Unforgettable journey to other planets

“Everyone has their motives,” Jean-Pierre said earnestly, wanting to remind everyone that they are not here to philosophize. “Most of the time they are rather mercenary.”

Dandin looked around at the earthlings:

“The Master is not looking for profit.”

“Of course,” Jean-Pierre brushed him off sarcastically.

“All right,” Dandin shifted his gaze to him. “What do you want?”

Jean-Pierre stopped and turned to Dandin.

“We just want to understand what’s going on and get back to the Earth,” Jean-Pierre said, looking at Debby.

“Ha-ha,” Dandin laughed. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. The fact that you want what you don’t have proves that you can’t see.”

“Are you suggesting we stay with the lilliputians and the volcano man?” shaking his head, Jean-Pierre said.

Dandin looked up, trying to understand what Jean-Pierre meant, but he could not.

“But you wanted something before you came here, didn’t you? A true desire cannot depend on circumstances. To hear yourself is to see the world. What do you hear?”

The question remained unanswered. The eyes of the earthlings went up to the castle gate, which was about 30 meters high. The gate was decorated with amazingly delicate and beautiful carvings: a semicircle at the bottom, from which a glow emanated, and circles of planets of different sizes above. Debby, Yulia and Van stood next to the gate and looked at the design.

“The foundation of everything is light,” Van said, explaining the drawing, “it serves everyone around them.”

“It’s really beautiful,” Debby said.

“Is that the solar system?” circling the drawing with his hand and looking closely, Dr Capri asked Dandin.

Dandin wondered:

“Are you naming our world after the Sun?”

Yulia chuckled. Dandin looked at her reaction and quickly lowered his eyes.

“This is a map of the world where our planet occupies its corresponding position. At the very bottom, serving those above.”

“And where is the Earth?” David asked.

“In the center,” Dandin pointed out, “where else would it be.”

Dandin touched the door, and it slowly opened with such ease, as if it weighed nothing. The inside of the palace was as bright as the outside, but no windows were visible anywhere. Everyone walked slowly along the yellow floor, looking around the interior. Here and there, small creatures peeked out from around corners and immediately hid. Van swam proudly ahead, showing his kindred that he was leading the procession.

Debby and Yulia stopped near a huge sculpture of a beautiful woman. The sculpture was about four meters high, made of the same metal as everything else on this planet. The statue represented a female sovereign seated on a throne. Her face was beautiful, and her body was covered by a light cloth flowing like silk. The rest of the travelers walked forward, Jean-Pierre turned around when he realized that the girls had fallen behind the group.

“What happened?” he asked. “Let’s go!”

“Look,” Debby said, “there are women here after all,” she pointed at the sculpture.

“What?” said Jean-Pierre in surprise.

“Yes, that’s right,” David said, turning to Dandin. “You said there are no women here.”

“That’s correct,” Dandin answered, lowering his eyes so as not to see the sculpture. “There are no women here for a long time now, but there used to be one, an amazing woman – our lord’s wife.

“And what happened?” Debby wondered.

“She left the Master.”

“Are there divorces in paradise?” Jean-Pierre grinned.

Dandin left his comment unanswered and turned to move on.

“Let’s move on,” Jean-Pierre shouted to Debby and Yulia, “no time to wait.”

Part 3 – Chapter 33

The screen in the conference room presented information on the Sun’s activity: figures and graphs showed the situation in real time. The room was buzzing with activity. It was now the command center for all nations at once. Presidents and generals, ministers and heads of intelligence agencies came here. In the next room, a space was set up for press conferences, where representatives of various departments reported to the major news agencies.

It was decided that the focus should be on information about the Sun and the anomaly on it. About Voyager, they were silent for the time being because no one could link the information about the signal to what was going on with the Sun. In half an hour, the head of the European Space Agency had a big press conference. The world needed information.

Numbers flickered on the screen. In the background, people were discussing that weather services had begun to report changes in the weather in all regions of the globe. Jean-Jacques Dordain covered his face with his hands and repeated the same question to himself, “What is going on? Just one sensible thought.”

When he opened his eyes, a dazed assistant stood in front of him.

“What is it?” rubbing his forehead, Jean-Jacques Dordain asked.

“Monsieur,” said the assistant, “we have discovered something interesting,” he pointed to the laptop screen.

Monsieur Dordain picked up his glasses from the table and put them to his eyes, he gazed into the image.

“A new spot?” he suggested.

“Compared to this,” the assistant zoomed out of the image, “everything else on the Sun is a spot. It looks like the beginning of a plasma ejection or something. The temperature at that spot has almost doubled in a matter of minutes.”

“What a nonsense,” said Jean-Jacques Dordain, closing his eyes. “How many degrees is it now?”

The assistant swallowed.

“Twenty million Kelvin,” his eyes darted around. “But we’re checking the data, there might be an error somewhere.”

“No,” Monsieur Dordain said with a shake of his head, “it’s not an error.”

He had already turned his gaze to the big screen and made sure that the information was up to date. The indicators on the screen were growing before his eyes. The last time Monsieur Dordain had looked at the monitor it had a figure of ‘-20%’ next to the phrase “solar activity, changes”, now it had another even more frightening figure, ‘+24%’. There was chaos in the room, everyone was talking and ringing loudly. Jean-Jacques Dordain turned on his microphone.

“Ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please. As you can see, the Sun’s activity has changed dramatically.”

Someone shouted from his seat: