The Jamie Drake Equation Read online

  And Minty has to wait ten years for hers…

  I don’t know what to say, so decide to change the subject.

  “Minty, do you really believe in aliens?”

  “Uh–huh,” Minty sniffs, wiping her face with the sleeve of her jumper. “The evidence is irrepressible.”

  “And do you think that they might be sending us messages?”

  “All the time,” Minty replies.

  I feel the phone vibrate in my pocket, the strange tingling sensation now creeping up the back of my neck.

  “And these messages,” I say, raising my voice as the buzzing sound from my pocket grows louder. “Do you think the aliens could send them to a mobile phone?”

  Minty laughs out loud.

  “Don’t be stupid,” she says. “The roaming charges would be massive.”

  The school bell rings across the playground.

  “Come on,” Minty says, jumping to her feet. “Let’s find out what our next stupid space challenge is.”

  10

  “CAN YOU IMAGINE AN ALIEN WORLD?”

  Mrs Solomon gestures towards the posters that she’s stuck up around the walls of our classroom. These show scenes from some of my favourite science-fiction films. There’s Luke Skywalker riding a Tauntaun across the icy wastes of Hoth, its grey-white fur almost lost in the snowy landscape. I can see the lush jungle moon of Pandora with its floating mountains and forests teeming with alien life. There’s Superman’s dad standing alone as Krypton burns. It’s like Class Six is the sun at the centre of a science-fiction solar system.

  “All these alien worlds have been imagined by artists and directors,” our teacher says, pointing to each picture in turn. “Cloud cities and mechanical planets, crystal mountains and desert moons. Now I want you to use your artistic skills to create your own alien worlds.”

  On the desk in front of me is a large sheet of poster paper. Pots of coloured pencils, pastels, wax crayons and charcoal mark the border with Minty’s half of the desk. She’s got first dibs on all the best felt tips and is already starting to draw the outline of some crazy alien scene.

  Minty’s the best artist in our class. In fact, she’s probably the best artist in the whole school. She does these brilliant cartoons in the school newspaper and when Mrs Solomon wanted some scenery for our class musical of Macbeth, Minty helped paint this really spooky castle with headless ghosts and skeletons everywhere. When we did the play, our headteacher Mr Hayes even had to cover up some bits of scenery because the Year One kids found them too scary. I bet the alien world she creates is going to look amazing.

  Mrs Solomon floats around the class in her flowery dress, throwing out her usual words of encouragement.

  “Beautiful yellows and greens, Jasmine.”

  “Amazing patterns, Lila.”

  “Lovely bold lines, Aaron. Are those tentacles?”

  I look back down at my blank sheet of paper. I don’t have a clue what to draw.

  “Are you stuck?” Minty asks, chewing on her pen lid as she looks up from her cartoon of an intergalactic scrap yard. In this, a huge metal dinosaur is munching on a pile of rusting robots, the jet-black sky filled with a Death Star moon. “If you can’t think of anything, then just draw an ice world. They’re simple – the only colour you need is white.”

  I shake my head, my mind as blank as my piece of paper. I don’t think Mrs Solomon would be very impressed with an invisible planet. But before Minty can offer another suggestion, an insistent buzz sounds out from my trouser pocket.

  “Is that somebody’s mobile phone?” Mrs Solomon enquires, a look of irritation flashing across her features. “Remember the school rules, please. If you don’t turn it off right away, it’s getting confiscated.”

  She glances round to look for the culprit. Digging deep in my pocket, I clamp my hand around the phone to mute the buzzing sound. As my fingers close around its metal case, I feel a strange vibration, right behind my eyes. I blink – the buzzing of my phone instantly replaced by a silence that seems to make time stand still.

  “Have you finished, Jamie?”

  I open my eyes to see Mrs Solomon now standing over my desk, her face creased in admiration. For a second, I feel totally confused. How did she get from there to here so quickly? Then I look down at my desk, my blank sheet of paper now filled with the most incredible picture.

