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RHCP Digital is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

Text copyright © Lucy Hawking, 2016
Illustrations by Garry Parsons
Illustrations/Diagrams copyright © Random House Children’s Publishers, 2016
Cover artwork, design and lettering © Blacksheep-uk
Cover space suits photography © Superstock
‘Building Rockets for Mars’ by Allyson Thomas © 2015 National Aeronautics and Space Administration, an Agency of the United States Government. Used with Permission.

All correspondence to:
RHCP Digital
Penguin Random House Children’s
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL

I don’t know what I may seem to the world, but as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

THE LATEST SCIENTIFIC IDEAS!

As you read the story, you will come across some fabulous science essays and information. These will really help bring the topics you read about to life, and are written by the following well-respected experts:

The Oceans of Earth
by Professor Ros E. M. Rickaby
Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford

Volcanoes on Earth, in our Solar System and Beyond
by Professor Tamsin A. Mather
Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford

What are Chemical Elements and Where Do They Come From?
by Dr Toby Blench
Research Chemist

Medically Speaking, is Suspended Animation Realistic?
by Dr David Warmflash, M.D.

Is There Anyone Out There?
by Professor Stephen Hawking
University of Cambridge

What is Quantum Teleportation?
by Dr Stuart Rankin
University Information Services, University of Cambridge

THE PINK-FRINGED CORAL waved gently in the soft blue ocean as a shoal of millions of tiny silver fish dived past it. Swimming as one, the swarm of fish jackknifed and suddenly shot upwards and away, towards the turquoise water above George’s head. A larger fish lay up there, hovering between George and the sunshine on the surface of the ocean. The huge fish moved slowly across his field of vision, as stately and as well armoured as any battleship.

On the floor of the ocean bed, where the coral reef dropped away to the sandy ground, little creatures scuttled along, waving their pincers furiously as though a catch would swim straight into them. Wriggly sand worms snaked around them, creating curly patterns in the loose material on the sea bed.

The Oceans of Earth

Earth – our blue planet – is exceptional in our solar system as it is nearly three quarters covered by the oceans. But why are our oceans here? Intriguingly, Earth’s oceans arrived from outer space. When the Earth was forming, it was too hot for water to condense on the planet. Just as tall mountains have snowy white tops above the ‘snow-line’, where the cooling of the atmosphere with height allows snow to persist, so too was there a gradient of cooling to a snow-line away from the ferociously hot early Sun.

Temperatures cold enough for ice grains to form were only reached further out in the solar system, in the asteroid belt somewhere between Mars and Jupiter. Earth’s oceans, therefore, had to be imported: many think this happened with a shower of water-rich meteorites or comets from the asteroid belt bombarding the early Earth.

Since then these extraterrestrial water molecules have been neither created nor destroyed! For the subsequent 3.8 billion years (the first evidence for liquid water comes from sediments of this age on southwest Greenland), our oceans have been trapped on the Earth’s surface, where they go round in two cycles.

First, the warmth of the Sun in the tropics turns some of the ocean to vapour (just as you see coming from a boiling kettle or steam engine) and clouds. Rising clouds cool and create rain, which trickles across the land and into streams and rivers before gushing back into the oceans.

Second, small amounts of water pop down into Earth’s interior, through deep-sea trenches in the ocean crust. This water rapidly returns to the surface through volcanoes or hydrothermal vents.

So the very same water molecules coming out of your taps at home have witnessed every second of Earth’s history, from before the start of self-reproducing life itself to the emergence of multi-celled organisms. Most probably, these water molecules passed through a dinosaur at some point. You could be making a cup of tea out of water that was once slurped down by a thirsty T. Rex!

What makes water so extraordinary and the oceans so key to life is its ability to dissolve things. Put some salt in a glass of water, or sugar in your tea, and those crystals will disappear or dissolve. This is because of the slight charge or ‘polarity’ of water molecules, which attracts elements into solution.

Water is even better at dissolving things if it is made a little acidic, by reacting with something like carbon dioxide to make carbonic acid. Take a sip of fizzy water (those bubbles are carbon dioxide) and see if you can taste the acidity; both my sons wrinkle their noses on doing so. Now, when water cycles from the oceans to clouds, then to rain and down rivers, it becomes a bit acidic by reacting with carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. As a result, this carbonated rainwater dissolves elements out of the land (this is called weathering), takes them into the rivers, and the elements end up going into the oceans. Have you ever seen reddish-brown rivers? These are full of iron which has been leached out of the rocks.

