by M. J. Konkel
Two reasons we had booked the flight. Neither was the lightning fast time to Beijing, although that was the main reason for most of those also aboard, the wealthy business people. Perhaps, some of those business travelers did it for the prestige too. So they would be able to say their time is so important they have to take hopper flights.
Our first reason though was it was the closest I could come to showing Joan what it was like for me when I piloted one of the rockets up for the Air Force. She wasn’t looking forward to the high g’s of take-off. But then, as we would coast through apogee, she would be weightless for forty-five minutes. And she definitely looked forward to that.
The second reason was that Joan would get to see the edge of space with her own eyes. The blackness of space and the vast curvature of the Earth below her. And, above the curvature, she would see the thin veil of the Earth’s atmosphere. The same atmosphere that seems so thick when you just look up from your back yard. I’ve never really seen a picture that did the view from space justice. Some things you just have to see with your own eyes to get its full worth, and I wanted her to see it with her own eyes.
The passenger section of the hopper was designed with large window ports for each set of passengers, larger than what was next to most airline seats. I guess it was part of GSE’s appeal to their customers. A seat with a view. I insisted Joan sit next to the window while I took the aisle seat next to her.
Joan had studied at Berkeley as a radio astronomer and then joined the SETI program after her doctorate, working at the Allen Telescope Array at Hat Creek, about 290 miles northeast of San Francisco.
That was until about six month before our wedding when the program had begun to shut down. Focused efforts had been going on since the 1980’s, and, after nearly half a century, there still was not a single definitive extraterrestrial signal detected. Even after ramping up, automating the searches, and examining into the visible and ultraviolet bands of the electromagnetic spectrum, nothing. The money dried up when the chorus echoing Fermi’s paradox grew louder. If there were extraterrestrial civilizations out there, where were they? Why can’t we find even one small solid piece of evidence for them? No, the WOW signal doesn’t count. Too short, couldn’t be found again and there are other possible explanations for it. We had known for decades that planets are very abundant throughout the universe. Here in the 2030’s, we even found life on another planet, Mars. Although the jury is still out about whether the deep underground microbes there arose independently from Earth or were transferred between the planets by hitching a ride inside some ejected impact debris. Maybe, advanced life forms are unique to Earth or at least extremely rare. After all, even here nothing big enough to be recognized as an animal existed for the first 85% of our planet’s existence. It was only a microbial world before then.
I diverged a bit there, but the point is Joan had spent almost her entire adult life pointing antennae into space. It seemed she should be able to at least just once actually touch it, figuratively speaking.
So there we were, holding hands as the Bullfrog accelerated down the runway. It took off just like any airplane would. Joan smiled at me one last time before peering out the window.
We were barely off the runway when disaster struck.
I don’t remember anything of the accident. I was later told that it was a manufacturing defect, a rarity in this day and age, in a seal to the kerosene tanks.
I woke up in the hospital many hours later with a concussion, burns over half my body, and minus half a foot.
Half of the eighteen passengers and the pilots did not make it. Joan was among them.
We were told it was a miracle any of us survived. It did not seem like a miracle to me. Joan was dead. And my career as an Air Force pilot was over from that day forward. I knew it as soon as I looked down at my foot.
*****
Back at the cliff.
For six months, I have grieved now. But was I really grieving for Joan or for myself at this point? Maybe it was time to stop feeling sorry for myself. I was still alive. Unless my rope suddenly let me down, sending me crashing onto those yawning boulders below. Joan, I was pretty sure, would have wanted me to live the rest of my life with the same intensity I had when she was alive. I suddenly realized I owed her that. I owed it to myself.
I glanced at my rope. Luckily I was a hundred feet up instead of thirty. More rope that had stretched to cushion my fall. I breathed in the cool air. Low humidity. I looked around behind me at the ocean. I realized, once I opened my eyes, that it was a splitter day.
I climbed.
Chapter 3
Eleven months after the accident, I hastily threw a few items into a bag that had already been mostly packed for the next PR tour, and I dashed out the door. The general had not left me time to do much more than that. I would have gone with the clothes on my back if I had to. I was excited like I hadn’t been in a long time.
The self-driving taxi got me down to Runway Two with under ten minutes to spare. The general was not there.
But my lift was, and I was surprised to see it was a Boeing C-17 Globemaster IV. To say the Globemaster is a large plane is a bit of an understatement. With four huge turbofan jet engines, the C-17 is a beast, used for hauling troops and equipment. Up to almost two hundred thousand pounds of payload in its belly.
An Air Force officer waited at the bottom of the stairway of the C-17 as I exited the driverless taxi. She saluted me as the taxi rolled away. “Major Danger?” she asked.
“It’s Danger.” I corrected her pronunciation and returned the salute. The salutes were purely courtesy since we were the same rank.
“Noted. I’m Major Ablah Muhammad. As soon as you’re aboard, we’ll be taking off.” She extended her hand, and I gave it a quick shake before walking past.
