Unforgettable journey to other planets

Debby’s breathing short, she looked around, trying to figure out how to get up. She lifted her torso slightly and leaned against the wall. Seeing her feet, she felt dizzy with fear. Nausea rose to her throat.

Her hip bone was clearly broken. Even through the jeans, you could see it sticking unnaturally out of her hip. There was no blood; it was a closed fracture. Debby tried to move her leg again, but nothing worked. She grabbed her jeans and moved the right leg slightly. A sharp stabbing pain stopped her. Debby closed her eyes and her lips quivered. She wanted to burst into tears, but she didn’t even have the strength to do that. The plane crash, Carol, the leg, the cold – it was all mixed up in her head, and Debby covered her face with hands.

Suddenly she heard Jean-Pierre screaming somewhere in the distance. It was a scream, and there was joy in the sound of it.

“He’s found people!” Debby exhaled and fell to the floor.

Part 2 – Chapter 21

Bernard Bajolet was frantically scrolling letters on his phone, and his mind was jumping from the titles of those letters to the words in the hall. “Maybe write ‘flight’” thought Monsieur Bajolet. “No, it doesn’t come out. When was it? In the basket, perhaps?” Bernard made a few more attempts and found one. He saw a letter from the HR department about Jean-Pierre Biro’s business trip. He opened the letter and jumped at the flight number with his eyes. “Oh my God, it’s his flight,” Monsieur Bajolet put the phone aside.

He put his left hand to his lips and looked around the hall. He glanced once more at the young specialist from Charles de Gaulle airport. The man continued to speak. Bernard Bajolet switched on his microphone.

“Excuse me,” he interrupted the young man’s five-minute report.

The tense gazes of the seated generals and officials began to search the hall for the one who was asking the question.

“I understand correctly that we have no specifics. We understand that the plane disappeared from radar in the same place where we lost the Nepalese helicopter a few hours ago. Anything else?”

The Indian general turned on the microphone:

“Absolutely correct. No information on the helicopter or the plane. The weather’s getting worse.”

“We have no communication with the crew. We tried to contact the airliner for almost an hour, and then it went off the radar. It started veering off course, and my colleagues tried to relay a message.”

“Is it a fact or an assumption that it crashed?” Bernard Bajolet couldn’t stand it.

“Almost a fact,” the young man reported.

The screen showed a map of Asia and two routes, one marked in gray for the planned course, the other in red for the actual course. A cross marked the point of the proposed crash.

Suggestions came from the audience:

“Drones?”

“Strong electromagnetic radiation. We already lost two,” the Chinese general said.

“Satellites?”

“Working on it!”

“You were talking about the border cordon near the mountain,” someone turned to the Indian general.

“The distance is long. We are thinking over this option.”

“Don’t we have any possibility to send a special team there?” Igor Komarov stepped in.

“Shall we send another helicopter there when the weather is even worse than in the morning?” The Nepalese general asked. “We are definitely not going to do that. We are trying to get a rescue team as close to the quadrant as possible. But the area is very difficult.”

Jean-Jacques Dordain stood up and thanked the young man from the airport.

“Gentlemen, I suggest we take a short break until our colleagues have some concrete information.”

Jean-Jacques Dordain was approached by his assistant and said something in his ear. He nodded and pointed to the screen behind him.

“Gentlemen, we have an update on the weather conditions.”

An image appeared on the screen. The large bright spiral of clouds, captured from the satellite, looked dreadful and fearful.

“Just above Kanchenjunga a cyclone about one hundred and fifty kilometers wide is now unfolding. Let’s keep this in mind in our plans,” said Mr. Dordain.

People began to rise from their seats.

In a minute several people had gathered around Jean-Jacques Dordain’s table: Igor Komarov, Charles Bolden and others.

Charles Bolden began:

“We have checked the signal quality and determined that this is definitely a recording from Voyager 2. This is it.”

“Okay,” reasoned the head of the ESA aloud. “We have a signal that we sent into space to inform about our location.”

“But the signal is coming from the Earth,” added Igor.

“On the frequency of space transmissions,” Charles nodded.

“A weather anomaly, an electromagnetic flare…” Jean-Jacques Dordain pondered. “We need at least something. Some kind of clue.”

Monsieur Dordain’s young assistant couldn’t take it anymore:

“Perhaps our message has been received,” he hesitated, “and now it has been sent to us using some device that exists on the Earth.”

