George's Cosmic Treasure Hunt

by Lucy Hawking

  Another objection is that the ancient Martian ocean would have been too salty for known terrestrial life-forms. But maybe Martian life was originally adapted to very salty conditions, or perhaps it developed in freshwater lakes?

  Thus life may well have begun on Mars—at the edge of a huge ocean there—then hitched a ride to the Earth on board a meteor. So our ultimate ancestors may, in fact, have been Martians!

  Brandon

  * * *

  Chapter 9

  As George and Annie jumped through the portal doorway, George twisted around to look back. For a millisecond he saw the Clean Room on planet Earth, and Emmett’s worried face peering through the portal. But then the doorway closed and disappeared entirely, leaving no trace in the dusty Martian sky of where it had once been.

  Propelled by the force of their leap through the doorway, George and Annie traveled through the Martian atmosphere without landing for a few yards. They were holding hands tightly, so they didn’t lose each other on this strange and empty planet. George touched down, but the impact of his feet on the surface sent them back up again in a great bouncing leap.

  “Where are the mountains?” he called to Annie through the transmitter as they landed again and quickly dropped the other one’s hand. They were standing on a huge expanse of flat, rubble-strewn, reddish ground. As far as they could see, there was nothing on either side but an endless scattering of red rocks across the desert planet. In the sky the Sun—the same star that shone so brightly on the Earth—seemed more distant, smaller, and colder, its light and warmth coming from farther away than on their home planet. The light looked pink, because of all the red dust floating in the air, but it wasn’t the beautiful familiar rosy glow of an earthly sunrise. Instead, it was a luminous color that seemed alien and unwelcoming to the first humanoids ever to complete the journey from Earth to Mars.

  “No mountains here,” Annie told George. “We’re at the north pole of Mars. The volcanoes and valleys are in the middle of the planet.”

  “How long have we got until sunset?” he asked, suddenly realizing they wouldn’t be able to see anything once the Sun went down. The absolute nothingness of this empty planet was giving him the creeps, and he certainly didn’t want to be there in the dark.

  “Ages,” said Annie. “The sun doesn’t set at the north pole in summer. But I don’t want to stay that long. I don’t like it here.” Even though her space suit protected her from the conditions on Mars, she shivered.

  It wasn’t nice to be so lonely and, like George, Annie suddenly missed being on a planet with people, buildings, movement, noise, and life. Even though they sometimes felt they would love to live on a planet where there was no one to annoy them or order them around, the reality was very different. On an empty planet, there would be nothing to do and no one to play with. They might have dreamed of being masters of their very own world, but when it came down to it, home didn’t seem so bad after all.

  George jumped into the air again, to see how high he could go. He rose about a couple of feet and landed a second later, not far from where Annie was still standing.

  “That was amazing!” he said.

  “We’d better try not to leave too many footprints,” warned Annie, pointing to the marks George had made on the surface, “or people will see them when the Mars orbiter passes over this place and takes a photo. And then they’ll think there really are Martians.”

  “I can see Homer!” said George, spotting a lonely little figure in the distance. Now separate, they bounced closer. “But what’s he doing?” he added in amazement. The robot looked very busy. He was rolling to and fro, chucking bits of rock in the air.

  “That’s what we’re here to find out,” said Annie. “I’m going to call Emmett. Emmett!” she said into her voice transmitter. “Emmett? Rats! He’s not answering.”

  They took a few long paces toward Homer and watched as he spun mysteriously—but purposefully—about.

  “Keep down!” hissed Annie, crouching. “Otherwise Homer might see us through his camera eyes. And then my dad will spot us on Mars and he’ll know where we are. That would be a disaster!”

  “But he won’t see us for a few minutes,” said George. “Not until the signal gets back to Earth. So even if Homer does take a picture of us, we’d still have time to get away.”

