“Look, it’s dark outside now!” George said, looking out the window. “Let’s go back to the tree house and take a photo of Saturn!”
“Excellent idea,” agreed Eric. “Even you two can’t get into trouble taking a photograph of a distant planet.”
Beryl giggled. “Please try,” she said, giving Annie and George a wink. “Life is so much more fun when you get into trouble from time to time. It’s what makes it all so interesting.”
“Go, kids!” ordered Eric in real, not pretend, exasperation.
Annie and George obediently filed out of the sitting room, breaking into a run as soon as they reached the kitchen.
“Last one to the tree house is a … ,” they shouted in unison.
“Bad banana!” yelled Annie.
“Rotten egg!” bellowed George as they dashed into the garden, each trying to push the other out of the way so they could leap through the hole in the fence first.
They reached the tree at the same time, with Annie snatching the ladder while George shinned up the knotted rope as though climbing the rigging on a tall ship. They arrived on the platform at exactly the same moment, and cried out, “I won!” The tree house was rocking to and fro like a ship in a storm, and they grabbed on to each other to prevent themselves from pitching over the edge into the dark garden.
“Whoa!” said Annie as the platform slowly stabilized itself.
“Oops!” George felt guilty. “We forgot to pull the ladder up when we left.”
“Is your telescope okay?” asked Annie.
George hoped so! He produced a little flashlight from his pocket. The telescope was still securely in its place, the camera next to it, waiting for its moment of glory in imaging the night sky. George took out a handkerchief and gingerly wiped the eyepiece until the sticky mess was gone.
“How did the twins even get up here?” said Annie. “Can they climb a rope ladder?”
“They get everywhere,” said George darkly. “Nothing is safe from them.”
“Aw, they’re so cute… .” Annie smiled. “You love them really.”
George didn’t answer. He was too busy trying to frame Saturn through his telescope so that he got the perfect shot of the magnificent ringed planet. For a moment he looked up at the stars in the night sky with his naked eye and thought what an extraordinary sight they were. He was totally fascinated by space; by what lay out there, beyond the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere. Space. George even loved the word. The vast expanse of the universe, enormous beyond imagination and full of bizarre, fascinating phenomena—planets, black holes, neutron stars … the list went on and on. The universe, he thought to himself, is amazing! And I want to understand it all. I want to go beyond the limits of human knowledge and understanding until I know as much as is possible to know about our incredible cosmic home—
“Are you going to take that photo?” Annie’s voice interrupted his wandering thoughts.
“I’ll try,” he replied. “I hope there isn’t too much light pollution.” Even the small university town of Foxbridge gave off enough light that the evening sky was orange around the horizon rather than pure black. But he pressed the button on his camera; it used the telescope to collect more light than the human eye so that it could record an image of a planet millions of miles away in the Solar System.
“Lessee!” said Annie, grabbing the camera. “Let’s have a look at your beautiful picture… .”
She opened up the camera’s memory to view the last photo. “Oh!” she said in surprise.
“What?” asked George. “Didn’t it work?”
“Well, it’s taken a photo,” said Annie, “for sure. But … ”
George reached for the camera and peered at the image it had just captured of the skies above Foxbridge.
“That’s not Saturn,” he said. “That looks like a … Well, I don’t know what that looks like… .”
“It looks like”—Annie finished his sentence—“some kind of spaceship. But it’s not like any spaceship I’ve ever seen before.” She gazed up into the night sky through the telescope. “I can’t see anything overhead.”
“Me neither.” George took a turn at peering through the telescope. “Whatever it was, it’s not there now.”
“That’s so weird,” said Annie. “Honestly, in the picture it looks just like a floating space doughnut, but when you look up into the sky through the telescope, there’s nothing there. Except the stars and stuff—but they were there before.”
“Really weird,” George agreed, using the zoom function to enlarge the photo on the small screen of his camera. He could just make out faint markings on the side of the mystery object. “It says ‘IAM.’ ”
“IAM?” said Annie. “What does that mean? International American Mission? Imbecile Android Missile? Incredible Armed Machine … ?”
“Don’t know,” said George. “It’s not anything I’ve ever heard about.” As a devoted space fan, he prided himself on knowing about every space mission currently in low Earth orbit. And this was not one of them. “Perhaps it’s a secret spaceship?”
“Or aliens?” Annie suggested excitedly.
“It’s probably some kind of weather satellite,” said George, more realistically.
“It’s a bit big for a satellite. That much I do know! I think it’s a UFO.”
“But why would a UFO turn up here?” George wondered. “What would it want from Foxbridge?”
As soon as he said it, he knew the answer. And even in the dim light, he noticed that Annie suddenly looked anxious. He knew her big fear was that something terrible would happen to her dad. Eric was such an important scientist and worked on such top-secret projects that, in the past, he had been targeted by people who wanted to stop his work or find out what he was doing.
“I’m sure it’s got nothing to do with Eric!” George tried to reassure Annie; but at the same time he was getting a fluttery feeling in his stomach that something really exciting might be about to happen. “It’s probably some random scientific spacecraft taking measurements of the atmosphere. It just looks like a UFO—I bet up close it’s really ordinary.” But even as he said this, part of him hoped that he was wrong; that it wasn’t something ordinary at all.
