Chapter No.11.

Carl didn't get together with Margaret and Janet until later when Josh and Alicia were in bed. They met in the lab where the women had obtained a new translation.

"You have to allow for some ancient thinking in this translation," Janet said. "There's an element of subjective reasoning in it, which is not unexpected.

"What makes you think that aliens visited the Vedic people?" Carl asked.

"There are references to 'Them', which we must assume is an alien presence. The other factor is that this alien visit resulted in a prophecy about a future event."

"I assume that this is not a direct prediction but more like a warning."

"We're not sure. The most interesting aspect of this prophecy deals with Chandra, which is the name of their Moon god."

"Fascinating," Carl reacted.

"There is a reference to a presence on the Moon that could result in what they refer to as a transference."

"An object?"

"Possibly. It's rather vague, but it appears to be something that the aliens brought along with them."

"I can't imagine an object that could be transported in a spacecraft having the capability of making billions of people vanish."

"Yes, that's definitely far-fetched but it does fit into the idea of teleportation."

Carl ran a hand through his hair. "I can't imagine that some object that could cause people to vanish would not be discovered by now. All of Earth's space agencies have scoured the moon over and over for unusual objects without finding anything."

"It's possible that it's not an object," Janet said. "I know that sounds rather vague, but there is a possibility that the Moon is the object."

He sighed. "Okay, let's sleep on it and maybe we'll be able to think more clearly after a good night's rest."

They didn't argue with that suggestion, even though night is a relativistic concept on a space station.

The next morning, which is also an artificial designation on a space station, the survivors gathered for breakfast before they went off to their daily activities, but it was not going to be anything like a normal day.

"Are we going to go to the Moon to search for an alien object?" Janet asked.

"Not without some better idea of where it would be located," Carl replied. "The Moon isn't large, but it still has a lot of real-estate to cover."

"What if it's the entire Moon?" Margaret suggested. "Maybe it's something buried in the Moon."

"I assume you're suggesting that the Moon came from a location outside of our solar system," Carl said. "That's possible, but there is no evidence to verify it. Even if it did, why would an intelligent alien species send a Mar's size planet to collide with Earth to form the Moon?"

"We're dealing with theories about how the Moon was created. Although, I admit that the idea that something on, or in, the Moon caused people to vanish is a stretch."

Carl rubbed his jaw. "That's for sure. The only thing I can think of is the fact that some quantum theories allow for an alternate reality or what we would call an adjoining universe. It's a farfetched idea, but it might be a possibility we should consider."

"There's no way we're going to be able to find evidence for that idea," Janet said.

"I agree, but I'm just suggesting it as a possibility."

"Well," Margaret said. "The Chandra Prophecy, as we call it, speaks of a transfer of people to a better place, a place of freedom and peace, or what we would call heaven."

"That's interesting, but it sounds like a religious promise of salvation," Carl said. "Although, I wouldn't necessarily believe that some intelligent alien species was religious."

"We didn't assume anything when we did the translation," Janet said. "We're just conveying what we discovered when we made the translation. It could be completely bogus."

"Well, the fact that it translated is enough to consider it as being a valid possibility. My problem is that we're stuck with no real scientific method to verify any theory we could come up with."

"The thing that bothers me about this is the fact that Josh and Alicia were left without a parent," Margaret said. "If anyone would be deserving of paradise or heaven it would be them."

"Yeah, we're left to suffer in purgatory," Janet said. "Our fate is to go back to Earth and watch it decay."

"Along with us," Margaret added.

"Unfortunately," Janet said.

"It wouldn't be that bad for some time," Carl said. "We could easily keep up the infrastructure at the launch facility. The rest of it would decay but not as bad as a modern city."

"There's plenty of food there, much of it typical of a tropical setting."

"I suppose we should look at it with some degree of hopefulness," Carl said. "The large cities will decay, and infrastructure will fall down, but we can survive for quite some time."

"We can become jungle babes," Janet kidded. "We can lounge around a swimming pool sipping pina colodas."

Margaret laughed. "Even better we don't need to wear much in a tropical paradise."

Carl waved a dismissive hand. "I don't think it would be a good idea to be out in the sun for long. Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun."

They rewarded him with boos.

Their frivolity would soon be smashed when something happened that changed everything.