Unforgettable journey to other planets

“Come on!” the Frenchman shouted, urging everyone on. “Let’s not waste our time. We must go.”

Everyone walked toward the light that entered the hall through the left aisle.

Jean-Pierre looked everyone out and watched intently the reactions of the hermit. The old man shifted his eyebrows and began to rub his beard, thinking hard about something.

“What?” asked Jean-Pierre incredulously.

“Chosen you all for important things,” smiled Bhrigu. “Journey will lead you. God help you.”

Jean-Pierre tried to understand the elder’s words, but the light from the passage beckoned and hurried him forward. So he followed everyone else. His eyes were blind from the bright light after the gloom of the cave.

“Here will be,” said Bhrigu quietly, raising his right hand in blessing.

Part 3 – Chapter 28

David covered up his eyes by his hand, they were teary from the bright light. The heat that had enveloped him made his body go limp. The air was heavy and dry, as if mixed with sand. He couldn’t breathe in.

“Hey!” a woman’s voice sounded nearby. “There’s a storm, let’s go back,” Yulia shouted.

“Yes,” David answered, trying to catch air through his mouth. “Doctor, Debby, where are you?”

“I’m here,” Debby shouted, coughing from somewhere on the right.

“No, it’s not a storm,” came Dr Capri’s loud voice.

Tears poured from David’s eyes, and he knelt down and tried to shield himself from the light that shone from everywhere. He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them sharply; for a second he saw someone’s figure nearby, he took a few steps and clung to a half-blurred shadow. It was Debby.

“Are you okay?” David asked. “Can you breathe?”

Debby nodded.

“Debby, David!” the doctor called out.

“We’re here,” David held up his hand.

The rumbling, crackling, and rumbling filled the entire space and drowned out the voices. The storm was clearly perceptible to all senses except one: the skin could not feel the gusts of wind or the drops of rain. The ground itself was humming and vibrating, eyes were blinding from the bright rays of the sun, and breath was spiraling from the lack of air. Debby, David, Yulia, and the doctor crawled toward each other like two pairs of moles at noon, groping the surface around them.

Dr Capri touched David’s arm.

“We’re here,” the doctor said, dropping to the ground beside David and Debby.

He led Yulia beside him, who also collapsed to the ground. The hum began to diminish. It became easier to breathe. David looked up and got dizzy. He tried to say something, but he couldn’t. Above him there were clusters of twinkling stars. The sky was as dark and deep as the heart of the ocean, and the stars were as bright as pearls that joined together in beautiful necklaces. David could only softly stretch out an ‘oh!’ sound.

The doctor, Debby, and Yulia began to look around, too, they felt cold inside. They couldn’t say anything and didn’t understand what they were seeing. Yulia stared into the sky with her mouth open. The doctor gingerly touched the ground near his feet, fearing getting burned. Debby squeezed David’s hand with horror and incomprehension.

“Hey. What is it?” Jean-Pierre’s voice was heard.

“I don’t understand,” David said to himself.

“How is it possible?” Dr Capri said in amazement.

He stroked the ground beside him as if it were ice, under which strange fish were swimming.

Jean-Pierre appeared from behind a high rock. He moved on the ground, but the ground moved with him. It was bright yellow, even orange, as if lava flowed beneath his feet, but it didn’t burn. The earth glowed, and though everything was visible as if it were daytime, there was no sun in the sky. Above was the darkness of night.

“What is it?” stomping his foot on the ground, the doctor asked himself. “It looks like stone, but it feels like it’s flowing.”

The ground was solid, and the doctor couldn’t figure out what it was made of. To the touch it was hot and smooth, but looking at it, one could see that it was like a river flowing slowly.

“I feel sick,” Yulia said and closed her eyes.

“Look up,” David told her.

Jean-Pierre walked over to the doctor and looked at the ground beside him, and then at his face, stretched out in surprise. He looked around. The landscape was monotonous and resembled the desert with small hills behind them from whence they had just come.

A desolate, fiery yellow valley spread out in every direction. On the horizon, the redness was abruptly interrupted by the blackness of the sky. Not a hint of mountains, plants, or clouds.

“We should go back to the cave,” Jean-Pierre suggested.

“What?” said first Debby and then the doctor almost simultaneously.

“To the cave?” Tulu-Manchi interrogated. “Are you kidding? We have to figure out what’s going on here,” the doctor paused for a second. “We have to figure out where we are at all. This isn’t Nepal or India,” he spread his hands and looked questioningly at Jean-Pierre.

The doctor took the stone in his hands, which resembled amber, weighed it, and smiled:

“Strange, not heavy, and not light.”

David and Yulia approached to look at it. The doctor handed the stone to Yulia, and she began to spin it in her hands. She crouched down and slammed it against another large stone. The muffled sound reminded her of a hammer hitting a tree. Yulia looked at the stone in her hand – it poured red at the point of impact and got hotter.

“There’s some kind of reaction in it,” Yulia remarked.

Jean-Pierre watched the scientists and David; when he saw the stone turn red, he shook his head:

“We have to go back!”

“Where?” said Debby, looking around frightenedly.

“To the cave,” Jean-Pierre wanted to give the obvious answer, but realized his own mistake.

There were large stones scattered on the ground all around, but nowhere to see the entrance to the cave. He rushed back, but realized that this would not help.

“Where were we moving from?” Jean-Pierre began to calculate the direction.

“From those boulders, I think,” David doubted.

Jean-Pierre took several steps in that direction – nothing. He was thrashing around, looking for the entrance to the cave. The others looked at him.

“Jean-Pierre!” shouted the doctor.