and quite easy to get to. We’ve already landed on the Moon, and driven across it in a buggy. On the other hand, the Moon is small and without an atmosphere or a magnetic field to deflect the solar wind particles, like on Earth. There is no liquid water,
but there may be ice in the craters at the north and south poles. A colony on the Moon could use this as a source of oxygen, with power provided by nuclear energy or solar panels. The Moon could be a base for travel to the rest of the Solar System.
What about Mars? That’s our next obvious target. Mars is farther from the Sun than planet Earth is, so it gets less warmth from the sunlight, making temperatures much colder. Once, Mars had a magnetic field, but that decayed four billion years ago: It was stripped of most of its atmosphere, leaving it with only 1% of the pressure of the Earth’s atmosphere.
In the past, the atmospheric pressure—which means the weight of the air above you in the atmosphere—must have been higher because we can see what appear to be dried-up channels and lakes. Liquid water cannot exist on Mars now, as it would just evaporate.
However, there is lots of water in the form of ice at the two poles. If we went to live on Mars, we could use this. We could also use the minerals and metals that volcanoes have brought to the surface.
So the Moon and Mars might be quite good for us. But where else could we go in the Solar System? Mercury and Venus are way too hot, while Jupiter and Saturn are gas giants, with no solid surface.
We could try the moons of Mars, but they are very small. Some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn might be better. Titan, a moon of Saturn, is larger and more massive than our Moon, and has a dense atmosphere. The Cassini-Huygens mission of NASA and ESA, the European Space Agency, has landed a probe on Titan, which sent back pictures of the surface. However, it is very cold, being so far from the Sun, and I wouldn’t like to live next to a lake of liquid methane.
What about beyond our Solar System? From looking across the Universe, we know that quite a few stars have planets in orbit around them. Until recently we could see only giant planets the size of Jupiter or Saturn. But now we are starting to spot smaller Earth-like planets, too. Some of these will lie in the Goldilocks Zone, where their distances from the home star is in the right range for liquid water to exist on their surfaces. There are maybe a thousand stars within ten light-years of Earth. If 1% of these have an Earth-size planet in the Goldilocks Zone, we have ten candidate new worlds.
At the moment we can’t travel very far across the Universe. In fact, we can’t even imagine how we might be able to cover such huge distances. But that’s what we should be aiming to do in the future, over the next two hundred to five hundred years. The human race has existed as a separate species for about two million years. Civilization began about ten thousand years ago, and the rate of development has been steadily increasing. We have now reached the stage where we can boldly go where no one has gone before. And who knows what we will find and who we will meet?
Good luck on all your cosmic journeys, and I hope you find this book useful.
Interstellar best wishes,
Eric
* * *
Chapter 3
Finally, the day came when the doors slammed on the last vanload of Eric, Annie, and Susan’s belongings, and they were standing in the street, saying goodbye to George and his parents.
“Don’t worry!” said George’s dad. “I’ll keep an eye on the house for you. Might tidy up the garden a bit.” He gave Eric a firm handshake, which made the scientist turn rather pale and rub his hand afterward.
George’s mom hugged Annie. “Who’s going to kick a ball over my fence now?” she said. “My vegetable patch is going to find life very quiet.”
Annie whispered something in her ear. Daisy smiled. “Of course you can.” She turned to George. “Annie would like to say good-bye to Freddy,” she told him.
George nodded, not wanting to speak, in case his voice wobbled. In silence, the two of them went through George’s house and out into the backyard.
“Good-bye, Freddy,” cooed Annie, leaning over the pigsty. “I’m going to miss you so much!”
George took a deep breath. “Freddy’s going to miss you too,” he said, his voice squeaking from the effort of holding back the tears. “He really likes you,” he added. “He’s had a really great time since you’ve been here. It isn’t going to be the same once you’re gone.”
“I’ve had a great time as well,” said Annie sadly.
“Freddy hopes you don’t find another pig in America that you like as much as him,” said George.
“I’ll never like another pig as much as Freddy,” declared Annie. “He’s my best pig ever!”
“Annie!” they heard Susan calling through the house. “Annie, we have to go!”
“Freddy thinks you’re the best,” said George. “And he’ll be waiting for you when you get back.”