The oceans accumulate all the elements dissolved from the land (and from reaction with the deep ocean floor at hydrothermal vents, such as spectacular black smokers). But only the water molecules themselves keep on cycling back to clouds – the elements are left behind. Some elements get so concentrated in the ocean that they turn back into minerals and fall out as sediments, notably limestone (calcium carbonate) and cherts (silica), a process which limits their concentration in the sea.

Unlike most elements, however, the elements sodium or chlorine – the two ingredients of salt – only fall out from the ocean episodically and in exceptional circumstances. For example, the entire Mediterranean dried up to a puddle about 6 million years ago, leaving huge salt deposits. The lack of a natural continuous ‘sink’ for sodium and chlorine means that the sea is always salty.

The weathering of land by water is the very reason why life could appear and remain on Earth: it acts as a thermostat for Earth’s temperature. The speed of weathering depends on Earth’s temperature. So if, for any reason, the temperature rises – due to the increase in solar luminosity over Earth’s history, for example – or if there is an increase of carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas which warms the Earth) in the planet’s atmosphere, then the rocks on land dissolve more quickly. This leads to a rush of elements (and carbon) into the oceans – which in turn speeds up the formation of sediment. This locks additional carbon dioxide into limestones, thus resetting the planet to its previous conditions and stopping everything from overheating. How do you think weathering works to stop the Earth completely freezing over?

While weathering maintained temperatures favourable for life to appear, we do not know, and perhaps might never know, where life did begin on our Earth (now there’s a challenge for you!). Was it in some ‘warm little pond’, as the great naturalist Darwin suggested, or at the depths of the ocean? Whichever it was, one thing we do know is that life’s origins and evolution depended on water. Elements are bound rigidly in rocks in the Earth’s crust, but the ocean is a watery cocktail of all those rocky elements (and organic molecules) highly available, all free to diffuse and react. This is the key to initiating life.

It is believed that the deeper oceans likely provided a safe haven for life’s very first stirrings – the surface of the early Earth would have been a much harsher environment. Down in the oceans, harmful radiation was filtered out, and the seas provided buffering against extreme temperatures, and protected the development of life against bombardments of meteorites and intense volcanic outpourings.

From uncertain origins perhaps 2.7 billion years ago, scientists believe that the first 2 billion years of life’s history almost certainly then played out in the ocean. But an inescapable feedback spurred life to become more and more complex. The increasing success of microbes created more chemical byproducts (notably oxygen in the atmosphere), most of which were initially toxic. So to afford more and better control of internal chemistry, simple cells became compartmentalized (these kinds of cells are called eukaryotes) and ultimately differentiated.

This appearance of multicellularity coincided with the most spectacular of life’s inventions – that of the skeleton. During this ‘Cambrian explosion’, 0.54 billion years ago, the rock record of life shows a change from faint ambiguous imprints to a diversity of robust yet intricate shell fossils, undoubtedly sculpted by organisms of complexity (indeed Darwin misread this explosion as the dawn of life).

The solution of Earth’s minerals concentrated in the ocean – as explained before – made making hard parts like shells relatively easy. Just as the horned dinosaurs developed ever more elaborate ornamentation against the increasing ferocity of the Tyrannosaurs, these first ‘biominerals’ afforded armoured protection against forces, poisons and, importantly, predators.

Skeletons – shells and bones – gave rigidity to support animal life in the first steps onto land!

Over Earth’s history, the weathering thermostat has maintained a balance between the amount of acidity (the carbon dioxide) and the amount of alkalinity (the dissolved ions in the ocean). You might think of the continents as an indigestion remedy or ‘antacid’ for the ocean. As long as the oceans have been present, they have always been slightly alkaline – perfect for making skeletons.

But we – and future generations on Earth – face a growing problem.

