Star Blaze Read Online Free PDF Page B

Johnny, who stood his ground but wished he could cover his ears to shut out the high-pitched scrapes of metal against metal. As Mr. Wilkins approached he bellowed at Johnny for being late andslammed the end of his sharpened knife into the long wooden table so that the neatly laid-out cutlery jumped into the air, clattering back down out of position.
    â€œI’m not your slave,” said Johnny defiantly, but it didn’t stop the cook dragging him by the ear into the kitchen and placing him in front of a near-empty pan of gray sludge bubbling on the hob, like hot mud around a volcano.
    â€œPorridge, sonny,” said Mr. Wilkins in answer to Johnny’s questioning look. “Four cups of water to one of oats. I want ten times that much—get cracking.” Johnny set to work as the cook sat down and opened up a newspaper. “And make sure there’s enough salt,” Mr. Wilkins shouted, as his beard bristled against the paper. “A tablespoon for every cup.”
    Johnny didn’t add any salt. Although he turned on a rusty tap, he didn’t use the brown water which flowed from it either. Once he was sure the cook wasn’t looking, he opened the fridge and, after sniffing several cartons, found some milk that hadn’t gone off to use instead. Finally, as he ladled the steaming porridge into bowls, he topped each portion with a dollop of golden syrup. Breakfast proved much more popular than normal, but washing up all the pots and pans took forever.
    Exhausted, his fingers wrinkled from spending so long in the lukewarm dishwater, Johnny was finally allowed to leave. Shutting the dining room door behind him, he found himself standing in front of Spencer Mitchell, dressed in a hooded sweatshirt and holding a deflated football. Despite being a few years older, Spencer invited Johnny outside for a kickabout in the station carpark. Johnny’s reputation as a footballer had spread through Halader House after his team had won the Essex Schools Cup last year. It was cool to be included, but Johnny still said no. He knew he had to talk to Kovac before leaving for the rendezvous.
    The quantum computer had surprised himself by calculatingthat the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies were due to collide in
only
half a billion years, apparently much sooner than Earthbound astronomers had predicted. Johnny said how impressed he was and then indulged the intelligent machine by asking how many new prime numbers it had discovered in the last week. Kovac sounded very proud to announce that there were four more, taking the total unknown to Earthbound mathematicians to seventy-nine.
    With Kovac in a far better mood than the last time they’d spoken, Johnny tentatively asked him to send a message to Sol. The computer agreed, but stressed there was no guarantee any signal would be received. That would depend on the precise whereabouts of the spaceship.
    It had to be worth a try. Kovac ran a search and determined that the huge radio telescope at Jodrell Bank was aligned in almost the right direction so, after a slight tweak, Johnny prepared to record a message. He’d never been so far from his ship and it was odd that any communication wouldn’t be instant. It reminded Johnny of when he was little, dreaming he was commander of the first ever Mars base. Then he’d pretend to record messages to send to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, updating Earth with the colony’s progress. Johnny smiled to himself. He’d still not taken the
Spirit of London
to the red planet and really should do that soon.
    Finding the right words was difficult. In the end, he simply said that he’d received an unidentified transmission, but one he believed to be friendly, and was going to investigate. He gave them the coordinates and the time, but made clear he didn’t expect them to come back because of it. He knew he wasn’t being especially brave—the message wouldn’t reach Pluto till