George and the Big Bang

by Lucy Hawking

  “Bye, George,” said Eric. “Good luck.”

  “What about Annie?” asked George. The sobbing had now stopped.

  “I’ll ask her to text you,” said Susan. “When we have things figured out.”

  *

  George slipped out of Annie’s kitchen door and back across the yard, hopping through the hole in the fence. In the darkness, his house glowed with a welcoming, familiar light. The solar-powered electricity generator his eco-friendly dad had rigged up didn’t provide a strong current, and the battery it fed was often rather flat in the evenings.

  George opened the back door and went into the kitchen, where his mother, Daisy, was processing vegetable purée for the babies. The smell of home overwhelmed him. His mother turned and smiled.

  “Have you come home? To stay, I mean?” she asked, seeing her eldest child hovering in the doorway, clutching a large hamster cage and a knapsack. A lump came into George’s throat. He nodded.

  “I’m so glad,” Daisy said gently. “I know it’s been difficult for you here with the girls …” The twins were snoozing in two rush baskets on either side of the stove, their long, dark eyelashes sweeping down over petal-perfect cheeks. “It will get better,” she went on, hugging George, “when they’re a little older. And not quite so noisy.”

  One of the twins—George still wasn’t quite sure which—laughed in her sleep, a pretty tinkling sound, like stardust falling to Earth.

  “You’ll be amazed when they’re older—you won’t be able to imagine what life was like without them.”

  George’s dad, Terence, was standing in the doorway, watching. George realized that his parents had never said anything about the huge amount of time he spent at the house next door, and suddenly he loved them even more for not mentioning it.

  “It’s good that you’re back, George,” his dad said gruffly. “We missed you. Here, let me help.” He took the hamster cage and peered in at the world’s second most powerful computer who, like the babies, was now asleep. “Who’s this … ?”

  “That’s Pooky,” said George. “Can he stay in my room?”

  His parents smiled. “Of course,” Daisy said. “What a dear little thing! A little smaller than that funny old pig.”

  “I’ll take him upstairs,” said Terence.

  With that, George climbed the stairs to his own room and went to sleep in his own bed, the curtains left open a crack just in case he should wake up in the night and look out to see a shooting star.

  Chapter Ten

  In the quiet, dark street below, a long shiny black car pulled up in front of Eric’s house. The driver got out and rang the doorbell. A white-faced Eric was waiting behind the front door, clutching a very small suitcase, with Cosmos in a laptop bag. He turned on the threshold to say good-bye. Susan and Annie hugged him tightly.

  “I have to go,” he said. His eyes burned like two dying stars in his pale face.

  “Good luck,” said Susan quietly. “Eric, please be careful! Please! Watch out for yourself. There are bad people out there, and they don’t like you.”

  “Hush, hush, I’ll be fine!” said Eric, trying to sound cheerful. Now that he was actually leaving, Susan and Annie couldn’t be angry with him anymore. “In a few days I’ll be back and we’ll all be laughing about this! It’s just a silly misunderstanding—once I’ve had a chance to explain, everyone will be fine. I’ll be home before you know I’ve gone! Maybe even in time for the party!”

  “Bye, Dad!” said Annie, her bottom lip wobbling.

  “C’mon, Professor.” The driver was getting impatient. “Get in the car, sir. We’re on a schedule.”

  Eric turned away and climbed into the sleek vehicle, the driver carefully shutting the door on him. The windows were made of dark glass, so Annie and Susan didn’t see the tear running down his cheek as he sat, alone with his computer, on the soft leather seat.

  The car rolled away down the street, the powerful engine purring. They drove in silence to a nearby airfield—it was a private strip where only a few planes landed and took off each day. A few words from the driver to the guard at the gate, and the car was through, heading right onto the airfield.

  A jet was waiting in the brilliant light of a full Moon, the small staircase folded down so that Eric could get right out of the car and into the plane. He climbed aboard, and found that he was the only passenger.

