George's Secret Key to the Universe

by Stephen Hawking

  “I’m feeling much better,” stated Dr. Reeper firmly. “And very much looking forward to the competition.”

  “That’s the spirit!” said the principal. “I’m so glad you’re here, Reeper! One of the judges has had to drop out, so you’re just the man to take his place.”

  “Oh no no no no no no no no,” said Dr. Reeper hurriedly. “I’m sure you can find someone much better.”

  “Nonsense!” said the principal. “You’re just the ticket! Come along, Reeper, you can sit with me.”

  Grimacing, Reeper had no choice but to follow the principal and take a seat next to him at the front of the hall.

  George waited by the door until at last he saw Annie again, coming toward him in a great gaggle of kids in blue uniforms. As she walked past him, he grabbed her sleeve and pulled her out of the great river of children flowing into the hall.

  “We’ve got to go!” he whispered in her ear. “Now!”

  “Where?” asked Annie. “Where have we got to go?”

  “Your dad’s fallen into a black hole!” said George. “Follow me—we have to rescue him …”

  Annie hurried along the hallway after George.

  “But, George,” she said, “where are we going?”

  “Shush,” he said over his shoulder. “This way.” He was taking Annie toward the side door, which led out onto the road. It was strictly forbidden for pupils to go out of that door by themselves during school hours. If George and Annie were caught leaving school without permission, they would be in deep trouble. Worse—much worse—they would forfeit their only chance to reach Cosmos, which would mean that Eric would be lost inside a black hole forever. It was vital that they leave the school as fast as possible.

  They walked along stiffly, trying to look completely natural and innocent, as though they had every reason in the world to be going in the opposite direction from everyone else. It seemed to be working—no one paid any attention to them. They were just approaching the side door when George saw a teacher walking toward them. He crossed his fingers, hoping they wouldn’t be spotted, but it didn’t work.

  “George,” said the teacher. “And where might you be going?”

  “Oh, sir!” said George. “We, um, we are just, um …” He faltered and ran out of steam.

  “I left something for the science presentation in my coat pocket, sir,” Annie’s clear voice cut in. “So my teacher asked this boy to show me the way back to the coatrooms.”

  “Carry on, then,” said the teacher, letting them pass. But he stood watching them until they disappeared into the coatrooms. When they peered back down the hallway, he was still standing there, guarding the school exit. The last children were straggling into the science presentation, which was due to start any minute now.

  “Rats,” said George, retreating back into the coatroom. “We won’t get out through that door.” They looked around. In the wall above the rows of coat pegs was a long, thin, rectangular window.

  “Do you think you can squeeze through?” George asked Annie.

  “It’s the only way out, isn’t it?” she said, looking up at the window.

  George nodded grimly.

  “Then I’ll just have to,” said Annie with great determination. “I’m not letting a black hole eat my dad, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not!”

  George could tell by the way she scrunched up her face that she was trying not to cry. He wondered if he’d done the right thing in telling her—maybe he should have tried to rescue Eric all by himself? But it was too late for these kinds of thoughts. He had Annie with him now, and they needed to get on with it.

  “Come on,” he said briskly. “I’ll give you a leg up.” He hoisted her up so she could undo the catch, push the window open, and slither through the narrow gap; she gave a small squeak as she vanished from view. George pulled himself up onto the ledge and tried to slide through as Annie had done, but he was a lot bigger than her and it wasn’t easy. He got halfway through but then couldn’t go any farther! He was stuck, one side of him dangling out of the window over the street outside his school, the other still inside the coatroom.

  “George!” Annie reached up and grabbed his foot.

  “Don’t pull!” he said, gently easing himself through the gap, sucking in his breath as much as he could. With another wriggle, he pulled himself free of the tight frame and landed in a crumpled heap on the pavement. He staggered to his feet and grabbed Annie’s hand. “Run!” he panted. “We’ve got to get out of sight.”

  They sped around the corner and stopped so that George could catch his breath. “Annie—,” he started to say, but she waved at him to be quiet. She’d got out her cell phone and was making a call.

