George's Cosmic Treasure Hunt (20 page)

A
s George and Annie jumped through the portal doorway, George twisted around to look back. For a millisecond he saw the Clean Room on planet Earth, and Emmett's worried face peering through the portal. But then the doorway closed and disappeared entirely, leaving no trace in the dusty Martian sky of where it had once been.

Propelled by the force of their leap through the doorway, George and Annie traveled through the Martian atmosphere without landing for a few yards. They were holding hands tightly, so they didn't lose each other on this strange and empty planet. George touched down, but the impact of his feet on the surface sent them back up again in a great bouncing leap.

“Where are the mountains?” he called to Annie through the transmitter as they landed again and quickly dropped the other one's hand. They were standing on a huge expanse of flat, rubble-strewn, reddish ground. As far as they could see, there was nothing on either side but an endless scattering of red rocks across the desert planet. In the sky the Sun—the same star that shone so brightly on the Earth—seemed more distant, smaller, and colder, its light and warmth coming from farther away than on their home planet. The light looked pink, because of all the red dust floating in the air, but it wasn't the beautiful familiar rosy glow of an earthly sunrise. Instead, it was a luminous color that seemed alien and unwelcoming to the first humanoids ever to complete the journey from Earth to Mars.

“No mountains here,” Annie told George. “We're at the north pole of Mars. The volcanoes and valleys are in the middle of the planet.”

“How long have we got until sunset?” he asked,
suddenly realizing they wouldn't be able to see anything once the Sun went down. The absolute nothingness of this empty planet was giving him the creeps, and he certainly didn't want to be there in the dark.

“Ages,” said Annie. “The sun doesn't set at the north pole in summer. But I don't want to stay that long. I don't like it here.” Even though her space suit protected her from the conditions on Mars, she shivered.

It wasn't nice to be so lonely and, like George, Annie suddenly missed being on a planet with people, buildings, movement, noise, and life. Even though they sometimes felt they would love to live on a planet where there was no one to annoy them or order them around, the reality was very different. On an empty planet, there would be nothing to do and no one to play with. They might have dreamed of being masters of their very own world, but when it came down to it, home didn't seem so bad after all.

George jumped into the air again, to see how high he could go. He rose about a couple of feet and landed a second later, not far from where Annie was still standing.

“That was amazing!” he said.

“We'd better try not to leave too many footprints,” warned Annie, pointing to the marks George had made on the surface, “or people will see them when the Mars
orbiter passes over this place and takes a photo. And then they'll think there really are Martians.”

“I can see Homer!” said George, spotting a lonely little figure in the distance. Now separate, they bounced closer. “But what's he doing?” he added in amazement. The robot looked very busy. He was rolling to and fro, chucking bits of rock in the air.

“That's what we're here to find out,” said Annie. “I'm going to call Emmett. Emmett!” she said into her voice transmitter. “Emmett? Rats! He's not answering.”

They took a few long paces toward Homer and watched as he spun mysteriously—but purposefully—about.

“Keep down!” hissed Annie, crouching. “Otherwise Homer might see us through his camera eyes. And
then my dad will spot us on Mars and he'll know where we are. That would be a disaster!”

“But he won't see us for a few minutes,” said George. “Not until the signal gets back to Earth. So even if Homer does take a picture of us, we'd still have time to get away.”

“Huh!” Annie snorted. “It's okay for you. If my dad sees us here, all that will happen to you is he'll send you right back to England. But I'll be stuck here—well, not here exactly. Not on Mars, but on Earth, with him being angry with me. And with every kind of boring punishment he can think of.”

“Like what?” asked George.

“Oh, I don't know!” said Annie. “No soccer and extra math homework and washing space suits and no allowance for ever and ever and ever, I expect. Honestly, planet Earth won't feel big enough.”

“Do we have to be quiet too? Can Homer hear us?” asked George.

“Hmm, don't think so,” said Annie. “Mars has the wrong sort of atmosphere for noise to travel, so I don't think he's recording any sound, just pictures.” She paused for a second and then shouted into her voice transmitter, “BUT I WISH EMMETT COULD HEAR US!”