  After only a few minutes the pilot’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “Good evening, Professor Bellis. It is our great honor to be flying you this evening. We will be landing at an airfield near the Large Hadron Collider in about an hour and a half. Could we ask you to fasten your seat belt for the journey?”

  With that, the little plane accelerated down the runway and smoothly lifted its nose until they were flying through the night sky toward what could be the end of Eric’s career.

  *

  Even though George had fallen into a deep sleep the moment his head touched the pillow, it didn’t last long. After what felt like just a few seconds, he found himself sitting bolt upright in bed, cold sweat trickling down his back. His sleep had been full of confused dreams in which people in black were chasing Freddy through thick orange grass on a faraway planet where the sun was green. “Stop the criminal pig!” they shouted in his nightmare. George tried to call out, to tell them to leave Freddy alone, but he could only manage a terrified croak.

  Waking in his bedroom, George was struck by a horrible thought. If Eric came back without Cosmos, he would never find out where Freddy had gone! Eric hadn’t told him where the pig’s new home was because he had still needed to look it up on Cosmos. If Cosmos was lost to them, then so was Freddy! What if the computer had sent him right out to the farthest reaches of the Universe? That would mean he’d be moving farther and farther away from him … George might never see him again, and it would be his own fault for not taking better care of his pig in the first place.

  THE EXPANSION OF THE UNIVERSE

  The astronomer Edwin Hubble used the one-hundred-inch telescope on Mount Wilson, California, to study the night sky. He found that some of the nebulae—fuzzy, luminous specks in the night sky—are in fact galaxies, like our Milky Way (although the galaxies could be of widely varying sizes), each containing billions and billions of stars. And he discovered a remarkable fact: Other galaxies appear to be moving away from us, and the farther they are from us, the faster their apparent speed. Suddenly, humanity’s Universe became much, much larger.

  The Universe is expanding: Distances between galaxies are increasing with time. The Universe can be thought of as the surface of a balloon on which one has painted blobs to represent galaxies. If one blows up the balloon, the blobs or galaxies move away from each other; the farther apart they are, the faster the distance between them increases.

  George lay there in bed, feeling miserable and sorry for himself—and for Freddy. It occurred to him that a midnight muffin and a glass of milk might provide some consolation. So he slipped out of bed and tiptoed very lightly downstairs in his pajamas, knowing his parents would not be happy if he woke up the babies when they were sleeping.

  But halfway down the stairs he heard a noise; it came from the dark, and supposedly empty, ground floor. George froze, too scared to go any farther down but not wanting to go back upstairs either in case he drew attention to himself. He listened really carefully, straining his ears for any faint sound.

  Just as he was starting to think that he must have imagined the noise, he heard it again. It was quiet but distinct—footsteps, as stealthy and careful as his own. Outside, the Moon was full and shining so brightly that it seemed almost like day in the silvery light that flooded in through the downstairs windows. From where he stood, pinned by fear against the staircase wall, George saw a long shadow pass the foot of the stairs and continue into the kitchen. He heard the back door open and close as the catlike footsteps padded away.

  As noiselessly as he could, George snuck back up the stairs to look out of the window into the ga
rden. By the light of his old friend the Moon, George saw the long shadow creep down to the end of the yard, where it seemed to float over the back fence and disappear. George’s blood was pumping so hard in his ears that he felt dizzy. He ran into his parents’ bedroom and shook his dad awake.

  “Rumppfff!” his dad snorted, turning over.

  “Dad!” hissed George urgently. “Dad! Wake up!”

  “Grugfmp!” Terence was talking in his sleep. “Ban the bomb! Save the whale! Meat is murder!”

  George shook him again.

  “Ban the whale! Murder the bomb! Save the meat!” Terence carried on sleep-talking while, beside him, Daisy was snoring softly, her head underneath the pillow.

  Finally he woke up. “George! … Is it the babies?” Terence groaned. “Do they need feeding—again?”

  “Dad, I saw someone!” George told him. “There was someone in the house! I saw them climb over the fence at the end of the yard.”

