“Okay,” Jean-Pierre concluded, “I’m going out to get someone to help us.”

Jean-Pierre disappeared from sight. A coldness entered the room. A second later, Jean-Pierre returned with a strange – either surprised or frightened – expression on his face.

“Debby,” he paused for a long moment before he continued speaking. “Debby, we survived the plane crash. We’re in the mountains,” Jean-Pierre swallowed his saliva to continue. “You need help. I’ll have to go away for a while, look for people. A village or perhaps climbers. I know…”

Jean-Pierre couldn’t finish his difficult reasoning. Debby took his hand and cried. Jean-Pierre lowered his head and imagined for a moment what his wounded companion was feeling right now. What pain she was feeling, knowing that they might not be able to survive. Jean-Pierre made a mental effort and decided inside, “I’ll do everything I can to save this American woman. Even if it means sacrificing my life.”

“I’m sorry,” Debby said through her tears.

Jean-Pierre looked up at her and asked stunned:

“What? What are you talking about?”

“You’re here because of me, God, it’s all my fault,” she began to squeeze his hand in despair. “Where are we? I don’t understand why I’m always hurting everyone.”

“Look at me,” Jean-Pierre said, trying to get in Debby’s field of vision. “It’s going to be okay. Do you know why?”

Debby looked at him with surprise, the tears stopped.

“We’re still alive, so we can do something.”

Jean-Pierre pulled out all the paper towels from the box above the sink and put them under Debby’s head. He ran his fingernail across the bottom of her right leg, but Debby felt nothing.

“We must hurry,” Jean-Pierre said to himself as he walked out of the small room.

Only a few pieces remained of the plane’s tail. The door of the toilet dangled. The second toilet in front had been swept away completely. From the outside, the keel and lateral stabilizers could be seen to have been pinched off the rocks, leaving holes. By some miracle, the small piece of iron around the toilet room was still intact and frozen between two low rocks.

Jean-Pierre stepped away from the tail of the plane and looked around. Pieces of hull plaster were hanging from the scratched body in bits. Wires, insulation, iron, and plastic had all turned to junk. Jean-Pierre looked around. To his right was a small hill that obscured the horizon. To his left, mountains covered the entire surface of the earth up to the sky with a crumpled cloth. He gazed into the distance and decided to go uphill. “Maybe behind this ridge I can see something.” He began to climb up, looking back.

Debby’s breathing short, she looked around, trying to figure out how to get up. She lifted her torso slightly and leaned against the wall. Seeing her feet, she felt dizzy with fear. Nausea rose to her throat.

Her hip bone was clearly broken. Even through the jeans, you could see it sticking unnaturally out of her hip. There was no blood; it was a closed fracture. Debby tried to move her leg again, but nothing worked. She grabbed her jeans and moved the right leg slightly. A sharp stabbing pain stopped her. Debby closed her eyes and her lips quivered. She wanted to burst into tears, but she didn’t even have the strength to do that. The plane crash, Carol, the leg, the cold – it was all mixed up in her head, and Debby covered her face with hands.

Suddenly she heard Jean-Pierre screaming somewhere in the distance. It was a scream, and there was joy in the sound of it.

“He’s found people!” Debby exhaled and fell to the floor.

Bernard Bajolet was frantically scrolling letters on his phone, and his mind was jumping from the titles of those letters to the words in the hall. “Maybe write ‘flight’” thought Monsieur Bajolet. “No, it doesn’t come out. When was it? In the basket, perhaps?” Bernard made a few more attempts and found one. He saw a letter from the HR department about Jean-Pierre Biro’s business trip. He opened the letter and jumped at the flight number with his eyes. “Oh my God, it’s his flight,” Monsieur Bajolet put the phone aside.

He put his left hand to his lips and looked around the hall. He glanced once more at the young specialist from Charles de Gaulle airport. The man continued to speak. Bernard Bajolet switched on his microphone.

“Excuse me,” he interrupted the young man’s five-minute report.

The tense gazes of the seated generals and officials began to search the hall for the one who was asking the question.

“I understand correctly that we have no specifics. We understand that the plane disappeared from radar in the same place where we lost the Nepalese helicopter a few hours ago. Anything else?”

The Indian general turned on the microphone:

“Absolutely correct. No information on the helicopter or the plane. The weather’s getting worse.”

“We have no communication with the crew. We tried to contact the airliner for almost an hour, and then it went off the radar. It started veering off course, and my colleagues tried to relay a message.”

“Is it a fact or an assumption that it crashed?” Bernard Bajolet couldn’t stand it.

“Almost a fact,” the young man reported.

The screen showed a map of Asia and two routes, one marked in gray for the planned course, the other in red for the actual course. A cross marked the point of the proposed crash.

Suggestions came from the audience:

“Drones?”

“Strong electromagnetic radiation. We already lost two,” the Chinese general said.

“Satellites?”

“Working on it!”

“You were talking about the border cordon near the mountain,” someone turned to the Indian general.

“The distance is long. We are thinking over this option.”

“Don’t we have any possibility to send a special team there?” Igor Komarov stepped in.

“Shall we send another helicopter there when the weather is even worse than in the morning?” The Nepalese general asked. “We are definitely not going to do that. We are trying to get a rescue team as close to the quadrant as possible. But the area is very difficult.”

Jean-Jacques Dordain stood up and thanked the young man from the airport.

“Gentlemen, I suggest we take a short break until our colleagues have some concrete information.”

Jean-Jacques Dordain was approached by his assistant and said something in his ear. He nodded and pointed to the screen behind him.

“Gentlemen, we have an update on the weather conditions.”

An image appeared on the screen. The large bright spiral of clouds, captured from the satellite, looked dreadful and fearful.

“Just above Kanchenjunga a cyclone about one hundred and fifty kilometers wide is now unfolding. Let’s keep this in mind in our plans,” said Mr. Dordain.

People began to rise from their seats.

In a minute several people had gathered around Jean-Jacques Dordain’s table: Igor Komarov, Charles Bolden and others.

Charles Bolden began:

“We have checked the signal quality and determined that this is definitely a recording from Voyager 2. This is it.”

“Okay,” reasoned the head of the ESA aloud. “We have a signal that we sent into space to inform about our location.”

“But the signal is coming from the Earth,” added Igor.

“On the frequency of space transmissions,” Charles nodded.

“A weather anomaly, an electromagnetic flare…” Jean-Jacques Dordain pondered. “We need at least something. Some kind of clue.”

Monsieur Dordain’s young assistant couldn’t take it anymore:

“Perhaps our message has been received,” he hesitated, “and now it has been sent to us using some device that exists on the Earth.”

Everyone turned to the assistant.

“A little more realistic, Francois,” said Monsieur Dordain grudgingly.

At the other end of the hall, Bernard Bajolet was sitting at his desk, dialing Jean-Pierre’s phone for the third time. “The mobile phone you are trying to call has been switched off, Please Try again Later.” He closed his eyes and gathered his thoughts. Then he called the accounting department.