  Twin suns shine in a bright purple sky above a vast forest filled with giant plants and ferns. Black flowers bloom in every direction and rising above these I can see huge golden spirals, shimmering like trapped sunlight. The shape of these unearthly skyscrapers is the same as the spiral icon on my phone, but as I stare in wonder at this impossible picture, I see that each golden spiral is actually a vast alien city winding into the sky.

  “This is amazing,” Mrs Solomon says, peering intently at the poster that covers my desk. “How did you capture such incredible detail with oil pastels?”

  I look down at my hands. My fingers are smeared with purple, green and gold, a rainbow of pastels scattered across my desk. In the picture, the colours almost seem to be alive – like this alien landscape is just frozen in time.

  Did I really draw this?

  When I closed my eyes, this page was blank and then, when I opened them a split second later, this amazing world was here. I must be going mad.

  “What an imagination,” my teacher murmurs as Minty stares at my picture open-mouthed.

  But as I rack my brain trying to work out what’s happening to me, the only thing I know for sure is that the mind that imagined this picture isn’t mine. So whose imagination is it?

  11

  The first thing I want to do when I get home from school is head straight for the observatory at the top of Beacon Hill. I’ve got to find Professor Forster and tell her what’s happening to me. If this golden spiral on my phone is some kind of alien message that I’ve downloaded from the Hubble Space Telescope, then she’ll know what to do.

  But when I open the back door I see Hayley sitting at the kitchen table with Granddad and I remember that it’s time for our weekly video conference with Dad. Hayley Collins was the first British astronaut to walk in outer space. Ten years ago she was on the International Space Station, just like Dad is now. She took part in a two-person EVA – that’s an extravehicular activity or spacewalk for short – to repair a solar panel that had been damaged by a micrometeorite strike.

  Hayley is our family escort. This means that while Dad’s in space she’s the person who helps to look after Mum, Charlie and me – keeping us up to speed with everything that’s happening with Dad’s mission. Hayley makes sure that all our communications with the ISS – like our weekly family video conference – run smoothly. If there’s any problem that needs sorting, she’s the person who can call Mission Control and put us straight through to Dad.

  Sometimes it can get a bit scary, worrying about all the things that could go wrong while Dad’s up there in space, but Hayley’s always great at keeping us calm. One of the first times we talked to Dad on the ISS via video link, Charlie suddenly started shrieking as the face of a giant ant filled the screen. This was really a normal-sized ant that had escaped from one of the experiments on board the space station – it just looked huge as it floated in front of the camera lens. Dad had to quickly abort the video call so he could capture the ant, but when the screen went black, Charlie just kept on screaming. She was convinced that the International Space Station had been invaded by giant alien bugs and that Dad was going to be eaten alive. Me and Mum tried to explain about the ant experiment, but Charlie wouldn’t listen to anything we said. Only Hayley could get her to calm down by saying that the ISS had a Space Bug Zapper installed that splatted any alien invaders as soon as they appeared. Charlie stopped crying then and when Dad reappeared on the screen ten minutes later, my little sister just wanted him to show her all the zapped aliens. Me and Mum had been too busy trying to make Charlie understand, while Hayley just focused on stopping my sister from worrying. Ha
yley says that’s what astronauts do – solve the problem in front of them.

  “Hi, Jamie,” Hayley says, putting down her mug of tea to greet me with a smile. “Ready to talk to your dad?”

  This is our last family video call before Dad’s spacewalk. When he comes home next week we won’t need a “family escort” any more. I think I’m going to miss her.

  “Is this the last time you’re coming to see us?” I ask.

  “No, silly,” Hayley grins. “I’ll be back on Friday for your dad’s spacewalk. We’ll watch the Light Swarm launch together – Mission Control have arranged for a live link with your dad’s helmet cam. You’ll get to see an astronaut’s view of the EVA.” She can’t hide her own excitement. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  At the mention of Dad’s spacewalk, my stomach does a somersault. For a second, I think this is just nerves about Dad’s mission, but then it gurgles again. I really need to go to the toilet.