Everyone turned to the assistant.

“A little more realistic, Francois,” said Monsieur Dordain grudgingly.

At the other end of the hall, Bernard Bajolet was sitting at his desk, dialing Jean-Pierre’s phone for the third time. “The mobile phone you are trying to call has been switched off, Please Try again Later.” He closed his eyes and gathered his thoughts. Then he called the accounting department.

“Good afternoon, this is Bernard Bajolet, please find me the phone number of my assistant’s wife, Jean-Pierre Biro,” he paused. “As quickly as possible.”

Part 2 – Chapter 22

Debby listened intensely. She searched for something to latch onto in the surrounding sounds, but found nothing. All she could hear was the wind rubbing against the hull of the plane. It sounded like a whistle or a hum. Debby closed her eyes and felt her rib cage rise and fall heavily. She listened to her unnaturally loud breathing. Someone ran to the door and stopped. She heard Jean-Pierre shouting outside in English:

“Hurry, we’re here!”

He ran inside, out of breath, but with burning eyes. His face said, “we are saved!”

“There are people! They are coming to us!” he swallowed. “How do you feel?”

Debby closed her eyes and exhaled, her lips expressing either a smile or despair. The pain didn’t stop for a moment, but she felt joy. Now they were going to get help. Consciousness, clouded by pain, suddenly sank into euphoria.

Jean-Pierre looked out again.

“We are here!” he shouted, calling out to the people.

Debby began to listen to what was going on outside. She could hear several people approaching.

Two Nepalese military men, a tourist, an elderly man, and a girl approached what was left of the tail section of the plane. Jean-Pierre raised his hand up, examining their clothes. He strained to think what could be the reason for such a combination of civilians and military, people of different nationalities, and in the middle of the mountains, where not a hint of civilization was visible. Jean-Pierre saw that the young man was carrying a hiking backpack on his shoulders, while the others were not even wearing warm clothes. The Frenchman tried to push the thoughts away. Somewhere deep inside there was a doubt, “They can’t help.” The group came closer to Jean-Pierre, and a civilian who was older than the others stepped forward.

“Hey, what happened?” Dr Capri asked briefly in English.

“Hi, I’m Jean-Pierre Biro. I was on a Paris-Tokyo flight. I don’t know exactly what happened, but the tail of our plane fell off and we…”

“We? Who’s with you?”

“There’s a woman here who needs help. It looks like a closed leg fracture,” Jean-Pierre pointed to the ajar door of the toilet.

Dr Capri began to translate Jean-Pierre’s report into Nepali. Yulia and David moved toward the mangled part of the plane, Jean-Pierre guiding them.

David looked at the massive steel tail that was wedged between two huge blocks of rock, assessed the slope of the mountain with doubt, and shifted his eyebrows. “Some sort of mystery. Two plane crashes in an hour. What’s going on here?” He followed Jean-Pierre and couldn’t believe the man in front of him was a plane crash survivor.

Debby saw shadows outside. Strange faces peeked into the room. When Debby saw Yulia, she stopped feeling pain for a second.

“Oh!” she let out a relieved shout along with a smile.

Yulia walked in and took her hand. She stood awkwardly, half-bent, in the confined space.

“Hi,” David said, standing behind Yulia. “We’ll help you. How are you feeling?”

Debby was relieved to see Yulia and David, but instantly she was tired, and somehow she felt sleepy. She felt almost safe.

“Hi,” Debby said to both David and Yulia, and to all the people who looked through the doorway of the toilet room one by one.

She saw Jean-Pierre’s face and felt like she’d known him almost all her life.

“I’m fine, but I can’t move my leg,” Debby added.

The helicopter captain and Dr Capri tried to approach Debby. To do so, they had to push Yulia and David outside. They sat squatting near Debby’s legs, which were lying in the doorway.

“Yes, it’s a closed fracture, she needs to go to the hospital right away,” the helicopter captain said in Nepali, examining Debby’s leg.

“What can we do, the helicopter is broken, right?” looking at Debby, Dr Capri asked the captain.

“We have to get the helicopter working and take her to the nearest town with a hospital,” said the captain, “otherwise… based on the blue toes on her leg…” he paused again. “We need to try to get the helicopter up, or find a village nearby.”

“Can you get a helicopter up here?” Dr Capri asked.