“Yeah, right,” said Annie. She didn’t sound completely convinced, but she looked a little more cheerful. She scuffed one sneaker against the other. “Do you think Dad’s safe now?”
“Yes, of course,” said George firmly, even though he wasn’t sure this was true at all. “He’s the most important scientist in the country. There must be people looking out for him. Stop worrying about your dad! I don’t think anything is going to happen over vacation in Foxbridge. Just usual boring parents and school projects and stuff. That’s all.”
“I hope you’re right,” Annie murmured, scanning the sky for signs of returning UFOs. She still didn’t sound her usual boisterous self.
“Calling Annie!” George cupped his hands around his mouth like a megaphone. “Do you have any chocolate—I mean, dinosaur toenails? I is hungry.”
Annie brightened up. “You sound ridiculous.” But at least she was laughing.
The next day was another bright, clear vacation day. Over breakfast, George had quizzed his dad as to what the little girls had been doing up in his tree house. His father had looked shifty but eventually admitted that after a long campaign of pestering from the twins, he had taken them up so that they could have a look at where their brother Georgie hung out.
“But you promised me they would never go up there!” George had exclaimed, feeling very let down.
“They won’t! Not again!” Terence promised. “It was just the once. Honest.”
George humphed again. It seemed as though rules were broken for his sisters when they never budged even a millimeter for him. But then he remembered Annie telling him not to be mean—and thinking of Annie reminded him of the photo of the UFO … which reminded him that he wanted to get his chores done as quickly as possible so that he could meet h
is friend in the tree house and find out if she’d gotten any useful info on the secret spaceship from Eric after she’d gone home last night. So he cheered up and got on with his tasks—feeding the hens, collecting the eggs, taking the vegetable waste into the garden for compost, and helping his mom, Daisy, knead the dough for their daily bread that had been proofing… . It wasn’t till after lunch that he was free to scoot down to the garden, up the ladder, and into the tree house once more.
He’d only been up there for a nanosecond when he heard a scuffling noise and a figure leaped onto the platform, causing the tree house to sway. George wondered again if he should check the ropes that held everything in place. But he quickly forgot to worry as an apparition in a long raincoat, old-fashioned felt hat, and sunglasses accosted him.
“The weatherman says the sky will be clear tonight,” it murmured mysteriously.
“Um … he does?” queried George, quickly realizing that Annie had now reinvented herself as a spy from the time of the Enigma machine. She sounded like one of those Second World War spies who used coded language to send messages to each other, so that even if their communications were intercepted, the enemy wouldn’t know what they meant.
“A cloud across the glass eye will bring early snow,” the apparition continued.
“The big cheese stands alone,” George replied, trying to join in.
“We pick the strawberries at midnight.” Annie discarded her coat and hat but kept the sunglasses on. She clearly thought they made her look cool.
“Hold on… .” George raised one hand with a flat, outstretched palm. “The message has to actually mean something, if you know how to decipher it—you can’t just say any old random stuff, you know!”
“OMG! You’re literally so literal sometimes!” exclaimed Annie, throwing herself onto the beanbag. “Did I mention how high my IQ is?”
“Yes, just, like, a trillion times,” replied George. He wished he could have his IQ measured, but when he’d asked his parents, they told him they didn’t approve of educational testing.
“What did your dad think of the photo?” he asked, hoping to get off the topic of Annie’s super-intelligence and on to something more interesting. She had taken his camera home with her last night. “What about Beryl—was she still there? Did she let slip any clues?”
“Well, I showed the picture to them,” said Annie, “but they didn’t recognize it; said it was probably some sort of foreign satellite. They did say it was kind of large—but they didn’t know what ‘IAM’ stood for.”
“So they didn’t tell you anything useful?” George was disappointed. He was longing for a good reason to go on another adventure—perhaps to open up Cosmos, Eric’s amazing computer, and use his portal to step out somewhere in the universe. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could just do because you felt like it—you had to be able to justify your space missions, and at the moment he couldn’t think of a really great reason why he should embark on a cosmic journey. The only reason was that he wanted to, but somehow, George suspected that wouldn’t be quite enough.
“No, they just kept laughing,” said Annie. “They were like—‘Pour another glass and let’s drink a toast to the UFO!’ They didn’t take it seriously at all.”
“So what now?” George had the feeling that this was a dead end.
“Dunno,” said Annie. “I tried posting the photo on Instagram to see if anyone recognized it, but I just got loads of junk comments about how we’d better watch out because the Thorgs were coming to eradicate us.”
“Yay! The Thorgs!” said George, trying to rally himself. “My fave aliens!” A thought struck him. “But seriously, was it a good idea to post it on the Internet? If it’s some kind of weirdo spooky secret mission, aren’t they going to be annoyed that you’ve posted a photo of their ship?”
“Oops!” Annie looked worried. “I didn’t think of that. I tweeted it too.”
“Well, that’s okay,” conceded George. “I know for a fact that you don’t have any followers, so it doesn’t matter.”
