SUNGLASSES AND ROCKETS Part 1 : New Moon

AMEN

Hardly had the plane taken off, when I fell into a deep sleep. Darwin had to wake me up when we switched planes in Miami. I was surprised to be feeling a bit livelier. That was probably from the hour of sleep I had gotten, and the hot Florida climate. Or perhaps I had begun to resign myself to my fateful destiny.

We got on board Taca Flight 320 immediately, on our way to the surely exotic country of Guatemala.

I sat down next to the window. I was more awake there, and even felt cheered up enough to chat pleasantly with my friend. Surprisingly, Felix sat down next to me. Darwin, who was behind him, looked at me in worry. He felt like he had to sit down beside the doctor, in another row. Surely Felix Gonzales was not concerned with trivialities such as a seat on a plane.

At any rate, it was time to socialize and at the same time to find out more about this enigmatic person.

"Hi," I greeted him, smiling. "We met yesterday at George Washington University. I'm a friend of Moses Masterton."

"Hi," Felix answered shortly. "That wasn't George Washington."

That was it. He kept his eyes fixed straight ahead, indifferently. I tried to strike up a conversation again, after take-off. Felix had taken a lap-top out of his small black briefcase, which he seemed to have all of his luggage in. It was time to break the ice.

"So you and the doctor are friends," I said cheerfully.

"Yes," he responded, distracted, without taking his eyes away from the computer screen.

"And how did you meet?"

Felix clicked a couple of buttons. It seemed he had not heard me, or he was pretending not to have heard me. I watched him for a while. I decided to lean against the window.

Although it may have been true that Mexican blood ran through his veins, Felix Gonzales was a complete contradiction to whatever personality trait could identify him as Latin American. He was neither sociable, nor talkative, nor friendly. To say he was a man of few words was to put it mildly. You could say that Felix practiced an economy of movement, gestures, and expression, as he did of lifestyle and conduct.

Be that as it were, his silence helped me fall into a deep sleep.

The seatbelt, I thought I heard after a few minutes. The seatbelt I heard again. I did not think I was dreaming. I rubbed my eyes and looked at Felix.

"We're going to land," he warned.

I mechanically fastened my seatbelt.

I looked out the window. We were going through a vast sea of grey clouds. Between the isolated patches of fog, the peculiarities of the country, which was in the heart of the American continent, began to appear: enormous dark-and-light-green mountains, one after another, demarcated by the rectangular divisions of crop fields at their bases...and almost no plains in sight. It was primarily mountainous countryside.

After a few minutes, modern buildings could be seen, alternating with houses and old buildings in the middle of an enormous valley. It looked like a model. The capital city, I thought.

You are asked to turn off cell phones, lap-tops, and any other electronic equipment. We will be landing in five minutes. Please fasten your seatbelts, the loudspeaker blared; the announcement reminded me that I was far from home, touching down in another country, and the only thing I knew about it was that in some out-of-the-way place here there was an old nuclear silo that now harbored a mysterious ship that would travel to the dark side of the Moon. I also knew we had to find it within 42 hours, or rather, before midnight on Thursday.

The trip to the Moon, according to what the doctor had told us, lasted about three days; of course, once we had found the questionable space comlex, Darwin and I were free. We would be back in DC on Friday morning...if everything turned out okay.

I started to pray.