The booming of mankind and our thirst for fossil fuels is adding carbon dioxide – hence acidity – to the ocean at an unprecedented rate. In a million years or so, the dissolution of the land masses of our continents will accelerate sufficiently to start to neutralize this great burp of carbon dioxide into our waters. But this weathering is inherently slow, so in the meantime, the oceans are becoming a bit less alkaline and a bit less saturated. This process is often termed ocean acidification. ‘Ocean slightly less alkalization’ would be a more accurate description, though less headline-grabbing!

Vulnerable organisms such as coral reefs will find skeleton generation increasingly challenging. This could have enormous ramifications across the marine ecosystem. Unless organisms can adapt – and fast!

Some scientists believe we should intervene to redress global warming and acidification by ‘geoengineering’ carbon dioxide removal. This could include manipulating the weathering of the land, to release more alkaline elements into the seas.

But should we really embark on yet another global-scale experiment with our Earth?

What do you think?

Ros

Another group of fish swam past, so close to George’s nose that he thought he could reach out and touch them! These fish were brightly coloured, like a little carnival passing through, with stripes of red, blue, yellow and orange. In the far distance, George thought he saw an immense flippered turtle turn and stare at him with its ancient unblinking dark eyes. The turtle opened its mouth, and to George’s astonishment, it seemed to be calling him! It seemed to know his name!

George, the turtle said. George! Strangely, the turtle seemed to have reached out a hand and was shaking his shoulder.

A hand? How would a turtle have a hand? George was just pondering this from his underwater idyll when . . .

‘George!’ It was his best friend Annie standing in front of him, holding the cardboard 3D virtual reality headset he had been wearing until just a few moments before.

George blinked, adjusting to the bright sunlight of a summer afternoon in Foxbridge rather than the murky blue gloaming in the depths of the Coral Sea, off the coast of Australia. He felt completely disorientated. A moment ago, he’d been floating by the Great Barrier Reef. Now he was back in the treehouse at the bottom of his garden, rather than at the bottom of the ocean. There was no turtle talking to him – just his best friend Annie from next door, and she certainly seemed to have a lot to say.

‘I’m taking back my VR headset!’ she complained. ‘I should never have let you have it! You spend all your time underwater now! And I want you to look at this.’ She waved her tablet at him and then pressed a button so the screen came to life. George looked down at it, but he was still seeing fish-shaped blue clouds in front of his eyes so it took him a few moments to focus his vision. Compared to the marvels of the reef, it looked very dull.

‘You made me come out of VR to read a form!’ he protested. ‘Like you fill in to get a railcard.’

George looked again. ‘Oh!’ he said, realization dawning like the sunrise on a planet with two suns in the sky.

‘Astronauts wanted!’ he read. ‘Astronauts wanted!’ he repeated. ‘That’s so cool!’ He carried on reading out loud. ‘Do you have what it takes to leave Earth behind and travel further than any human being has gone before? Could you start a human habitation on the red planet? Could you save the future of the human race by helping it spread out into space and colonize a whole new planet? Do you have the skills to take us into a new era of manned space travel?’ George rattled off quickly. ‘If so, apply here . . . Hang on,’ he said suspiciously. ‘If they want astronauts, don’t you think they mean grown-up ones?’

‘No!’ said Annie triumphantly. ‘This is for junior astronauts! It says so – between the ages of eleven and fifteen!’

‘Bit weird, isn’t it?’ asked George. ‘Why would you send a bunch of kids to Mars?’

‘Duh!’ replied Annie. ‘Any mission to Mars won’t be ready for years – by the time it lifts off, we won’t be kids any more. But they must want to start the training now so they’ve got lots of time to pick the best candidates . . . Can you fill them out?’ She handed him the tablet.

‘You can’t change what you’ve typed,’ said Annie, who was getting more confident now about admitting she was dyslexic. ‘And there’s no autocorrect – the form goes automatically, as soon as you’ve typed it. So it would be way better if you did it.’

‘Will spelling really matter on Mars?’ questioned George. ‘There are far more important things for travelling in space, you know that.’

‘No,’ said Annie firmly. ‘It won’t. But I might not get there if I call it the planet “Rams” by mistake.’

‘Of course it is!’ scoffed Annie. ‘You don’t think they are going to let just anyone fly to Mars?’

‘Yes, Rams, the new home of the human race!’ cried Annie. ‘Right, come on. What’s the first thing?’

