Tomy and the Planet of Lies by Erich von Däniken Read Free Book Online Page A

truck lurched, covering us with sand and dust, and then came to a standstill.
    The motor stalled.
    Before the driver climbed down from the cab, I registered Tomy’s weak voice behind me.
    â€œHave you got anything to drink?” he asked.
    â€œOnly brackish water,” I replied automatically and felt so overjoyed that I could have yodeled from happiness. Tomy was back! He squatted upright in the piled up junk on the back seat, looking tired, dried out and asked:
    â€œHas Mahmud arrived yet?”
    â€œ Who? ”
    â€œThe driver of the army vehicle!”
    â€œYou mean him over there?”
    Tomy smiled tiredly. A heavily built man in beige-brown army fatigues and black laced up boots climbed down out of the truck. A wild-looking mustache and 5-millimeter stubble covered half of his face. From underneath his raven-black hair and large, dark eyes with bushy eyebrows poked a beak-like nose from the leathery skin. I then noticed the two pale silver stars on his epaulettes: the man must be some kind of low- ranking officer. Tomy freed himself from the chaos of the car’s interior and called to him. It sounded like Arabic. At least, Marc and I understood nothing.
    Mahmud, as the bearded man was called, dug three plastic bottles out of his cab and handed them round wordlessly. Before I put my bottle to my lips, I looked over to Tomy, who now stood behind our shattered rear window. He tipped almost the entire contents of his bottle over his head and body before taking a few swigs. Then he spoke Arabic again to Mahmud. He fetched a crate containing 24 liters of mineral water from the back of the truck, 20 cans of cola wrapped in plastic film and a ten-liter container of distilled water. Without saying a word he started untying the cloth roof from over the hood of the car, unscrewed the battery’s terminals and began expertly filling up the main battery. Then he emptied several bottles into the radiator, throwing the empties to the floor afterwards and then made his way towards the broken rear window. Tomy said something in Arabic and then asked us to give the stranger a hand. He plucked the remaining bits of glass from out of the frame, took a waxed cloth, and cut it to the right shape using his army knife. Marc and I held the cloth in place while Mahmud took a paintbrush and smeared some stinking black substance that looked like tar around the edges.
    After a few minutes, the cloth was firmly stuck in place. Then Mahmud conjured up a battery and jumper cables from somewhere within his vehicle and attached everything to our battery. Tomy, who had been chatting intermittently with Mahmud, asked me to try the starter. The car started first time. I left the motor running to charge up the battery. Mahmud gave us a military salute, called something to Tomy that sounded something like “salaam” and “shukran,” climbed back into his monstrous vehicle and roared off, leaving a massive cloud of dust behind.
    Tomy’s body regenerated very quickly and we silent witnesses, who had stood around like mute boys the whole time, finally managed to get out the questions that we had been burning to ask the whole time.
    â€œHave you got any vitamins and minerals here? We should all take some,” began Tomy, before he told us—after taking the tablets—his incredible story.
    Around a hundred kilometers from here was the border and just a bit further was an Iranian Army barrack. He had taken over the camp commandant and explained about our predicament…
    â€œJust like that?” snapped Marc disbelievingly. “He just let you come in and take him over and you gave him orders?”
    I noticed quickly that Tomy put a lot of effort into explaining things that we found difficult to understand. He was patient: not exactly one of my best qualities. The human consciousness, he explained, understands everything immediately. It is connected with multiple consciousnesses in a kind of network