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Authors: Lucy Hawking

BOOK: George's Cosmic Treasure Hunt

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George sneaked into the room he shared with Emmett and hopped back into bed, but not before he'd taken Annie's flashlight from her. He was wide awake now, so he got out his copy of
The User's Guide
and turned to the chapter, “Getting in Touch with Aliens.”

THE USER'S GUIDE TO THE UNIVERSE

GETTING IN TOUCH WITH ALIENS

If aliens are really out there, will we ever get to meet them?

The distances between the stars are staggeringly great, so we still can't be sure that a face-to-face encounter will someday take place (assuming the aliens have faces!). But even if extraterrestrials never visit our planet or receive a visit from us, we might still get to know one another. We might still be able to talk.

One way this could happen is by radio. Unlike sound, radio waves can move through the empty spaces between the stars. And they move as fast as anything
can
moveâat the speed of light.

Almost fifty years ago some scientists worked out what it would take to send a signal from one star system to another. It surprised them to learn that interstellar conversation wouldn't require superadvanced technology like you often see in science-fiction movies. It's possible to send radio signals from one solar system to another with the type of radio equipment we could build today. So the scientists stood back from their chalkboards and said to themselves: If this is so easy, then no matter what aliens might be doing, they'd surely be using radio to communicate over large distances. The scientists realized that it would be a perfectly logical idea to turn some of our big antennae to the skies to see if we could pick up extraterrestrial signals. After all, finding an alien broadcast would instantly prove that there's someone out there, without the expense of
sending rockets to distant star systems in the hope of discovering a populated planet.

Unfortunately, this alien eavesdropping experiment, called SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), has so far failed to find a single, sure peep from the skies. The radio bands have been discouragingly quiet wherever we've looked, aside from the natural static caused by such objects as quasars (the churning, high-energy centers of some galaxies) or pulsars (rapidly spinning neutron stars).

Does that mean that intelligent aliens, able to build radio transmitters, don't exist? That would be an astounding discovery, because there are surely at least a million million planets in our Milky Way Galaxyâand there are one hundred thousand million
other
galaxies! If no one is out there, we are stupendously specialâand dreadfully alone.

Well, as SETI researchers will tell you, it's entirely too soon to conclude that we have no company among the stars. After all, if you're going to listen for alien radio broadcasts, not only do you have to point your antenna in the right direction, but you also need to tune to the right spot on the dial, have a sensitive enough receiver, and be listening at the right time. SETI experiments are like looking for buried treasure without a map. So the fact that we haven't found anything so far isn't surprising. It's like digging a few holes on the beach of a South Pacific island and coming up with nothing but wet sand and crabs. You shouldn't immediately conclude that there's no treasure to be found.

Fortunately, new radio telescopes are speeding up our search for signals, and it's possible that within a few dozen years we could hear a faint broadcast from another civilization.

What would they be saying to us? Well, of course we can only guess, but one thing the extraterrestrials will surely know: They'd better send us a long message, because speedy conversation is simply impossible. For example, imagine that the nearest aliens are on a planet around a star that's one thousand light-years away. If we pick up a signal from them tomorrow, it will have taken one thousand years to get to us. It will be an old message, but that's okay. After all, if you read Sophocles or Shakespeare, those are old “messages” too, but they're still interesting.

However, if we choose to reply, our response to the aliens will take one thousand years to get to them, and another one thousand years will pass before their answer gets back to us! In other words, even a simple “Hello?” and its alien response, “Zork?” would take twenty centuries. So while talking on the radio is a lot faster than traveling in rockets for a meet-and-greet,
it's still going to be a very relaxed conversation. That suggests that the aliens might send us books and books of stuff about themselves and their planet, knowing that we won't be doing a lot of chatting.

But even if they do, even if they send us
The Alien Encyclopedia
, will we be able to read it? After all, unlike in the movies and TV, the extraterrestrials aren't going to be fluent in English or any other earthly language. It's possible that they may use pictures or even mathematics to help make their message understandable, but we won't know until or unless we pick up a signal.

No matter what they send us, detecting a radio squeal coming from a distant world would be big news. Indeed, imagine what it was like five centuries ago when explorers first discovered that there were entire continents, filled with inhabitants, that were completely unknown in Europe. Finding the New World changed everything.

Today, we've replaced the wooden sailing ships of those early explorers with giant aluminium-and-steel antennae. Someday soon they may tell us something extraordinarily interesting: namely, that in the vast expanses of space, humans are not the only ones watching the Universe.

And today's young people may be those who will be there to listenâand to respond. This could be
you
!

Seth

Chapter 6

T
he next morning at breakfast, George's eyelids were very heavy, and he felt confused to be eating breakfast at the time he'd usually be having lunch. However, that felt like nothing compared to Annie's revelations from the night before. He didn't know what to make of what she'd told him.

Once before, George hadn't believed her: When he first met Annie and she had told him she went on journeys around the Solar System, he had laughed at her and said she was lying. But that had turned out to be true in the end, so he wondered what to make of this latest story.

It worried him that, according to Annie, Eric didn't seem to be taking the alien message seriously. On the other hand, if it meant he might get a trip out to space, just to check it out, he felt he would probably go along with Annie's version. Anything to fly through the cosmos again, even if it was on a fruitless quest for an alien life-form!

