George's Cosmic Treasure Hunt

by Lucy Hawking

  He leaped to his feet, his heart pounding. He didn’t want to move Cosmos, who was ready to transfer Annie and George from Titan to wherever they thought they might find the next clue. But neither did he want Cosmos to be interrupted by someone who might mess around with him while he was performing such an important and difficult operation.

  Emmett suddenly spotted what looked like a length of shiny yellow aluminum foil. In fact, it was the covering used to protect probes from overheating in the Sun’s rays as they traveled through space. He gently arranged it around Cosmos and then stood in front of the computer, trying to strike a carefree and nonchalant pose, as though he always wandered into Clean Rooms and lurked around large machinery being prepared for space travel. He readjusted his face mask in the hope that whoever came in might not realize that he was, in fact, a kid and would just assume he was a very small Clean Room operative.

  A figure was ejected into the Clean Room from the decontamination machine. It staggered a bit, weaving around in its white suit until it had found its feet. It was impossible to guess who it might be—even more so because the decontamination machine seemed to have put the head covering and face mask on backward, so where there should have been eyes and a chin there was just dark hair.

  “Youch!” the figure cried, tripping over a half-assembled satellite. “Oh, colliding hadrons!” It hopped from foot to foot. “I’ve stubbed my toe! Ouch! Ouch!”

  Emmett got a sick feeling in his stomach. It felt like it did when he ate too much. There was only one person it could be underneath the white suit, and he was about the last person Emmett wanted to see right now.

  The hopping figure stopped dancing around and ripped off his back-to-front face mask and head gear. It was, of course, Eric.

  “Ahh,” he said, looking down at Emmett, disguised in his white suit. “Do you, by any chance, work here?”

  “Er, yes, yes, I do!” said Emmett in his deepest voice. “Absolutely. Have done so for years. Many many many many many many years. I’m really ancient, in fact. You just can’t tell because I’ve got my face mask on.”

  “It’s just that you look, a bit…well, a touch, perhaps…”

  “I was taller,” said Emmett in his grown-up voice. “But I got so old I shrank.”

  “Yes, yes, interesting,” said Eric calmly. “Well, the thing is, Mr….”

  “Hm, hm…” Emmett cleared his throat. “Professor, if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course, Professor…?”

  Emmett panicked. “Professor Spock,” he said wildly.

  “Professor…Spock,” repeated Eric slowly.

  “Er, yes,” said Emmett. “That’s right. Professor Spock from the University of…Enterprise.”

  “Well, Professor Spock,” said Eric, “I wonder if you could help me. I’m looking for some kids who I seem to have lost. And maybe you’ve seen them somewhere around here? Or, being so wise and so very old, you might have an idea where they’ve got to? They were seen coming this way by a security camera.”

  “Kids?” repeated Emmett gruffly. “Can’t stand them. Don’t have any of them in my Clean Room. No, not never. Not kids.”

  “The thing is,” said Eric gently, “I really do need to find them. For a start, I’m worried about them, and I’d like to know that they’re okay. But also because we’ve got an emergency situation going on, and it involves one of the missing kids.”

  “It does?” said Emmett, forgetting to use his adult voice.

  “Actually it’s about his father,” Eric told him.

  “His father?” Emmett whipped off his face mask. “Is my dad okay? Has anything happened to him?” Tears filled his eyes.

  “No, Emmett,” said Eric, putting an arm around him and patting him on the back. “It isn’t your dad. It’s George’s.”

  Eric started to tell Emmett the story of George’s dad—where he’d gone and why, and how he’d got lost in the South Pacific—but he was interrupted by the sound of the decontamination machine starting up again. “Beep! Beep!” The red light over the door flashed as yet another person entered the machine.

  “Get your nasty robot hands off me!” They heard an outraged shout. “I’m an old lady! Show some respect!”

  There was a crunching noise, and the machinery seemed to grind to a halt, followed by a stamping of feet as the door was pushed open and an irritated old woman clutching a walking cane and a handbag—both neatly wrapped in plastic—burst through.