‘Erm . . . Explain in your own words why you would be a great candidate to join a trial programme for junior astronaut training in preparation for a Mars mission in 2025.’

‘Easy!’ cried Annie. ‘I’ve got a very high IQ, I’m excellent at problem solving, I have lots of experience of travelling in space—’

‘Can we put that?’ interrupted George. While it was definitely true that he and Annie had travelled in space before, no one was supposed to know about their out-of-this-universe adventures. ‘When does training start?’ he asked. ‘Hang on! It starts really soon. How are we going to get places on this? Haven’t they chosen people already?’

‘Hey, chill out! It says that a few places have come vacant,’ said Annie. ‘I can’t believe we missed the advert the first time. And it’s timed to start at the beginning of the school holidays.’

Glancing up in surprise, finger frozen above the tablet, George saw that Annie had turned white. ‘C’mon, I . . . I . . . wouldn’t read your text messages!’ he said.

‘Well, don’t!’ said Annie. ‘Just . . . don’t. Go back to Astronauts Wanted . . .’

But the screen pinged again. And again. And again, until there was a whole list of incoming unread messages, all from the same number.

‘Right. Mars,’ said Annie defiantly, brushing her long fringe out of her eyes, clearly determined to ignore the messages, which were piling up by the minute. ‘Let’s leave this planet behind. I don’t want to stay here with the horrible people.’

‘NOTHING!’ said Annie. ‘Why has something always got to be going on? No Thing is Going On. Except me, leaving Earth for ever to become a space superhero so I can look down on those earthy worm idiots.’

‘Yuk!’ he exclaimed, recoiling from the screen. ‘That’s nasty! I’m going to write back . . .’

U NO, came a message only seconds later. U NO AND U R SCARED OF US COS U R WEAK AND SILLY AND WE HATE U.

‘Why would they think that?’ asked George. He was so disgusted by the messages that he flinched away from the screen as though it was burning hot. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I don’t either,’ said Annie miserably. ‘I thought I was friends with everyone.’ She seemed to find it hard to explain at first, but then the words came tumbling out. ‘This group of girls suddenly started whispering about me. As soon as I came into the room, they all started muttering behind their hands, and when I asked them why, they just laughed in my face and said they weren’t whispering about me and I had a really big head to think they were talking about me. But as soon as I went out of the room, they stopped.’

‘She just said that she would look into it – and it would help if I could identify the ringleaders, which I can’t. But the best thing is to be mature enough not to react, because if I ignored the bullies they would stop. And if I didn’t they would keep on bullying me. I figured that meant it was my fault for paying them any attention.’

‘That’s stupid!’ said George. ‘Bullies don’t just stop because you ignore them!’

‘And then I started getting left out of everything,’ said Annie. ‘Like, everyone else would be going somewhere at lunch time or after school. And I’d be the only person who wasn’t invited. If I tried to sit next to anyone in my class, they would get up and walk away and everyone else would laugh.’

‘But why?’ said George, bewildered. ‘I don’t get it.’ Annie was the coolest person he’d ever met and he couldn’t begin to imagine how anyone would think differently.

‘And, like, there are all these stories about me at school now.’ Annie looked distraught. ‘I heard some girls saying that everyone knew I was actually really thick, but my dad did all my homework for me, which is why I’m top of the class.’

‘Well, that’s not true!’ said George. ‘They’re probably just jealous. Do you know who is sending these messages?’

‘It’s one of them,’ said Annie. ‘It’s got to be. But I don’t know which one.’ She wrapped her arms around her knees and buried her head so that George could just see a blonde crown above shaking shoulders. ‘I’ve only got like one or two friends left now, and even they don’t dare hang around with me too much.’

‘So that’s why you haven’t wanted to do anything lately!’ George realized. Every time he’d asked Annie to come to the skate park or go to the cinema with him, she’d made up some kind of really obviously flimsy excuse. ‘In case you see any of those girls?’

‘Yup,’ said Annie’s muffled voice. ‘It would just make it worse.’ She sounded like she was crying now. ‘I don’t want to go any place or do anything.’ She swallowed, then added fervently, ‘Except space. I still want to go into space.’

‘Right, that’s enough,’ said George fiercely, snatching up the laptop. ‘C’mon.’

