Unforgettable journey to other planets

Part 3 – Chapter 29

The cell phone began buzzing on the table beside the bed. Bernard Bajolet opened his eyes, looked up at the ceiling for a second, and tried to guess what the call might be about. He held the phone to his ear.

“Monsieur, I’m sorry to call you at this hour,” the temporary assistant named Desiree began to justify herself.

“It is your job,” said Bernard, without much ado. “To the point.”

“General assembly again. The Indians found a helicopter carrying a Russian engineer from Roscosmos and a doctor from the observatory in Kathmandu. They were the ones who detected the signal…” the assistant wanted to continue.

“I know. Car!” Monsieur Bajolet interrupted her.

“Already downstairs.”

Bernard Bajolet hung up and quickly got ready. In five minutes he was in the car. Twenty minutes later, he entered the hall he was already familiar with and sat down at his seat. There were several people in the hall besides him. Everyone looked sleep-deprived. Igor Komarov entered the hall and looked at his watch. Mr. Bajolet nodded at him in greeting. The screen began to set up a video conference call with the Indian military base.

More and more people began to enter the hall. Soon an Indian general entered the room, speaking on the phone, and informed his colleagues that the video conference should begin.

“Will we be able to start soon?” Jean-Jacques Dordain asked via microphone.

“Yes,” replied the general, “helicopter pilots are already there.”

A small conference room appeared on the screen. The camera was fixed on top and showed a simply furnished room. A great number of military men were sitting at the table.

“So, gentlemen,” the Indian general hung up his phone and began speaking into the microphone. “Our team just returned from a rescue expedition. We found the pilot, Captain Shah, the co-pilot and the military communicator. They were sent by the Nepalese military as an escort…” the general didn’t have time to finish.

“Excuse me,” Igor Komarov interrupted him, “have you found Yulia Danilina?”

“Um… No,” replied the general.

“What?! But what happened?” the head of Roscosmos began to get nervous.

“That’s why we asked Captain Shah to tell us his version of what happened. It is more about the missing plane.”

There was a pause. It was obvious that the signal had already reached the military base, but Captain Shah didn’t start any explanation.

“He doesn’t speak English, so he will be translated,” the general added. “Please, Captain Shah, tell us what happened.”

A few more seconds of silence and everyone heard the tired voice of the Nepali pilot. The Indian military interpreter began to speak:

“We left our base yesterday morning. We had two civilians with us. One was a Russian girl from Roscosmos, the other was Dr Capri from Kathmandu Observatory,” the interpreter swallowed, clearly worried. “We were moving to the specified quadrant near Kanchenjunga. Near the supposed place of the emission, all the helicopter systems shut down. We contacted the base…”

“Shut down?” the Russian general sitting next to Igor Komarov asked into the microphone. “Describe in details what happened.”

There was a pause again.

“I don’t know,” briefly, but with a shiver in his voice the Indian soldier translated, “all systems simply turned off. I hardly landed the machine.”

The captain was silent for a moment, reconstructing the chronology of events in his memory.

“No one was hurt. When we got out of the helicopter, we met an English tourist. He was alone. He saw us falling and came to help. We tried to get the helicopter going again, but we were stopped by…” first the captain and then the interpreter fell silent.

The hall filled with tension. Everyone in the hall could see the captain, torn by some inner dilemma, looking around and not finding a place, either looking at the interpreter or somewhere to the side. He looked at the man next to him in the same uniform and made up his mind:

“We saw the plane crash. It scattered right in the air, and then,” the interpreter paused and shifted his gaze to somewhere behind the camera. “Then it disappeared.”

“Is he talking about the missing Paris-Tokyo flight?” the head of ESA asked his colleagues without using the microphone.

“Yes,” several voices came from the audience.

“It all fits,” said the French general sitting next to Bernard Bajolet.

Captain Shah was silent again.

“Captain,” the Indian general asked him, “clarify what do you mean by the words ‘disappeared’.”

“I mean that the plane just disappeared right in the air. The visibility was good, and we could hear the turbines roaring. It was flying away from us at an altitude of maybe a couple of kilometers. Maybe lower. And then the whole front just disappeared in the air.”

“Maybe it was clouds or fog?” someone in the audience suggested.

