Unforgettable journey to other planets

He ran into the hall in a rage and wanted to do something terrible to the hermit, but the doctor stepped forward quickly and diverted his attention to himself.

“What happened, Jean-Pierre?” Dr Capri said loudly.

“Where is the exit? I’m asking you, Aborigine!” Jean-Pierre kept shouting behind the doctor’s back.

“What are you talking about?” David asked incomprehensibly.

Jean-Pierre turned away from all the people and exhaled. He pressed his lips together and inhaled through his nose with such an effort that his chest almost doubled in size.

“I want to ask our new and caring friend where the exit from the cave is.”

“It…,” David wanted to answer, but Jean-Pierre’s own answer overtook him.

“It was near the pile of firewood, but it’s not there now. Not!” repeated Jean-Pierre louder and extended his hand toward the other room, inviting everyone to check his observations.

Everyone moved into the other room. Only Jean-Pierre, Bhrigu, and Debby remained in their places, motionless.

Debby lowered her eyes to the floor, standing next to Bhrigu. And he just stared at Jean-Pierre’s emotions, which were very simple – resentment.

“What have you done to us?” Jean-Pierre asked quietly and angrily in French.

Tulu-Manchi, Yulia, and David entered the hall in quick strides and looked alarmed.

“Bhrigu!” Dr Capri began to speak in a loud and anxious voice. “Bhrigu,” he switched to Nepali. “Please tell us what is happening. We cannot find the exit from the cave.”

The hermit hesitated and said:

“Interesting. Very interesting,” Bhrigu replied in English. “Place this is not usual. Sacred place. To understand its motion very difficult. But I can help to understand you. Seems to me, you are connected and have to find important something.”

“Where… is… the… exit?” Jean-Pierre repeated, pausing between words.

“Exit?” the hermit thought again. “You need exit?”

“Yes,” the Frenchman answered, looking at him sternly.

“I show you the exit. It is on the other side,” and Bhrigu pointed to the dark part of the hall on the other side of the lake.

“What?” blurted out Jean-Pierre and all the others.

“But that’s impossible,” David concluded.

“Yes?” answered Bhrigu with a smile.

Jean-Pierre turned to Debby and said to himself:

“How do we get there?” he shook his head. “What am I talking about? The gateway is gone. We went in there yesterday. How is that possible?”

“Wait, Jean-Pierre. Stop,” Dr Capri said, closing his eyes and shaking his head. “Bhrigu, how is it possible? Is it you? Do you know anything about the signals from Voyager?”

Bhrigu raised his eyebrows in surprise as a sign that he did not know what the doctor was talking about. He thought for a moment and turned in the direction he had just pointed to the travelers.

“Boat is there,” Bhrigu said, pointing to the right.

Jean-Pierre went in the direction indicated.

“Yes, here it is!” he called out from the darkness.

“I don’t understand,” Yulia said to Dr Capri.

“I can’t understand it either,” David added. “I woke up near the entrance, and I could feel the cold air coming in from outside.”

“That’s right,” Dr Capri said without taking his eyes off the hermit.

“Bhrigu,” Debby said, unable to endure, into the hermit’s back. “Did you make this happen?”

“No, Debby,” answered Bhrigu quietly, “sometimes goddess of fortune come, but we think it’s bad.”

“You gave us something to drink yesterday. I remember!” Yulia cried out anxiously.

The doctor nodded and turned to Debby:

“I even gave you a few sips.”

“No,” David shook his head. “I didn’t drink. I saw everyone else was drinking, but I didn’t have the energy.”

“Tea,” Bhrigu nodded, “strong, maybe, but just tea.”

Jean-Pierre walked along the bank, pulling the boat up by the rope. He stepped closer to the hermit:

“You’re coming with us,” Jean-Pierre said in French. “And if there’s nothing there, you’d better be able to swim well.”

“Do you want to go there?” Dr Capri asked.

“Yes,” answered Jean-Pierre. “It’s not a hallucination. All of this. I’m sure of myself, and I’m sure of what I see. Believe me, he didn’t poison us. It’s all crazy, but that’s not what’s important.”

“So what is?” the doctor was surprised.

“If your military friends are still alive, they will have to search for us. Either they will choose the direction that seems most logical to them, or…” Jean-Pierre paused, “and I hope so, they will start searching every possible hiding place in a spiral. Starting from the crash area. But if there’s no way out, how will they find us?”

Jean-Pierre pointed to Bhrigu with a glance to get into the boat.

“We don’t have much time. We walked about 20 or 30 minutes yesterday. So we’re about one or two kilometers away from the crash point. We were going mostly toward the setting sun, so westward. And you and the pilots came from the north. How long did you walk from the helicopter before you saw me and Debby?”

“We ran, about fifteen minutes,” answered the doctor to Jean-Pierre.

“So,” Jean-Pierre wanted to make another assumption, but when he saw Bhrigu he froze. “Although now it is important that the exit is really on the other side of the lake.”

David ran to get his backpack and Yulia’s bag in the other room. He tapped the place where the passage had been yesterday and whispered, “How is that possible, isn’t a rock?” He threw the backpack into the boat and helped Yulia and Debby get in, then seated himself.