The boat moved along the calm surface of the underground lake. The bottom immediately disappeared from under their feet and the light slapping of the oars against the water began to fill the vaults with even sounds

“Bhrigu,” Dr Capri asked in English, “and still, could you explain what is happening? How is it possible that the exit from the cave has disappeared?”

“Tulu-Manchi,” the hermit began quietly, “need you to understand question. How it happen? Or why it happen?”

“Both,” said David, pulling himself closer to the boat on his hands.

“Hmm,” Bhrigu smiled. “Good answer. I don’t know how it happen. It matters not much. But clear you have to go out a different way than you came.”

“Just to get out,” said Jean-Pierre, overtaking the boat. “How much longer?”

“Little,” answered Bhrigu. “Little further,” said Bhrigu. “Exit is close.”

“Debby, pull the torch forward,” Jean-Pierre asked.

Debby turned to the bow of the boat and held the torch forward over the water. The stalactites and stalagmites appeared out of the darkness. They were lumpy and yellowish and looked like huge dead snakes. Some protruded from the water in a frozen desire to reach the ceiling, others dangled from above.

“There,” Bhrigu pointed to the two o’clock.

The doctor took a second oar and turned the boat’s bow in the right direction.

In a few seconds, the cave’s arch appeared out of the blackness, and the light began to reflect off the wall directly in front of them. The boat sailed up to the solid stone barrier.

“Where now?” Jean-Pierre asked, taking hold of the boat.

“That way,” answered Bhrigu.

In the distance there was a sound like a waterfall, it was somewhere beyond the walls. The boat was moving slowly, parallel to the wall.

“Here is the exit to the bank,” said Jean-Pierre, feeling the bottom.

The boat came to a small bank, like two peas in a pod, similar to the one from which they had sailed. David and Jean-Pierre pulled the boat up.

“This is the same shore, isn’t it,” said David.

“No,” Jean-Pierre said uncertainly. “Debby, give me the torch.”

Debby handed over the torch, and Jean-Pierre walked forward with it. After a few seconds, he lit the torches mounted on the wall.

“No, David, there’s another passage, there’s no stretcher and the torches haven’t been lit for a long time,” Jean-Pierre shouted. “Get out of the boat.”

The doctor and David helped everyone onto dry land, and together they moved toward Jean-Pierre.

“What’s next?” Yulia asked.

“There is a passageway,” Jean-Pierre pointed forward.

Everyone went inside and found themselves in a large hall, almost perfectly round in shape. There were four passages in the hall: one from which they had just come and three at the opposite end of the hall. Faint sunlight streamed in from one. It was bright and dry in here.

“Old man didn’t lie,” said Jean-Pierre. “Let’s get out of here.”

Relief spread through the hall. For a moment everyone forgot the strange circumstances of the journey and the inexplicable, almost magical, but frightening mysteries left on the other side of the lake.

“Stay here I,” Bhrigu began.

“Oh, no. Don’t even think about it,” Jean-Pierre interrupted him grudgingly. “I didn’t let you go. Not until I’m sure we’re safe.”

“Belongs to this place I,” the hermit continued calmly.

“Jean-Pierre,” Debby said pleadingly. “That’s enough. There’s light in there. We’ll get outside.”

“But he…” said Jean-Pierre with incomprehension.

“No,” the hermit interrupted him himself. “Find the way forward is easy now.”

Jean-Pierre looked around at everyone, pondering. He stopped at Debby, who was begging him for mercy with her eyes. She was uncomfortable with the way Jean-Pierre was treating the old man. And though she felt a deep misunderstanding too, she believed that the hermit was not the cause of all of this.

The doctor and Yulia knew for sure that everything going on right now was somehow connected, but they couldn’t get their heads around how this hermit, who barely speaks English, the Voyager Gold Record signal they detected, yesterday’s unexpected storm, and, most importantly, the disappearing exit, could be connected.

David alone was simply amazed and happy at the adventures that were happening around him. He felt a kind of languor in his chest from everything that was going on and could not believe that he had decided to go here at this particular time by himself. He liked the hermit who had been so caring to them in a moment of need. He liked having the doctor and Yulia by his side, who seemed to him to be the only people who understood what was going on.

Everyone thought there was someone or something that was the cause of everything that was going on. How could it all be explained. David thought it was the doctor and Yulia, Debby thought it was her bad luck. Yulia thought it was aliens, and Dr Capri, though he was hiding it, thought it was some kind of Chinese experiment.

But in that very second, Jean-Pierre suddenly felt that there was no reason and that no one here now understood what was going on.

He began to nod, thinking that Bhrigu really didn’t look much like a terrorist or an evil genius in the service of some government.

“Okay,” Jean-Pierre agreed with Debby, “we have to go.”

Everyone turned at the same time to the hermit, who was looking directly at Jean-Pierre. He nodded.

“Come on!” the Frenchman shouted, urging everyone on. “Let’s not waste our time. We must go.”

Everyone walked toward the light that entered the hall through the left aisle.

Jean-Pierre looked everyone out and watched intently the reactions of the hermit. The old man shifted his eyebrows and began to rub his beard, thinking hard about something.

“What?” asked Jean-Pierre incredulously.

“Chosen you all for important things,” smiled Bhrigu. “Journey will lead you. God help you.”

Jean-Pierre tried to understand the elder’s words, but the light from the passage beckoned and hurried him forward. So he followed everyone else. His eyes were blind from the bright light after the gloom of the cave.

“Here will be,” said Bhrigu quietly, raising his right hand in blessing.

David covered up his eyes by his hand, they were teary from the bright light. The heat that had enveloped him made his body go limp. The air was heavy and dry, as if mixed with sand. He couldn’t breathe in.

“Hey!” a woman’s voice sounded nearby. “There’s a storm, let’s go back,” Yulia shouted.

“Yes,” David answered, trying to catch air through his mouth. “Doctor, Debby, where are you?”

“I’m here,” Debby shouted, coughing from somewhere on the right.

“No, it’s not a storm,” came Dr Capri’s loud voice.

Tears poured from David’s eyes, and he knelt down and tried to shield himself from the light that shone from everywhere. He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them sharply; for a second he saw someone’s figure nearby, he took a few steps and clung to a half-blurred shadow. It was Debby.

“Are you okay?” David asked. “Can you breathe?”

Debby nodded.

“Debby, David!” the doctor called out.

“We’re here,” David held up his hand.

The rumbling, crackling, and rumbling filled the entire space and drowned out the voices. The storm was clearly perceptible to all senses except one: the skin could not feel the gusts of wind or the drops of rain. The ground itself was humming and vibrating, eyes were blinding from the bright rays of the sun, and breath was spiraling from the lack of air. Debby, David, Yulia, and the doctor crawled toward each other like two pairs of moles at noon, groping the surface around them.

Dr Capri touched David’s arm.

“We’re here,” the doctor said, dropping to the ground beside David and Debby.