At the time when on the Earth in its different hemispheres, there were happening the strange and weird, far-reaching event, Max and Jennifer were on the ship of Tondor, and knowing nothing, continued their mission to Pluto. Alien’s ship didn’t disappear or dissolve. Only Tondor without warning left them alone for a while. Now, they've had plenty of time to talk about everything and to discuss everyone.
Max and Jennifer knew perfectly well that the notion of “flight” was purely conventional for Tondor’s ship. They knew that they could at any moment reach not only the Pluto, but could get without problem in any other place of the Universe. And if they really were flying somewhere, according words of Tondor, it was only for them to get used to the idea that they will meet with Pluto. In fact, the ship could yet be on Pluto, or in its vicinity. In any case, Jennifer was glad that they were left alone. The technical characteristics of the alien’s ship was not interested her at all. Much more she was interested in a sudden, so frighten her visions of Max. And she probably in the tenth, and maybe the twentieth time was demanding that Max recount again and again what he saw and heard during his metamorphosis.
Max realizing that he has no alternative but to obey her, patiently was telling Jennifer again and again all what he remembered. Jennifer listened to him attentively, trying to comprehend and understand what happened to Max. One should admit she gets it bad. She did not know what to think. Max himself also did not explain his vision. It seems he has not yet completely come to his senses. But she couldn’t not to believe him too. Max did not cheat. And why would he tell a lie? To make sure of his sincerity, it was enough to look at his bewildered, pale face.
Jennifer felt as she begins to shiver. She suddenly brightly, quickly and clearly as summer lightning’s flash had visualized everything that Max told her haltingly and in with confusion. First, about Michael's room and huddled around the frightened people. Not just the strange people from the street, but her, Jennifer’s friends. Then about the tanks and shooting. What is it? Menacing, ominous warning what will wait for them when they return home? With tanks all was clearly. Its episode resembles to the future. But what about the scene on the floor in the house of Michael? No, there's something wrong. Maybe their consciousness split in two? Maybe they had been cloned? But how? In what way? How Max could see them? It was completely incomprehensible! Jennifer herself saw nothing. Just terribly was afraid for Max. If something bad had happened to him, she left alone, would have died. Thankfully with her dear Max everything was okay.
‘Tell me again. All what you remembered. All you saw.’ She said in a voice which was breaking with emotion.
Max frowning forehead, knocking and stammered, not knowing in what time yet had just begun to repeat what he had seen and heard during his amazing metamorphosis.
Jennifer intensely listened to him and on her cheeks rolled down the tears. But she did not wipe it. She simply did not notice it. Lord, how she wanted to go home! Only now, listening to Max, she immediately lively and vividly imagines the faces of friends who mention Max. God, how she wanted to go home! Or at least find herself on the spot of Max. No, she, Jennifer would not so easy to give up. She would with her teeth and her hands clutched, in all, of which only she could, but she would not come back to the ship!
‘That’s all, Jenny! Sorry, but that's all what I could see and remembered.’ Max finished somehow guilty. He wanted to talk further. He saw with what tension Jennifer listened to him. He saw her tears on her cheeks. He saw how she felt hurt and, at the same time happily as he spoke about familiar to her names. But coming up, add something of himself to make her feel better, he didn’t want. That was it. He couldn’t change anything. What he saw that he saw! He's not a storyteller. He’s just a common Ukrainian guy who got in the incredible story with his American girlfriend.
Jennifer cope with her emotions, looked at the screen of the ship. Bright stars like needles, its mysterious rays seemed to penetrate deeply into the very brain. One Star was standing out with its size among the rest. It was much bigger and with a yellowish tinge. Jennifer knew it was the Pluto! To understand this one shouldn’t be to smart.
‘But tanks? It’s looked very scary? Shot just at you? How do you think what hat meant? Max, hold me.’ She asked quietly. ‘I'm cold and sad. I'm afraid. What if we do not go back? What if we died and so looks the Death? What if Tondor is the Death itself! After all none of the people know what the Death looks like and what happens to a person at the time of transition from one world to another? What if he's forwards us to the place where we will spend eternity?
From the words of Jennifer on Max’s back ran down chill. What if she's telling the truth, and they are really dead? No wonder that their friends were saving them, providing the first medical assistance. It was a real emergency for all of them. Maybe they were poisoned? Lay there now on the floor, drenched with water, and their souls are on the ship of Tondor. Maybe Tondor is a carrier of souls? As it was in the ancient Greeks? From these thoughts in Max’s throat stuck a lump. But how can this be? Well, he could not so simply die! What for! No! No! It's something else. It is quite another!