He scaled quickly down the ladder, the tablet under his arm pinging all the time, while Annie followed him at top speed shouting, ‘Where are you going?’

George jumped through the hole in the fence which divided the next-door gardens belonging to his and Annie’s families, and ran up the overgrown path to Annie’s back door. ‘Eric!’ he hollered.

Annie’s dad was on the phone. ‘Yes, I know, Rika,’ he was saying rather testily. ‘I haven’t been a scientist for all this time without understanding how experiments work. I’m just saying that I don’t think your suggestion is going to produce the kind of results we need.’

The two friends heard a furious high-pitched squeaking from the other end of the phone.

‘If you’ll just let me make some simple changes to your plan for the space mission . . .’ he said. ‘Rika . . .? Rika? Are you there?’ He put the phone down. ‘Can you believe it?’ he said, spotting Annie and George. ‘Rika seems to have hung up on me. We used to get on so well. I don’t understand why she’s changed so much.’

He took off his glasses and started cleaning them on his shirt, a process which only seemed to make them filmier. ‘I do wish I had a second-in-command who liked me a little more,’ he complained. ‘It is making everything incredibly complicated, not to mention embarrassing now, that my deputy treats me like I am some kind of dangerous fool.’ He put his glasses back on and looked at Annie and George and noticed they were both very upset. ‘But that isn’t what you’ve come to see me about it, is it? What’s wrong?’

‘Eric!’ said George. ‘Annie’s getting nasty messages! And she won’t tell you because she thinks you will blame her.’

Annie stood beside George, unable to wrestle the tablet back from him as he was now holding it with both hands over his head.

‘It’s all right, Dad,’ she said bravely. ‘George is making too big a deal out of it. They’re jokes. It’s just silly. A lot of it is my fault really. And I’ve got it all under control.’

‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ said Eric. ‘Give me the tablet.’ He took the computer and looked at the messages on the screen. His face changed instantly from sunny and friendly to thunderous.

‘Don’t!’ wailed Annie, who was mortified. ‘I don’t want you to read them.’ She collapsed into sobs while Eric read the contents of her inbox, his eyes widening in disbelief.

‘These aren’t jokes,’ he said angrily. ‘This is not funny. And it’s certainly not your fault. Have you told your mum about this?’

‘I’ve got an idea,’ said Eric. ‘Follow me.’ The two friends trooped behind him into his study, where Cosmos – the world’s greatest supercomputer – was humming to himself on the desk.

‘Professor!’ replied Cosmos cordially, his screen springing into artificial life.

‘Cosmos, me old mate,’ said Eric, leaning on the desk. ‘The youngest member of the Order of Science, Annie Bellis here, has an issue with which we require your assistance.’

‘My pleasure.’ Cosmos glowed. The supercomputer had a special fondness for Eric’s daughter. ‘What can I assist you with today?’

‘Annie is receiving malicious communications,’ said Eric seriously. ‘On this tablet, through an internet messaging service.’

‘Has this matter been referred to you by another member of the Order?’ asked Cosmos.

‘Thank you, yes, by George Greenby, also a member of the Order, the second youngest scientist in our number.’

‘In that case, under the International Agreement for the Use of Supercomputers in matters pertaining to the Order of Science, part two, paragraph three, sub-clause b, amended in 2015 by annexe k,’ reeled off Cosmos. ‘I find . . .’ He paused while his circuits chuntered.

Eric waited, as did the two friends. They knew from Eric’s constant grumbling that he and Cosmos – since new regulations over supercomputer use had come into force – now had to work with far more rules and regulations about everything he did than they had done in the past. Before, Eric had been pretty much free to be as creative with how he used Cosmos as he had wished.

‘I find I can act on your behalf!’ said Cosmos delightedly. ‘Please attach the tablet so I can download the information.’

‘I don’t know!’ said Eric gleefully. ‘But I bet it will be fabulous! Within,’ he added hastily, ‘the provisions of the International Agreement for Response to Defamatory Statements about scientists within the Order, as mandated in—’

‘Something like that,’ agreed Eric. ‘Annie, perhaps you should be a lawyer when you grow up.’

‘No thank you, Dad!’ exclaimed Annie. ‘I’m going to be a scientist! I told you already.’

