George and the Blue Moon by Stephen Hawking & Lucy Hawking

Author:Stephen Hawking & Lucy Hawking
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Published: 2017-11-07T00:00:00+00:00

“Yes, sir!” said Annie under her breath as she slid out of her hammock, blearily rubbing her eyes as she went. She changed out of her space pajamas into her flight suit—and as she did so, the television set in their pod flickered to life without either of them touching it.

“Greetings!” said the now familiar voice of Rika Dur, but pitched rather higher than when Annie had last heard it. Annie shivered. She couldn’t imagine why she had thought Rika was so lovely. Now that her suspicions that something was afoot at Kosmodrome 2 had been confirmed—and that this something was linked to Rika and to Europa—she couldn’t for the life of her think why she had thought Rika was impressive. Rika even looked different. Her face was strangely lopsided all of a sudden, as though it was slipping down one side of her neck. It was an odd and pretty gruesome sight.

“Are you ready for Challenge Number Three?” Rika sang out, the same tinny echo that Annie had picked up in her voice the night before ringing once more.

“As ready as we’ll ever be!” said Leonia, nodding.

“Do you notice anything different about her?” Annie suddenly decided to check that she wasn’t seeing things that weren’t there.

“Um, yes!” said Leonia in surprise. “Something’s happened to her nose, right? But shush, we need to hear about the challenge.”

“Today,” said Rika through the TV set, “your challenge is mechanical. You will build and operate a Rover on the surface of Mars. You have already been to the Mars Assembly Room. The buses are waiting outside to return you to that location—that’s the place where most of you failed to comprehend the last task in front of you. I was disappointed,” said Rika, actually sounding quite angry, “that so few of you were able to divine what lay in front of you. I felt quite let down.”

“She’s in a bad mood this morning,” commented Leonia.

“I trust that today none of you will leave me as deflated as you did yesterday,” scolded Rika. “My hope is that you will all show at least a creditable effort. Otherwise I will start to wonder whether there is any hope for humanity at all.”

“Not so nice now,” agreed Annie. She still didn’t quite know if she could trust Leonia or not. “Is this how you thought it would be?” she asked tentatively. “The Mars training process?”

“Nope.” Leonia shook her head. “Not a bit of it. And not in a good way. I’m not sure I trust these prople enough to take us to Mars. It just all feels a bit too random and weird, like something’s going on behind the scenes that we don’t understand.”

Annie nodded. That was exactly how she felt too! But they had no time to talk about it further.

“Astronauts!” Rika suddenly shouted, coming much too close to the TV screen for Annie’s liking. “Go!”

*

Once Annie and Leonia had arrived, in the little shuttle buses, at the Assembly Room, they ran in to find that the mocked-up surface of Mars now had track running around the edge and through the middle.

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