Once more everything went dark. The little beam of brilliant light shot out from Cosmos’s screen into the middle of the room, hovered for a second, and then started to draw a shape. Only this time it wasn’t making a window out of thin air. It was drawing something different. The beam drew a line up from the floor, then turned left, kept going in a straight line, and dropped back down to the floor again.
“Oh, look!” said George, who could see what it was now. “Cosmos has drawn a door!”
“I haven’t just drawn it,” said Cosmos huffily. “I’m much smarter than that, you know. I’ve made you a doorway. It’s a portal. It leads to—”
“Shush, Cosmos!” said Annie. She had put on her helmet again and was speaking through the voice transmitter fitted inside it. It gave her the same funny voice that had so frightened Ringo and his friends. “Let George open it himself.”
By now George had struggled into the big, heavy white suit and glass helmet that Annie had chucked at him. Attached to the back of the suit was a small tank that fed air through a tube into the helmet so he could breathe easily inside it. He put on the big space boots and gloves that Annie had thrown at him, and then he stepped forward and gave the door a timid push. It flew open, revealing an enormous expanse filled with hundreds of little lights that turned out to be stars. One in particular was much bigger and brighter than the others.
“Wow!” said George, speaking through his own voice transmitter. When he’d watched The Birth and Death of a Star, he’d seen the events in outer space through a windowpane. But this time there didn’t seem to be anything between him and outer space. It looked as though he could just step through the doorway and be there. But where? If he took that small step, where would he be?
“Where . . . ? What . . . ? How . . . ?” said George in wonder.
“See that bright star over there, the brightest star of all those you can see?” George heard Cosmos reply. “It’s the Sun. Our Sun. It looks smaller from here than when you look at it in the sky. The doorway leads to a place in the Solar System that is much farther away from the Sun than planet Earth. There is a large comet coming—that is why I have selected this location for you. You will see it in a few minutes. Please stand back from the door.”
George took a step backward. But Annie, who was right next to him, grabbed his suit and hauled him forward again.
“Please stand back from the door, a comet is approaching,” said Cosmos as though he were announcing the arrival of a train at the station. “Please do not stand too close to the edge—the comet will be traveling at high speed.”
Annie nudged George and pointed at the doorway with her foot.
“Please stand back from the door,” repeated Cosmos.
“When I count to three . . . ,” said Annie. “One.” She held up one finger. Beyond the door, George could see a large rock coming toward them, much larger than the tiny one that hit the window the day before.
“This comet will not be stopping,” continued Cosmos. “It goes straight through our Solar System.”
Annie held up another finger to indicate “Two.” The grayish white rock was getting closer.
“The journey time is approximately one hundred and eighty-four years,” said Cosmos. “Calling at Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Earth, and the Sun. On its way back, it will also call at Neptune and Pluto, now out of service as a planet.”
“Please, my wonderful Cosmos, when we’re out there on the comet, can you accelerate the journey? Otherwise it will take us months to see the planets!” Without waiting for Cosmos to reply, Annie shouted, “Three!” grabbed George’s hand, and dragged him through the doorway.
The last thing he heard was Cosmos’s voice, calling as though from millions and millions of miles away, “Don’t jump! It isn’t safe! Come ba-a-a-a-ack.”
And then there was silence.
