by Lucy Hawking
Fortunately, new radio telescopes are speeding up our search for signals, and it’s possible that within a few dozen years we could hear a faint broadcast from another civilization.
What would they be saying to us? Well, of course we can only guess, but one thing the extraterrestrials will surely know: They’d better send us a long message, because speedy conversation is simply impossible. For example, imagine that the nearest aliens are on a planet around a star that’s one thousand light-years away. If we pick up a signal from them tomorrow, it will have taken one thousand years to get to us. It will be an old message, but that’s okay. After all, if you read Sophocles or Shakespeare, those are old “messages” too, but they’re still interesting.
However, if we choose to reply, our response to the aliens will take one thousand years to get to them, and another one thousand years will pass before their answer gets back to us! In other words, even a simple “Hello?” and its alien response, “Zork?” would take twenty centuries. So while talking on the radio is a lot faster than traveling in rockets for a meet-and-greet, it’s still going to be a very relaxed conversation. That suggests that the aliens might send us books and books of stuff about themselves and their planet, knowing that we won’t be doing a lot of chatting.
But even if they do, even if they send us The Alien Encyclopedia, will we be able to read it? After all, unlike in the movies and TV, the extraterrestrials aren’t going to be fluent in English or any other earthly language. It’s possible that they may use pictures or even mathematics to help make their message understandable, but we won’t know until or unless we pick up a signal.
No matter what they send us, detecting a radio squeal coming from a distant world would be big news. Indeed, imagine what it was like five centuries ago when explorers first discovered that there were entire continents, filled with inhabitants, that were completely unknown in Europe. Finding the New World changed everything.
Today, we’ve replaced the wooden sailing ships of those early explorers with giant aluminium-and-steel antennae. Someday soon they may tell us something extraordinarily interesting: namely, that in the vast expanses of space, humans are not the only ones watching the Universe.
And today’s young people may be those who will be there to listen—and to respond. This could be you!
Seth
* * *
Chapter 6
The next morning at breakfast, George’s eyelids were very heavy, and he felt confused to be eating breakfast at the time he’d usually be having lunch. However, that felt like nothing compared to Annie’s revelations from the night before. He didn’t know what to make of what she’d told him.
Once before, George hadn’t believed her: When he first met Annie and she had told him she went on journeys around the Solar System, he had laughed at her and said she was lying. But that had turned out to be true in the end, so he wondered what to make of this latest story.
It worried him that, according to Annie, Eric didn’t seem to be taking the alien message seriously. On the other hand, if it meant he might get a trip out to space, just to check it out, he felt he would probably go along with Annie’s version. Anything to fly through the cosmos again, even if it was on a fruitless quest for an alien life-form!
Susan suddenly spoke up. “I thought we’d show George the neighborhood today,” she said. “Take him around and maybe go to the beach.”
Annie looked stricken. “Mom!” she said. “George and I have stuff to do here.”
“And I’ve got my theories on the information-loss paradox to work on,” said Emmett rather sourly. “Not that anyone cares.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Susan firmly. “George has come a long way to see us, and we can’t expect him to just sit in a tree, chatting to you all day.” The phone rang and she answered it. “George, it’s for you,” she said, passing over the receiver.
“George!” came the crackly voice of his dad, sounding like he was shouting from a very long way away. “Just wanted to let you know we’ve arrived in Tuvalu! We’re just about to get on the ship and sail for the atolls. How’s it going in Florida?”
“It’s fine!” said George. “I’m here with Eric and Susan and Annie and this other boy called Emmett who is—”
But the connection cut off. George handed the phone back to Susan.
“I’m sure he’ll call again,” she reassured him. “And your mom and dad know you are okay. Now we’re going to go out and have lots of fun!”
Annie rolled her eyes at George, but there was no getting out of it. Her mom had made plans to take them to the theme park, to the pool, to a dolphin sanctuary, to the beach. They were out all day and all evening for several days. There was no opportunity for them to get Cosmos out of his secret hiding place and work on him. And with Emmett constantly trailing their every move, they hardly even had a chance to look at Annie’s alien message—only once, when they locked themselves into the bathroom and studied the piece of paper.
“So, that’s a person,” said Annie. “And that arrow must mean the person is going somewhere. But where?”
“Um, the person is going to…,” said George. “A series of small dots moving around a bigger dot. I know! What if the dots are the planets in orbit around the Sun, which is at the center? The arrow points to the fourth dot, so it means the person is going to the fourth planet from the Sun, which is—”
“Mars!” said Annie. “I knew it! There is a link to Homer. This message means we have to go to Mars and—”
“But what does the rest mean?” said George. “What does all this mean—a person with an arrow crossed out?”
“Perhaps that’s what will happen if the person doesn’t go to Mars?”
“If the person doesn’t go to Mars,” said George, looking down the column, “then the funny-looking stick insect falls over.”