‘OK, OK,’ said Eric, shaking his head. ‘Just saying – maybe there will be more jobs in the future for lawyers than there will be for scientists . . .’

‘Well, don’t,’ said Annie firmly. ‘I bet Nana and Grandad didn’t say to you: “Don’t be a cosmologist, little Eric, ’cos you’ll never get a job that way” . . .’

‘Well, now you know how that feels,’ said Annie firmly. George was very pleased to see how much more cheerful she looked.

‘I don’t think I ever spoke to my parents the way you speak to me,’ complained Eric.

Eric gave her a mock cross look, but George knew he wasn’t angry with Annie. It was just how they were, bickering endlessly about everything but in a funny and friendly way. Mostly.

Standing right next to Cosmos and Annie’s tablet, George was the first to see an outgoing message on the tablet screen, sent by Cosmos via the tablet to the same number that had been harassing Annie. But there wasn’t just one message; there was a first one, which was followed instantly by another and another and another.

‘I,’ the supercomputer replied happily, ‘am sending over, in one hundred and sixty character chunks, the full text of Principia Mathematica, the great work of Isaac Newton. Once that has been sent, I will continue with Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, which will be superseded by the collected works of Einstein. It should take around one hundred and fifteen hours for all the text to go through. I do not think you will hear from this correspondent again, not given the amount of interesting reading matter we have supplied.’

‘Genius!’ cried Eric. ‘You have invoked the “Respond by Education, Not Threat” clause of the agreement!’

‘To the very letter,’ said Cosmos. ‘Would you like me to show you from whence your messages originated?’

‘Yes!’ said Annie. ‘You know who sent them then? Oh, Cosmos, lovely Cosmos, I wish I’d asked you to find out stuff about this for me before.’

Cosmos didn’t answer, but simply posted a map on his screen with a big red arrow pointing to a nearby address. ‘Is this location known to you?’ he asked.

Annie had turned a sickly whitish-green again. ‘That’s Belinda’s house! I thought she was my friend,’ she whispered, sounding broken-hearted. ‘I thought she wasn’t joining in with the others. She said they were awful and should know better.’

Her dad put his arm round her. ‘I’m sorry, darling,’ he said. ‘We think we know people, but . . .’ His face brightened up. ‘Cosmos! Can you continue performing this action and open the portal at the same time?’

Cosmos snorted. ‘Of course, Professor,’ he said. ‘This task uses around 0.000000000001 per cent of my full capacity.’

‘Good!’ said Eric. ‘Under the “Entertainment and Welfare” section of the agreement in relation to scientists suffering from distress, I have a request!’

He winked at the two friends. They knew he was treating them like real grown-ups, like proper members of the Order of Science in order to cheer them up – and it was working! They both loved pretending that they were adult scientists with important experiments and ideas that might change the future of the world. Annie and George looked at each other, not daring to hope.

‘Professor Greenby,’ replied Annie politely. ‘Such an honour to know your work.’

‘Put your spacesuits on,’ said Eric firmly. ‘Cosmos, open the portal. I will give you the coordinates. Because, fellow scientists of the Order of Science, we are going on a field trip.’

‘A FIELD TRIP!’ Annie was overjoyed. ‘You haven’t let us use the space portal in, like, for ever!’

The portal, Cosmos’s computer-generated doorway to space, had been closed to George and Annie for some time now. When Annie was a little girl, her father used to take her for spacewalks quite often, in the way other dads would take their kids to the park. But since the new regulations about supercomputers, Eric had been very firm that Cosmos was a tool for professional research only and not for exciting activities on rainy Earth days.

Annie and George hadn’t really been listening to the whole long and rather boring rigmarole that Eric had poured out one day, in one of his endless complaints about the now-hated Rika Dur, his second-in-command, and how she insisted on writing a special new rule for everything that used to just happen by itself in the past. But they had certainly listened when Eric told them that the upshot of all of this was no more journeys into space for Annie and George using supercomputer Cosmos and his amazing portal.

And yet now, to their delight, it looked as though Eric himself was fed up with the rules and regulations and wanted to go out to space too in order to make Annie feel better after her horrible experience on Earth.

But Cosmos didn’t seem so sure this was a good idea. A computer, even a supercomputer, can’t actually look down its nose, but that was exactly what Cosmos seemed to be doing.