“Bye, George,” said Annie.
“Bye, Annie,” said George. “See you in space.”
Annie walked slowly away. George climbed into the pigsty and sat on the warm straw. “It’s just you and me now, Freddy, my cosmic pig,” he said sadly. “Just like it was before.”
After Eric, Susan, and Annie had left, it seemed horribly quiet in the backyard. The days stretched on and on, each one pretty much the same as the last. There was nothing particularly wrong with George’s life these days. The horrible Dr. Reeper had left the school, and now that George had won the big science competition, he had found some friends to spend his lunch breaks with. The bullies who had given him such a hard time when Dr. Reeper was around tended to leave him alone these days. At home, George had his computer, so he could find out interesting stuff for his homework—or about science in general, in which he was more and more interested—and send e-mails to his friends. He regularly logged on to the various space sites to read about all the new discoveries. He loved looking at the pictures taken by space-based observatories, like the Hubble Space Telescope, and reading accounts of space journeys by astronauts.
But although this was all really fascinating, it wasn’t the same without Annie and her family to share these discoveries with. Each night, George looked up into the sky with the hope of seeing a shooting star fall toward Earth, as a sign that his cosmic adventures were not yet over. But one never came.
Then one day, just as he had given up hope, he got a very surprising e-mail from Annie. He’d written to her lots of times, and in return received rambling messages full of long, boring stories about kids he’d never met.
But this message was different. It read:
* * *
George, Mom and Dad have written to your parents to ask you to come and stay over summer vacation. YOU MUST COME! The fact is, I need you. Have COSMIC mission! Do not chicken out!! Elderly loons are useless, so say nothing of space adventures to them. Even Dad says NO, which is situation serious. So pretend is normal trip. SPACE SUITS AT THE READY! YRS IN THE UNIVERSE, xxx A
* * *
George e-mailed her right back.
* * *
What?? When?? Where??
* * *
But her reply was short.
* * *
Can say no more for now. Make plans to come. Raid bank for ticket and get here, xx A
* * *
George just sat there, staring at the screen, in shock. There was nothing he wanted more than to go and see Annie and her family in Florida. He would go in a heartbeat even if there wasn’t an adventure. But how? How would he get there? What if his parents said no? Would he have to run away from home and hide on an ocean liner to get there? Or sneak onto an airplane when no one was looking? He’d slipped out into space through a computer-generated portal when he wasn’t supposed to. But getting to America suddenly seemed far more complicated than fishing someone out of a black hole. Life on Earth…, he thought. Much trickier than life in space.
Then he had a good idea. Gran. That’s who I need. He e-mailed her.
* * *
Dear Gran. Must go to America. Have been invited to stay with a friend but need to go SOON! Is very very important. Sorry can’t explain. Can you help me?
* * *
The answer pinged back in just a few seconds.
* * *
* * *
Sure enough, just an hour later, there was a ferocious banging on the front door. George’s dad went to open it, but as soon as he did, he was barged out of the way by his mother, who was waving a cane and looking very angry.
“Terence, George must go to America to stay with his friends,” she announced, without so much as a hello. She brandished her walking stick at George’s dad.
“Mother,” he said, looking furious, “how dare you interfere?”
“I can’t hear you—I’m deaf, you know,” she said, thrusting a notebook and pen at him.
“Mother, I am very well aware of that,” he said through gritted teeth.
“You’ll have to write it down!” said Gran. “I can’t hear you! I can’t hear a word you say.”
George going to Florida—or not—is none of your business, he wrote in her notepad.
Gran looked over at George and winked craftily at him. He flashed a quick smile back.
George’s mom had come in from the garden and was wiping her muddy hands on a towel. “That’s very odd, George,” she said quietly, “because it was only this morning that we opened a letter from Susan and Eric, inviting you to visit during your summer vacation. How does your gran know about this already?”
“Um, perhaps Gran is psychic?” said George quickly.
“I see,” said his mom, giving him a funny look. “The thing is, George, Eric and Susan told me they were asking us first, before you knew about the invitation, in case it wasn’t possible for you to come. They didn’t want you to be disappointed if it didn’t work out. And, you see, we just can’t afford the fare, George.”