“Is the general already aboard?” I asked as I climbed the steps into the plane.
“It’ll be just us and the co-pilot,” she answered. “You can stow your bag and take the second officer seat.”
I glanced to my right upon entering and spotted several large wooden crates strapped down. I couldn’t help but wonder if they had anything to do with whatever mission I was to be sent on. I tossed my bag into a bin and cinched the netting over it as Ablah pulled a lever down, and the exit door automatically swung up and closed. She then pulled a latch over it, securing it for the flight. Meanwhile, I headed up to my assigned seat behind and across from the first officer’s seat. The co-pilot was already seated in front of my seat.
“Major, this is Captain Castro,” Ablah said for introductions as she squeezed past me and sat herself into the pilot’s seat.
The co-pilot twisted and offered her hand to me. I shook it before I sat down.
“Those boxes back there going to Homey too?” I asked.
“Yep,” Captain Castro answered.
“Any idea what’s in them?”
“Ablah asked and the loadmaster said, quote, ‘it’s above your frickin’ clearance level.’ So, no idea,” Captain Castro answered.
“You don’t know either, Major?” Major Muhammad asked.
“No, ma’am,” I answered. “I don’t even know what the mission is. I’m to be filled in at Homey.” I knew the mission involved me and a space flight, but if the pilots didn’t have clearance to know what was in the boxes, I decided it best not to let them know what little I knew of my role. That was probably classified as well.
“Shit!” Captain Castro muttered, then turned her head back toward me. “The major cannot swear, but I can. And I know she’s just as pissed as I am about it.”
“Yeah. I hate that no one aboard knows what we’re hauling,” Major Muhammad agreed. “If something goes wrong, it’s nice to know what’s in the back. But we have our orders, and we’ve been cleared for take-off.”
My thoughts were momentarily on the crates until I spotted lightning out the windshield ahead of us.
“Get ready for a bumpy ride, Major,” Major Muhammad said.
&n
bsp; “You can call me Austin. How bad is this system supposed to be?” I asked, wishing I had paid closer attention to the weather forecast. Before the accident, I always had known the forecasts. I was going to have to be more on the ball.
“Call me Ablah. It’s a big system with high winds. I was hoping that we could get above it before it arrived, but it looks like we’ll be flying right into it.”
“Is that a sound decision?” I asked.
“Sound or not, our orders are to get you to Homey before first light. No matter what,” Ablah yelled as we accelerated down the runway. “Oh, and since we’re on a first name basis, the captain goes by Kenz, short for McKenzie.”
The nose of the craft lifted up and the whole plane vibrated hard enough to rattle my teeth. We all knew this was the most dangerous part of the flight. A sudden strong downdraft could have the strength to push our nose down, causing us to plow a furrow into the runway. Not good for the survival of pilots immediately behind that nose.
Lightning flashed again outside, and a booming thunderclap resounded throughout the cabin almost immediately afterward. The nose of the plane dipped, and I grabbed the arms of the seat, fearing we were about to crash.
The nose came back up. But the plane still flew like we were driving fast down a road full of potholes. And then we were climbing, although it still felt like a jackhammer was being used on the plane. Over the next few minutes, the rattling lessened, and the plane leveled out.
“You okay back there?” Ablah asked.
“Not my worse ride,” I replied.
“I’ve been in downdrafts before but never when I was still over a runway like that,” Ablah said. “We were lucky our load on this trip is light. I don’t know if I could have gotten the nose back up with a hundred tons in the back.”
“I was in one where we dropped for a full minute once,” Kenz said. “Hauling troops to Egypt for an exercise. I think some of those guys in the back soiled themselves on that one.”
“What about you Austin? Worst one?” Ablah asked.
“Worst turbulence? My second trip down on the X-37C. Bad enough it gave the pilot a concussion. I was the co-pilot and had to take over piloting.” I didn’t mention my worst flight. The one eleven months ago.
“You’re a space pilot?” Kenz questioned. “How many times have you been up?” I heard envy in her voice. Every pilot wished they could go up at least once.
“Twelve trips,” I answered. I didn’t tell her I was an ex-pilot. She was unable to see through my boot that part of my foot was missing. Of course, the general had made it sound like I was no longer an ex-pilot.
“Do you like music, Austin,” Kenz asked.
“Sure,” I said. “Anything, but bubblegum.”
“Good. I got some new stuff from Reconstruction Zone that just came out. This first one’s called ‘Space Trekkin’.”
Suddenly, the cockpit filled with guitar riffs and deep base. The tune’s basically a cover of the old Deep Purple song “Space Truckin’” with a few of the words changed. I wondered if Kenz had chosen that one especially for me.
Continued in Dangerous First Step
About the Author
M.J. Konkel was born and raised in rural western Wisconsin. He had a brief military stint in the U.S Army and then went to school in Minnesota where he earned a B.S. and Ph.D. in chemistry. After living in New Jersey for a while, he is back in western Wisconsin with his wife, two kids, and assortment of animals.