  “Mom!” she said urgently into the phone. “It’s an emergency … No, I’m fine, it’s not me … Yes, I’m at the school where you dropped me this morning, but I’ve got to … No, Mom, I haven’t done anything … Mom, listen, please! Something’s happened to Dad, something awful, and we’ve got to rescue him … He’s gone into outer space and got lost, and we have to get him back … Can you come and pick us up us? I’m with my friend George and we’re just near his school. Quickly, Mom, quickly, hurry up, we haven’t got long … okay, bye.”

  “What did your mom say?” asked George.

  “She said, When will your father learn to stop doing silly things and behave like an adult?”

  “What does she mean by that?” said George, perplexed.

  “I don’t know,” said Annie. “Grownups have funny ideas.”

  “Is she coming?”

  “Yes. She won’t be long—she’s coming in her Mini.”

  Sure enough, just a few minutes later a little red car with white stripes pulled up next to them. A sweet-faced lady with long brown hair wound down the window and stuck out her head.

  “Well, whatever next!” she said cheerfully. “Your father and his adventures! I don’t know. And what are you two doing out of school?”

  “George, this is my mom. Mom this is George,” said Annie, ignoring her mother’s question and wrenching open the passenger door. She held the front seat forward so that George could climb in. “You can go in the back,” she told him. “But be careful, don’t break anything.” The backseat was covered in recorders, cymbals, triangles, mini-harps, and string drums.

  “Sorry, George,” said Annie’s mom as he clambered in. “I’m a music teacher—that’s why I have so many instruments.”

  “A music teacher?” echoed George in surprise.

  “Yes,” said Annie’s mom. “What did Annie tell you I was? President of the United States?”

  “No,” said George, catching her eye in the rear-view mirror. “She said you were a dancer in Moscow.”

  “That’s enough talking about me as though I wasn’t here,” said Annie, putting on her seat belt. “Mom—drive the car! We need to rescue Dad, it’s really important.”

  Annie’s mom just sat there with the engine off. “Don’t panic, Annie,” she said mildly. “Your father’s been in all sorts of difficult situations before. I’m sure he’s going to be fine. After all, Cosmos wouldn’t let anything terrible happen to him. I think you two should go back to school and we won’t say any more about it.”

  “Um, that’s the thing,” said George, who wasn’t quite sure what to call Annie’s mom. “Eric hasn’t got Cosmos—he’s been stolen! Eric’s in outer space all by himself. And he’s near a black hole.”

  “By himself?” repeated Annie’s mom. She suddenly turned quite pale. “No Cosmos? But then he can’t get back! And a black hole … ?”

  “Mom, I keep telling you it’s an emergency!” pleaded Annie. “Now do you believe me?”

  “Oh my goodness gracious me! Fasten your seat belt, George!” exclaimed Annie’s mom, starting the car. “And tell me where I need to go.”

  George gave her Dr. Reeper’s address, and she put her foot down on the accelerator so hard that the little car shot forward with a great lurch.

  As the red
Mini zoomed through the heavy traffic toward Greeper’s house, George explained as best he could what had happened over the past twenty-four hours. While the little car wove through the traffic across town, cutting in and out—much to the annoyance of people in bigger cars—he told Annie and her mom (who asked him to call her Susan) all about going to see Eric yesterday to ask for his help with his science presentation. He told them about the mysterious note that he hadn’t trusted and about Eric leaping through the portal into outer space and having to follow him. And how both of them had got sucked toward an invisible force and how when the doorway appeared to save them, it was too faint and only George had managed to get through.

  He told them about landing in the library and looking around to find that Eric wasn’t there, and how Cosmos had been stolen; how George had run after the thieves but had lost them in the dark; how he had gone back to Eric’s to look for the book that Eric had told him to find; how he’d tried to read it but couldn’t understand it and then had found the notes in the back that explained that it was possible to escape from a black hole; how he needed to find Cosmos because although someone could escape from a black hole, he would need Cosmos to make it happen; and how he’d realized where Cosmos must be and had gone there that morning and seen Dr. Reeper—

  “Reeper? Do you mean Graham Reeper?” Susan interrupted him as she swerved the little car around a corner.