In this tense moment ... Jennifer’s mobile phone rang! Heard here and now so familiar ring tone of Jennifer’s phone was so unexpected, that Max and Jennifer stood motionless a few seconds and looked at each other as if not understanding what was happening. Then Jennifer rushed to her purse, which was lying on the bed, quickly opened it, poured all the contents on the bed, grabbed with the trembling hands ringing and flashing the mobile phone and quickly brought it to her ear. Tears immediately stopped rolling down her cheeks, and she looked totally balanced and adequate. Max could hear clearly a woman's voice coming from the tube. She spoke in English. Max realized that was calling someone familiar to Jennifer. How someone could reach them on the phoned, he did not know. The main thing was that somebody got through! Jennifer listened to, but it seemed like she did not hear or did not understand the words of a woman who was talking to her. Only in the twenty seconds, her face took on an expression of meaningful and began to show some interest.
Max who was watching the girl slowly began to realize that the call was allowed by Tondor. He in some way connected invisible for Max speaker and Jennifer. He did in rather from the desire to protect Jennifer from hysteria. If Max was right in his assumption, but he did not really want to make a mistake, it means that their case is not so bad. He with a nod asked Jennifer, who was calling. She in answer only impatiently waved with her hand and head. That gestures one could understand how one wanted. It could mean wait or leave me alone. Max has decided not to disturb her. Give her opportunity to recover.
Perhaps an invisible interlocutor talked about something very exciting. Within a few minutes, on the face of Jennifer has appeared a timid smile. She started to say “yes”, and then asked the questions.
‘But tell me about the color. What color?’ Jennifer asked getting more interested in the conversation. ‘Red .... I see.... Ah, I understand. I prefer the black. I'd bought the black, but the red car also nice.’
Max at first intuitively guessed that they were talking about buying a car. And then he heard it. Jennifer often told him that he loved black cars. But Max purposely came to her in the car color of platinum. He wanted to tease his girl a bit.
Then seems the invisible girl asked where Jennifer is now. And not only asked, but guessed. It is understood by Max understood it when he heard Jennifer response:
‘Yes, I’m with Max. One can say in a cruise. Yes, yes ... far away. What? In the Emirates? Ah, well, you could say so. We’re in the Emirates. When we come back? In two weeks I suppose. Maybe even take a trip to Japan or to the relatives of Max. Yes, Cora, of course, I’ll bring you a souvenir. I'll call you. Aha, see you later, bye.’ Jennifer said goodbye to her friend looked at the phone in her hand, turned it over, and looked at Max.
‘Cora called. Can you imagine? She bought a new Bentley. Red. I said that I prefer the black car. Well, you heard everything yourself.’
‘Yes, I heard. Max agrees. ‘How is your mood now? I mean after the call?’
‘You know, much better. Nervous breakdown ended without starting. I’ve got the confidence that everything will be fine. With us nothing bad will happen. We’ll finally get home.’
‘I'm happy for you. Hey, maybe we can now call s where ever we want?’ Max took out his own mobile phone about which he forgot to think and began to think to whom call at first turn. It was odd, but on board the ship, the phone battery did not discharge. It looks like it was charging by the ship itself. Max did not have time to call anybody. Phone rang himself.
Seeing whose number appeared on the touch screen, Max got very pale, as if from an unexpected surprise. Then he got pleased. His Mom was calling! You can not imagine how it was incredible to hear at that moment so far and at the same time so beloved voice. Max got parch into his throat. Something stung his eyes. Somewhere far away, at a distance of the millions and perhaps billions of kilometers, so familiar voice worriedly was asking where he was and what happened to him. Why not ring. Do not get in touch in the webcam. Quickly to cope with the emotions which overcame him, Max cheerfully began to tell his mother how things are going on in America, about his studies and job. No, no he didn’t get married yet! But he thinks about it!
But inside his head he was feverishly thinking about what to tell his mom more to protect her from the truth, from what happened and was happening to them on real. “But what if shout aloud, mom help me, call someone, get me out of here!” But some inner strength kept him from such an act. Max realized if there was in some incredible way the mobile communications, then surely Tondor was aware of this. Simply speaking it was he himself who arranged this unexpected, but a pleasant conversation. At the same time Max really wanted that his mom in some way figure out that with him on real was not everything all right. And he is now in such a distant cruise that it was even hard to imagine!