“No,” the captain shook his head when the interpreter voiced the Europeans’ hypothesis.

“I saw it with my own eyes, and so did they,” the interpreter continued, and Captain Shah pointed to his subordinates, “and the civilians saw it too.”

“But where are they?” burst out from the Roscosmos head. “What happened to them?”

“We saw part of the plane, the tail part,” the interpreter clarified. “It came off the plane and fell slowly not far from us. We rushed over there.”

“Did part of the plane get out?” again the Indian military general clarified.

“Yes, but…” said the interpreter, trying to capture the intonation of the captain, “it’s hard to explain. The tail of the plane also fell unusually. There seemed to be an invisible parachute tied to it. Um. Slowly,” the interpreter transmitted a tone of uncertainty.

“What?” there was an exclamation in the audience.

“Explain,” the Indian general asked.

“It was falling like a feather, slowly,” the Indian military man translated, and Captain Shah splashed his hands in a sign that he himself understood how strange it is. “We just thought there might be people there. We left the co-pilot next to the machine, went over a couple of hills, and then we saw this Frenchman and a young girl, apparently an American. Her name was Debby, yes, Debby, and the Frenchman’s name was Jean-Pierre.”

A chill ran through Bernard Bajolet’s body. His breath collapsed for a second. He quickly found himself and, after the second time, turned on his microphone.

“Please wait. Jean-Pierre Biro? That was his name? That’s my assistant.”

The whole room looked at Bernard Bajolet. He concentrated all his attention on the image of a distant conference room somewhere in India. There was silence again, and then Captain Shah nodded.

“Biro, yes.”

Monsieur Bajolet turned on the microphone again:

“Did he survive? He… Tell me where he is.”

Captain Shah nodded to the interpreter.

“Yes, they survived. The girl’s leg was damaged. It appeared to be a closed fracture. She could not move, she was in bad condition,” the interpreter paused, while the captain was thinking of what more could be added to this description.

“We got the data,” the general sitting next to Bernard Bajolet said quietly. “It apparently was an American citizen, Debby Glandfield. She was traveling from the United States to Japan. We’re looking for her relatives right now.”

“What about the man?” Bernard turned to Captain Shah.

“He was fine. There were a few bruises on his face, but he was fine. That’s why we were surprised. You see? The tail of the plane was falling very slowly.”

There were rustles and questions in the hall. Many people were looking at Monsieur Bajolet, discussing something. Others asked questions to the captain, but it all turned into unrelated chatter. The head of ESA took the situation into his own hands.

“Gentlemen, please be quiet!” he looked at the screen. “Please, what happened next? Why don’t we see the scientists and the rescued passengers with you?”

Captain Shah continued:

“The woman was in serious condition, and we decided to return to the helicopter. By then a strong wind had risen, and we had constructed a stretcher. The weather was rapidly worsening. The civilians took the girl, and we moved forward with Dr Capri. Then… I don’t know how we lost sight of him; we tried to go back, but visibility was zero. Snow and wind everywhere. We couldn’t find them. Half an hour later, we found our helicopter and co-pilot. We decided to wait for the wind to calm down, but it only got stronger.”

The Indian general, who was sitting behind a desk at the European Space Agency building, came into the conversation:

“After a couple of hours, we found them near the helicopter. After that, a rescue team went out with the Nepalese military to look for civilians, but all we found was an inverted tail section. The team split into two groups. One took the captain’s team back to our base, and the other stayed in the quad to search for survivors. We have no more news so far,” the general finished.

“Is there still bad weather in the area?” someone from the hall clarified.

“Yes, the weather is constantly changing, but in total the conditions are bad. We hope that the civilians found some shelter nearby. There’s a big storm out there.”

Several people ran into the ESA room. One of them immediately ran up to Jean-Jacques Dordain. Two others to Charles Bolden. The audience froze.

“Just a second,” said the Indian general.

The man was explaining something emotionally to the head of the European Space Agency, then he started pointing at the other two and his laptop screen. Jean-Jacques Dordain silently asked, “are you sure?”, and the man nodded briefly.

Monsieur Dordain looked around the room, remembered the video conference call, and, indicating with his hand to the panting man that he should wait a second, began:

“Gentlemen, you might have more questions, but we need to interrupt the videoconference urgently. New information has come up.”