“Ouch!” said George, whose space helmet felt like it might explode from the sound of Annie's voice erupting into it.

“Who? What? Where?” Finally, they heard Emmett.

“Emmett, you twit!” said Annie. “Why didn't you answer before?”

“Sorry,” came Emmett's voice. “I was just reading something…Are you okay?”

“Yes, we are, no thanks to you, ground control,” said Annie. “We have landed on Mars and we are approaching Homer. Do you have any further information for us?”

“Just checking,” murmured Emmett. “I'll get back to you.”

“Can I
boing
right over him?” asked George longingly. He was really enjoying the lower gravity on Mars and wanted to keep jumping higher and higher. “Then I could look down to see what he's doing?” George's white space suit had turned reddish brown from the Martian dust.

“No, you'd crash into him!” said Annie. “You can only go about two and a half times higher on Mars than you can on Earth. So don't try anything silly. We need to get to Homer,” she said, “but stay to one side. That way we should miss the camera.”

They took a few giant loopy steps nearer to the robot, who was now motionless after his burst of frenzied activity, as though it had worn him out and he needed a rest.

“He's stopped fooling around. Let's creep up on him!” said Annie. It wasn't easy to tiptoe in heavy space boots, but they did their best to approach the robot without him noticing. Homer's legs were splayed firmly against the Martian ground. His solar arrays—the panels that allowed him to collect radiation from the Sun and turn it into energy—were covered in dust. His thick rubber wheels were now still, and his long robotic arm hung limply by his side, but his camera was still flashing its beady eyes.

But as they got near to him, they noticed something else—something they hadn't seen on the pictures Homer had sent back from Mars.

“Over there!” said Annie. “Look!”

Next to Homer on the flat Martian surface they saw a series of marks made in the dust and rubble by Homer's tires.

“It's a message!” yelled George, forgetting not to shout while wearing the voice transmitter. “It's just like the one Cosmos received! It's the same sort of marks! Someone has left us a message on Mars!”

Annie kicked him with her space boot. “Don't shout!” she whispered.

At the same time they heard Emmett's excited voice from planet Earth. “A message? On Mars? What does it say?”

“We're trying to work it out,” said Annie. “What if Homer wasn't just messing around? What if all that
dancing around he did was because he was writing a message for us?”

They took a careful stride, which landed them right next to the squiggles Homer had drawn in the dust.

“It's going to take a few minutes,” George warned, “before we can work it out.”

He and Annie bounced together back and forth over the message as they tried to make sense of it.

“Can you tell me anything about the marks?” asked Emmett urgently. “Anything I can enter to see what Cosmos makes of it?”

Just then George and Annie were flying right over the message. “Um, well,” said George. “There's a circle surrounded by other circles.”

“It could be a planet with rings,” said Annie. “It could be Saturn. And look, next to it, all those rocks arranged in a row, that could
be the Solar System, like in the other message.”

“And over there—there's the planet with rings again, but it's also got lots of little pieces of stone arranged around it.”

“Maybe it's the moons of Saturn,” came Emmett's voice. “Do you think the message wants you to go to the moons of Saturn? I'm putting the information into Cosmos now, to see if he can give us another clue. Can you count how many little pieces of stone? Saturn has quite a lot—about sixty. But only seven round ones.”

The wind, which had been just a breeze, was now starting to blow more strongly, whipping bits of surface rubble up into the air and whirling them around.

“Oh no! Severe weather warning”—Emmett read off Cosmos's screen—“incoming gales from the south. Potential evacuation situation.”

“We need more time!” George replied. “We don't know what the message means yet! We're trying to count the moons around the planet with rings.”

“But it does have the same ending,” pointed out Annie, whose blood had run colder than space itself when she saw the last picture in the row. “It still says no planet Earth.” They made another jump and landed right next to Homer. Annie got hold of his legs with her hand to stop herself from falling over in the strong wind; with the other hand, she grabbed on to George.