George’s heart sank. It felt as though they were so close to getting out into space and now Cosmos was putting the brakes on! It was unbearable! George could almost taste space in his mouth he was so excited about the prospect of exploring with Annie and Eric beside him. He just couldn’t wait for that extraordinary feeling when he stepped over the threshold of Cosmos’s doorway and once again was free floating above some incredible cosmic planet-scape. And now, after all, it might not happen. His shoulders drooped.

But Eric, who was halfway into his spacesuit, which he put on over his normal clothes, simply asked, ‘Why?’

‘It does not meet the criteria under the provisions of the agreement. I find no specific mention of field trips into space merely in order to cheer people up.’

Eric paused. He was clearly trying to think of a way to get round the problem. The two friends watched him, willing him to find a really clever solution that would let them get out into space, even if just for a minute or two. But as Eric sighed and started to slip off his spacesuit again, they realized it wasn’t going to happen.

‘Cosmos is right,’ he said sadly. ‘We’ll all be in huge trouble if anyone finds out I used a supercomputer to take kids—’

Annie interrupted. ‘Not kids; two members of the Order of Science! We became members of the Order of Science years ago – you got us to join so we could help you understand what kids want to know about science to make the future world a better place.’

‘Trouble with who?’ asked George longingly. ‘We won’t get into trouble with anyone, will we? I don’t see how that could happen.’ But he didn’t sound very convincing. Memories of space trips he had taken which hadn’t worked out very well – and got them into lots of trouble with all sorts of people – surfaced in his mind.

Eric frowned. ‘Some of the Order wouldn’t mind,’ he said. ‘But if Rika’ – he almost spat the name out – ‘found out, she’d rocket me into space from Kosmodrome 2 on a one-way ticket.’

Kosmodrome 2 was the name of Eric’s new-ish place of work. Recently, he’d taken over as head of Kosmodrome 2 – an international space facility and joint enterprise involving lots of countries and private companies, trying to bring the plans for robotic and manned space travel together into one gigantic whole. Annie and George had pestered Eric to take them to his ‘office’ but Eric had regretfully refused. Kosmodrome 2 was a closed facility, he explained. Only in exceptional circumstances could they have visitors. However many exceptional circumstances Annie and George dreamed up, none of them seemed to make the grade.

‘To think I was so pleased when I got that job,’ said Eric, folding his spacesuit up surprisingly neatly and putting it back in the cupboard. ‘I really thought I could help coordinate the world’s efforts to get further into space. Turns out, I can’t even manage the person who is supposed to be helping me.’

Annie looked at her dad sympathetically. ‘Are you being bullied too?’ she asked.

‘You could say that,’ admitted Eric. ‘I’m being bullied at work. Except it’s all so clever and so sneaky that I sometimes I wonder if I’m going mad and imagining things. Everything I do at work goes wrong somehow, and yet I don’t understand why, except that it all started when Rika came back from her holidays. She was normal, friendly, helpful, nice before – and then after she wasn’t . . . it’s so very, very odd.’

‘Yes!’ said Eric, as though this was a revelation to him. ‘They are! Whenever I pass people in the corridors – and Jupiter knows, we have enough corridors at Kosmodrome 2 – they seem to be whispering, but they stop while I walk past and then start again!’

‘Goodness, yes,’ said Eric fervently. ‘Completely bonkers ones too! Why would I deliberately trigger the space elevator to malfunction when we have a group of important international guests? I just wouldn’t do that!’

George was startled. He hadn’t heard anything about an incident with a space elevator – he was pretty sure he’d remember if he had; it wasn’t the sort of thing he would forget in a hurry. In fact, he hadn’t heard anything about a space elevator at all! This was really important and exciting stuff that they were missing out on!

‘Poor you, Dad,’ sympathized Annie. ‘I know just how you feel. Have a hug!’

There was a moment’s silence as Eric and Annie hugged and George stood around wondering what to do next. And that’s when he had his new idea.

‘I know!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ve got a plan! It’s like a thing we did before: we opened the portal with Cosmos but we didn’t go through it – we just looked

Also available by Lucy and Stephen Hawking:

THE LATEST SCIENTIFIC IDEAS!

The Oceans of Earth