  “Well, if you’re all off to speak to Dan Dare,” Granddad says, getting up from the table with a groan, “I’m going out to the barn to give my drum kit a good thrashing. That blinking nurse didn’t say anything about me not playing the drums.”

  So while Granddad heads to the barn to vent his frustration and Hayley phones Mission Control, I make a dash for the bathroom.

  * * *

  I’m just zipping my trousers back up when I hear a buzzing sound above the noise of the toilet flush.

  I pull my mobile out of my pocket. In the centre of the home screen the golden spiral is still spinning, the icon looking even larger than it did last time. The phone vibrates again in the palm of my hand. I feel the same tingling sensation that I felt behind my eyes just before things got strange at school.

  I still don’t know how that weird alien picture got on to my sheet of paper. I don’t remember drawing anything at all. And even if I did, there’s no way I could have made an amazing picture like that. I usually can’t even draw stick men without making a mistake, but that extraterrestrial landscape almost looked like a photograph.

  My finger hovers over the golden spiral, wishing I could just click to unlock this mystery.

  “What are you?” I murmur, trying to make sense of it all. The mobile vibrates again, sending a strange tingle up my arm. As the toilet flush finally gurgles into silence, all I can hear is a constant hum that seems to be coming from my phone. Then through the drone, I hear the sound of a voice crackling from the speaker.

  “We are – BZZZ. We are – BZZZZ.”

  I stare at my phone open-mouthed.

  “Hello?” I say, holding the phone close to my ear. “Who’s there?”

  There’s no reply. My mobile has stopped vibrating now and the only buzzing sound that I can hear is coming from a wasp that’s just flown in through the bathroom window. Maybe I just imagined that voice…

  “We are the – BZZZZZ.”

  I nearly drop the phone down the toilet.

  “Who are you?”

  I’m so shocked that I can’t stop myself from blurting out the answer.

  “I’m – I’m Jamie,” I stutter.

  “Help BZZZ.”

  The voice coming from the speaker doesn’t sound like a person. It’s more robotic – like one of those phone calls you get when someone sends a text message to your home phone instead of your mobile. If this is a message from outer space, then maybe “Buzz” here is leaving a voicemail…

  But before I can listen to the rest of it, the bathroom door handle rattles, followed by the sound of Charlie’s voice outside.

  “Jamie, come quick!” she squeals. “Daddy’s on TV!”

  “I’ll be right there,” I shout.

  Switching my phone into silent mode, I quickly shove it back into my pocket. If I’ve really downloaded some kind of intergalactic distress signal, then my spaceman dad will know what to do.

  12

  Squeezed next to Mum and Charlie on the sofa, I stare at Dad’s face on our brand-new TV – this one fixed higher up on the wall so Granddad can’t pull it down. Behind Dad I can see a tangle of wires and cables snaking around the interior of the International Space Station. Back here on Earth, Hayley is sitting in the armchair next to the living room door, out of sight of the video camera but still close by in case anything goes wrong with the connection.

  “Hey guys,” Dad says, his face breaking into a smile. “How are you doing?”

  Because of the satellite relay, there’s always a two-second delay between the moment Dad speaks and when we hear him. At first this made our video calls a bit of a nightmare as Charlie kept getting upset when Dad didn’t seem to be listening to her straight away, but we’ve worked out a system now. Charlie talks first so she can tell Dad her news, while Mum and me wait for our turn.

  So while Charlie starts telling Dad about how she fed the bunnies at nursery school today, I think about what just happened with my phone.

  Professor Forster said that the only extraterrestrial signal the human race has ever received was a seventy-two-second beacon beamed from the stars. On Friday, Dad’s sending a swarm of space probes to Tau Ceti – one of our nearest stars – but they’ll still take fifteen years to get there, travelling at nearly light speed. And any information they beam back will take another fifteen years to reach Earth. So if Buzz is a message sent from some alien planet, how come it’s talking back to me?