He never learned if prompted or not a mother's heart to her what actually was happening to her beloved son, because in the phone appeared a rustle and instead of worried mother's voice, he heard the hoarse voice of his uncle, a colonel of the SBU of Nikolai Podgorny.
Max immediately got tensed.
‘How are you, Uncle Nick!’ He shouted.
‘Hey Max. Thanks I’m fine. Max, what happened? Where are you? Are you all right? My colleague in the United States said about your disappearance. On the road, they found your empty car. Had you been kidnapped? Do you need something? Is the girl with whom you were in the car with you right now?’ Short and important questions fell one after another. Max opened his mouth to answer, but then with the corner of his eye he noticed as the thickness of the ship was cutting through by the yellow shining body of Tondor. The alien was returning on board the ship. Max intuitively realized that he should not ask for help his Uncle Nicholas. And it was too late. And even if it wasn’t too late, it was naive to believe that Tondor will not get to know about everything. More probable the hosted by him a phone’s session was the next check of how he will behave himself.
‘Car, yes ... it’s so happened. You know, I always dreamed of becoming an astronaut and get into the first Martian’s crew. Take a walk on Phobos ...’ Max kept talking but Tondor kept approaching closer and closer. Only a few meters separated them.
When Tondor stepped into the room the connection was broken.
Max was holding his mobile phone and did not know what to think and what to say. He didn’t know to whom he has to talk at first, to Jennifer or to Tondor. He decided to talk with Jennifer when they again stay along. If it at all was possible on an alien’s ship. In the soul of Max was smoldering the faint hope that Uncle Nicholas somehow would understand what he hinted at when he was speaking about his desire to become an astronaut and go to Mars. It’s a faint hope. But even if Uncle Nicholas will guess in some absolutely incomprehensible enlightenment of the mind, what it would give to him, Max? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! Well, unfortunately his Uncle Nicholas didn’t posses such a cool space ship as Tondor did. How he could get to them Max couldn’t even imagine. Will he use for a space voyage the primitive spacecraft Soyuz or the same primitive in comparison with the alien’s ship Shuttle? Well, just in the whole world there was nothing that could compare to the alien’s ship. That's all conversation.
Meanwhile an amazing landscape, replaced by a new no less surprising one. Gloomy and mysterious Pluto was slowly but perceptibly increasing in size. On its dark surface, closer to the northern hemisphere was glowing the thick yellow spot of Tondor’s base. The fact that this was the base, where they were going, didn’t arise any doubt.
“That would be great now to upload a video to a social network!” Jennifer suddenly thought. “The quantity of visitors would be enormous! Of course, everyone would have thought this is a Photoshop. So what! I do know that it is not so!”
But in the presence of a mysterious figure of Tondor, Jennifer did not dare openly to shoot his base. She never dared to shoot. Just staring wide-eyed, constantly trying to get rid of the obsessive feeling that she laws watching some a sci-fi movie, sitting in a large darkened of cinema. Oh, if it on real was now the cinema. Even the cheapest! She would be happy!
Pluto was at such a vast and unthinkable distance from the Earth, and even from the Sun, which is big and hot on the Earth, has become common here in the common small bright star. Star which didn’t not differ from other stars, which were decorate a bottomless space.
Visually looking at the ten meters screen of the ship one could assume that the base of Tondor occupies a large area, approximately no less then the several hundred square kilometers.
‘He could create some a Sun or something like that.’ Jennifer quietly whispered into Max’s ear. ‘Because here as dark as I don’t know where else.’
Max in respond, nodded almost imperceptibly, he was completely absorbed with what he saw on the screen.
Tondor’s base was approaching. Here the dense yellow light poured a huge screen of the ship. Shimmered, glistening the reflections. It immediately became brighter, more cheerful. Jennifer herself, do not notice, even smiled. If one looks more attentively, one can already discern something on the surface of the base. Some still not yet clear, vague shadows. Base drifted over the dark space constrained the cold and darkness of Pluto's surface, and it was unclear who and for what purpose, this giant lit up that strip of light. That is, most likely, the base was established by Tondor.