  “Huh!” Annie snorted. “It’s okay for you. If my dad sees us here, all that will happen to you is he’ll send you right back to England. But I’ll be stuck here—well, not here exactly. Not on Mars, but on Earth, with him being angry with me. And with every kind of boring punishment he can think of.”

  “Like what?” asked George.

  “Oh, I don’t know!” said Annie. “No soccer and extra math homework and washing space suits and no allowance for ever and ever and ever, I expect. Honestly, planet Earth won’t feel big enough.”

  “Do we have to be quiet too? Can Homer hear us?” asked George.

  “Hmm, don’t think so,” said Annie. “Mars has the wrong sort of atmosphere for noise to travel, so I don’t think he’s recording any sound, just pictures.” She paused for a second and then shouted into her voice transmitter, “BUT I WISH EMMETT COULD HEAR US!”

  “Ouch!” said George, whose space helmet felt like it might explode from the sound of Annie’s voice erupting into it.

  “Who? What? Where?” Finally, they heard Emmett.

  “Emmett, you twit!” said Annie. “Why didn’t you answer before?”

  “Sorry,” came Emmett’s voice. “I was just reading something…Are you okay?”

  “Yes, we are, no thanks to you, ground control,” said Annie. “We have landed on Mars and we are approaching Homer. Do you have any further information for us?”

  “Just checking,” murmured Emmett. “I’ll get back to you.”

  “Can I boing right over him?” asked George longingly. He was really enjoying the lower gravity on Mars and wanted to keep jumping higher and higher. “Then I could look down to see what he’s doing?” George’s white space suit had turned reddish brown from the Martian dust.

  “No, you’d crash into him!” said Annie. “You can only go about two and a half times higher on Mars than you can on Earth. So don’t try anything silly. We need to get to Homer,” she said, “but stay to one side. That way we should miss the camera.”

  They took a few giant loopy steps nearer to the robot, who was now motionless after his burst of frenzied activity, as though it had worn him out and he needed a rest.

  “He’s stopped fooling around. Let’s creep up on him!” said Annie. It wasn’t easy to tiptoe in heavy space boots, but they did their best to approach the robot without him noticing. Homer’s legs were splayed firmly against the Martian ground. His solar arrays—the panels that allowed him to collect radiation from the Sun and turn it into energy—were covered in dust. His thick rubber wheels were now still, and his long robotic arm hung limply by his side, but his camera was still flashing its beady eyes.

  But as they got near to him, they noticed something else—something they hadn’t seen on the pictures Homer had sent back from Mars.

  “Over there!” said Annie. “Look!”

  Next to Homer on the flat Martian surface they saw a series of marks made in the dust and rubble by Homer’s tires.

  “It’s a message!” yelled George, forgetting not to shout while wearing the voice transmitter. “It’s just like the one Cosmos received! It’s the same sort of marks! Someone has left us a message on Mars!”

  Annie kicked him with her space boot. “Don’t shout!” she whispered.

  At the same time they heard Emmett’s excited voice from planet Earth. “A message? On Mars? What does it say?”

  “We’re trying to work it out,” said Annie. “What if Homer wasn’t just messing around? What if all that dancing around he did was because he was writing a message for us?”

  They took a careful stride, which landed them right next to the squiggles Homer had drawn in the dust.


  “It’s going to take a few minutes,” George warned, “before we can work it out.”

  He and Annie bounced together back and forth over the message as they tried to make sense of it.

  “Can you tell me anything about the marks?” asked Emmett urgently. “Anything I can enter to see what Cosmos makes of it?”

  Just then George and Annie were flying right over the message. “Um, well,” said George. “There’s a circle surrounded by other circles.”

  “It could be a planet with rings,” said Annie. “It could be Saturn. And look, next to it, all those rocks arranged in a row, that could be the Solar System, like in the other message.”

  “And over there—there’s the planet with rings again, but it’s also got lots of little pieces of stone arranged around it.”

