Cosmic

by Frank Cottrell Boyce

  It’s gravity that keeps the gases round the Earth, the gases that we breathe, and it keeps the water in the oceans and the clouds in the sky, so that it never gets to be a hundred and thirty degrees on the surface. And it’s gravity that keeps the sun together. If there was even a tiny bit more gravity than there is, the sun would be more compact and it would burn brighter and faster and it would only have lived a few million years so there would’ve been no chance for life to grow. And if there was even a bit less gravity, then the sun would burn too dim and the Earth would never have got warm enough for life.

  “Are you on a main road?” It was Dad again.

  “Not really. Well, yeah, in a way….” In my head I was listing all the things that I could remember from Earth: Mom, Dad, Southport Fair, the 61 bus…and I put my thumb up to blot the Earth out again, but this time it didn’t quite blot out and then I saw something—like a tiny mosquito, whizzing up over the top of my thumb, somewhere out there.

  The command module was on its way back.

  Dad said, “I tell you what…can you see a pub or a hotel or anything? Hang on. My credit’s going here. Text me. I’ll top up and use that DraxWorld thing to find you. Righto?”

  And his phone went dead. Which was just as well, because the docking procedures take a bit of concentration.

  I’m putting this phone away now till the children are back on board.

  This Is Not a Simulation

  Well, I did it. I successfully redocked the command module with the Dandelion. If it had been a game of Orbiter IV, I would have got an extra life for that.

  The children came back through the hatch, giggling and pushing each other, and Samson Two said, “Guess what? You were wrong!”

  “What?”

  “This is not a simulation. We really are in space! We’ve just had a water fight on the moon.” He went on to explain that water fighting on the moon turns out to be quite complicated.

  You can squirt the water all right, but it flies this spooky, curved flight, like a diagram, following an arc toward the ground. And it doesn’t ever find its target. In midflight it turns to tiny clouds and drifts along like ghosts for a while before disappearing altogether.

  He said it was because they were in direct, unmediated sunlight. The temperature could’ve been anything up to 266 degrees. The water just boiled.

  I thought it must have been weird standing there, feeling quite comfortable but knowing that if you took your suit off you’d boil to death.

  But they didn’t.

  They smelled slightly fireworky. This was because some elements of the moon dust they’d trailed in had reacted with the oxygen inside the Dandelion. And they were covered in the dust. Just covered. They looked like chimney sweeps. I found a little hoover for cleaning up crumbs attached to the wall near the food cupboards and I made them hoover their suits.

  “Otherwise everyone will know what you did,” I said.

  “They’ll be able to tell by looking at you.”

  Max wanted to know why it was such a big secret. “Surely it’s something to be proud of, being the first child on the moon?” he said.

  And Florida said, “They’re going to find out anyway, next time anyone goes there. D’you know what we did?”

  “No,” said Samson Two, “don’t tell him. It’s a surprise.”

  “Oh,” said Max, “we almost forgot. A present. Moon rock.”

  And he gave me a square gray stone from another world.

  What else did they do down there? Well, seeing as I’m the dad, I’ll tell you like a dad would:

  1. How we got there. We had a great run out. We didn’t see any traffic to speak of. Just one meteor shower and that was it.

  2. What the parking was like. For a start, the parking was completely free of charge. And there were an infinite number of parking spaces. As long as you looked out for the boulders and canyons. How come they can provide ample parking on the moon and not in Bootle, I’d like to know.

  3. What it was like in the old days. Well, they had the Apollo program. There seemed to be some bloke going to the moon every few weeks. I thought we’d all be going there for our holidays when we grew up. Now look.

  4. Something thoughtful which it made you think. We walked on the moon. We made footprints somewhere no one else had ever made footprints, and unless someone comes and rubs them out those footprints will be there forever because there’s no wind.

  5. Something to do with last night’s soccer. No soccer because there wasn’t enough gravity, but we had a water fight instead. The winner was—surface conditions.

  After they were back on board we did one more orbit. Three-quarters of the way round, we burned the Dandelion’s boosters and we were heading back to Earth. They all rushed to the back to watch the moon getting smaller and smaller. Florida did ask me then, “What about you, Dad? Did you have a good time?”

  “It was all right.”

  It might look like a coincidence that Dad rang me just as the phones came on. But it wasn’t. He’d been trying for days and days. He got through the moment they came back on because he’d been trying all the time—that’s what dads do. I had to look out for the children, like Dad looked out for me and his dad had for him, right back through time. Dadliness was out there among the stars, a force like gravity, and I was part of it.

  But in the end, Florida’s obsession with weight was what saved us.

  “According to my math,” said Samson Two, “we should begin reentry procedures now.”

  “You are joking,” I said. “We’re miles away.”

  When you do reentry on the simulator, the Earth feels like this giant wall right next to you. If we looked out of the window now, yes, it looked big, but you could still see the curve. You could tell you were way out.

  “What you’re saying is that my math is wrong. Which is simply illogical.”

  “What I’m saying is that it looks a bit far away. It looks a bit high. To be honest, I don’t want to jump from here.”

