From Venus's diary
TV:... "No new abductions were reported in the last sixteen hours, suggesting that the few abductions recorded yesterday night may have been isolated episodes. All the signalled cases happened within the New Sixam borders, while the other Nations are potentiating their aerial defences as a precaution. During her speech, the President..."
Venus: ...
We've all been trying to find an explanation for what happened all night long, but it's something so absurd that we don't even know what to do. Those old spaceships hadn't been used by anyone for decades now and abductions seemed to belong to a distant past, so what happened a few hours ago was like a bolt from the blue for all of New Sixam.
Steve was just there, by my side, it seemed like the best day of our lives. And instead at that moment I didn't even know where he was, if he was injured or not, or if he even was still...
Cassy: By putting together the data from the satellites and the radars, sooner or later someone will find the information we need. There is no aircraft that is invisible to every detection device, it's just a matter of time.
Cassy: You know what? I'm going to the space command center now, I want to see the satellite recordings collected last night by myself! At least one of the sensors must have measured something, isn't it? Would you like to come as well?
If there's one thing my sister and I have in common, it's that neither of us is good at sitting still and waiting. We don't know if our work will be of any use, but this will not be enough to convince us to stand here and do nothing!
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From Cassy's diary
Venus and I spent all day at the space command centre, we've both registered there as new astronaut recruits since our graduation. We have been told that our first tasks will consist of short space trips to collect raw materials from the main asteroid belt of the Solar System. New Sixam is incredibly resource-poor, so mining minerals in space seemed like the obvious choice for our Nation.
Today, however, we focused on something entirely different, just like the rest of the centre: we checked every single line registered in the last 12 hours by any satellite put in orbit by New Sixam. It was exhausting work, especially if you add it to a completely sleepless night, but what else could we do?
I felt so tired I felt like I could have fallen asleep at any moment, yet I still couldn't stop looking for a solution. I felt like when all the pieces of the puzzle are already available, and it was so frustrating not being able to put them back in place!
Unless...
Everyone knows that those shuttles have an AI that automatically uses teleportation for distances greater than 10,000 km, this had been the secret behind the space exploration carried out by our ancestors since ever. So, everyone just assumed that those spaceships had surely teleported towards who knows where the moment they disappeared from our records, I gave it for granted all day long as well. However...
No, they couldn't have gone very far. And the idea I had in mind suddenly gave me a rush of energy, it wasn't time to go to sleep yet!
Venus had thought about it for a few more moments, before leaping to her feet and running towards the rocket. There was no time to waste, not even to request official permission at the space centre, and logic told us that the place Steve was most likely to be at the moment was just around the corner, in the distance scale of the universe...
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From Venus's diary
I don't know how Cassy managed to be the first to have that idea, looking back now it seemed like such an obvious solution... The closest hiding place to Earth had been right in front of us all night, what could it be if not the Moon?
Or, to be more precise, a cave right under its surface. Our sonars took a while to locate it, and the radio signal receivers cleared all our doubts. Someone was hiding right down there, it was clear at that point.
There was no time to waste, we had to search around as quickly as possible. At that point Steve had been abducted for more than a day, who knows what could have happened to him...
So we decided to split, to be able to check on a larger area in half the time.
Cassy: (relieved) Steve, you're fine!
Steve: Cassy! You don't know how happy I am to see you!
Meanwhile Cassy had already warned me via radio, I was so relieved that it didn't even seem real to see him like this again, in one piece!
Steve looked relieved to see us there with him, but I could still feel how frightened he must have been after the abduction. What had happened to him? Who did this? And...
Cassy: Ok, let's also put together the other guys who have been abducted and...
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