SUNGLASSES AND ROCKETS Part 1 : New Moon

EVERYTHING READY

"Swim?" I repeated in surprise.

"Perfect," the doctor responded, and he looked us straight in the eye: "Look after Vanessa."

My heart leaped. I felt like he was talking to me alone.

"Of course, doctor Masterton," I heard myself answer. "I'll protect her with my life! I swear!"

The doctor nodded his head and gave us a few slaps on the back.

"We will board the Bat in 90 minutes," he informed us as he headed towards another extensive panel of computers. "The launch-off window will begin in exactly 114 minutes and 18 seconds."

We traipsed after him.

It was difficult not to be curious about electronic marvels such as those of the enormous control room in which we found ourselves. My inquisitive gaze fell upon a huge pane of glass standing straight up like a screen in the middle of the room. The image of a world map, labeled with geographic coordinates, covered the entire surface of the glass. The continents appeared in various different tones of green, and the oceans were likewise marked by shades of blue. Lighted red and orange dots were spread out over the land and sea. Some flashed and others were steady.

I kept walking, although I went slowly. The enormous screen had captured my attention. I easily found our location on the map: the Atlantic Coast of Guatemala, next to the Gulf of Honduras. There was an orange point of light in the region. It wasn't flashing. Did that point mark the existence of the Bat Cave in which we found ourselves?

Another orange light, also steady, appeared on Guatemalan territory as well. Could it be the other abandoned silo in Ciudad de Antigua? Were the flashing orange lights space rockets launch -pads?

There was also a red flashing light in a region close to the border between Guatemala and Mexico. Evidently, the lights extended snake-like along the whole American continent. There were even a few in the oceans. But the red lights were the ones that were dispersed all over the globe: America, Africa, Asia, Europe and Oceania.

Did those red lights stand for nuclear-headed missiles? It frightened me just to think about it. There were an awful lot of them. With just a quick glance you could see that the red lights outweighed the orange by quite a margin. You could easily count the orange ones. I felt overwhelmed. Such scary speculations made my hair stand on end.

The doctor's booming voice snapped me out of my morbid thoughts.

"Felix," he called, "How are we doing?"

"Combustion levels optimal, plutonium levels safe, amount of oxygen inside the ship..."

The checklist continued for quite a while. There was so much information that it was hard work for me to digest it all. It seemed like everything was going well.

Suddenly Felix went quiet.

"Give me a few minutes," you heard him ask after a pause, only to return to his silence once more, accompanied only by insistent typing.

I admit that Darwin and I were no more than simple spectators. We were just standing there waiting for lift-off time so that we could then abandon the space complex.

"Gordo," Darwin said, glancing at his watch, "in 110 minutes we'll be abandoning the base."

"It's incredible," I agreed, marveling, "I never imagined we'd witness a Bat taking off towards the Moon!"

The mission that had almost cost us over lives was just a few minutes away from its end. Of course, we had to swim to get back to the hotel...but we'd worry about that detail when the time came. What was for sure was that there was about to be a spaceship launch.

Yes, the gods had bent under the iron will of a band of bold warriors. We had made it.

At that moment Felix got up from his seat. It looked like everything was ready.

"We don't have enough energy to open the cave's hatch," he declared.

"We can fix that," the doctor responded from another panel.

"And besides that," Felix continued, "we can't count on having the power necessary to fire up the rockets. There's not enough electricity."

"Damnation!"