Susan suddenly spoke up. “I thought we'd show
George the neighborhood today,” she said. “Take him around and maybe go to the beach.”

Annie looked stricken. “Mom!” she said. “George and I have stuff to do here.”

“And I've got my theories on the information-loss paradox to work on,” said Emmett rather sourly. “Not that anyone cares.”

“Don't be silly,” said Susan firmly. “George has come a long way to see us, and we can't expect him to just sit in a tree, chatting to you all day.” The phone rang and she answered it. “George, it's for you,” she said, passing over the receiver.

“George!” came the crackly voice of his dad, sounding like he was shouting from a very long way away. “Just wanted to let you know we've arrived in Tuvalu! We're just about to get on the ship and sail for the atolls. How's it going in Florida?”

“It's fine!” said George. “I'm here with Eric and Susan and Annie and this other boy called Emmett who isâ”

But the connection cut off. George handed the phone back to Susan.

“I'm sure he'll call again,” she reassured him. “And your mom and dad know you are okay. Now we're going to go out and have lots of fun!”

Annie rolled her eyes at George, but there was no getting out of it. Her mom had made plans to take them to the theme park, to the pool, to a dolphin sanctuary, to the beach. They were out all day and all evening for several days. There was no opportunity for them to get Cosmos out of his secret hiding place and work on him. And with Emmett constantly trailing their every move, they hardly even had a chance to look at Annie's alien messageâonly once, when they locked themselves into the bathroom and studied the piece of paper.

“So, that's a person,” said Annie. “And that arrow must mean the person is going somewhere. But where?”

“Um, the person is going toâ¦,” said George. “A series of small dots moving around a bigger dot. I know! What if the dots are the planets in orbit around the Sun, which is at the center? The arrow points to the fourth dot, so it means the person is going to the fourth planet from the Sun, which isâ”

“Mars!” said Annie. “I
knew
it! There
is
a link to Homer. This message means we have to go to Mars andâ”

“But what does the rest mean?” said George. “What does all this meanâa person with an arrow crossed out?”

“Perhaps that's what will happen if the person
doesn't
go to Mars?”

“If the person doesn't go to Mars,” said George, looking down the column, “then the funny-looking stick insect falls over.”

“Funny-looking stick insectâ¦,” said Annie. “What if that's Homer? If the person doesn't go to Mars, maybe something terrible will happen to Homer. We have to get out there and save Homer! It's really important!”

“Look, Annie,” said George doubtfully. “I know your dad's upset about Homer, but he is just a robot. They could send another one. I just don't know that these messages are enough to prove anything.”

“Look at the last line,” said Annie in a spooky voice. “And be afraid.”

“If the person doesn't go to Mars and doesn't save Homer, thenâ¦,” said George.

“No planet Earth,” said Annie.

“No planet Earth?” exclaimed George.

“No planet Earth,” confirmed Annie. “That's what the message means. We have to go to Mars to save Homer, because if we don't, something terrible will happen to this planet.”

“We have to tell your dad,” said George urgently.

“I've tried,” said Annie. “See what you can do.”

At that moment they heard a banging on the bathroom door.

“Come out!” shouted Emmett. “Resistance is futile!”

“Can I flush his head down the toilet?” said Annie longingly.

“No!” said George sharply. “You can't. He's not a bad kid. He's really nice if you actually try to talk to himâ¦.”

Emmett started bashing on the door again.

At last Annie's mom decided they all needed a quiet day at home. The next day was to be the great highlight of George's visit. Eric had got them tickets to see the launch of the space shuttle! They were going to the launchpad to watch the mighty spacecraft blast off from Earth. Even Emmett got thoroughly overexcited. He kept muttering space-shuttle commands to himself and reciting facts about orbital velocity.

George and Annie were both thrilled for different reasons. George was gripped by the idea of the enormous rocket that gave the space shuttle the power it needed to zoom upward into space. In the past, he had walked through Cosmos's doorway to travel through space; now he was going to watch a real spacecraft begin its great journey!

As for Annie, she was fizzing with secretive joy over the idea of the launch. “My plan is coming together,” she whispered to George. “We will uncover the aliens!
We will!” Annoyingly, she refused to explain to George quite how she meant to do this. When he asked her, she got a faraway look in her eyes. “It's all in the plan,” she told him. “And when you need to know, then I will tell you. For now, you must believe.” It was very irritating for George, and he much preferred talking to Emmett than to Annie when she was in full-on mystery mode.

Even so, the more she stalked about, impersonating a secret agent working on extraterrestrial activity, the more George racked his brains as to what the alien message might mean and where it had come from. He had tried talking to Eric about it, but he hadn't got far.

“George,” Eric said patiently. “I'm sorry that I don't believe that an evil alien life-form is messing around with my robot or wanting to destroy the Earth, but I don't. So please drop it. I've got other things on my mind. Like how to send another robot out to Mars to take over the work that Homer should have done. This has been a terrible time for us at the Global Space Agency. Not everyone is as excited about space travel as you and Annie. Some people don't accept that it has any use at all.”

“But what about all the inventions that have come from space?” said George hotly. “If we hadn't gone into space, there's so much stuff we wouldn't have now on Earth.”

SPACE INVENTIONS
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