The head of ESA looked at the scientist standing next to him, then at the head of NASA. Between them there was a short discussion without words. Charles Bolden nodded to share the bad news with colleagues. Jean-Jacques Dordain gathered air into his lungs:

“Okay,” he made sure the video was off. “Gentlemen, we’ve received reports from our probes that the Sun’s activity is dropping dramatically. We’re trying to figure out what happened, but the brightness of the Sun…” Jean-Jacques couldn’t find the words. “I think it would be better if Dr Pierre Edo explain what we are observing now.”

A gray-haired but very young man sat down next to the head of the ESA and turned on his microphone. He calmly began to explain:

“We are observing a decrease of solar activity right now. This is represented by a decrease in brightness, but in the near future, climatic anomalies await us. The normal brightness or absolute stellar magnitude of the Sun is 4.7. An hour ago, this value fell to 4.2. The dynamic of the decline is very fast. We assume that by the end of the day, the value will be 2.”

The people in the room didn’t know how to react to this. They whispered, but did not decide to ask a question.

The doctor waited a second and asked himself:

“What does this mean for us? A drop in the Sun’s luminosity, and therefore in heat output, by more than half would create a new ice age on Earth.”

The audience erupted in shouts. Questions poured in from all sides about how the data had been obtained, who had confirmed it, and what it might be related to.

The doctor turned to someone at the table and said nonchalantly.

“Exactly,” he waited until everyone at the table had calmed down. “What has it to do with?” he repeated. “We got a signal from Voyager, then we found out it malfunctioned, and now the Sun is fading. My opinion,” he looked at the head of ESA. “We must find the connection between all these events as soon as possible.”

Part 3 – Chapter 30

“We thought it was the way out of the cave: we were blinded by the light, it felt like there was a storm around,” David told Van the story of their journey while the little creature floated through the air beside him.

“Yes, yes,” Van squeaked expertly, “you changed bodies.”

“What?” said Dr Capri, looking at his hand.

“Changed bodies,” Van repeated. “In new planets, you have to change bodies in order to get there. And how did you think it would work?”

“We didn’t think anything,” Jean-Pierre grinned. “We didn’t really expect that there are little…” he thought for a second, “little men walking around on the Sun.”

“I’m not a man,” Van hissed grudgingly. “I’m Valikhilya,” he shook his little head in a sign of utter despair.

He sped up to get away from Jean-Pierre. Debby, noticing how offended Van was, grinned and indicated with her eyes that Jean-Pierre should apologize. Jean-Pierre declined without a word.

They were all walking through a vast valley that shimmered yellow, orange, and red under their feet. Somewhere in the distance, high flames were erupting and flying off the surface into the blackening sky like huge glowing ribbons.

“Wow,” Jean-Pierre said, impressed by the sight. “And what is that?”

Van remained silent and pointed away from the travelers, indicating that he only accompanied them and did not want to join in the conversation.

“Van,” David called out to him.

Silence. Dr Capri turned to Jean-Pierre. So did all the other earthlings.

“What?!” replied Jean-Pierre in a mute rebuke. “All right.”

He took a few wide steps to get closer to the flying Valikhilya ahead of him.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to offend you.”

“Van cannot be offended,” the little creature replied without looking, “but,” he paused meaningfully, “you can’t call one living being by another. I’m Valikhilya, and I’m proud of it.”

“I see it,” Jean-Pierre smiled.

Van shook his head, inviting everyone to move on.

“So there are no people here?” David asked.

“People are a form of body. In order to travel to other planets, you have to adapt to life on them. If your body is not suitable, you have to change it.”

“I don’t understand,” said Yulia.

“A human being is,” Van tried to find a word, “one way to live on the Earth. To live on another planet, you need another way.”

“We use spacesuits for that,” David said.

“I know,” Van replied, expressing some level of distaste. “I don’t imagine how that’s possible.”

David looked at the doctor and smiled.

“Don’t you have such technology?”

“Technology?” Van grinned. “It’s a real punishment, isn’t it? To be trapped in a cocoon that you can’t get out of, and to think you’re in another world. You can’t even see the world for what it is.”

“So we changed bodies?” David clarified.