“If we can take off,” said the captain as he stood up, “but it would be better to take her to the helicopter.”

They moved away from the room, making some space for Yulia and David. Jean-Pierre approached them to discuss the plan. They agreed that the girl had a closed fracture and many bruises, and they needed to get her to the hospital as quickly as possible.

“It’s amazing how you survived,” Dr Capri shook his head. “Surviving a plane crash.”

“Now we need to help the American girl and send rescuers to search for the plane,” concluded Jean-Pierre.

Captain Shah nodded:

“Yes, and as fast as we could.”

He put the first aid kit he had taken from the helicopter in front of him and pulled out a painkiller. He put the liquid in a syringe and went into the tail section of the plane to give Debby the injection.

Dr Capri looked around at everyone standing outside.

In the middle of the beautiful mountain landscape, standing next to the wreckage, were people who shouldn’t have been here at all. And the doctor understood that very well. He knew this country, he knew what was possible here and what was not. What he saw in front of him in no way fit into his already complicated plans for the day.

He looked at Yulia, who did not fully, but certainly understood the complexity of the whole situation better than anyone else. She knew for a fact that the helicopter would almost certainly not take off. She knew for a fact that the plane had crashed for the same reason that their helicopter. And so David’s phone went crazy for the same reason. And it all started with that signal they detected in Kathmandu. And the source of that signal is somewhere near here.

The doctor shifted his gaze to David, who emerged from the remains of the plane. He was sitting beside his backpack, opening it and taking out his goods. Captain Shah showed him to keep the girl warm. And David got the sleeping bag for that.

The doctor shifted his gaze to the Frenchman, who was standing beside him, looking questioningly straight at him, trying to figure out what was going on. The man seemed to see right through the doctor. There was doubt and disbelief on his face.

The doctor felt a gust of cold wind and saw dark clouds coming toward them from behind the mountains. They were spreading across the sky and growing larger as they swallowed the air. The sunlight began to change, as if it were sunset. A sharp gust staggered those who were standing on their feet.

“We can carry her in the sleeping bag,” David suggested.

“We need something solid,” Jean-Pierre pondered. “A stretcher.”

The captain came out of the wreckage and nodded to the doctor. Tulu-Manchi stepped inside and leaned over to Debby.

“We have a helicopter. It has everything we need to help you,” he looked at Yulia and back at Debby. “We need to get you to the hospital, and the sooner, the better.”

“Where can we find a stretcher?” David asked Jean-Pierre.

“How far is your helicopter?” Jean-Pierre asked.

“About twenty minutes from here,” answered the doctor briefly.

Jean-Pierre felt the snowflakes start to touch his face. He looked around at everyone. Yulia was wrapping Debby in the sleeping bag. David was handing her warm clothes out of his backpack. The doctor was standing next to the military, discussing something. Anger began to grow in Jean-Pierre’s chest. He was eager for action and realized that every second of delay was a risk to Debby’s life. “If the storm starts, we’re stuck here.”

Jean-Pierre walked over to the plane and looked through the doorway. He clenched his fist, looking at Debby, then shifted his gaze to the black clouds. Then paused, staring ahead of him in thoughtfulness. A sharp gust of wind hit him in the shoulder.

The tail of the plane rattled and staggered. The people inside shrieked briefly. Jean-Pierre grabbed at the hull, trying to hold the huge wreckage in place with his own strength.

“Get out!” shouted Jean-Pierre.

“How are we going to get Debby out?” Yulia answered loudly.

Dr Capri and the military ran up to the tail; they rested against the steel plating and began putting rocks under the underside of the plane to stop it from moving. The tail of the plane froze in place.

“Hold it!” shouted Jean-Pierre to the military outside, making his way to the lavatory.

He took hold of the ajar door and began swinging it from side to side. The top edge had already been broken off, and under a few pulls the door gave way and fell off.

“Help me put her here,” Jean-Pierre commanded, pushing Yulia aside and turning to David.

David hesitated for a second, but then, remembering how easily the plane gave way to a gust of wind, reached over to Debby’s head. Her feet lay outside the toilet. Jean-Pierre carefully slid the door under Debby, David took hold of her shoulders. They slowly began to lift Debby up, and she pressed her lips together with a premonition that she was about to feel a sharp pain. Jean-Pierre and David slowly placed the American woman on the door.

“Quickly!” Yulia shouted outside.