  Terence grunted unhappily but got heavily to his feet. “Good luck finding anything to steal in this place,” he muttered to himself. “Good luck finding anything at all.” But he went downstairs to check, coming back with a serious but very sleepy face.

  “The back door was open,” he said to George. “I’ve locked it now. It was probably just a cat, you know. Go back to sleep now, before the babies—”

  At that moment they both heard a wail from one of the cribs. “Oh no,” groaned Terence. “There goes one …” Another baby wail joined in. “And there goes the other. Back to bed, Georgie. See you in the morning.”

  *

  The next day at school, George’s head was pounding. He slumped over his desk, hardly able to keep his eyes open. His dad had decided not to report anything to the police—nothing had been stolen, and anyway, Terence was sure that it was some kind of animal, probably a cat, that had nosed its way into the kitchen in search of food.

  George didn’t agree: The footsteps he had heard were too heavy to belong to a cat, unless it was the size of a leopard. It was much more likely that it had been a person. But he didn’t argue with his dad. He gave a huge yawn. It was exhausting, trying to work all this out.

  “Are we keeping you up?” said George’s new history teacher pleasantly.

  “No, sir,” said George.

  “Then kindly get out your textbook and turn to page thirty-four.”

  George fumbled in his bag and found the book. He opened it at the page he had marked to read for homework the evening before but, in all the excitement of Eric’s talk, completely forgotten about.

  Someone else, however, had got there before him. Tucked into that very page was a note, folded in half and with his name written on it in a familiar old-fashioned, curly script. Heart sinking, George unfolded the piece of paper, and read:

  George,

  Evil is at work in the Universe. Our friend Eric is in danger. We must speak. Do not try to contact me by any means. I will come to you.

  Courteously yours,

  Dr. R.

  George felt a chill creep down his spine. His bag had been downstairs the night before. He’d left it on the table in the living room. That meant the shadow he had seen and the footsteps he had heard must have belonged to none other than Dr. Reeper, Eric’s old enemy.

  Why visit me? thought George in horror. Why not visit Eric?

  As soon as he’d asked himself the question, he knew the answer. Eric wasn’t there—by last night he’d already gone, taking Cosmos with him. And Pooky, the nano supercomputer that strange Dr. Reeper might have expected to find at Eric’s, had been upstairs in George’s house, where Reeper hadn’t dared venture. If he had intended to visit Eric, he would have already been too late to find him. So he came looking for George instead. If Reeper was creeping around in the dead of night, then he must have something very important to tell him. George knew he needed to find Reeper and ask him what was going on. But could he trust him?

  Annie, George knew, would say “No way!” Reeper had got them into deep cosmic trouble twice before. But he had turned out okay in the end: He’d saved all their lives when they had got stuck on a distant moon with no way back. And once they’d returned to planet Earth, Reeper had sworn to put his dark past behind him. He wanted to be friends with Eric, he’d said. He wanted to work as a real scientist again, and not live in the shadows any longer.

  Judging by the note that George had found in his textbook, it looked as though Reeper had information that would help Eric. George had a thousand questions running through his head, the first of which was: How on earth would he ever find Reeper?

  “If I was a crazy ex-scientist, where would I be?” he thought to himself. At least, he meant to think it to himself, but it soon became apparent that he’d said it out loud.

  “I don’t know where a crazy ex-scientist might be,” replied his teacher mildly. “But if I was George Greenby, I would be on page thirty-four right now, and about to give my teacher the answer to the question written on the board.”

  The rest of the class tittered. “Sorry, sir,” said George, and for the next thirty minutes he tried to make his brain return to 1066 and all that, instead of focusing on the evil at work in the Universe.

  But he found it almost impossible. One thought kept flashing through his mind, as clearly as if Cosmos had shouted it in huge red capital letters:

  ERIC IS IN DANGER.

  Chapter Eleven

  After school, George rode around Foxbridge on his bicycle before going home. It was very unlikely that he would just run into Reeper on the street, but he didn’t know what else to do. And then he remembered Cosmos’s map of Foxbridge. The basement! If he could find the basement where the secret meeting had been held, he might be able to discover more information about TOERAG. He just knew that Reeper’s message had something to do with those people in black.