“Bodies?” Van laughed. “Took the suits off. You must feel very well now without your bodies.”

Everyone looked at each other in bewilderment. Yulia shook her head, not wanting to hear these words.

“But I can see my own body and theirs,” she said in confusion.

“Everyone has a body, but they’re different. For example, in your world, the basis is water. In our world, it’s fire. Each world has a different ratio of elements. We have bodies, too, but they are different,” he thought of how to phrase it differently. “My body is finer than yours on the Earth, so you think that no one lives on the Sun. When a resident of a grosser world goes to a finer world, he leaves his old body behind in the world he came from.”

“But why can’t I see the difference? I am the exact same,” David wondered.

Van smiled and pointed his finger at him:

“Everyone has his sound.”

“Sound?”

“The way he sounds, and you can’t change it. Or rather, it’s hard to change. The body forms itself around that inner sound. Here and there You are the same, though the bodies are different.”

“You mean soul?” Debby smiled.

Van looked at her with an affectionate look and nodded.

“Soul. But it’s not just the soul that creates the body, a lot of things are involved.”

“Past actions, desires,” Dr Capri continued Van’s thought.

Valikhilya nodded:

“We call it sound.”

Dr Capri smirked at something and continued to follow the soaring Van.

“By the way,” David remembered something, “do you all speak English here?”

Van grimaced to show that he didn’t know what he was talking about.

“Language,” said Yulia. “You understand us, and we understand you.”

“Ah,” Van brushed her off. “That’s right, you have different languages there. It’s not like that here. When you change bodies, you have already acquired the ability to speak and understand the language of the Sun. Only on Earth are so many languages. It’s stupidity that prevents your life,” he shook his head.

“So we all speak the sun’s language now?” David wondered. “I feel like I’m speaking English.”

Yulia listened to herself:

“And I’m in Russian.”

Van only smirked.

“Tell me about your world. What is it like?” looking ahead, Dr Capri asked.

“It’s the most beautiful world there can be. Everyone here is happy, and we all help our king, Ra.”

“I thought you said his name was…” Jean-Pierre couldn’t remember the name.

“Vivasvan,” the doctor helped him.

“What?” said Van in surprise.

He looked at Jean-Pierre and after a second laughed in his ringing voice.

“Ha-ha,” he laughed. “I had completely forgotten that in the lower worlds you have only one name. It’s not like that here. The king has many names. His name depends on what the one who addresses him wants to say. Ra is the same as Vivasvan. But Vivasvan is a personal reference or remembrance of the king. The name Ra is used when you see the king in the distance or his palace.”

“Palace? Where is it?” David asked, looking around.

“There it is,” Van pointed to an approaching cloud of light on the horizon.

This cloud looked like the sun, but it was moving quickly right toward them. A huge fire column was erupting from this cloud onto the surface of the Star.

“What was that stream?” Dr Capri asked, squinting.

Van raised his small hands above his head and smiled.

“It is the shadow of our emperor.”

Everyone looked at each other with undisguised excitement.

“Are you leading us to him?” Jean-Pierre asked.

“To Him? No,” Van frowned. “We are going to Dandin’s.”

“Is he,” Jean-Pierre grimaced, “wak-ha-nilla too?”

Van looked at him with contempt:

“Valikhilya. No. He is an aide to the emperor.”

While they were talking, the flying castle approached. It could be seen hovering high above the surface. If one squinted, one could see its yellow color and a glow of such power that one’s eyes could not stand it for long. The castle was rushing right at them.

“How are we going to get up there? Will you lift us up? Or will someone throw down the ladder?” Jean-Pierre asked Van, looking at Debby and Yulia.

Both of them were walking with their eyes wide open in amazement. They pointed at the castle and stared at it in fascination. The palace itself glistened as the walls let in the strong light that was hidden inside. David and Dr Capri, too, opened their mouths and turned their heads, gazing at the clump of mountain above them. The noise grew, and the giant approached closer. Van raised his hands in the air and then lay down on the ground, bowing.

“What are you doing?” Jean-Pierre inquired.

Van rose from his bow, bright and happy. He began to glow a little.

“I am greeting my King.”

His voice became less squeaky and his gaze changed. He was smiling.

