SUNGLASSES AND ROCKETS Part 1 : New Moon

THERE IT IS...

It was a tense situation. The Discovery descended, as if out of control, down a steep bank made up out of rocks that looked more like enormous steps. You could say that we banged and clanged our way down. Each turn of the wheels was a violent jolt marked by a severe shake to the vehicle's chassis. In spite of it being just 11:45, in the depths of the narrow crevice, it was dark all around. The annoying fact that there was a downpour made visibility that much harder. If it weren't for the vehicle's halogen headlights, we would have been making our way along almost blindly.

In a fit of desperation, I opened my window and stuck my head out, to look up. The rain pelted fiercely on my face. Even so, I managed to make out how far it was to the surface. Terrified, I realized that it was very far away. No less than some 260 feet! It was suicide to be where we were!

Suddenly the doctor turned towards the back row.

"Prepare the harpoons! We need to be ready to escape!"

I was finally hearing something that made sense!

Without any room for doubt, the harpoons would make do for scaling the walls of the cliff; each of their ropes supported up to 1,000 pounds of weight.

"We have to keep going!" the doctor's niece stubbornly insisted. "The mines are close by! And..."

"Staying alive is more important!" her uncle interrupted her. "Do as you're told."

Almost at that very instant, a lightning bolt flashed. Darwin and I obeyed at once.

It wasn't easy to find the harpoons in the middle of all the confusion, but we did it amazingly quickly. We didn't want to die underground!

"Doctor!" Darwin shouted, loading his harpoon. "Whenever you say!"

"Ready!" I seconded, as I frenetically finished loading the three other harpoons.

Vanessa still refused to take up her weapon. Ah! There's nothing as beguiling as a feisty woman!

"Uncle!" she shouted. "The mines are close! We should stay on the road! I insist!"

The doctor may have been eccentric, but he wasn't crazy. We had to get out of there.

"Maybe you're right..." the doctor responded, looking through his binoculars. "Felix, stay off the brakes."

I don't know what Moses Masterton had managed to see through such a shower. What I do know is that the indomitable scientist was crazy. And his niece too. Oh God! I had fallen in love with a crazy woman!

"But doctor!" Darwin objected. "This is nuts..."

We skidded dizzily downwards, with violent knocking all around us.

"Calm! We have to remain calm!"

The water was falling down the walls of the ravine in torrents, dragging stones and branches along with it. In a matter of seconds, it had formed a rapid current in the winter river that had cracked open. We were all in a state of alarm. The threat of an avalanche was in the air. Suddenly, we collided brutally. The impact threw me, seatbelt and everything else included, against Felix's seat. Fortunately, the harpoon I was holding in my hands fell to the floor. If it hadn't been for that, it surely would have speared me. Vanessa had pitched on top of me.

All considered, it wasn't going that badly for me.

"Oh!" she whispered in reaction. "I'm sorry, I..."

She pulled herself away, completely ruffled. Vanessa is mine, I thought, almost reflexively.

"I think..." she continued. "I think..."