  Florida said, “Samson Two, when you did your math, did you remember to add the weight of the Dandelion? Or did you do your calculations based on just the command module?”

  Samson Two stared at her for a while and then said, “Excuse me, please.” And started his math again.

  So we’re still in high orbit now. We’re using the sails to glide down as gently as we can into a lower and lower and faster and faster orbit. It’s like the world’s biggest, gentlest spiral slide. With views of Greenland, the Pacific and Northern Russia.

  “Can’t we just keep going nice and gently like this till we get down?” said Hasan.

  Sadly not. Eventually we started to see the glowing envelope of atmosphere. You can’t just float through that. It’s a firewall.

  We’re back in the command module now.

  We’ve pressed the green button—all of us together this time. I felt the jolt as we uncoupled the Dandelion. I could almost hear Keira Knightley’s voice kicking in: “We realize you had a choice of carrier today and we’d like to thank you for choosing…” as she drifted off into space.

  We know what buttons to press to make our descent. We’re just waiting for the right moment. The monitors are all still out. Samson Two is running Orbiter IV on the Wristation. We’re all watching it on the wall. I’m pressing the real buttons a few seconds after he presses the game ones.

  I gave them a team talk. I said, “Reinflate your Vehicle Escape Suits. And stay calm. I know we can do this, because we are cosmic.”

  Then I jettisoned the bottom half of the module—the bit with the window and the door and all those things that can’t stand the pressure.

  So now we are flying blind. We’ve got no window. I can more or less feel the angle in my bones. If we hit it wrong, we bounce off into space. Now the gravity is really hurting. It must be increasing. We must be right.

  I’m looking at Dad’s St. Christopher. It’s rocking from side to side like there’s an earthquake. I can feel myself getting heavi
er and heavier, like the boy in his story. I can barely move. The simulator is counting down. And now I can hear it saying, “Uh. Oh. You’re. Dead.”

  We Got a Bit Lost

  It was very quiet. Everything was white and cold. I was lying there, trying to figure out what was happening. I could feel something hot—breath: stinking, hot breath—and a smell of damp and the sound of breathing. I noticed all these things before I noticed where they were coming from—a wolf.

  A wolf? I sat up and it snarled at me. More hot, stinking breath.

  The door of the command module was open. There was snow outside and more wolves. Shoving each other, trying to get in.

  We’re back on Earth.

  But we’re tinned food.

  Something went whizzing past my head and hit the wolf between the eyes. It yelped and backed off.

  Florida lunged past me, lashing out at the wolf, and pulling the hatch shut. She yelled, “I’ve just been to the moon and back in an ice-cream van. I’m not about to be eaten by a dog.”

  The “dogs” howled and scratched at the hatch. I said, “They’re not dogs. They’re wolves.”

  She passed out.

  St. Christopher was in pieces on the floor. So that was what she threw at the wolf. I remember thinking Dad would go mad. He said it had really looked after him. Mind you, I suppose it’s really looked after us.

  I sat with my back to the door, keeping it pushed shut. That’s when I noticed my Draxphone wedged into the multifunctional display unit. I dashed over, grabbed it, then threw myself against the door again. That’s where I am now. No one is looking for us. I know this because Dr. Drax said she would deny all knowledge of us. But now I’ve got the phone, it doesn’t matter. I can call Dad. I can tell him to get someone to find us.

  I called Dad.

  The phone rang twice. Then it beeped. A text. “You have no credit.”

  So now I’m sitting here, just talking to the phone. No one is listening. Even if someone knew we were out here, how would they find us? One little module the size of a Smart car, stuck out in the frozen wastes of Siberia, which is bigger than Europe.

  The others are waking up. They’re all bruised and bloody. They’re glad to be alive, but they don’t realize that being alive is only a temporary situation.

  Wait. Got to stop. Got to stop talking because. Because my phone is ringing.

  It was Dad. “Liam, it’s me. I thought you were coming home today.”

  “Dad, hi, we got a bit lost.”

  “I know you’re not in the Lake District, Liam. I know you’re up to something. Just tell me where you are.”

  “Not sure.”

  “Okay. This is what you do: find a pub….”

  “A pub?”

  “No. You’re too young. What else comes up on DraxWorld? Libraries. Schools. Anything like that. Find one, call me back and I’ll know where you are. I should be able to tell from the phone, but it’s obviously gone wrong. It says you’re in Waterloo, but you’re not, are you?”

  “Maybe. I mean I might be in a Waterloo.”

  “There’s only one Waterloo, isn’t there?”

  “No, there’s hundreds, Dad. One in Sierra Leone, one in Brussels, one in Brazil—”

  “You’re not going to tell me you’re in Africa?”

  “No, I don’t think so. I might be in Siberia though.”

  “Very funny. Leave it with me. I’ll sort something out.”

  He hung up. I looked at the others and said, “What happened? I thought we died.”

  “We forgot about the parachutes—again,” said Samson Two, “but then Max pressed the button and saved us.”

  Max said, “No, Florida pressed the button and saved us.”

  Florida said, “No, Hasan pressed the button and saved us.”

  Hasan said, “No, Samson Two pressed the button and saved us.”