  “Maybe it’s the moons of Saturn,” came Emmett’s voice. “Do you think the message wants you to go to the moons of Saturn? I’m putting the information into Cosmos now, to see if he can give us another clue. Can you count how many little pieces of stone? Saturn has quite a lot—about sixty. But only seven round ones.”

  The wind, which had been just a breeze, was now starting to blow more strongly, whipping bits of surface rubble up into the air and whirling them around.

  “Oh no! Severe weather warning”—Emmett read off Cosmos’s screen—“incoming gales from the south. Potential evacuation situation.”

  “We need more time!” George replied. “We don’t know what the message means yet! We’re trying to count the moons around the planet with rings.”

  “But it does have the same ending,” pointed out Annie, whose blood had run colder than space itself when she saw the last picture in the row. “It still says no planet Earth.” They made another jump and landed right next to Homer. Annie got hold of his legs with her hand to stop herself from falling over in the strong wind; with the other hand, she grabbed on to George.

  Emmett came back over the transmitter, sounding panicked. “I don’t think you have more time,” he said urgently. “Cosmos has detected a giant dust storm, which is spreading very fast toward you! We have to get you out of there before you get lost in it! Cosmos says he may not be able to find you in a dust storm—oh!” He broke off abruptly.

  “Emmett, what is it?” Annie and George had just seen the huge dust clouds in the far distance, rolling over the empty ground toward them.

  “Cosmos is stalled!” Emmett said in despair. “He says: Reverse portal not available at this moment due to an urgent system update. Until he’s finished updating, he can’t bring you back! He can only send you farther out!”

  “Em, get us out of here!” shouted Annie, not caring how much noise she made now. “Send us somewhere! Anywhere! But out of this storm! I can’t hold on much longer!”

  The wind was blowing the surface dust up around them. Homer was already covered in it, his shiny solar arrays blanked out. George and Annie could only just see each other as the torrent swirled around them. Annie was still hanging on to Homer’s leg, with George floating out behind her, buffeted by the terrible winds. He wrapped both hands tightly around one of Annie’s arms. But they both knew that, at any second, they could be blown away from each other and lost forever on Mars.

  “The moons of Saturn!” yelled George into his voice transmitter. “If you can’t bring us back, send us farther out! Send us to the next clue!”

  Through the gritty cloud, which was growing thicker by the second, they saw the faint outline of a doorway standing right next to them. As it became more solid-looking, George let go of Annie with one arm and grabbed the door frame. Swiveling around, he braced his feet against it, still holding tightly on to Annie, who was in turn still attached to Homer.

  “Open the door!” he bellowed to Emmett on Earth. “Annie! When I count down, I’m going to throw you through it! Let go of Homer!”

  “I can’t!” screamed Annie. “I can’t let go!”

  George realized she was frozen with fear that she might be blown away if she released her hold on Homer.

  “You have to!” he shouted back. “I can’t pull you and Homer through the doorway! I’m not strong enough!”

  The door swung open very fast. Behind it they could see a mysterious orange swirl.

  “On my count, Annie, let go!” said George. “Five, four, three, two, one.” He tried to hurl her through the door but she was still clinging to Homer. “Close your eyes,” he shouted, “and imagine Earth. I’ll be right behind you, Annie. I’m coming with you. Try again—you can do this. Five! Four! Three! Two! ONE!”

  Annie let go of Homer’s leg and catapulted through the doorway. George flung himself after her, swinging around the door frame and into another world—one he had never even dreamed of.

  The doorway shut behind him as the dust cloud swallowed the whole of Mars, sweeping Homer’s message and Annie and George’s footprints off the surface and covering the little robot in a blanket of reddish dust. All that was left was the tiny red light on Homer’s camera, winking away as he took photos of the Martian storm and sent them back to Annie’s dad, so many millions of miles away on friendly planet Earth.

  Chapter 10

  Far away from the Global Space Agency headquarters, but really very close in terms of space distances, Daisy, George’s mom, had just watched the sun rise over the Pacific Ocean. The sapphire night sky had changed to a light azure wash as the brilliant stars faded from view and the mist rose from the crystal-clear water. Daisy had been watching the sky all night.