  “Yes,” replied George. “Greeper. He’s my teacher. Do you know him?”

  “I did once, a long time ago,” said Susan in a dark voice. “I always told Eric that he shouldn’t trust Graham. But he wouldn’t listen. Eric always thought the best of people. Until …” She trailed off.

  “Until what?” piped up Annie. “Until what, Mom?”

  “Until something terrible happened,” said Susan, her mouth set in a grim line. “Something none of us have ever forgotten.”

  “None of who?” said Annie, gasping with excitement at the prospect of a thrilling family story she hadn’t heard before. But she didn’t get to find out, because right then, her mom turned into Greeper’s driveway and parked the car in front of his house.

  It wasn’t easy to break into Greeper’s house. Even though the place was old, scruffy, and unloved, Greeper had locked every single window and door. They went around the house, trying everywhere, but nothing would budge. When they reached the window of the room where George had seen Cosmos only that morning, it looked like the great computer was no longer there.

  “But I saw him!” protested George. “In that room!”

  Annie and Susan looked at each other. Susan bit her lip to try and hide her disappointment. A fat tear snaked down Annie’s cheek.

  “If we can’t find Cosmos … ,” she whispered.

  “Hang on a minute!” exclaimed Susan. “Shush, you two! Listen!” They all strained their ears as hard as they could.

  From somewhere inside the room they heard the faint tinny mechanical sound of someone singing: “Hey diddle diddle the cat and the fiddle … the cow jumped over the moon … although technically that would not be possible without a space suit because the cow would freeze,” the voice added.

  “It’s Cosmos!” cried George. “He’s singing so that we know where to find him! But how are we going to get to him?”

  “Wait there!” said Susan mysteriously. She vanished off around the corner, but a few minutes later appeared inside the room where Cosmos was singing. She opened the ground-floor window very wide so that Annie and George could climb through.

  “How did you do that?” asked George in wonder.

  “I should have thought of it before,” said Susan. “Graham had left his spare key under a flowerpot by the front door. It’s what he always used to do. So I let myself in.”

  Meanwhile Annie had followed the sound of brave Cosmos’s singing and was rooting around in a big cupboard. She pulled out a cardboard box full of old blankets, threw them out, and, at the bottom, found Cosmos himself. Unfolding his screen, she covered it in kisses. “Cosmos, Cosmos, Cosmos!” she squealed. “We found you! Are you all right? Can you rescue my dad?”

  “Please plug me in,” gasped Cosmos, who was a bit the worse for wear. At Eric’s house, he had been sleek, silver, and shiny—a glossy, well-looked-after computer. Now he was scratched and battered, with marks and smudges all over him. “I am exhausted. My batteries are nearly dead.”

  George looked at the spot where he had seen Cosmos earlier that day and, sure enough, there was the computer’s cable. He attached Cosmos to the cable and heard him take big, thirsty gulps, as though he were drinking down a huge glass of cold water.

  “That’s better!” sighed Cosmos. “Now, would someone like to tell me what the microchip is going on around here?”

  “Eric’s fallen into a black hole!” George told him.

  “And we need you to get him out,” pleaded Annie. “Dear Cosmos, please say you know how.”

  Cosmos made a whirring noise. “I am checking my disks for information,” he said. “I am searching for files on how to rescue someone from a black hole … Please wait …” He made more whirring noises and then stopped and went silent.

  “Well?” said Annie, sounding worried. “Can you?”

  “Um, no,” said Cosmos reluctantly. “Those search terms have produced zero information.”

  “You don’t know how? But, Cosmos, that means—” Annie couldn’t finish the sentence. She threw her arms around her mom and started to cry.

