This was because, while small, the Cocos (Keeling) Islands occupy a very strategic position. In World War II they hosted a vital radio base and today— especially since the rise of China and its activities in Africa—it monitors air, sea and satellite traffic over the Indian Ocean.

With Jack and Wally in the dim space was Jack’s good friend, General Eric Abrahamson.

Tall, bespectacled, articulate and with multiple degrees from several top universities, General Abrahamson couldn’t have been more different from Wally.

But he had one quality that meant they got along fine: Eric Abrahamson didn’t care who you were or where you came from. If you were a decent person who knew their stuff, you were welcome in his company.

He greeted Wally warmly.

Abrahamson was Jack’s point-of-contact in the Australian military. Due to the highly unusual nature of Jack’s missions over the last twenty years—otherworldly shafts of light lancing down from the sun or dark stars mentioned in ancient texts—Jack required a ranking officer with considerable general knowledge and an open mind. Abrahamson had both.

The three men sat with a radio technician in the Australian Signals Directorate’s fortified basement underneath the airfield on West Island.

Jack had arrived there in the Sky Warrior overnight with Wally and his hard drive.

Paranoid as he was, Wally had encrypted his hard drive very securely.

It had required a military-grade decryption program to crack it and thus listen to the messages that Wally had intercepted during his astronomical eavesdropping.

In the dark basement, Jack, Abrahamson and Wally listened to it.

They heard two voices speaking in Mandarin, talking about something very unusual: the landing of a remote-controlled vehicle on the surface of the Moon.

Once translated, it went like this: