The comet was now traveling straight again. In front of them, the Sun was bigger and brighter than before, but still very small compared to its size when seen from the Earth. George spotted another bright dot that he hadn’t noticed before, a dot that was quickly growing bigger as they approached it.
“What’s over there?” he asked, pointing ahead and to the right. “Is that another planet?”
But there was no reply. When he looked around, Annie had gone. George untied himself from the comet and followed the trail of footprints she had left in the icy powder. He carefully gauged the length of his steps so that he wouldn’t find himself flying off the comet again.
After climbing carefully over a small icy hill, he saw her. She was peering into a hole in the ground. Around the hole were bits and pieces of rock that seemed to have been spat out by the comet itself. George walked over and looked down into the hole too. It was a few feet deep, with nothing much to be seen at the bottom.
“What is it?” he asked. “Have you found something?”
“Well, you see, I went for a walk—,” Annie started to explain.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” George interrupted her.
“You were shouting at me about not shouting!” said Annie. “So I thought I’d just go by myself. Because then there’d be no one to get mad at me,” she added pointedly.
“I’m not mad at you,” said George.
“Yes, you are! You’re always angry with me. It doesn’t make any difference if I’m nice to you or not.”
“I’m not angry!” shouted George.
“Yes, you are!” shouted back Annie, balling her gloved hands into fists and shaking them at George. As she did so, something extraordinary happened. A little fountain of gas and dirt blew up from the ground just next to her.
“Now look what you’ve done!” complained George. But as he spoke, another little fountain erupted through the rock right next to him. It formed a cloud of dust that slowly dispersed.
“Annie, what’s happening?” he asked.
“Um, it’s nothing,” replied Annie. “This is all fine, don’t worry.” But she didn’t sound very sure. “Why don’t we go and sit down where we were before?” she suggested. “It’s nicer over there.”
But as they walked back, more and more little geysers of dust erupted around them, leaving a haze of smoke in the air. Neither of them felt very safe, but neither of them wanted to admit it. They just walked more and more quickly toward the place where they’d been sitting before. Without saying a word, they anchored themselves to the comet once more.
In the sky, the bright dot George had seen growing had become much bigger. It now looked like a planet with red and blue stripes.
“That’s Jupiter,” Annie said, breaking the silence. But she was whispering now. She didn’t sound like the confident show-off she had been earlier. “It’s the biggest of the planets, about twice the volume of Saturn. That makes it more than a thousand times the volume of Earth.”
“Does Jupiter have moons too?” George asked.
“Yes, it does,” replied Annie. “But I don’t know how many. I didn’t count them last time I was here, so I’m not sure.”
“Have you really been here before?” George looked suspicious.
“Of course I have!” said Annie indignantly. George wasn’t sure he believed her.
Once again, the comet and Annie and George started to fall. As they fell, George gazed at Jupiter. Even by Saturn’s standards, Jupiter was enormous.
As they flew by, Annie pointed out a big red mark on Jupiter’s surface.
“That thing,” she said, “is a huge storm. It’s been going on for hundreds and hundreds of years. Maybe even more, I don’t know. It’s over twice the size of the Earth!”
As they moved away from Jupiter, George counted how many moons he could spot.
“Four big ones,” he said.
“ ‘Four big ones’ what?”
“Moons. Jupiter has four big moons and lots and lots of little moons. I think it has even more moons than Saturn.”
“Oh, okay,” said Annie, who was sounding nervous now. “If you say so.”
George was worried—it wasn’t like Annie to agree with anything he said. He noticed she had shuffled a little closer to him. She slipped her hand in its space glove into his. All around them, new jets of gas and dust were springing up out of the rock, each one spitting out a small cloud. A thin haze was forming over the whole comet. “Are you all right?” he asked Annie. She had stopped showing off and being rude, and he felt sure something was very wrong.
“George, I—,” Annie started to reply, when a huge rock smashed into the comet behind them, shaking the ground like an earthquake and sending up even more dust and ice into the haze.
Looking up, George and Annie saw there were hundreds and hundreds of rocks, all coming toward them at high speed. And there was nowhere to hide.
“Asteroids!” cried Annie. “We’re in an asteroid storm!”
