SUNGLASSES AND ROCKETS Part 1 : New Moon

PANTS?

Darwin and I kept moving instinctively to the right. Behind us, fragments of the fragile ledge went tumbling down. Felix and the doctor were quickly pulling the packages along.

The price of taking one wrong step was death. We had to keep calm.

But it wasn't possible.

My friend and I slowly began to cry out in unison.

"Quiet!" the doctor reprehended. "Don't come off the wall!"

We were in such a hurry that, almost without realizing it, we bumped against the backpacks and ended up on top of them. We were suddenly detained.

"There's no more room!" the doctor declared.

The length of the ledge had been reduced to a few feet. Some packages fell down into empty space.

"We have to think quickly!" Vanessa exclaimed, held in place by her uncle. Felix prepared the harpoon. This little shelf isn't going to last much longer! Darwin guaranteed.

The five of us found ourselves squashed together like tinned sardines. In the middle of this danger, a brilliant idea came to me:

"Let's go back through the crevice!" I proposed.

"Never!" Uncle Jonas and his blonde companion responded.

"But doctor," I insisted, "the ledge is going to give way at any moment!"

"According to my calculations, we have six min..."

Crack. Crack, you could hear, and my feet found themselves treading air. I fell. I saw something appear before my eyes: a pair of legs. In one reflexive movement I grabbed them with all my might while we fell, unbalanced, at terrifying speed down the flat wall. The incline must have been almost vertical. In the middle of the confusion I heard grunts of effort, and scratches; I felt arms encircling my neck, and the next thing was a rope that passed under my arms and almost in the same instant you could hear a shot . It was followed by a sharp buzzing noise, which ended in a deafening metallic screech.

A violent jolt was the inconvenient end to my fall. The rope tensed at once and dug into my skin. An instant later I was hanging from it, dangling as if I were a lead weight. I looked upwards. Some way above, Felix was fixing a rope around his waist. No doubt the harpoon had plunged into one of the girders in the ceiling. Someone had seized me by the waist and was crushing me as if they wanted to juice me. I had the air squeezed out of me.

On top of which, the arms around my neck were pressing me so tightly that they began to strangle me.

"Don't let go of me!" I heard them say in my ear.

It was Vanessa's voice.

"I won't!" I exclaimed.

I confess that, many times I had imagined the beautiful girl giving me a great big hug. Although I admit that at that point in time it was more like my beloved was asphyxiating me.

"Uncle?" Vanessa called out.

"Here below!" the doctor responded.

"Is everyone all right?" Darwin asked.

It dawned on me that three people were hanging from me. My friend's voice vibrated against my squashed stomach. And the doctor, in turn, was hanging from him. And the niece had caught on to my neck. What torture!

"Don't let go!" continued Darwin, who was surely starting to pull down my pants.

"I can't.." I coughed.

"Hold on!" the doctor shouted from below.

After several jerks, Felix's voice was heard:

"Hold on tightly," he ordered.

At once, the sound of gears broke out all around. We started a slow descent. Felix had managed to activate the harpoon's firing motor. Almost at the same time, there was a burning smell in the air. We stopped suddenly.

"The motor burnt out," Felix announced.

"We'll do it the old-fashioned way!" the doctor interrupted at once. "On the count of three, we'll all swing towards the wall!"

We obeyed. The rope began vibrating. And the vibrations quickly became more intense, resulting in a booming echo that sounded throughout the entire vault. It was the sound of the harpoon hitting against the girder in the ceiling again and again, marking our wild swinging to and fro.

"I can't take it anymore!" Darwin whimpered.

But the one that really couldn't stand it any longer was me. I felt like a tube of toothpaste: all squashed out. I couldn't get my breath. As if that weren't enough, a wave of nausea started to wash over me.

"I think I'm going to throw up..." I blurted out.

"Hold on a bit longer," Vanessa whispered to me, and she sealed the plea by giving me a kiss on the ear.

"Another one," I heard myself request.

I got another kiss. My dreams were coming true. It was a shame that it was happening at that unfortunate moment...

Up until then, the swinging back and forward had gotten so that we were hitting against the wall. We mechanically pushed ourselves off with our feet each time we hit. The shoving produced a refreshing breeze on my beet-red face. We got closer to the little steps on the wall of the building. Then we swung away again.

Each swing got us closer, but it was never enough.

In spite of the gigantic sweep we made with our movements, we didn't reach the metallic structure. We were short by several feet. Clearly, the rope wasn't long enough.

After three failedattempts to reach the steps, the doctor made a new proposal:"Darwin! Undo your pants!"