“Funny-looking stick insect…,” said Annie. “What if that’s Homer? If the person doesn’t go to Mars, maybe something terrible will happen to Homer. We have to get out there and save Homer! It’s really important!”
“Look, Annie,” said George doubtfully. “I know your dad’s upset about Homer, but he is just a robot. They could send another one. I just don’t know that these messages are enough to prove anything.”
“Look at the last line,” said Annie in a spooky voice. “And be afraid.”
“If the person doesn’t go to Mars and doesn’t save Homer, then…,” said George.
“No planet Earth,” said Annie.
“No planet Earth?” exclaimed George.
“No planet Earth,” confirmed Annie. “That’s what the message means. We have to go to Mars to save Homer, because if we don’t, something terrible will happen to this planet.”
“We have to tell your dad,” said George urgently.
“I’ve tried,” said Annie. “See what you can do.”
At that moment they heard a banging on the bathroom door.
“Come out!” shouted Emmett. “Resistance is futile!”
“Can I flush his head down the toilet?” said Annie longingly.
“No!” said George sharply. “You can’t. He’s not a bad kid. He’s really nice if you actually try to talk to him….”
Emmett started bashing on the door again.
At last Annie’s mom decided they all needed a quiet day at home. The next day was to be the great highlight of George’s visit. Eric had got them tickets to see the launch of the space shuttle! They were going to the launchpad to watch the mighty spacecraft blast off from Earth. Even Emmett got thoroughly overexcited. He kept muttering space-shuttle commands to himself and reciting facts about orbital velocity.
George and Annie were both thrilled for different reasons. George was gripped by the idea of the enormous rocket that gave the space shuttle the power it needed to zoom upward into space. In the past, he had walked through Cosmos’s doorway to travel through space; now he was going to watch a real spacecraft begin its great journey!
As for Anni
e, she was fizzing with secretive joy over the idea of the launch. “My plan is coming together,” she whispered to George. “We will uncover the aliens! We will!” Annoyingly, she refused to explain to George quite how she meant to do this. When he asked her, she got a faraway look in her eyes. “It’s all in the plan,” she told him. “And when you need to know, then I will tell you. For now, you must believe.” It was very irritating for George, and he much preferred talking to Emmett than to Annie when she was in full-on mystery mode.
Even so, the more she stalked about, impersonating a secret agent working on extraterrestrial activity, the more George racked his brains as to what the alien message might mean and where it had come from. He had tried talking to Eric about it, but he hadn’t got far.
“George,” Eric said patiently. “I’m sorry that I don’t believe that an evil alien life-form is messing around with my robot or wanting to destroy the Earth, but I don’t. So please drop it. I’ve got other things on my mind. Like how to send another robot out to Mars to take over the work that Homer should have done. This has been a terrible time for us at the Global Space Agency. Not everyone is as excited about space travel as you and Annie. Some people don’t accept that it has any use at all.”
“But what about all the inventions that have come from space?” said George hotly. “If we hadn’t gone into space, there’s so much stuff we wouldn’t have now on Earth.”
* * *
SPACE INVENTIONS
There are many things we use on Earth that have been improved or developed because of advances in space technology. Here are just some of them:
air purification
anti-fog ski goggles
automatic insulin pumps
bone-analyzer technology
car brake linings
cataract-surgery tools
composite golf clubs
corrosion protection coating
Dustbuster
earthquake prediction system
energy-saving air-conditioning
fire resistant materials
fire/flame detectors
flat-panel televisions
food packaging
freeze-dried technology
high-density batteries
home security systems
lead poison detection
miniaturized circuits
MRI imaging
noise reduction
pollution measuring devices
portable x-ray devices
programmable pacemakers
protective clothing
radioactive-leak detectors
robotic hands
satellite navigation
school bus design
scratch-resistant lenses
sewage treatment
shock-absorbing helmets
smokestack monitors
solar energy systems
storm warning services (Doppler radar)
studless winter tires
swimming-pool purification systems
toothpaste tubes
* * *
“And,” continued Eric gently, “even if we could get Cosmos working, after all that computer has been through, I don’t think it’s safe to use the portal. What if he broke down when someone was out there in space and we couldn’t get him started again in time to rescue them? Homer is only a robot, George. It isn’t worth the risk.”
“But what about the end of the message?” persisted George. “With the Earth crossed out?”
“It probably comes from some crank,” said Eric. “And there are plenty of them. Don’t think about it anymore. I will get Homer sorted out—somehow. And the planet isn’t coming to an end, not for several billions of years, when our Sun comes to the end of its life. So there’s no panic.”
“Finally!” said Annie when her dad went to work, her mom popped out for a few minutes, and Emmett seemed safely absorbed with his online simulator. “We can work on Operation Alien Life-form. We don’t have long. And we have to get Cosmos working before tomorrow. It’s crucial. Come on, George!” She ran up the stairs to her parents’ room.