  On the rug in front of the TV, Charlie’s showing Dad how she’s learned to do a cartwheel. Collapsing in a giggling heap on the floor, she squeals with delight as Dad demonstrates a space somersault, his head disappearing backwards as his knees and legs fill the screen before flipping right round again.

  “Again! Again!” Charlie squeals, still giggling uncontrollably. Then she stops and turns towards Mum with a worried look on her face. “I think I’ve done a wee.”

  “Never mind,” Mum replies with a weary sigh. Getting up from the sofa, she takes Charlie by the hand.

  “I’ll just have to get her a change of clothes, Dan,” Mum says as Dad raises a guilty hand in apology. “Why don’t you have a chat with Jamie?”

  On the TV screen, I watch as Dad plucks a floating pen out of the air.

  “Oops, pen overboard,” he says. “One of the hazards of space gymnastics.” He tucks this back into his top pocket and then nods his head as if hearing Mum’s reply. “So how are things with you, son?”

  I don’t know what to say. From the hallway, I can still hear Charlie complaining as Mum leads her up the stairs. The silence lengthens into six, seven, eight seconds – my brain still trying to find the right words.

  “Are you still receiving me?” Dad asks, leaning towards the camera with a frown.

  “We’re still receiving you, Dan,” Hayley calls out brightly from the other side of the room. “Jamie’s just having a bit of a think.”

  She gets up out of her chair.

  “I’ll just go and give your mum a hand with Charlie,” she says, moving towards the door. “Give you and your dad some space to talk.”

  “Is everything OK?” Dad asks, his voice overlapping with the end of Hayley’s sentence as she heads out of the room.

  I watch him bob in microgravity, his face still creased in concern.

  “Dad,” I say, “I think I’ve got aliens on my phone.”

  There’s a pause as my words zoom four hundred kilometres up into space. Then Dad laughs out loud.

  “Good one, Jamie,” he says with a grin. “Is this some new game you’ve got then? I thought Mum wasn’t too keen on you downloading things to your phone?”

  “No, Dad.” I try to explain, struggling to put it all into words. “I think it’s a real alien message. You see I downloaded it from the Hubble Space Telescope. At first I thought it was some kind of computer virus as it just kept on buzzing all the time, but then it tried to turn my finger into a torch. All these really weird things have been happening at school today and now it’s started talking to me. It says its name is Buzz. I think it’s�
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  “Whoa,” Dad says, the echo of his voice cutting across mine. “Slow down, Jamie – you’re not making any sense.”

  I pause to catch my breath. It’s weird. Dad might be the one who’s weightless, but I kind of feel lighter too, now that I’ve told him everything.

  Dad always said I can tell him anything – any problem I’ve got, any worry I have, and he’ll help me to sort it out. That’s why it’s been so hard with Dad up in space, especially when the main thing I’m worried about is Dad being up in space. Now at least I’ve got my own problem for him to sort out. All I needed was for Dad to believe me and now he’ll be able to tell me what to do.

  “First of all, the Hubble Space Telescope stopped working last year,” Dad says. “So you couldn’t have downloaded anything from it – especially not an alien message.”

  “I know, but Professor Forster hacked into the telescope.”

  “Who’s Professor Forster?”

  “She’s an astronomer,” I tell him. “I met her at the observatory at the top of Beacon Hill. She’s looking for aliens, just like you.”

  “Jamie, my mission’s a bit more complicated than that—”

  “I think the signal might be some kind of distress call. Buzz says they need help—”

  Our sentences are overlapping now – the satellite delay causing our words to crash into each other. Raising his hand, Dad waits until there’s a moment of silence and then he starts to speak again.

  “I know this mission has been hard on you, Jamie,” he says. “Especially with me missing your birthday on Friday. But you don’t have to make up this story about alien messages just to get my attention.”