Without collusion, David and Jean-Pierre abruptly lifted the door and took a step to the ground. The plane groaned again. Dr Capri stood beside it, with his hands resting on the hull, while the military threw rocks under the belly of the hulk. The doctor saw everyone out of the plane and stepped aside. The giant wreck tilted on its side, and the rocks began to roll from under it. The wind howled again sharply and the plane jumped a few centimeters. Then it rolled for a few meters and flipped on its belly. David and Jean-Pierre breathed nervously as they stared at the scene.

“This is going to end very badly,” Yulia said quietly in Russian.

Dr Capri looked at the military, who were also, out of breath, staring at the flipped tail. Captain Shah turned to the doctor.

“We won’t get the helicopter up in this weather, we have to find shelter nearby.”

Dr Capri relayed this to everyone else. Jean-Pierre nodded. He looked at Debby, she was losing her composure: her eyes were rolling and her breathing had become quite heavy.

“Let’s go,” Jean-Pierre nodded again.

“We will go forward and try to find shelter, move to that rock over there,” said Captain Shah and pointed to the elevation.

The military ran up the slope. Dr Capri took David’s backpack, which lay on the ground:

“Follow them. Yulia, hold Debby’s leg; I’ll walk ahead, so we don’t lose the soldiers.”

Yulia inhaled loudly and exhaled. She had felt like her limit had been reached the moment she had boarded the helicopter in Kathmandu. By now, she had forgotten herself and was simply obeying her instincts and Dr Capri.

The wind hit the rocks in sharp gusts and lifted small stones. They shuffled the ground and complemented the rumble of the wind with a crackling sound. Debby cried softly and Yulia ran up to her. She took her hand and squeezed it tightly. Dr Capri walked forward and shouted, addressing Jean-Pierre first.

“Follow me!”

“Go!” Jean-Pierre commanded and followed the doctor.

Part 2 – Chapter 23

“I can’t see them!” the doctor shouted. “Hurry up!”

Tulu-Manchi walked ahead and shouted back without looking. He gazed anxiously into the dim space in front of him. He was almost running, doubting every step. Torn between rushing forward and losing the porters behind him, or hesitating and condemning them to the fate of a mountain storm.

Jean-Pierre lost sight of the doctor and tried to quicken his pace. He could hear Debby crying from the shaking, but he tried to walk faster.

“Faster, come on!” he shouted.

Yulia ran beside the handmade stretcher and held Debby’s hand. She could feel Debby’s hand clenching with each step from the pain running through her body. The wind rumbled so loud and fierce that Yulia didn’t dare look up. The cold seeped under her clothes and burned her body. Little icicles sliced her face and hands.

The fascinating landscape was drowned in fog and blackness. The sun had disappeared, though it was only a few hours after noon. The landmark of the rock was swallowed up by black clouds. Jean-Pierre picked his direction at random, trying to find the doctor.

Yulia felt Debby’s hand weaken and her fingers loosen.

“Stop!” Yulia screamed.

David began to reduce his step, slowing down the procession. Jean-Pierre turned over his shoulder and looked at Debby. Breathing heavily, he shouted desperately into the fog:

“Doc! Doctor!”

Yulia looked ahead and screamed in fright, too:

“Dr Capri, where are you?”

The light was still breaking through the dust and fog, but the hum drowned out their voices. Yulia pointed ahead at eleven o’clock, noticing some sort of movement.

“Hurry up!” Jean-Pierre commanded.

Everyone moved briskly forward.

“Doctor!” Yulia ran out in front of Jean-Pierre. “We are here! Wait for us!”

The light abruptly changed and blackness began to come over them. Jean-Pierre looked up, trying to understand the size of this unknown danger. They took a few more steps, and through the impenetrable swell Jean-Pierre began to make out the shape of a mountain. Yulia was running in front of him ten or fifteen meters away, shouting something in Russian. Suddenly, she stopped abruptly and fell silent. David looked out from behind Jean-Pierre’s shoulder, checking to see what was there. The porters took a few more steps and saw the doctor standing in front and some man beside him. Their figures were not clearly visible, but the doctor’s posture was recognizable.

Dust and fog still hung in the air, but the wind died down. It became quiet and a little lighter. Everyone approached Dr Capri and the stranger who was standing beside him, talking quietly about something. The hum left behind and there was silence.

“Good day, I want to say,” the stranger said in English.

