George's Cosmic Treasure Hunt (2 page)

After eight minutes and thirty seconds in the air—George felt like entire centuries could have passed by and he wouldn't have noticed—the three main engines shut down and the external fuel tank detached.

“There she goes!” whistled his pilot, and through the window George saw the huge orange fuel tank disappear from view to burn up in the atmosphere.

Outside, they passed the boundary line, where the blue of the earthly sky turns into the black of outer space. Distant stars shone around them. They were still climbing higher, but they didn't have much farther to go before they reached their maximum height.

“All systems are good,” said George's pilot, checking all the flashing lights on the panels. “Heading for orbit. Commander, will you take us into orbit?”

“I will,” said George confidently, now speaking to mission control in Texas. “Houston”—he said the most famous word in the history of space travel—“we are go for orbit. Do you read me, Houston? This is
Atlantis
. We are go for orbit.”

In the darkness outside, the stars suddenly looked very bright and very close. One of them seemed to be
zooming toward him, shining a bright light directly into his face, so close and so brilliant that—

George woke up with a start and found himself in an unfamiliar bed with someone shining a flashlight in his face.

“George!” the figure hissed. “George! Get up! It's an emergency!”

I
t hadn't been easy to decide what to wear. “Come as your favorite space object,” he'd been told by Eric Bellis, the scientist next door, who had invited George to his costume party. The problem was, George had so many favorite outer-space objects, he hadn't known which one to pick.

Should he dress up as Saturn with its rings?

Perhaps he could go as Pluto, the poor little planet that wasn't a planet anymore?

Or should he go as the darkest, most powerful force in the Universe—a black hole? He didn't think too long or hard about that—as amazing, huge, and fascinating as black holes are, they didn't really count as his favorite space objects. It would be quite hard to get fond of something that was so greedy, it swallowed up anything and everything that came too close, including light.

In the end George had his mind made up for him. He'd been looking at images of the Solar System on the Internet with his dad when they came across a picture sent back from a Mars rover, one of the robots exploring the planet's surface. It showed what looked like a person standing on the red planet. As soon as he saw the photo, George knew he wanted to go to Eric's party as the Man from Mars. Even George's dad, Terence, got excited when he saw it. Of course, they both knew it wasn't really a Martian in the picture—it was just an illusion caused by a trick of the light that made a rocky outcrop look like a person. But it was exciting to imagine that we might not be alone in this vast Universe after all.

“Dad, do you think there
is
anyone out there?” asked George as they gazed at the photo. “Like Martians or beings in faraway galaxies? And if there are, do you think they might come to visit us?”

“If there are,” said his dad, “I expect they're looking
at us and wondering what we must be like—to have this beautiful, wonderful planet and make such a mess of it. They must think we're really stupid.” He shook his head sadly.

Both George's parents were eco-warriors on a mission to save the Earth. As part of their campaign, electrical gadgets like telephones and computers had been banned from the house. But when George had won the first prize in the school science competition—his very own computer—his mom and dad didn't have the heart to say he couldn't keep it.

In fact, since they'd had the computer in the house, George had shown them how to use it and had even helped them put together a very snappy virtual ad featuring a huge photo of Venus.
WHO WOULD WANT TO LIVE HERE?
it said in big letters.
Clouds of sulfuric acid, temperatures of up to 878 degrees Fahrenheit (470 degrees Celsius)…The seas have dried up and the atmosphere is so thick, sunlight can't break through. This is Venus. But if we're not careful, this could be Earth. Would you want to live on a planet like this?
George was very proud of the poster, which his parents and their friends had e-mailed all around the world to promote their cause.

Given what he knew about Venus, George felt pretty sure that there wasn't any life to be found on that smelly, hot planet. He didn't even consider going to Eric's party dressed as a Venusian. Instead, he got his mom, Daisy, to help him with an outfit of dark-orange bobbly knitted clothes and a tall pointy hat so he looked just like the photo of the “Martian” they'd found.

Wearing his costume, George waved good-bye to his parents—who had a big evening planned helping some eco-friends make organic treats for a party of their own—and squeezed through the gap in the fence between his garden and Eric's. The gap had come about when George's pet pig (given to him by his gran), Freddy, had escaped from his pigsty, barged through the fence, and broken into Eric's house via the back door. Following the trail of hoofprints that Freddy had left behind him, George had ended up meeting his new neighbors, who had only just moved into the empty house next door. This chance encounter with Eric and his family had changed George's life forever.

Eric had shown George his amazing computer, Cosmos, who was so smart and so powerful that he could draw doorways through which Eric; his daughter, Annie; and George could walk, to visit any part of the known Universe.

But space can be very dangerous, as George found out when one of their space adventures ended with Cosmos exploding from the sheer effort of mounting the rescue mission.

Since Cosmos had stopped working, George hadn't had another chance to step through the doorway and travel around the Solar System and beyond. He missed Cosmos, but at least he had Eric and Annie. He could see them anytime he wanted, even if he couldn't go on adventures into outer space with them.

George scampered up the garden path to Eric's back door. The house was brightly lit, with chatter and music
pouring out. Opening the door, George let himself into the kitchen.

He couldn't see Annie, Eric, or Annie's mom, Susan, but there were lots of other people milling about: one grown-up immediately pushed a plate of shiny silver-iced muffins under his nose. “Have a meteorite!” he said cheerfully. “Or perhaps I should say, have a meteoroid!”

“Oh…um, well, thanks,” said George, a bit startled. “They look delicious,” he added, helping himself to one.

“If I did this,” continued the man, tipping some of the muffins onto the floor, “then I could say, ‘Have a meteorite!' because then they would have hit the ground. But when I offered them to you, suspended in the air, they were—technically—still meteoroids.” He beamed at George and then at the muffins that were lying in a pile on the floor. “You get the distinction—a meteoroid is a chunk of rock that flies through the air; a meteor
ite
is what you call that piece of rock if it lands on the Earth. So now I've dropped them on the floor, we can call them meteorites.”

With the muffin in his hand, George smiled politely, nodded, and started backing away slowly.

“Ouch!” He heard a squeak as he trod on someone behind him.

“Oops!” he said, turning around.

“It's okay, it's only me!” It was Annie, dressed all in black. “You couldn't have seen me, anyway, because I'm invisible!” She swiped the muffin out of George's hand and stuffed it into her mouth. “You only know I'm here because of the effect I have on objects around me. What does that make me?”

“A black hole, of course!” said George. “You swallow anything that comes near you, you greedy pig.”

“Nope!” said Annie triumphantly. “I knew you'd say that, but that's wrong! I am”—she looked very pleased with herself—“dark matter.”

“What's that?” asked George.

“No one knows,” said Annie mysteriously. “We can't see it, but it seems to be absolutely essential to keep galaxies from flying apart. What are you?”