  Had Reeper been at the demonstration?

  Was Reeper the figure in black who had tried to talk to Vincent?

  George pedaled very fast. He knew Foxbridge really well, and Cosmos’s map had shown him exactly where the secret basement was.

  When George got there, he realized that this was, of course, Eric’s college—the one where he and Reeper had been students of the great Zuzubin. Reeper, Zuzubin, and Eric were all members of the same college community.

  Zuzubin, thought George. Zuzubin. Why did he seem to be everywhere and nowhere all at the same time?

  The huge gates of Eric’s college were closed and bolted, but a little door cut into the wood of the main entrance was left open for students to come in and out. George hopped through, only to find a fierce-looking porter, the guardian of the college, waiting for him.

  “I have something for Professor Bellis,” George lied, not knowing what else to say.

  “Leave it at the desk,” growled the porter, who had just finished straightening every single blade of grass in the bright green lawn behind him. He’d dusted down the marigold petals in the herbaceous borders, swept all the paving stones, and polished the brass door knockers, so the last thing he wanted was a scruffy schoolboy messing up his perfect courtyard. “College is closed.”

  The porter stood there, glaring at George over his handlebar mustache, giving George no choice but to back out and go home. After he’d had a snack George went next door to see Annie, but he found only Susan, Annie’s mom, who appeared frazzled for a change. Normally it was George’s mom who looked like she’d got out of the wrong side of bed. This time, Susan had the messy hair, mismatched clothes, and worried eyes.

  “Annie’s not here,” she told George. “She’s gone to a karate lesson with Vincent. Apparently he’s a black belt.”

  Of course he is, thought George. He would be.

  “I would ask you in,” continued Susan, looking stressed, “but I’ve been trying to get everything ready for this big party we’re having on Sunday and Annie and I need to go to my sister’s tonight so I’m very busy. And look! This window is broken—we don’t know how. There’s gl
ass everywhere.”

  George’s heart sank. “Did that happen last night?” he asked. He didn’t want to tell Susan that his house had received a midnight visit too. She looked anxious enough as it was.

  “It looks like it,” she replied. George thought she was going to cry. “We didn’t hear anything—and nothing’s been taken. It’s very strange.”

  “Is Eric back soon?” he asked to try to cheer her up.

  “I’ve hardly heard from him. But he says the big meeting is tomorrow night,” said Susan. “And he hopes they’ll figure everything out so that he can fly back the morning after. I must leave now, George. I can’t stay any longer.”

  With that, she shut the back door, and George heard the sound of the key turning in the lock, followed by the sharp noise of bolts being shot across. He sighed. There was nothing more for him to do here so he went home.

  As he came into the kitchen, his father had just switched on the radio for the news.

  “Could the Universe be swallowed by a bubble of destruction, leaked from the Large Hadron Collider?” said the newsreader in a cheerful voice. “That’s the big question on everyone’s lips this evening.”

  “George!” said Terence. “Do you know anything about this?”

  “Shush!” said George. “Please, Dad, I need to listen!”

  The news report continued:

  “A dramatic statement released today by anti-science group The Theory of Everything Resists Addition of Gravity claims that the new experiment at the Large Hadron Collider could be extremely dangerous! In an open letter to the Universe, Theory of Everything scientists state that the experiment is reckless and unsafe, as it may produce a tiny amount of something called the True Vacuum.

  “According to Theory of Everything sources, our existence in the Universe depends on the False Vacuum, which could be destroyed as a result of the high-energy experiments scheduled to begin shortly at the Collider. Within eight hours, Theory of Everything estimates, the bubble of destruction could have ripped our whole Solar System apart! Professor Eric Bellis, leader of the Collider Experimental Group, was this evening unavailable for comment. However, in the last few minutes a statement has been issued on behalf of the those working with him: ‘The Collider is perfectly safe and no one should be afraid of the advances of science.’