  “No one has provided me with information about escaping from black holes,” explained Cosmos apologetically. “I only know how to get into a black hole and not how to get out again. I am not sure it is possible. Eric would have told me if he knew. I am accessing my archive on black holes, gravity, and mass, but I fear none of these files holds the data I need.” His drives whirred again, but then he fell silent—unusually, for Cosmos, lost for words …

  “So Eric’s lost,” said Annie’s mom, wiping her eyes. “He told me a long time ago that nothing can come out of a black hole once it has fallen in.”

  “No!” said George. “That’s not right! I mean, Eric’s changed his mind about black holes. That’s what he says in the notes he wrote for Annie and me.”

  “What notes?” asked Cosmos.

  “The ones I found in the back of his new book.”

  “What did the notes say?”

  Searching in his bag, George tried to remember Eric’s exact words. “Eric wrote that black holes are not eternal,” he said. “They somehow spit out everything that falls in … takes a long time … radiator something.”

  “Radiation,” corrected Cosmos. “Do you have the book? Maybe I can download the information from it and work something out.”

  “Yeah! Radiation! That’s it!” George had found Eric’s big book on black holes and handed it over to Annie. “But, Cosmos, we’ve got to be quick—as soon as Greeper sees I’m not at school to give my talk, he’ll come right back here.”

  “We’d be a lot quicker if Eric had bothered to update my system properly in the first place.” Cosmos sniffed.

  “Perhaps he meant to but forgot?” said George.

  “Typical!” said Cosmos.

  “Do you mind?” said Annie angrily. “Could we hurry up?”

  “Of course,” said Cosmos, sounding serious again. “Once I have the new information, I can start right away. Annie, attach the book to my book port.”

  As quickly as she could, Annie pulled out a clear plastic tray from Cosmos’s side and adjusted it until it stood upright. She propped the book on it and pressed a button on the computer. “Ready?” she said.

  The humming noise of the computer grew louder and louder and the pages of the book started to glow. “Rebooting my memory files on black holes!” said Cosmos. “Finished! You were right, George. It is all in Eric’s new book. I can do it. I can rescue Eric from a black hole.”

  “Then do it!” George, Annie, and her mom shouted in unison.

  Annie pressed
the ENTER key on Cosmos’s keyboard and the portal window appeared in the middle of the room. On the other side of it was a very distorted view of somewhere in outer space. In the middle was a black patch.

  “That’s the black hole!” cried George.

  “Correct,” replied Cosmos. “That’s where I left you and Eric.”

  The view seemed very still, as though nothing was happening.

  “Cosmos, why aren’t you doing anything?” asked Annie.

  “It takes time,” replied Cosmos. “I need to pick up all the little things that come out of the black hole. Most of them are so small, you can’t even see them. If I miss one, I may not be able to reconstruct Eric. I will have to filter out Eric from every single object that ever fell in the black hole.”

  “What do you mean reconstruct?” asked Annie’s mom.

  “The black hole expels particles one by one. Each time a particle gets out, the black hole expels more the next time, so it gets quicker and quicker all the time. I’m fast forwarding time by billions of years. Please let me work. I need to pick up everything.”

  George, Annie, and her mom fell silent and stared through the window, each willing Cosmos to get it right. After a few minutes the black hole still looked exactly the same as it had before. But then, as they watched, it started to shrink, and the space around it became less and less distorted. Once the black hole had begun shrinking, it got smaller and smaller faster and faster. Now they could see an enormous number of particles that seemed to be coming from the black hole itself.

  Cosmos was making a whirring noise that was getting louder and louder as the black hole shrank. The lights on his screen—so bright just a minute ago—started to flicker and grow dim. The whirring noise suddenly went crunchy and a high-pitched alarm rang out from Cosmos’s keyboard.

  “What’s wrong with Cosmos?” George whispered to Annie and Susan.

  Susan looked worried. “It must be all the effort he’s making with the calculations. Even for Cosmos, they must be very difficult.”

  “Do you think he’ll be able to do it?” squeaked Annie.

  “We just have to hope,” said Susan firmly.