“How are we going to get there?” Jean-Pierre repeated the question. “Do we go up like you?”

Van began to rise slowly upward.

“Here, everyone can fly. If you still think you have bodies, perhaps you should take off some of your clothes.”

Dr Capri began to look at his clothes in wonder. He took off his jacket and looked questioningly at Van. He made a sign to drop it. The doctor threw his jacket to the surface, a moment later the jacket simply disappeared.

“Here you are what you want to be, and you do what you want to do,” his voice sounded loud, but his body was no longer visible.

The huge flying castle was already almost over the heads of the travelers. The upper part of the city, which looked like a medieval citadel made of some kind of metal, was covered by the base of the flying island. From below, it looked like an unhewn rock that had been torn from the surface of the Sun. A huge stream of light burst from the center of the city downward, piercing the surface of the Star with force. The flow ignited the bowels, feeding them and heating them.

The earthlings threw their heads upward and stared in fascination at the impending island. The powerful roar of the ray grew stronger. It was approaching like a great tornado.

“What do we do?” hoping that someone had a plan, shouted Jean-Pierre.

“I don’t know,” David shook his head.

“We left our bodies on Earth,” Dr Capri said quietly so that no one could hear him, “the laws are different here. We need to understand what it’s like to fly.”

“Hey You! It’s time to tell us how to fly,” Jean-Pierre began to shout and looked around for shelter.

Suddenly, Van spiked from on high and shouted:

“Just take off after me! Otherwise, you will burn! No one can withstand this heat.”

“We can’t!” Jean-Pierre shouted. “We have never flown before.”

He looked at the fire stream tearing up the surface, turning it no longer into the lava, but into a moving volcano. All the travelers began to rush in different directions. Yulia cried out, David panicked:

“We have to run!”

“Run where? Look how big it is,” answered Jean-Pierre.

The pillar of fire was bubbling two hundred meters away from them. It was more than a kilometer in diameter, and it filled the space in front of the travelers, carrying the raw, searing, roaring energy from the overhead rock to the very heart of the Star.

The pillar was approaching rapidly, and running was pointless. It was impossible to hide from such unbridled and immense power. This deadly light was like a fiery tornado or a sheer cliff stinging with sparks.

Panic and fear drowned in the heat. Jean-Pierre looked around. David stood beside him, mesmerized. Yulia covered her face with her hands. The doctor was all clenched up with tension and impending pain. “We can’t escape,” Jean-Pierre thought. He shifted his gaze to Debby. She smiled sadly at him and nodded. Jean-Pierre was surprised to see her lips moving, but he couldn’t make out the words. He lowered his head closer to her and heard her sing a lullaby:

“Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are…”

She was looking somewhere through the wall of fire. Debby had already been dying for a few hours, and now she was just trying to calm her friends down. She was thinking about her kids at school, about Sango, about Nika of Samothrace’s wings, and how amazing and unfathomable it all was.

The hum abruptly fell silent and the looming wall froze at the words, “He could not see which way to go, If you did not twinkle so.”

Only Van continued to whirl around the petrified earthlings and squeak an extended “Aaaaah!” He looked like a bee that had lost its orientation and was spinning in an imaginary circle. Debby finished singing and put her hand on the head of Yulia, who was crying beside her.

“It’s okay,” Debby said gently, “it’s going to be okay.”

Part 3 – Chapter 31

Audrey sat in the room with her eyes closed. There was no emotion on her face, she was breathing deeply and trying to concentrate. The world grew smaller with each breath. First, the sounds of the city disappeared. Then the sounds of the neighbors upstairs faded away, then the feeling of the room. Audrey was left alone with her breathing, but she felt each breath hit a huge, dark rock of sadness. There was no way she could overcome it.

Suddenly, she felt goosebumps run through her body. A wave of warmth and tenderness enveloped her. Audrey felt the blackness turn first into brown, then into red and orange light. She smiled and grinned at the pleasant sensation. Tears came up and Audrey opened her eyes. The room was filled with bright sunlight. It seemed to be an unfamiliar room, someone else’s, from another planet. Audrey felt that she was there and that beauty too. Then she dismissed the thought and turned to the window. The sun had found a thaw between the thick clouds, but another cloud had already obscured it, swallowing the glowing orb.