  “Maybe you all did.”

  My dad did sort everything out. It turned out I was wrong about Dr. Drax. Of course she was looking for us. She wanted to keep our trip a secret, so she wasn’t going to leave a used spaceship lying around.

  Dad’s SIM card was a clone of mine, remember. So his phone logged my phone’s position. And when I saved phone numbers, they saved onto his card as well as mine. That’s how he was able to call Dr. Drax and give her our precise location.

  That’s why she turned up in her plane a couple of hours later with blankets and drinks and hot food and a lot more forms to fill in.

  She was very nice to us. Then she said, “And, Mr. Digby, I believe you have a phone. Hand it over. And any cameras, diaries…anything that proves where you’ve been.”

  Special Gravity

  So where am I now? Well, I’m in the New Strand Shopping Center, sitting by the water fountain while Mom and Dad are in Switched-On Electricals upgrading his satnav. I’ve borrowed my dad’s phone so I can play Snake on it while I’m waiting for them. And while I’m noodling around, looking for the game, I notice that his audio diary is nearly full. And that’s when I realize. Our phones were twins. When I reentered the atmosphere, my space diary was saved to his card, down here in Bootle, too. So I can listen to it all again.

  And I can tell you how it ends.

  The best thing about being on Earth is definitely the just-right gravity. The way you don’t float off the floor, or feel like you’ve got a cannonball stuck to your head. People are hurrying past and round each other, with their bags and their strollers and their shopping carts. They come up to each other and then they go away and then they come back again. And it’s all like a great big dance and everyone knows their moves. Then suddenly everyone—everyone—moves over toward the windows of Switched-On Electricals. As though some big comet with massive inherent gravity has gone by and they’re all drawn to it. I can only see backs. People are standing on tiptoe. Dads are putting their kids on their shoulders. I know what they’re doing. They’re watching the launch of a rocket called the Infinite Possibility, which is going to send the first-ever child astronaut—a thirteen-year-old girl called Shenjian—into space. She’s going to circumnavigate the moon. So she’s not just going to be the first child in space; according to the TV, she’s the first person to leave Earth’s orbit since 1972. Everyone wants to see her. Her face is on the front of all the papers, on T-shirts, lunch boxes, mouse pads—anything you like.

  One person has just left the crowd and is heading over to me. It’s Dad. He’s walking toward me like there’s some special gravity pulling him toward me. And maybe there is. Maybe everyone’s got their own special gravity that lets you go far away, really far away sometimes, but which always brings you back in the end. Because here’s the thing. Gravity is variable. Sometimes you float like a feather. Sometimes you’re too heavy to move. Sometimes one boy can weigh more than the whole universe. The universe goes on forever, but that doesn’t make you small. Everyone is massive. Everyone is King Kong.

  Dad says, “Aren’t you coming to watch it?”

  “Maybe later. I’m okay just now.”

  Everyone in the world remembers where they were when they heard about what Shenjian saw on the lunar surface.

  I was standing in our kitchen. I was about to go to school. I’d just taken my end-of-term report out from under the little square gray stone that we use as a paperweight. Mom was reaching up to give me a kiss. “D’you know,” she said, “I’m sure you’ve shrunk.”

  And she pushed me back against the “See How I Grow” chart and measured me. And it was true. I was half an inch shorter than I’d been the day I started at Waterloo High.

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” said Dad. “That would be typical Liam, wouldn’t it? To start shrinking as he gets older. To spend his childhood six foot tall with a beard and his adulthood five foot nothing with a baby face.”

  The traffic update had just begun on the radio. Dad turned it up so he could hear properly when suddenly it stopped and the newsreader came on with this amazing report and went over live to the rocket.
And Mom turned on the TV and I knew I wasn’t going to school. No one was going anywhere that day.

  Because Shenjian had found something on the moon.

  “And really,” said the announcer, “this find of hers changes everything. We’ve got pictures. Yes. There it is. There’s no doubt about it. It’s a man-made object. We know that no Apollo mission went to that part of the moon. It seems unlikely that a secret Russian or Chinese mission would leave a thing like this…. This is…extraordinary. Inexplicable. This changes our view of everything.”

  It was a load of rocks—squarish gray stones like the one on top of our kitchen cabinet. And all the stones were arranged to spell out some words. It couldn’t be a coincidence because it was just so clear.

  Florida rang up to make sure I was watching. “Remember the surprise?” she said.

  I’d completely forgotten about it. But I saw it now. Spelled out across the lunar surface, two words—“Hello, Dad!”

  I was grinning all over my face. I whispered, “Hello,” into the phone. I was assuming that she’d written it for me. Now I come to think about it, maybe she was saying hello to the other dad, the one who’d left.

  My dad looked across at me. He looked puzzled. Like he knew it had something to do with me. I said, “Hello, Dad.” And he looked even more confused. When he hears this story maybe he’ll think I got them to write it there for him. And maybe he’ll be right. Maybe it was for both of us, and for other dads too. For all the dads on Earth. And for all the dads not on Earth. And for their dads, outward in space and backward in time, all the way to the Dad of the Universe.