SUNGLASSES AND ROCKETS Part 1 : New Moon

TO THE COLONIAL CITY

We left the doctor's room exactly at 6:30 p.m. We immediately boarded a small tour bus. Due to the haste with which we left, we had to help the bellboys put the many pieces of luggage that Dr. Masterton had with him in the rows between the seats.

We had only stayed in the luxury hotel for seven hours! And we had worked. We hadn't even had lunch or left the room; we didn't have time. Under the guidance of Moses Masterton, we spent the whole day calibrating electronic devices and radiation detectors. In a matter of hours we had become familiar with portable Fieldspec detectors for uranium 235 and plutonium 239; scintillation Bicron probes that detected alpha and beta particles; Berthold ionization chambers for the detection of gamma and beta radiation; and Ludlum proportional counters, among many other sophisticated instruments. The calibration was done in part with radioactive sources of cobalt 60, cesium 137, and americium 241, which the doctor kept in heavy lead cylinders.

The rest of the equipment was meticulously inspected by Felix Gonzales. You could say that the work the four of us had done was frenetic. The one time I got a chance to take a quick breather, I seized the opportunity to take a peek out the window, and—tough luck!—when I looked towards the pool I saw that the girls were leaving, the sun was setting, and the reddish rays of the afternoon light were filtering into the room. I lost myself in a nostalgic funk. I so desperately wanted to see Vanessa. But she was so far away and I had no way of finding her.

I needed therapy, there was no doubt about it.

But instead of getting it, I now found myself sitting in the last row of a small tour bus on its way to the city of Antigua, about which I knew absolutely nothing, except that it hid a certain kind of space complex: a Bat Cave.

That fact added to my worries. But I had to remain calm. If everything turned out okay, tomorrow at this same time I would be back in D.C.

"Tomorrow we'll have time to enjoy ourselves," Darwin said yawning. "Tomorrow is the big day."

"Of course," I replied, trying to look relaxed.

Although the doctor had made it clear to us that we were only going to accompany him to the old nuclear silo, 45 minutes away from the place where we had the reception, in reality I didn't know what to make of it all. The unexpected task of calibrating strange devices used to detect radiation gave me food for thought...

The situation was serious.

As if to soothe my disquiet, a dense cloak of fog covered the highway. The strong halogen headlights of the bus hardly penetrated more than about six feet of the thick haze. The driver decided to go slowly.

It seemed like I was the only one who was worried. It didn't take Darwin long to fall asleep, and Felix and the doctor, sitting in the first row, seemed oblivious to the worries that our difficult path was stirring up in me. They were absorbed in calculating who-knows-what on their lap-tops. As for me, apprehension made me feel like I had to stay alert. I relentlessly kept watch out the window.

After half an hour of travel, the fog gradually started to abate, until it was possible to see all around us. Before long, the black silhouettes of the thick cypress forests of the mountains appeared at the edges of the road. The outlined trees were the only things that stood out amidst the semi-darkness. Hills and slopes, their curves pronounced, followed one after the other along our path.

An hour of traveling went by, and buildings started to appear; they were of a Colonial-Spanish style, almost in ruins, and they lined the edges of the road.

In a few minutes we will arrive in Antigua Guatemala the driver announced.

At those words, I felt goose bumps all over my body.