Back at George’s school, the pupils in the hall were getting restless and bored. Kids were shifting around in their seats, whispering and giggling as a series of nervous, solemn-faced competitors from the different schools battled to gain their attention. However, no one was more agitated or jumpy than Dr. Reeper, who was sitting in the front row with the principal and the other judges.
“Sit still, Reeper! Good heavens, man!” hissed the principal out of the side of his mouth. He was feeling very irritated with Dr. Reeper for behaving so badly in front of the teachers and principals from the other schools. So far he hadn’t bothered to listen to any of the presentations and hadn’t asked a single question. All he had done was anxiously check the order in his program and crane his neck around to look at the hallway behind him.
“I’ll just go and make sure George is up to speed with his speech,” Reeper whispered back to the principal.
“You will not!” spluttered the principal. “George will do perfectly well without you. Try and show some interest, would you? You’re letting the school down.”
The boy on stage finished his speech on dinosaur remains. “So that,” he concluded brightly to his tired audience, “is how we know that dinosaurs first walked the Earth two hundred and thirty million years ago.” The teachers dutifully clapped as he clambered down from the stage and went back to join his school group.
The principal stood up. “And now,” he said, reading from his notes, “we have our last contestant, our own George Greenby, from this very school! Can we give a big welcome to George, whose topic today is . . .” The principal paused and read his notes again.
“No, no, that’s correct,” said Dr. Reeper hurriedly. He stood up. “George’s talk will be on the subject of Cosmos, the world’s most amazing computer, and how he works. Hurray for George!” he cheered, but no one joined in. Then a long silence followed as everyone waited for George to appear. When he didn’t, the noise level in the room rose as the kids, sensing the prospect of a swift end to the school day, rumbled with excitement.
The principal looked at his watch. “I’ll give him two minutes,” he said to the other judges. “If he hasn’t shown up by then, he’ll be disqualified, and we’ll get on with the prizes.” Just like the pupils, the principal was thinking how nice it would be to get home early for once, so he could put up his feet with no pesky kids getting in the way.
The clock ticked but still there was no sign of George. With just seconds to go, the principal turned to the judges and was about to announce the competition closed, when a flurry of activity at the back of the hall caught his attention. A group of people seemed to have come in—two adults, one with a laptop computer under his arm; a blond girl; and a boy.
The boy ran straight up to the front of the hall and said, “Sir, am I still in time?”
“Yes, George,” said the principal, relieved that he had shown up after all. “Get yourself onto the stage. Good luck! We’re relying on you!”
George climbed onto the big school stage and stood right in the very middle.
“Hello, everyone,” he said in a thin voice. The crowds in the hall ignored him and carried on pushing and pulling and pinching each other. “Hello,” George tried again. For a moment he felt sick with nerves and very foolish, standing there by himself. But then he remembered what Eric had said to him in the car on the way there, and he felt more confident. He pulled himself up straight, threw his arms out to either side, and yelled, “Good afternoon, Alderbash School!”
The kids in the audience fell silent in surprise.
“I said,” bellowed George again, “Good afternoon, Alderbash School!”
“Good afternoon, George!” the room shouted back at him.
“Can you hear me at the back?” asked George in a loud voice. Leaning on the wall at the back of the hall, Eric gave him a thumbs-up.
“My name,” continued George, “is George Greenby. And I am here today to give a talk. The title of my talk is My Secret Key to the Universe.”
“Noooooo!” cried Dr. Reeper, jumping out of his seat. “That’s wrong!”
“Hush!” said the principal angrily.
“I’m leaving!” said Dr. Reeper in a furious temper. He tried to storm out of the hall but got halfway down the center aisle when he saw Eric standing at the back. Eric gave him a little wave, smiled, and patted Cosmos, whom he was carrying under his arm. Reeper turned a shade of light green and slunk back to his seat at the front, where he sat down quietly once more.
“You see,” George carried on, “I’ve been really lucky. I found a secret key that’s unlocked the Universe for me. Because of this secret key, I’ve been able to find out all sorts of things about the Universe around us. So I thought I’d share some of the stuff I learned with you. Because it’s all about where we came from—what made us, what made our planet, our Solar System, our Galaxy, our Universe—and it’s about our future. Where are we going? And what do we need to do to survive centuries into the future?
“I wanted to tell you about it because science is really important. Without it, we don’t understand anything, so how can we get anything right or make any good decisions? Some people think science is boring, some people think it’s dangerous—and if we don’t get interested in science and learn about it and use it properly, then maybe it is those things. But if you try and understand it, it’s fascinating, and it matters to us and to the future of our planet.”
Everyone was listening to George now. When he stopped talking, there was complete silence.
He started again. “Billions of years ago, there were clouds of gas and dust wandering in outer space. At first these clouds were very spread out and scattered, but over time, gravity helping, they started to shrink and become denser and denser . . .”
