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goes to the University, he will be the first.”
    “I’m sure that with your guidance, he will go.” The elder looked at me and nodded. He picked up his glass of orange juice and held it up in a toast.
    “Doctora, I am ready to answer your questions.”
    “Buddy tells me that you are a space traveler. Could you tell me about your experiences?” I asked.
    “I have been a star traveler since I was Miguel’s age. That was the first time I went to the stars. I was almost nine years old. I remember because I was worried when I was taken away that I would miss my birthday party. I was born on September 11, 1910. They took me two days earlier. I thought, ‘I will never see my ninth birthday.’” He rubbed his hands on his pants and laughed. “Now that I think about it, it sounds foolish. But I was not yet nine and I thought as a child.”
    “I think it is a normal reaction,” I replied. “I know how important birthday celebrations can be.”
    “That is true. We celebrate life. That is the reason why I worried about my birthday. I loved birthday parties, and I was afraid I would never see my family again.”
    “Tell me what you remember of your first abduction.”
    “Not much. I remember being taken into the sky by a bright light. I was alone at the time, and within minutes, I was in another place. It was a strange place. Metal everywhere. The walls were metal, and everything was a dull gray and cold to the touch. I remember thinking that this must be what it was like to freeze. I was cold, so cold. There were no hammocks, and I wonderedwhere the people slept. They led me down a long hall. A door opened and I walked into an area that was like a forest with trees and flowers. It was hot like my village. It smelled of damp soil and flowers. They led me to two other boys about my age, and we planted trees. The trees were from my village. We planted medicine leaves. I taught the boys how to plant them. We did this for several hours and then I was back to earth and my village.”
    “In time for your birthday,” I said.
    “Yes. In time for my birthday and I did not tell anyone what had happened. I told them I got lost and fell asleep. I thought it must have been a dream. It was not until it happened a second and third time that I realized it was really happening, and that I was going to a place in the sky. On the third trip, they took me during the day. I saw the disk for the first time in the daylight. It was like a cowboy hat, a sombrero, but it was silver. It was high above earth. It was so high that the Earth looked like the soccer ball. We were high. Each time I went there, I taught them about plants. I taught them as my grandfather had taught me about our medicine. They encouraged me to point out medicine plants to them in the forest. They would gently dig them up under my guidance, and later I would plant them in their garden in the sky.” He paused for a moment and smiled. “They made me feel important.”
    “Were the other boys human?” I asked.
    “They were not Maya. One had slanted eyes. One was dark, almost black. My favorite was a boy with very small hands—almost half my size. His skin was so white and his hair was white. He had green and yellow eyes that changed color with the light. He spoke a language I had never heard, and yet we all understood each other. There were many languages spoken there in the disk, but we all understood each other. It is still the same way today, and I have never understood how that can be. We all speak different languages, we are different colors, but we understand each other.”
    “Can you describe the disk in more detail?”
    “It was like a huge silver sombrero. It floated in the sky high above the Earth. It was lighted but the lights were greenisheverywhere but in the plant room. At night, I could look out and almost touch the stars. We were in space but it seemed like we just floated there. We were in no hurry. The disk was circular and there were living quarters