  As the Sun had set the day before, she had seen Mercury and Venus hang just over the horizon, disappearing as the Moon rose in the east. The night darkened, and a million brilliant stars peppered the sky. Among them were Alpha and Beta Centauri, bright stars that both pointed the way to the Southern Cross, the great constellation that is visible only in the Southern Hemisphere. Daisy had lain back on the sands and looked into the heavens. Above her were the constellations Libra and Scorpius, with the beautiful star and heart of Scorpius, Antares, shining down on her.

  As she gazed at the stars, she thought of George at the space-shuttle launch and imagined his excitement at seeing a real spacecraft lift off into the skies above. Little did she realize, as she sat on the beach and looked upward, that George himself was somewhere out there in the Solar System, traveling between Mars and his next destination on the cosmic treasure hunt!

  It was just as well that poor Daisy had no idea her son was, at that moment, lost in space, because George’s dad, Terence, was currently lost on Earth, which was why she was sitting on the sand, waiting for the boat he’d taken to reappear. Terence and Daisy had gone to Tuvalu, a group of islands in the Pacific, a beautiful paradise lapped by a gentle blue sea. The sands were white, the palm trees waved, and enormous butterflies and exotic birds fluttered among the thick vegetation.

  But they hadn’t gone there for a vacation. They had joined a group of their eco-warrior friends who were on a mission to chart the changes affecting these islands, islets, and atolls.

  The seas that looked so friendly, warm, and inviting were actually rising, threatening to swallow up some of the tinier islands and leave no trace of life. Soon, all the people might lose their homes as the sea level got higher and higher. The ocean was rising because of a combination of melting land ice in the Antarctic, Greenland, and the glaciers, coupled with the thermal expansion of seawater. As water warms up, it takes up more space, which all adds up to more water and less land. Some of the islands and atolls were so low-lying that any change to the sea level became obvious very quickly, as homes were flooded and beaches disappeared; the main runway in the capital city was now unusable for much of the year because it was often underwater.

  The people could at least leave—even though they didn’t want to lose their homes and their lives on those wonderful islands. But all the birds, butterflies, and moths that had become used to that climate and that environment really didn’t have anywhere else to go.

  The Pacific Islanders
had been trying to tell the rest of the world what was happening to them. They’d been to big conferences and made lots of noise about how their homes might not exist in a few years’ time if global warming continued to make the sea rise at the same rate. Some people argued that the changes the Tuvaluans were experiencing were just part of a normal cycle of weather patterns that caused big storms to wash over the islands and drown them in monster tides. But others were convinced that what they saw was a sign of something more sinister that couldn’t be explained away so easily.

  In a sense, the fact that Tuvalu seemed to be sinking was nothing new. The five atolls that made up the Tuvalu group had been sinking into the sea for a very long time. The famous explorer and naturalist Charles Darwin had sailed across the Pacific in 1835 and come up with an explanation for how atolls, which from above look like flat rings of sand surrounding a lagoon, had formed. New islands were created in tropical waters due to volcanic activity. Over millions of years, coral—organisms that live in warm shallow water—built up along the shoreline of these new volcanic islands as they sank back into the sea. Eventually the volcanic island would disappear altogether, but the coral would carry on growing up to the surface and above the water, forming reefs and beaches.

  However, this process had taken place over a very long time—maybe as much as thirty million years. It was the past ten years and the next five that were giving the Tuvaluans serious cause for concern, and it was these rapid recent changes that they wanted to record.

  In order to do this, George’s dad and a couple of others had left the main atoll by boat to explore the islands. But they hadn’t come back when they were expected. They had taken maps for their journey but no GPS system or cell phone. They had said they would navigate by the stars, just as another explorer, Captain Cook, had done all those years ago when he had sailed across the Southern Seas to record the transit of Venus across the Sun.