  The beeping noise had stopped and the red light was frozen in mid-flash.

  “What in heaven’s name was all that about?” demanded the old woman. She wasn’t wearing a white outfit at all—just her usual tweed suit. “I will not be treated like that by some blasted machine. Ah, Eric!” she said as she spotted him. “I’ve found you. You can’t get away from me, you know.”

  “I’m starting to realize that,” murmured Eric.

  “What was that? I’m deaf—you’ll have to write it down.” She ripped off the plastic covering from her handbag and rummaged around for her notebook.

  “Emmett,” said Eric in resigned tones, “this is Mabel, George’s grandmother. She arrived here today to ask for my help in locating George’s dad, Terence—who, as I told you, is lost in the South Pacific. The emergency alert I received earlier—it turned out to be from Mabel, who George’s mom, Daisy, had contacted.” He took Mabel’s notebook and scribbled: Mabel, this is Emmett. He is George’s friend and he is just about to tell me where George and Annie are.

  Mabel looked over at Emmett and smiled, a real smile full of friendliness and warmth. “Oh, Eric!” she said. “What a terrible memory you have! Emmett and I met at the airport so we are old friends already. Remember though, I’m very deaf, so if you want to talk to me you’ll have to write it down.”

  “Live long and prosper,” said Emmett, giving her the Vulcan salute with one hand and writing his greeting in her book with the other.

  “Thank you, Emmett,” replied Mabel. “I have, indeed, lived a very long time and prospered greatly.” She saluted him back again.

  “But I don’t understand. How are you going to rescue George’s dad if he’s in the Pacific and you’re here?” Emmett asked Eric. “Are you going to send a rocket to pick him up?”

  “Ah, well, you forget,” said Eric. “I—well, the Global Space Agency actually—have satellites which orbit the Earth. Space missions don’t just look outward across the cosmos, they also look back at Earth, so we can see what’s happening on our own planet. So I’ve asked the satellite department to look closely at that part of the Pacific Ocean to see if they can spot Terence. Once we know where he is, we can let Daisy and his friends know, and they can send someone out to rescue him. So fingers crossed, Terence is going to be okay.”

  * * *

  SATELLITES IN SPACE

  A satellite is an object that orbits—or revolves—around another object, like the Moon around the Earth. The Earth is a satellite of the Sun. However, we tend to use the word satellite to mean the man-made objects that are sent into space on a rocket to perform certain tasks, such as navigation, weather monitoring, or communication.

  Rockets were invented by the ancient Chinese in around AD 1000. Many hundreds of years later, on October 4, 1957, the Space Age began when the Russians used a rocket to launch the first satellite into orbit around the Earth. Sputnik, a small metal sphere capable of sending a weak radio signal back to Earth, became a sensation. At the time, it was known as the Red Moon and people all over the world tuned their radios to pick up its signal. The Mark I telescope at Jodrell Bank in the United Kingdom was the first large radio telescope to be used as a tracking antenna to chart the course of the satellite. Sputnik was quickly followed by Sputnik II, also called Pupnik because it had a passenger on board! Laika, a Russian dog, became the first living being from Earth to travel into space.

  The Americans tried to launch their own satellite on December 6, 1957, but the satellite only managed to get 4 feet off the ground before the ro
cket exploded. On February 1, 1958, Explorer I was more successful, and soon the two superpowers on Earth—the USSR and the U.S.—were also competing to be the greatest in space. At that time, they were very suspicious of each other and soon realized that satellites were good for spying. Using photographs taken from above the Earth, the two superpowers hoped to learn more about activities in the other country. The satellite revolution had begun.

  Satellite technology was originally developed for military and intelligence reasons. In the 1970s the U.S. government launched twenty-four satellites, which sent back time signals and orbital information. This led to the first global positioning system (GPS). This technology, which allows armies to cross deserts by night and long-range missiles to hit targets accurately, is now used by millions of ordinary car drivers to avoid getting lost! Known as satellite navigation, or sat nav, it also helps ambulances to reach the injured more promptly and coastguards to launch effective search-and-rescue missions.