George followed her, grumbling as he went. “Are you actually going to tell me what we’re doing?” he demanded from outside her parents’ bedroom. “I’m sick of you saying, ‘It’s on a need-to-know basis and you don’t need to know.’ I came over because you said you needed my help. So far you’ve hardly told me anything about your plan.”
Annie emerged beaming from her parents’ room, holding a metal box. “I’m sorry!” she whispered. “But I didn’t want you to tell Emmett about us going into space to chase aliens.”
“I wouldn’t!” said George, feeling hurt that she didn’t trust him.
Annie barged her way into her bedroom and put the metal box down on her desk. “Cosmos,” she announced, “is in here. And I have the key.” She produced a tiny little key on a chain around her neck, then opened the box and pulled out the familiar silver computer. She locked the box again and took it back to the wardrobe in her parents’ room.
“How did you get the key?” asked George when she returned.
“I borrowed it,” said Annie mysteriously. “After I got Cosmos out and received the alien message, Dad decided to lock him away. But he doesn’t realize how smart I am.”
“Or how sneaky?” commented George.
“Whatever,” said Annie. “Let’s get going.”
She opened up Cosmos and plugged him in. She pressed ENTER—the secret key to the Universe—but nothing happened. She pressed it again, but the screen stayed blank.
Suddenly her bedroom door inched open and a nose poked around it.
“What are you doing?” said Emmett.
“Nothing!” said Annie, jumping up to try to block his view. But Emmett had already edged his way in.
“If you don’t tell me what you’re doing with that computer,” he said slyly, “I’ll tell your mom and dad.”
“Tell them what?” said Annie.
“I’ll tell them whatever it is you’re doing that you don’t want me—or them—to know about.”
“But you don’t know what I’m doing,” said Annie.
“Yes, I do,” said Emmett. “That computer is the one you think is really powerful. The one you’re not supposed to use by yourselves. I’ve been listening to you and George when you don’t think I can hear you.”
“You little worm!” screamed Annie, throwing herself at Emmett.
“I hate you!” he yelled back, tussling with her. “I never wanted to come here! I wanted to go to Silicon Valley with my mom and dad. This is the worst summer of my life!”
“JUST SHUT UP, BOTH OF YOU!” shouted George.
Annie and Emmett let go of each other and gazed at the normally mild-mannered George with surprise.
“Now look here,” he said. “You’re both being ridiculous. Emmett’s having a horrible summer and he’s really bored. But you’re a computer genius, right, Emmett?”
“Affirmative,” said Emmett sulkily.
“And, Annie—you’ve got a computer problem you can’t solve. So why don’t you ask Emmett—nicely—if he’ll take a look at Cosmos and see if he knows what to do with him? He might enjoy doing it and we might be able to stop fighting. Okay?”
“S’pose so,” grumbled Annie.
“Right,” said George. “Annie, you explain.”
She pointed to the silver laptop lying on her bed. “This is a computer—”
“I can see that.” Emmett scowled.
She ploughed on. “—that can do special things. Like open doorways to places in space.”
Emmett looked down his nose. “I doubt that.”
“No, it can,” said George. “The computer has a name—he’s called Cosmos and when he works, he’s amazing. Eric invented him but we blew him up by mistake last year. Now Eric really needs Cosmos and we need you to get him working again. Emmett, do you think you could try to fix him?”
“I’ll get my emergency computer kit!” said Emm
ett, who was now beaming from ear to ear. He dashed out of the door.
“He’s not so bad,” said George to Annie. “Just give him a chance.”
“Just one,” muttered Annie.
Emmett came back with a collection of hardware, CDs, and screwdrivers of different sizes. He arranged them all in neat piles and started fiddling around with Cosmos. The others watched him in silence, noticing how the smug look on his face faded as he grappled with their old friend. A frown crept over his brow.
“Wow!” he remarked. “I have never seen anything like this! I didn’t think they could make a computer I didn’t understand!”
“Can you save him?” whispered Annie.
Emmett looked baffled. “This hardware is mega-cool,” he said. “And I thought quantum computing was just a theory.” He twiddled a bit more, biting his lip in concentration.
The noise of cicadas buzzing in the garden floated in from the window. But suddenly they heard another sound. It was very faint and none of them could be absolutely sure they’d really heard it.
“Wasn’t that—?”
“Shush!” said Annie. They heard it again. A very quiet beep. When they looked closely at the great computer, they realized that a tiny yellow light on one side of him had come on. In the middle of his screen, which until now had been blank, they saw a thin line appear.
“Emmett!” squeaked Annie, hugging him enthusiastically. He flinched away and made a face. “You did it! I’m going to try talking to him.” She leaned toward the screen. “Cosmos, please come back!” she pleaded. “We need you.”