“Does it say any more? What about the other entries?”
Toby clicked through the other search results while Hannah stood by impatiently, reading what she could over his shoulder. Eventually he stopped clicking and leaned back in the chair.
“Well?” she demanded, “what else?”
“Nothing else,” he said. “When they investigated the ship, everything looked normal, just as if they had just gone out to see something and never come back. Apart from that strange message from the captain, left on the ship’s log. There were no spacesuits either, as if they’d just walked out. ”
“Weird,” said Hannah.
“Agreed,” responded Toby “muchas weird. However, none of it explains why we have moving pictures in a window. That’s weird like nothing.”
Chapter 4
“Hey, that’s cool. A picture of space on your window,” exclaimed Ella. She and Joe had come over to play and Hannah was showing them the window.
“What do you mean?” asked Hannah.
“Well, the picture,” said Ella impatiently, “it’s a picture of space. You know, outer space, planets and things.”
Hannah studied it intently. There were lots of faint spots that could be stars. And looking at it closely, the bigger circle with markings could really be a moon. But it was a different one this time, it wasn’t round, more like a peanut shape. It still had markings like the other one she and Toby had seen.
“Where’s your phone? Your mobile?” said Ella. “Can you take pictures of it? Maybe video?”
Hannah had never thought of that. She got her phone and tried a few shots.
“It’s too bright, you can’t see anything,” she complained.
At that moment, Toby came in to use the computer and found them all clustered around the window.
“Toby, it’s space. Outer space,” said Hannah. “Ella guessed it and you can see, if you look.” Toby studied the faint picture.
“And we’re trying to take a picture of it but it’s too bright to see anything.”
“What if we put something over the outside of the window?” suggested Toby. “Maybe a darker background would help.” He fetched a hammer and some tacks and cut the side out of a cardboard box. Going outside, he tacked the cardboard up over the window.
“Ooh, it’s dark,” said Ella.
“Dark,” agreed Joe.
“But, look, you can see much better what the picture is. It looks more and more like outer space.”
Toby came back in to view the results and bumped into the chair.
“Whoa, that’s an improvement. Pity you can’t see where you’re going at the same time.” He looked more closely at the window. “That peanut shape looks like one of the moons of Mars. Deimos I think.”
“I thought moons were round,” said Hannah curiously.
“Nope,” replied Toby, “they come in all sorts of shapes. Does this work better for the phone?”
Hannah tried taking a picture of the window again. The results were much better.
“Maybe this is what the ship saw on its explorations,” she said.
“It didn’t only do one trip, though,” said Toby. “If it’s somehow showing what the ship went past, how come it’s not just one big jumble of images?”
This was a stumper. It didn’t make sense really, if you thought about it.
“How can we find out more about the window or the spaceship?” asked Hannah. “We already looked at the internet. What about the library?”
“Maybe,” answered Toby. “Can’t hurt to look, anyway.”
“We could go on the bus,” said Hannah. “That goes right into town and I know where the library is. Let’s go now.”
“Hang on a minute,” said Toby. “First we’ll need to tell Mum where we’re going. And Ella and Joe will have to get their Mum to agree.”
Ella and Joe hurried away. Hannah rushed off to find her mother, who was painting in the studio.
“Mum, we’re just going into town, into the library,” she announced.
“Who is ‘we’, Hannah?” asked her mother. “You and Toby?”
“Yes, and Ella and Joe,” said Hannah. “They’re just asking their mother.”
Hannah’s mother looked at Toby, who had followed Hannah upstairs and was curiously studying the new painting of children on the beach.
“This is quite a responsibility, Toby. I’m not very sure about this idea.”
“It should be fine, Mum,” said Toby. “Hannah’s a sensible kid and the other two seem to have their heads screwed on right.”
“Even so, they’re not very old yet. Especially Joe. I think he’s a bit young for this adventure.”
“Oh, mum,” said Hannah, “it’ll be all right. Plea—ease.”
Just at that moment Hannah heard Ella calling downstairs.
“Hannah, Hannah, where are you?”
Hannah clattered down the stairs rapidly. Ella was looking upset.
“Mum said ‘no’,” she said sadly. “Joe’s too young.”
“Our mum was just going to say ‘no’ too,” said Hannah. “So now what do we do?”
“I’ll tell you what,” said Hannah’s mother from the top of the stairs. “If you all pile into the car, I’ll take you over to the library now. I can go and pick up a couple of things that I need while you do your thing and then we can all come home together, how about that?” Ella rushed straight off again to put this new proposition to her reluctant parent.
And that’s how it turned out. Everybody got into the wagon, buckling up without being told, sitting expectantly as the car was backed around and then they were on their way. Hannah’s mum agreed a time to meet them later, pulling up outside the library to let them all out before driving off.
“Everybody present and correct?” said Toby. Hannah and Ella nodded.
“Check,” said Joe.
They went up the wide steps between two tall concrete columns. Toby led the way, skimming through the book titles as he went past.
