Free George's Cosmic Treasure Hunt by Lucy Hawking Page A

just a pile of metal on a distant planet.
    Annie couldn’t bear it. Her dad had been so excited and happy at the prospect of receiving Homer’s findings. She hated seeing him so upset. So she had a brilliant idea: She decided to get Cosmos out of retirement, just to see if she could make him work again.
    â€œI realized that if we had Cosmos,” she told George as they stood outside under the starry sky, “we could just go off to Mars, fix the robot, and come home again without anyone even knowing. If we went when the monitoring satellite was on the other side of Mars, no one would even see us. I mean, we’d have to be careful not to leave a footprint or drop anything. That would be a bit of a disaster.”
    â€œHmm,” said George, still affected by his weird dream. “So what did you do?”
    â€œI got Cosmos out of his secret hiding place.”
    â€œNot that secret if you knew about it,” said George.

    â€œAnd,” Annie went on, ignoring him, “I started him up.”
    â€œAnd he actually worked?” George was wide awake now.
    â€œNot really,” admitted Annie. “At least, only for a few seconds, and he didn’t say anything. But this is what I saw on his screen.” She waved the paper at George. “It was there—honest, it was. It was a message. I checked the sender ID and it said: unknown . For message location, it said: extraterrestrial . Then Cosmos died and I couldn’t start him up again.”
    â€œWow!” said George. “Did you tell Eric?”
    â€œOf course,” said Annie. “And he tried to start Cosmos up again but couldn’t. I showed him the message, but he didn’t believe me.” She pouted. “He said I was making up stories—but I’m sure Homer really is waving to us and has something he wants to tell us. But my dad just insisted that Homer doesn’t work because he had a bad atmospheric entry and that this message—if Cosmos received it at all—is just something to do with Cosmos being broken.”

    â€œBut that’s really boring of him!” remarked George.
    â€œNo, he’s just being a scientist. It’s like Emmett said,” admitted Annie. “Most people believe there is only some form of bacteria out there and no real aliens. But I think…”
    â€œWhat do you think?” asked George, looking up at the stars.
    â€œI think,” said Annie firmly, “that someone out there is trying to get in touch with us. I think someone is using Homer to attract our attention, and because we’re just ignoring him, they’ve started sending us messages instead. Only we can’t pick them up because Cosmos isn’t working.”
    â€œWhat are we going to do?”
    â€œWe’ve got to go out there,” said Annie, “and see for ourselves. But first we have tofix Cosmos. We need to see if the aliens are sending us any more messages! And then, maybe, we can send one back…”
    â€œHow would we do that?” asked George. “I mean, how can we send a message that they will understand? And even if we knew how to send it, what would we say? And in what language? They’ve sent us the message in pictures—it must be because they don’t know how to speak to us.”
    â€œI think we’re going to say, Leave our lovely robot alone, you pesky aliens! ” said Annie, looking fierce. “ You’re messing with the wrong civilization! Pick on someone else! ”
    â€œBut we want to know who they are and where they come from,” protested George. “We can’t just say, Get lost, aliens, and never find out who sent the message.”
    â€œWhat about, Come in peace and then go home ?” said Annie. “So we find out who they are, but they’re not allowed to come to Earth if they have evil intentions.”
    â€œYeah?” said George. “Who’s going to stop them? They could