Everyone began to respond to him with repetitive nods without words. Dr Capri rehabilitated the stranger and said:

“This is Bhrigu. He is a hermit. He says there is a cave to take shelter in.”

Jean-Pierre felt that his hands were stiff, and he could hardly feel them. He looked at the strange-looking man, at the doctor, at the bewildered Yulia.

“Where are the soldiers?”

“I lost them out of sight,” the exhausted doctor shook his head.

David said quietly:

“Debby is hushed, what’s happened to her?”

Dr Capri walked over to the stretcher and leaned over it.

“She lost consciousness; her breathing is even.”

The hermit looked behind Jean-Pierre’s back and glanced at the girl.

“For me follow,” said Bhrigu and walked leisurely toward the mountain.

“We must go,” said Dr Capri. “She needs water and warmth. She is very weak. We can’t find the helicopter now.”

Jean-Pierre was hesitant to go, he turned to the doctor:

“If we turn back now, we won’t be able to find the military today.”

“I ran as fast as I could,” the doctor excused himself, “but they just disappeared in that dust. I screamed.”

The doctor shifted his gaze from the hesitant Jean-Pierre to the hermit in front, who was standing half-turned ten meters away, waiting for them to move.

“It’s a calm for a few minutes,” the doctor looked around.

“You think they’ve gone far?” David asked.

Yulia answered:

“In this storm we won’t even see them within fifty meters.”

To prove Yulia’s words, the light went down even more.

“Okay,” agreed Jean-Pierre.

Everyone began to walk forward, getting over the slight incline. The wind howled again somewhere in the distance. After a few hundred meters, they came to a large rock. The top of the cliff was covered with fog. But somewhere at the top was a dark cave. The travelers looked around the steep stone wall. A hermit was climbing the steps carved in the stone. He turned and beckoned again, pointing to the beginning of the stairs.

“A little more,” Yulia whispered in Debby’s ear, “don’t be afraid, everything will be fine soon.”

David lifted the stretcher above his head to keep Debby from rolling down. They slowly began to climb the narrow, winding stairs. David’s hands began to shake from fatigue, and he set the door on his head. The wind died down, and the scalding snow stopped falling. They climbed the last step, and David collapsed to the ground with fatigue.

“We need to walk a few more meters,” said Dr Capri, “let me do it.”

David nodded and relented. Sweat ran down his face.

He wiped his sleeve and looked at the stairs they had just climbed. The makeshift steps were of varying heights and stooped from time. In some places, snow covered the stairs. David tried to see the valley they had come from, but the weather was still bad and nothing was visible. The wind rustled and drove a wad of fog in front of David’s eyes. He looked around, and a peak flashed between the clouds. Majestic and calm. It seemed unaffected by the storm. It was illuminated by the sun, and only the fuzzy top showed that the strong wind had blown thousands of tons of snow off the ridge of the giant.

“David,” Dr Capri’s voice was heard, “you will freeze there. Please go deeper into the cave. You have a lighter, don’t you?”

“Yes,” David answered, still breathing heavily, and wiped his face again with his sleeve.

He rose with great effort, stepped into the gloom of the cave, and saw Jean-Pierre trying to wake Debby up. Dr Capri watched him and looked intently at Debby. Yulia was sitting on the cold floor, breathing tiredly. Out of the darkness came the hermit.

“Cold here, but warm in other place. Deeper to go we need. Please,” he looked at the oblivious Debby and then nodded to himself, “Water there. For her we need it.”

“The important thing now is to make a fire and keep her warm. Let’s go a bit more,” Jean-Pierre said, looking at Debby, and took hold of one edge of the door.

The cave was quite wide. Jean-Pierre, David, and Dr Capri took the stretcher and followed the hermit. He walked ahead with Yulia and talked with her nonchalantly about something.

Part 2 – Chapter 24

The second hall of the cave was slightly larger than the first and quite spacious. There were several stalactites on the wall opposite the narrow entrance. In the center was a place to keep the fire going, which smoldered slightly. To the left of the entrance were semblances of shelves on which lay books and some dried flowers and plants. On the right was a pile of twigs and a few dry scraps of dung. Near the entrance hung a lamp with several lights burning. The temperature in the cave was very comfortable. First Yulia and then everyone else felt their bodies go limp and relax from the warmth.

The men placed the stretcher next to the smoldering fire.