Shuttle six – Lunar inspection

After the invisible hand of fear that had gripped his stomach, finally disappeared, leaving him in peace, Azakis had begun to pace nervously around the shuttle’s bridge muttering unintelligible phrases.

"Will you stop going around and around in circles like a spinning top?" Petri scolded him."You’ll wear the floor out and we’ll end up drifting about in space like two old disused satellites."

"But how can you be so calm? TheTheos has been destroyed, we’re millions of kilometres from our own planet, we can’t contact anyone and, even if we were to succeed, it would be impossible for someone to come and fetch us, and what do you do? You lay there slouched in your armchair as if you were on holiday, sitting on the cliff at the Gulf ofSaraan enjoying the view at sunset."

"Calm down old chap, calm down. We’ll find a solution, you’ll see."

"At the moment I can think of absolutely none whatsoever."

"Why are you so upset. It’s the gamma waves that your poor tired brain is emitting, that are preventing you from reasoning with lucidity."

“Do you think so?"

"Of course," replied Petri with a lovely big smile."Come and sit down beside me, take some deep breaths and try to relax. You’ll see, before long everything will seem very different."

"You may well be right, my friend" said Azakis as, following the advice of his companion, he threw himself heavily into the second pilot’s grey armchair,"but at the moment I can do everything but relax."

"If you promise to calm down, I’ll even let you smoke one of those filthy smelly things you always carry around with you."

"Well, actually that might be a good idea. I’m sure it’d help me a bit." Having said that, he pulled a long dark hand-rolled cigar from a pocket and, after having cut the ends with a strange multicoloured contraption, put it in his mouth and lit it. He quickly inhaled several puffs letting small bluish smoke clouds disperse into the room. With a slight hiss, the shuttle’s automatic air purification system was activated. In a few moments the smoke vanished and with it also the pungent sweetish smell.

"But, this way, there’s no fun," exclaimed Azakis who was already in a much better mood."I’d forgotten how efficient our purification systems are."

"You designed them," answered Petri."They couldn’t be otherwise."

The tension seemed to be slowly melting away.

"Let’s take stock of the situation," proposed Azakis as, with his cigar still between his lips, he enabled a series of holograms which positioned themselves in mid-air all around the two aliens."We’ve got four operational shuttles including our own. TheTheos-2 has now landed onNibiru and both are outside the range of action of the optical vortices communication system." He puffed out another couple of little clouds of smoke, then he continued,"Propellant and food stocks are at ninety-nine percent."

"Well done, I see you’re taking control of the situation again. Go ahead" Petri urged, satisfied.

"All the remaining six members of the crew are in perfect condition. Shields and equipment are at maximum efficiency. The only problem is that we no longer have an