“One day I will,” said Annie, stung. “One day I’ll have millions, if not billions of followers …” She paused and gave a smug smile. “Once my blog goes live, then all this will change.”
“Your blog?” asked George in surprise. He didn’t know anything about Annie’s blog.
“It’s supercool,” she enthused. “I’ve got to prepare stuff for a blog—it’s for my school science project. Actually, it’s not going to be a blog. I think I’ll do a vlog instead, and put it on YouTube.”
“What’s it called?” George asked.
“Um … I don’t know yet,” said Annie. “I’m still deciding. Our teacher said it had to be ‘The Chemistry of Some Thing’—but we all have to choose what the Thing is.”
“The Chemistry of Chocolate?” offered George. “You could do that really well.”
“I was going to do the Chemistry of Chocolate, but then Karla Pinchnose stole my idea!” said Annie in outrage. “So I have to do something really cool to show her that even if she copies me, I’m still going to come up with a better plan. And that I’m still smarter than her.”
“The Chemistry of Glue?” suggested George, laughing.
“I’d better not.” Annie sighed. “Mom and Dad weren’t very pleased when I stuck them to the dinner table with my very excellent homemade polymer. I don’t think I can do any more stuff with glue. The Chemistry of …”
“Did you ask your dad?” George was idly looking through his telescope, sweeping across the skies and the cityscape.
“I did,” she told him. “He got all excited and was, like, ‘Oooh, I’ve got medals for chemistry, you know!’ I was, like, ‘Seriously, Dad! No one cares about your medals! Have you taken science? No, of course not, because you went to school back in the dark ages when you wrote with a quill and parchment—’ ”
“Annie!” George interrupted her. “Look!”
“What?” She jumped off the beanbag in a flash and tried to peer over his shoulder into the eyepiece of his telescope. But she didn’t really need the telescope. It didn’t take a lens to see what was happening in Foxbridge.
A mass of people were streaming along the streets winding down to the city center—mostly on foot, but some on bicycles or mopeds. Cars had ground to a standstill, unable to move either forward or backward through the mob that surrounded them. The people were approaching from all directions, all heading for the main square.
“Thundering Thorgs!” said George in astonishment. Their hometown was usually a sleepy, quiet place; the center was normally frequented mainly by tourists and students. He’d never seen anything like this before.
“Is it a boy band?” asked Annie, jumping about in excitement. “It must be! It must be a secret visit by UnDetection! They’re my all-time favorite band! They’re on tour, and they said on Twitter to keep an eye out because no one knew where they would show up next… . C’mon, George, we have to go!”
“I don’t know how much fun it will be,” said George doubtfully. Down in the town, he could see that anyone who tried to go against the tsunami of people was simply spun round and washed along by the sheer force of the crowd.
“It will be awesome!” Annie was already climbing down the ladder. Knowing that he couldn’t let her go by herself, George charged after her, down the rope, through the hole in the fence, back into her house, and out through the front door again.
Annie sprinted along to the end of their road where it joined the high street, leading into the heart of Foxbridge.
“What about your mom?” George called as he hurried after her. He almost caught up with her at the corner, before she disappeared into the fast-moving stream of people.
“She sent me over to your house when she went out—I’ll text her… . Do you think they’ll sing?” she yelled back as they were swept along the streets.
“I didn’t know they could,” muttered George, who preferred Fall Out Boy and the Arctic Monkeys to the pop that Annie li
ked so much.
He managed to get a grip on her wrist, which he encircled like a handcuff. Losing her in this mass of people was not an option. “You mustn’t fall over!” he shouted at her. “You’ll get trampled!” They were being squeezed and shoved on all sides as they were forced along toward the center of town.
“I just want to see his hair!” Annie screamed back at him. “His beautiful hair!” She had a huge poster of the lead singer of UnDetection above her bed, and George knew that, when she thought no one was looking, she stroked the floppy locks in the photo. “He might spot me!”
George snorted to himself. No one would notice anything in this enormous jostling river of people who buffeted him and Annie one way and another as they jogged along. George couldn’t care less whether he saw UnDetection or heard a note they sang, but he wasn’t going to let Annie get lost in the madness.
As they surged forward into a market square that was surrounded by graceful old buildings with turrets and gargoyles and grand stone columns, the atmosphere changed. Up until then, the crowd had been quite friendly, as though everyone was taking part in a joint adventure. But suddenly the mood shifted, and the pushing and shoving became more aggressive.
“Whoa—it’s turning nasty!” warned George, still trying to hang on to his friend. He had a bad feeling about this situation. But Annie was still so focused on reaching her beloved band that she hadn’t picked up on the change in atmosphere.
A roar went up. Shoving forward, the multitude seemed to be trying to converge on a single point. But as there were by now hundreds, if not thousands, of people in the center of Foxbridge, chaos had taken over. At the very edge of the crowd, the police stubbornly blew their whistles and called for order, but no one took any notice.
“I won’t be able to see the band!” Annie panicked as she realized that they were much smaller than most of the other people.
George jumped up to try to see over the heads of those in front. “I don’t think there is a band,” he said. There was no sign of a big stage or any kind of musical setup.
George and the Unbreakable Code Page 3
