"Sandra! Where is Victor? And Helen?" Commander John Koenig snaps.
"Uh... They are still in the pool, Commander, we were swimming..." replies Sandra Benes, the data analyst. Of course, no reader want to see Victor Bergman naked in the pool, so let's leave him where he is and continue the story with Sandra Benes quickly covering herself to join David Kano and Commander John Koenig, fully operative.
"Don't you see? The planet looks like Earth! Where the hell are you now, two guys ? Kano, I'm amazed at you and your computer!"
"Sorry, the computer didn't report it," replies David Kano shyly.
"What you say, Kano?" Commander John Koenig continues "You can clearly see Africa, Saudi Arabia, and the Indian Ocean! And under the clouds we look at Europe! Only the colors changes, because the sea is white and the rocky crust is pink." "Commander," adds Sandra Benes, "spectroscopic analysis reveals that the sea is calcium hydroxide, which is white. The rocky crust, however, is quartz, and takes pink color for presence of calcium. These dark clouds are methane."
"Yes," David Kano reflects "maybe we know too little about cosmic space, but the electronic archives point to only one possible explanation: the Black Box Concept."
"What?" asks Commander John Koenig
"So, Commander, i will explain everything to you," David Kano continues.
"The Black Box Concept is commonly used in electronics. Simply, when a machine is set up to perform certain operations, the end-user is interested only to the result, not to the internal mechanism to achieve the result, understand ? In computer engineering, it's called "encapsulation" and it's a concept that applies to software too. When a programmer, or a data analyst like Sandra, set up a function, then, in a container, it's important to know what the input and output will be, but internal code, for safety reasons, is hide to all; you can write your code in Assembler, Cobol, or you can write "ABRACADABRA", but no one will care about."
"Okay. And the planet?" asks Commander John Koenig mindful.
"Well..." David Kano continues, "the Black Box is also valid for organic bodies, not just electronic ones. Look at the screen! In 1998, on planet Earth, before the Moon was ejected into outer space, dead aliens have been found. Well, outside they are similar to us: with arms, legs, face, and head. But inside, their internal organs are strange, inconceivable. This is because the natural environment of every planet affects only the outside of the bodies, to shape a humanoid, strong to survive, but inside they remains "black boxes".
Sandra fixes the Kano's point:
"Good! The computer has correlated the planet and the Black Box Concept, applying the concept to celestial bodies as the organic and electronic bodies too. In practice, the third planet in a solar system similar to ours, must have an outside structure identical to Earth, but inside remains a Black Box, incompatible with human life."
Sandra Benes tries to convince the Commander: "Aliens may look similar to us outside, but completely different inside. They have tiny external differences: they can have four arms instead of two, or six fingers instead of five."
"It's clear!" the Commander finally exclaims "The planet looks like Earth, but it isn't. At close range, we can see that Italy has no islands! Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica are missing! Furthermore, there are two England, one above the France and one above the Spain, but Ireland doesn't exist!"
"That's all ? No ! " says David Kano "the aliens don't appreciate our incursion, and launched four warheads at us!"
Just at the end of the story, occurs a gift for the alphans:
"It's water! These missiles fired a load of water!" exclaims Commander John Koenig.
"Maybe because the water is deadly for them!" says Sandra Benes.
"If they are calcium, then water will melt them like plaster."
"Yes," concludes David Kano, "that's exactly the Black Box Concept, My Dear Commander. On the outside, the missiles looks as ours, on the inside, they contains water."
THE END
Story and drawing by Leo001 about the characters and the fiction of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson.