  Communication across the world was also changed forever by satellites. In 1962 a U.S. telephone company launched Telstar, a satellite that broadcast the first-ever live television show from the U.S. to Britain and France. The British saw only a few minutes of fuzzy pictures, but the French received clear pictures and sound. They even managed to send back their own transmission of Yves Montand singing “Relax, You Are in Paris!” Before satellites, events had to be filmed and the film taken by plane to be shown on television in other countries. After Telstar, major world events—such as the funeral of U.S. President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and the World Cup in 1966—could be broadcast live across the globe for the first time. Mobile phones and the Internet are other ways in which you might be using a satellite today.

  Satellite imaging isn’t used only by spies! Being able to look back at the Earth from space has enabled us to see patterns, both on the Earth and in the atmosphere. We can measure land use and see how cities are expanding and how deserts and forests are changing shape. Farmers use satellite pictures to monitor their crops and decide which fields need fertilizer.

  And satellites have transformed our understanding of the weather. They have made weather forecasts more accurate and shown the way weather patterns emerge and move around the world. Satellites cannot change the weather but they can track hurricanes, tornadoes, and cyclones, giving us the ability to issue severe weather warnings.

  In the late 1990s NASA’s TOPEX/Poseidon satellite, which maps the oceans, provided enough information for weather watchers to spot the El Niño phenomenon. And Jason, a new series of NASA satellites, has recently been launched to gather data about the ocean’s role in determining the Earth’s climate. This in turn will help us to understand climate change better, showing us detailed images of the melting polar ice caps, disappearing inland seas, and rising ocean levels—information we now need urgently!

  Just as satellites can look back at the Earth and transform our understanding of our own planet, so they have also changed our perception of the Universe around us. The Hubble Space Telescope was the first large-scale space observatory. Orbiting the Earth, Hubble has helped astronomers to calculate the age of the Universe and has shown that it is expanding at an accelerated pace.

  There are three thousand satellites in orbit around the Earth, with a total coverage of every square inch of the planet. It is getting quite crowded out there and can be dangerous. Satellites in low Earth orbit move very fast—around eighteen thousand miles an hour. Collisions are rare, but when they happen, they make a mess! Even a fleck of paint moving at that speed could cause damage if it hit a spacecraft. There may be a million pieces of space junk orbiting the Earth, but only about nine thousand of these are bigger than a tennis ball.

  * * *

  “Couldn’t the satellites also measure the rising sea?” asked Emmett.

  “Well, yes, they could,” said Eric. “And I would have happily helped them, if only they’d asked me. But even so, human exploration and real experience are still very important. On their journey they will have learned a lot about other things that satellites can’t help us with. But we could have worked together on this project. And perhaps we will now. Daisy called Mabel to tell her that Terence was missing, and Mabel came right here to find me. Which was, of course, exactly the right thing to do. Any minute now, we should spot him,” he finished, just a touch smugly. “Anyway, where are George and Annie? Have you been playing hide-and-seek?” He smiled, and Emmett’s heart leaped into his mouth.

  “We are playing a sort of game,” he stuttered.

  “Oh good!” said Eric. “MABEL, THE KIDS ARE PLAYING A GAME! Tell us—we can all join in. I could do with some fun, what with having missed the launch.”

  “Y’know, like, a treasure hunt,” said Emmett slowly.

  “Ye-esss…,” said Eric.

  “A game?” asked Mabel. “How exciting!”

  “Like, where you have clues and you have to follow them to find out where you need to go,” continued Emmett, wishing he could blast himself into space at that exact moment and not have to finish what he had to say.

  Eric scribbled something in Mabel’s notebook.

  “A treasure hunt! How splendid!” she exclaimed, reading it. “My, it’s not just your memory, Eric! Your handwriting is dreadful too. How ever did you get so far in life?”

  “So what’s the clue? Where have they gone?”