“Here we are,” he said, “Space exploration. We could also see if the library index has anything on the ISS Apex anywhere else. Maybe it would go faster if we split up. You work here and I’ll try the index.” Hannah pulled a couple of books out of the shelf and put them on the nearby table as Toby headed off to the computers in the corner.
“Let’s take one each and see what we can find. Anything on the ISS Apex.”
Ella and Hannah started flicking through their books, stopping to read anything that looked useful. Joe amused himself with a book on the planets as his reading wasn’t up to technical books yet. When one of them finished a book, Hannah took it back to the shelf and pulled out another one. She was very careful to make sure the numbers on the backs were all in the right order.
“What about this?” said Ella, pointing to a headline.
“I don’t think that’s the right Apex,” said Hannah, “there’s no ‘ISS’. But let’s have a look.” She pulled the book over. It was talking about space exploration having reached its apex under the previous administration and was now declining.
“I don’t think so,” she said doubtfully, “Toby!” she called in a loud whisper. There was a stern “Shh”, from behind the desk by the door. Hannah took the book over to Toby and he read the paragraph.
“It’s interesting but not really what we’re after,” said Toby and Hannah returned the book to Ella.
“Nearly,” she said. “But Toby says we should keep looking,” she settled herself back into the seat. Before long they had run out of books and were sitting looking at each other when Toby returned.
“Let’s go outside where we can talk,” he said. “It’s nearly time to meet Mum anyway.” Hannah returned Joe’s book of planets to the shelf and they gathered at the door. Sitting along the bottom step together, they compared notes. Hannah and Ella had only found the commentary on the space programme and administration. Toby hadn’t
found anything any different from what they’d found on the internet.
“Would Auntie Laura know anything more about it?” suddenly asked Ella. “She does something with space.”
“What sort of thing?” asked Hannah. “Can we phone her? Do you have a number?”
“It’s in Mum’s phone,” said Ella. “I don’t really know what sort of thing she does, we can ask Mum.”
“Okay then,” decided Hannah, “when we get home.”
Chapter 5
Hannah started the term at her new school. It was a bit scary at first but she soon found out where everything was. There was another new girl in her class and they could compare notes and share anything new they found out, which was really helpful.
In the evenings she carried on with her research into the ISS Apex and the journey it had made to Europa. The internet had a lot of information and she found the ISA website which had a lot of pictures of moons and planets and showed where Jupiter was in relation to the other planets.
“Toby?” she called one day, “Do you know what this is about?”
Toby was reading in the living room and came in to the computer. She showed him an image of all the planets and their moons. There was a dotted line from Earth out into space that didn’t seem to go anywhere.
“I tried to get a chart of the journey of ISS Apex and this is what it’s giving me. But it doesn’t go anywhere.”
Toby looked at the screen for a moment.
“Oh, I know!” he said, “that’s because of the movement.”
“What movement?”
“The planets. You know they are all orbiting round the sun, right?” she nodded. “And the moons go around the planets, yes?” she nodded again.
“Does it tell you how long it would take from Earth to Europa?”
“Yes, the old missions, like the Voyagers, took about two or three years. They then invented a new fuel and could go faster. For the ISS Apex it was a year,” said Hannah.
“So all the year that you’re travelling, the moon is moving around the planet, and the planet is moving around the sun. When you leave Earth there’s no point in aiming at where the moon is when you take off, it will have moved somewhere else by the time you get there. Does that make sense?” he watched her concentrating. Hannah thought this through for a minute or two then nodded.
“Yes I see. It’s like playing netball at school. When someone is running, you need to throw the ball in front of them, otherwise you miss.”
“Exactly right,” he said, “well done! Well the spaceship has to aim at where Europa will be in a year’s time and that’s why it looks like it’s going into nowhere.”
“I get it,” she said, pleased. “It’s because the moon will meet them when they get there.”
Toby grinned. “I hadn’t thought of it quite that way, but you’re right. It all comes together at the end if you have your calculations right.”
Hannah had an idea. She printed off the picture with the dotted line and took it to the moving window. Toby followed, intrigued.
“Toby, you said that peanut moon was probably Deimos, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I think so. We could compare it with some of your ISA pictures, if you like.”
Hannah shook her head. “Not right now, come and hold this up for me, beside the window, please?” Toby obliged and Hannah looked from one to the other. She pointed to the chart.
“That’s Deimos, right?”
“Uhuh,”
“Then when we saw it on the window, the ship must have been about here, right?”
Toby looked at where her finger was on the chart. She was pointing to a spot on the dotted line close to Mars.
“We didn’t see Mars, though,” he said. “If the ship was that close, we should have seen Mars.”
“Remember that I saw something big before that, before you came home,” said Hannah. “Maybe that was Mars.”
“Could be, I guess,” he responded. “Did it have markings on it? Maybe lines?”
Hannah propped her chin on her hand, remembering.
“Might have been,” she said. “I don’t really remember and it was before you put the cardboard over, so it wasn’t very clear to see.”
Toby put the chart on the worktable in front of the computer screen and stepped back to compare it with the window.
“The thing is,” he said, “where are we now?”
