Unforgettable journey to other planets

David wanted to stop and make camp, even though he had only walked a few miles after saying goodbye to Tobias’ group. He chose a comfortable spot with a view of Kanchenjunga, got his things and a kettle. He warmed water for tea, pocketed some breadcrumbs, and lay down in his tent, opening it so that he could see the mountain. David tucked his backpack under his head and felt, to his surprise, as if all the energy had gone out of his body. He felt unimaginably sad and lonely. He felt his throat tighten and a river rise to the bridge of his nose. He jumped out of the tent and looked around. There was no one around.

Fear drove through him. Tears welled up from his eyes, and he collapsed to his knees. Then he crawled into the tent and in a few seconds fell asleep from exhaustion. Only in the evening, he awoke to the sound of the wind. In front of his temporary abode the mountain ranges stretched on all sides, and in the midst of them rose a mountain illuminated by the setting sun.

“Kan-chen-jun-ga,” David whispered, and sighed deeply as he covered himself with his sleeping bag.

Part 1 – Chapter 11

Yulia rubbed her temples in a circular motion, sitting next to Dr Capri. They couldn’t figure out what was going on, so they dropped their heads.

“Well,” the doctor raised his head, “we know for a fact that this is a Voyager recording. We heard some Senegalese and Japanese music. And greetings in different languages of the world.”

“Yes,” Yulia confirmed desperately and added again, “but I don’t understand why we caught this recording on the wave of space transmissions. I tell you, when NASA launched the Voyagers in ’77 to explore the solar system, they did have gold-plated records with music and pictures of the Earth on them, but they don’t play it. Voyagers don’t fly around in space with speakers and perform concerts for the stars. It’s just a piece of hardware.”

“Okay, Yulia. The message is indeed the same, the frequency corresponds to the transmission frequencies in space…”

“From the spacecraft to Earth,” Yulia added.

“Yes,” the doctor confirmed Yulia’s remark, “but we caught this message. The source is near Kanchenjunga. Maybe there was a mistake in the coordinates?”

Yulia rolled her eyes.

“There could be a mistake in the coordinates, or in the decoding, or even in the signals I’m receiving now. It could be a repeater error, or just a set of radio data, electromagnetic activity, etc. But that’s too much error for a system that just needs to be hung on the ceiling. And that!” she pointed to the old speakers, which were playing another batch of international hits.

Dr Capri stood up and stretched his shoulders. He looked at Yulia’s computer monitor, then out the window, then at the wires going into the control box. He yawned with fatigue and covered his mouth with his hand.

“If we’re at a blind alley, I have to tell Dr Lamichen,” Tulu-Manchi said.

“Maybe I should call my boss first?” doubtfully, Yulia said.

“Yes, you can call him. On that computer,” Dr Capri pointed to the old white computer in the corner, “there is the Internet. Meanwhile, I’ll go downstairs.”

Yulia was left alone and felt despair creep in. “What the hell is going on here?” she thought. She copied the data onto a flash drive. Mozart’s “Magic Flute. Aria of the Queen of the Night” played on the speakers. Yulia didn’t like the pressure of this music. She turned down the volume and went to the computer on the opposite wall. There Yulia launched Skype and typed in her boss’s username.

“Hello,” said Yulia’s boss, “how’s work going?”

“Mikhail Nikolaevich, we installed the system, but we are getting strange data. Can I send you the information, so you can check?”

“Tell me in words what happened,” Mikhail asked doubtfully.

“Well, to make a long story short, after the installation the system went crazy. It found an anomaly, not a space anomaly, but here, on the ground. The source is somewhere in the mountains. The system shows a large emission of energy and electromagnetic radiation.”

“So…”

“I decoded the signal. It was an audio signal on a long-range frequency. The signal…” Yulia turned to her laptop and heard faint sounds of music, “the signal is a ‘golden record’ from Voyager. Remember, music, greetings, sounds of Earth?” she became confused.

Mikhail Nikolayevich’s face changed. It was apparent, even with the poor Internet bandwidth and the low quality of the picture, that he did not know how to respond. He was still waiting for Yulia to continue.

“It’s kind of weird,” Mikhail said, singing the words a little bit.

“I checked everything, the system works properly. It’s not the settings. The system must have reacted to the frequency of the signal.”

She knew that none of the Roscosmos executives don’t like it when employees can’t make assumptions on their own to solve a problem. And emergency situations were not something Mikhail Nikolayevich liked.

“All right, Yulia, send us all the data, we’ll check it now.”

“I already did.”

Mikhail Nikolaevich checked the mail, saw the letter from Yulia, clicked the ‘forward’ icon, typed a few words and sent the letter.

“Stay by the computer, I’ll call you back,” said the boss goodbye.

Yulia, disconnected. She sat by the computer, trying to figure out how disappointed the boss was, until scraps of the sounds of the ill-fated recording reached her. “It’s a bug, and I can’t explain it,” Yulia thought.

Dr Capri and Dr Lamichen came up to the room. Tulu-Manchi was explaining the situation to him in Nepali. Giyanu Lamichen quietly listened to his colleague’s story and nodded approvingly. Nothing seemed to bother him. Yulia could only understand words like ‘Voyager’ and ‘Bach’ in the doctor’s words.

“Right,” Dr Lamichen said in English. “Yulia, you need to look into the causes of this mistake. It is very important for us. Please start over. I’ll call the workers, and you can reinstall the whole system.”

“But…” Yulia began, “it’s not about the installation. It’s about the signal. Either it’s some kind of experiment by the Chinese, or it’s a reflection of the satellite signal,” she couldn’t believe what she was saying, but she continued on. “I informed my supervisor, and he is checking the signal now. He’ll check with the Chinese if he needs to.”

“Then continue,” Dr Lamichen said in English, looking at Tulu-Manchi.

Dr Capri nodded back at him, and Dr Lamichen left the room.

“What does your boss say?” Tulu-Manchi asked Yulia.

“He said he would call back when he checked the signal.”

“Yulia, what else do we know about this signal?” taking a seat next to him, Dr Capri asked.

“Well, let’s start from the beginning,” Yulia sighed heavily. “First of all, it’s on the frequency we use to transmit the signal from spacecraft to Earth. Second, along with the information signal, a powerful magnetic pulse emanates from the same place. The signal is very clear and stable. This does not happen when we are talking about a signal from space.”

“Okay,” assessing Yulia’s words, the doctor said. “What do we know about the information in this signal?” he asked the question and started answering it himself. “This is the recording that was on Voyager. We were able to get the audio signal, but you say that there are pictures and something else.”

“Yes,” Yulia confirmed, “I think in an hour we’ll be able to find out all the exact information when my boss checks the signal through the Roscosmos channels.”

“Let’s check the exact coordinates for now and try to find the nearest village or town on the map,” suggested Dr Capri.

Together they went to the old stationary computer. Yulia saw that there was a Skype message from her boss, “Call you back in a minute.”

She sat down beside the computer. Dr Capri looked at her carefully and asked:

“Bad news?”

“No,” Yulia shook her head, “he said he would call back in a minute. But for some reason, I am not happy.”

A message popped up on the screen indicating an incoming call. Yulia answered and moved closer to the monitor.

“Yulia,” Mikhail said sharply, barely appearing on the screen.