  Eric was still smiling when Cosmos, from under his reflective thermal blanket, said in a loud voice, “Ping! Sending is complete! Mission stage three is underway.” Eric stopped smiling as soon as he heard Cosmos’s voice. He ran over to the shiny pile of crumpled foil and whisked it away to reveal the supercomputer underneath. “THAT’S MY COMPUTER!” he shouted so loudly that even Mabel heard him with no problem. “So where in the Universe are Annie and George?”

  Chapter 12

  Eric looked so angry that, for one horrifying moment, Emmett had a vision of him exploding like a supernova in a burst of radiation that was so bright it could outshine a whole galaxy. He glared at Emmett, the full force of nuclear fury blazing in his eyes.

  “If you’ve done what I think you’ve done…,” he said.

  Emmett just opened and closed his mouth, like a goldfish. He tried to speak, but he couldn’t get any sound out. He made a strange sort of gurgling noise instead.

  “Where are Annie and George?” asked Eric quietly but fiercely, his face white with tension.

  “A—a—a—” was all Emmett could stutter.

  Mabel’s bright eyes were flicking from Eric to Emmett as she tried to work out what was going on.

  “Tell me,” said Eric. “I need to know.”

  Emmett moved his lips, but he still couldn’t make his voice work. He swallowed loudly as tears filled his eyes.

  “Okay!” said Eric. “If you refuse to tell me, then I’ll ask Cosmos instead.” He knelt down on the floor in front of the computer and started tapping away furiously. “How could you!” he muttered. “How could you do this!”

  Mabel hobbled over to Emmett and handed him her notepad and pencil.

  “If there’s something that’s too difficult to say,” she whispered to him, “perhaps you could write it down instead? Then anything you need to tell Eric, I can say for you.”

  Emmett looked at her gratefully and took them. He chewed the pencil end, not sure where to start.

  “What if I ask you some questions?” said Mabel kindly. “That might get us going. Why is Eric so upset?”

  He’s mad because we took his special computer, Cosmos, Emmett wrote neatly in Mabel’s book.

  “What’s so special about Cosmos?” asked Mabel.

  He can send you across the Universe.

  “Have Annie and George gone on a trip?”

  Emmett nodded, his big eyes full of fear. But Mabel just smiled at him and motioned for him to carry on writing. He took a big gulp and put pen to paper again. They were on Titan, but they’ve just gone through the portal to the nearest star system to us, Alpha Ce
ntauri. They think this is where they will find the next clue. The first clue came to them on Earth, they got the second on Mars, and the third on Titan.

  “Ah, the treasure hunt.” Mabel nodded understandingly.

  Eric was still bashing away on Cosmos, who didn’t seem to be helping him. “Bug off! Access denied!” said the supercomputer angrily. Emmett glanced nervously at them.

  “Who is leaving these clues for them?” said Mabel.

  We don’t know, wrote Emmett. But each message has the same ending—it threatens to destroy planet Earth if we don’t follow them.

  “Any more clues about the clues?”

  Well, wrote Emmett, doodling a little. I did work something out. But I might be wrong…. He drew a series of dots.

  “Carry on,” said Mabel as Eric let out a howl of frustration. She put a calming hand on Emmett’s shoulder. “We’ll deal with him in a minute.”

  The first clue came to them on Earth, where there is already life. The second clue was on Mars, where we think there might have been life in the past . The third clue was on Titan, which is a moon of Saturn. Titan might be like the Earth was just before life began. So we thought the fourth clue might take them to Alpha Centauri, which is the nearest star system to us and the closest place we would look for signs of life outside the Solar System. And they have to find a planet in a binary star system. That’s what the clue says.

  “So you think they are following a trail of life in the Universe in order to prevent life on Earth from coming to an end,” said Mabel. “You are a very smart boy, Emmett. Eric!” She poked him in the back with her cane.

  “Leave. Me. Alone. I. Am.

  Busy,” said Eric as Cosmos blew a loud raspberry at him.

  “Oh, grow up!” said Mabel. “I’ve got something to say. And when you get to my age, you have the right to speak, whether anyone wants to listen to you or not. Eric, you have scared this poor boy so much he can’t tell you what he knows. So if you could try and be a bit nicer to him, he will stop feeling so terrified and help you sort this out.”