They both studied the chart and Hannah ran her finger along the dotted line.
“The other thing,” he went on, “is that it’s going too fast. It can’t be exactly what they saw on the trip because, with the time the ship would take to travel the distance, we wouldn’t be seeing that sort of progress until two months from now or more.”
“Speeded up, like the DVD fast forward?” asked Hannah.
“Well, yes, like that, but I can’t see how. Mind you, I can’t see how it’s doing what it’s doing anyway, so I suppose it doesn’t really matter.”
“That’s just another thing to find out then,” said Hannah determinedly. “Right now, I think we’re about here,” her finger rested on a point along the dotted line between Mars and Jupiter. “You can only see things in the distance, and we know we’re past Mars already. There are a couple of slightly bigger ones here and here, what are they?”
“Dunno,” said Toby, “Jupiter has so many moons you just wouldn’t believe. Maybe a couple of those.” He sat down in the computer chair and swivelled, thoughtfully.
“You know, there’s still the mystery of where they all went and how the ship took off,” he said.
Hannah stood next to the chair and put both hands on the arm, stilling the swivel.
“We could just watch, and see what happens. I can catch it with my phone on video. Besides, what will happen when we get to the end?”
“I don’t even know how it started, beats me!” replied Toby in frustration.
Chapter 6
The next Sunday Hannah was colouring in a picture for a project for school and heard a knock at the door and then Ella’s voice. She bounced down the stairs to find out what was going on and saw Ella and a strange grownup, a lady wearing a smart light green pantsuit and a matching scarf in her brown hair. Ella was explaining to Toby, who had opened the door.
“So I brought Auntie Laura over here to see your space window. Is that okay?” She peered up at Toby. Toby smiled at ‘Auntie Laura’ and gestured for them to come in.
“Please, feel free. It is quite fascinating, Mrs …er...”
Ella’s aunt smiled and held out a hand for Toby to shake. “Just call me Laura, everybody does. I hope we’re not interrupting anything, barging in like this.” Joe followed them in, grinning at Hannah as they trooped in the door. Hannah came down to say ‘hi’ and led them all into the little study. The cardboard still over the outside of the window made everything very dark until she switched on the lights.
“We think it’s the voyage that ISS Apex made to Europa. The last one that lost all the people from it. Come over here and then I’ll switch the lights off again so you can see it.”
“How extraordinary,” commented Laura as she stared at the window. “Why do you think it was on the way to Europa? And why do you think it’s the ISS Apex?”
Hannah related the story of their investigations and how the house plans and documents showed that the window had come from the old space craft.
“So, you see, the peanut moon must have been Deimos and we’re now on the way to meeting Europa,” she finished.
“You know I’ve heard some rumours about this stuff,” said Laura. “They have been experimenting with a recording gel that goes between panes of glass. You need a special sort of remote device to make it start and play. It’s supposed to be incredibly hush-hush though. But that would explain why you have a moving picture in the window. If they put a test model into the Apex and it seemed to be malfunctioning, they would assume it just wasn’t going t
o work and that’s how it made it into the scrap heap instead of being destroyed.”
“But why is it going so fast?” said Toby. “You can actually see the moons moving and we’ve seen it changing over days. The ISS Apex was supposed to take a year over the journey. That would mean that it would take months and months for us to see what we have seen so far.”
“It is probably programmed into the gel,” Laura replied. “It needs to play back faster than it records or there’d be no point in having it, really. I still can’t see why it’s playing back for you now. What started it off?”
Hannah shrugged. “We didn’t do anything to it. Maybe it has just been playing over and over since it was put into this house. It’s a new house, nobody lived here before us.”
“Maybe the process of putting the window in is what started it off,” suggested Toby. “There’s a good chance the builder wouldn’t have noticed, the picture is really faint in full daylight. That’s why we covered up the outside of the window.”
“Have you worked out what speed it’s going?” asked Laura. “When will it get to Europa?”
“I can’t be really sure,” said Toby, “but I think we should see Jupiter any day now. We’ve already seen a couple of little moons that could belong to Jupiter.”
“You do realise, don’t you, that this could solve the mystery of the missing crew,” said Laura. Hannah looked up in excitement.
“You mean we could see what happened?” she asked.
“Yes, it’s obviously showing what’s outside the window. We might be able to see what happened to the crew, if we were looking at the right time. I’m going to have to alert the Agency about this.”
Hannah looked at her doubtfully.
“Wouldn’t they want to take the window away?” she asked.
“Possibly, I guess,” replied Laura, “but maybe not, if they think that shaking it up might turn it off again.”
“I really like having it in our house,” said Hannah. “I wouldn’t like it to be taken away.” They all agreed that it was much more fun having the window in the house. Then Hannah went on, “Maybe we could video it for them, or they could video it for us.” She showed Laura the video clip she had managed to take on her phone.
“That might be an answer,” replied Laura. She turned away and headed for the front door. “Thanks ever so much for showing us the window. I’ll let you know what they say.” Hannah and Toby waved their friends off.