have to return and get them to give it to us."
"Calm down old chap, calm down. Weâve got time for that. First, Iâd go and have a look on the moon to see if we can recover anything from our beautiful ship that you merrily smashed into pieces."
âMe? What have I got to do with it? It was you who made it explode up there."
"And who was it who lost the remote-control system?"
"But that was your fault. The clasp was defective."
âAll right, all right! Whatâs done is done. Now letâs try to get to grips with this situation. Although Iâm an incurable optimist, at the moment, I canât see any brilliant solutions."
"Thatâll be the gamma waves" retorted Azakis, repaying his friend with the same currency. "Assuming of course that those four neurons lurking in your empty head are still able to emit them."
"After that pitiful joke, I can finally announce that the old Zak is once again amongst us. Welcome back."
"So, can you manage to get this shuttle to the explosion site without crashing into some lunar elevation?"
"Certainly sir. At your orders," exclaimed Petri, imitating the military ways he had often seen used by his terrestrial friends. "Destination moon" he added cheerfully, after having started the engines and set the course towards the satellite.
It took only a couple of minutes to reach the place where the Theos had disintegrated. The shuttle began to slowly fly over the area of the hidden face of the moon that had suffered the impact of the explosion. The ground, normally very bumpy and full of craters caused by ancient impacts of hundreds of meteorites that, over millions of years, had literally riddled it, now appeared incredibly smooth and flat for about six hundred square kilometres. The wave of energy generated by the explosion had swept everything away. Rocks, craters and depressions no longer existed. It was as if a giant steamroller had passed over the area, leaving behind it an endless expanse of soft grey sand.
"Incredible," exclaimed Petri. "Itâs like flying over the immense Sihar desert on Nibiru."
"Weâve made a big mess" said Azakis dejectedly.
"No. Canât you see how beautiful the view is now? Before the surface had more wrinkles than our Supreme Elder, now instead itâs as smooth as a babyâs skin."
"I donât think thereâs much of our beloved spacecraft left."
"I'm running a full in-depth scan of the area, but the biggest piece Iâve found is approximately a few cubic centimetres."
"Thereâs no denying it. The self-destruct system worked really well."
"Hey Zak" exclaimed Petri suddenly. "In your opinion, what's that?â and he pointed to a dark spot on the main screen.
"I wouldn't know... You canât see it very well. What do the sensors say?"
"Theyâre not picking anything up. According to them thereâs nothing but sand there, but I think I can see something else."
"Itâs impossible that the sensors canât pick something up. Try doing a calibration test."
"Just give me a second." Petri fiddled with a series of holographic controls then sentenced, "The parameters are within normal range. Everything seems to be working properly."
"Strange ... Letâs try and get a little closer."
Shuttle number six moved slowly in the direction of that strange object that seemed to emerge from the layer of dust and grey sand.
"Maximum magnification" Azakis ordered. âBut what is it?â
"From the little I can see, it looks like part of an artificial structure" Petri tried venturing.
"Artificial? I donât think any of us have ever installed anything on the moon."
"Perhaps it was the terrestrials. I seem to have read somewhere that theyâve completed several expeditions to this satellite."
"What is decidedly strange is that the sensors are not picking up anything of what our eyes instead are seeing."
"I donât know what to say. Perhaps the explosion has damaged them."
"But if you just ran a test and everything is working," answered Azakis perplexed.
"Then that stuff weâre seeing must be made of some material that is unknown to us and therefore that our sensors are unable to analyse."
"Are you trying to tell me that the terrestrials have managed to invent a compound that not even we know about, theyâve brought it up here and theyâve built a base or something with it?"
"And, moreover, now weâve even destroyed it for them," commented Petri dejectedly.
"Our friends never cease to amaze us, do they?"
âThatâs true... Well, weâve had a look around here. Iâd say we should leave it for the moment. Weâve got rather more important things to do right now. What do you say boss?"
"Iâd say youâre absolutely right. Considering that there doesnât seem to be anything usable left of the Theos anymore, I think we can leave."
"Heading for earth?"
"Letâs return to Elisaâs camp and try using her H^COM to contact Nibiru."
"And our travelling companions? We canât just leave them up here" said Petri.
"Weâll have to organise a support base on earth. We could set up a sort of camp close to that of our friends."
âSounds like a good idea to me. Shall I inform the rest of the crew?"
âYes. Give them the coordinates of the excavation site and ask them to organise the preparation of an emergency structure. Weâll go down there first, and weâll set about contacting the Elders."
âLetâs goâ said Petri cheerfully. "And to think that, until a little while ago, I was getting worried about how I was going to overcome the boredom of the return journey."
At the same time, at a distance of about 500 U.A. from our sun, a strange ovoid shaped object appeared practically out of nowhere, preceded by a streak of bluish lightning that tore through the absolute blackness of space. It moved in a straight line for almost a hundred thousand kilometres at an incredible speed before disappearing again, swallowed up by a sort of huge silvery vortex with golden reflections. The whole action lasted only a few seconds and then, as if nothing had happened, that place so remote and desolate, deep in space, plunged back into the total quiet in which it had been immersed until then.
Tell-el-Mukayyar â Contact with Nibiru
"Yes, Colonel," said a very refined voice on the other end of the phone. "We have received reports, from several observation points on earth,