Max stared at the screen of the ship. He tried to capture the finest details in mind. But there were not the small details! The huge structure slowly drifted over the dark surface of the planet. In a moment, the yellow glow intensified, as if breaking through the constraints of its invisible borders, highlighting the perpetual darkness of black stones, dressed in the armor of ice. It was a real Pluto. Ten more seconds and the yellow glow came to its normal state. Perhaps by that flash the base reacted to the approaching of Tondor’s ship.
On the screen, meanwhile, continued to unfold a fascinating spectacle of imagination. The ship continued to fall into the abyss of yellow light. But soon, far below the yellow light began to darken, thicken. It looks like there was something else, perhaps the base’s surface itself. A few more minutes of free fall in the yellow area passed, before the ship crossed the invisible border. The yellow light left high up, and the ship sped forward, and has already dipped into the purple, ominous glow.
Got paled, Jennifer cried out involuntarily. Inside the ship once became dark, as if in front of an approaching storm. Yellow light body of Tondor darkened, painted in a pale red color. Then it replaced by the crimson glow, and Tondor blazed exactly as a firebrand or cooling lava which was slowly crawled over the ridge of the volcano.
Jennifer was scared. Instinctively, she clung to Max. Warmth of Max body a bit calmed her down. Tondor, who during these days has become for them, if one could say more familiar again, was strange and sinister. His body more and more blackened, covering with the pale and light brown spots. He did not move. He did not say a word. His silence, especially now scared Max and Jennifer even more. With an effort, Jennifer forced herself to not look at the stranger, but at the screen.
Down, right under the ship was unfolding a grand picture. Scarlet surface of the base got closer, it now was hardly differed in the twilight of crimson, and Jennifer saw how from the surface, towards them began to rise the giant constructions and buildings. There was many of it. Constructions appeared everywhere at the same time. Shaken and blinded, Jennifer was unable to keep up with them. Riot of colors and shades amazed her imagination. The height of the buildings was about ten and even some more kilometers. Powerful peaks of constructions disappeared in the dense of purple glow. Like reefs it was a danger for any alien ship which ventures to land here. The process of the emergence and growth lasted only a few seconds. Scarlet, boundless surface brightened, sags, and once the building was ready!
“If they have got such home…” Jennifer was thinking amazingly. “I am ready to bow before Tondor!” She did not at that moment even want to think about the familiar, dusty and primitive apartments on the Earth. Deprived of extraterrestrial aesthetics, lightness and light! Slightly the night’s illumination brightened somewhat its appearance. In order not to spoil her mood with an inappropriate comparison, Jennifer began to look even more closely at the screen.
Max also was looking at. Yes, everything was great. Terrific. Wonderful. But he has been already tired from light and wanted that everything quickly would over. He just waited patiently when the ship finally landed.
Buildings. What did they look like? If Jennifer only could correctly describe everything! She however has got again a vain idea to record everything was she saw on her mobile phone. But in the presence of Tondor, she didn’t dare to shoot his base. She felt he would not approve her actions.
Despite of the crimson glow of the air, and red light the surface itself it seemed the glow was absorbed all around. The building had its own glow that didn’t intermix with the glow of the base’s surface or with the air’s glow. The yellow light diluted by the pink and pale pink tones was stunning. The huge, translucent, seemingly very light and fragile structures – went right into the heavens. The buildings had got the resemblance with the lumps of pure ice, illuminated by the searchlights.
Less than in ten minutes, beneath the ship stretched the endless and blazing metropolis. But, however, in spite of the limit of space the new construction continued to appear on the surface of the base.
“Old” buildings somehow in an understandable way shifted to the periphery, giving the place to the new ones, more colorful and bright. And there, far-far away on the horizon, it has formed yet a glowing wall of light.
On Jennifer’s body ran down the shiver of admiration. She had never seen yet such a beauty in her life! It was so beautiful. So bright. So unusual. And most importantly, there were no any living beings. Even there were not fellows of Tondor. Metropolis was completely empty.
“If this is indeed the metropolis,” She corrected herself.
Max tried to get a better look of the building surrounding the ship. Smooth, translucent walls were shining with the pale lilac light. Inside, the merging into a continuous strip of dark, then, blurring with something white and light green slowly moved some shades. No windows. No doors. Anyway, there were no any holes or openings. It was the monolithic buildings flying high into the purple sky. Who knows, maybe it was not at all the building!
And then came the moment when the ship stopped its movement. Max and Jennifer carried away by the contemplation of wonderful scenery did not immediately realize that the ship of Tondor had landed. They were on the surface of Pluto.
 

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