Pillar to the Sky (22 page)

“Dinner at eight,” Franklin said.

The Brit pointed to the door leading out of the vast open building.

Victoria, with a shout of delight, was already heading for the door, but Eva protectively snagged her. She had already gone through one white-knuckled moment this morning and now their somewhat crazed friend was pushing their daughter into another adventure?

Franklin smiled with delight, but then his features turned serious under Eva’s icy gaze and he looked at the Brit.

“You are one hundred percent sure this is safe?” he asked. “As I think about it now, looking at these three, I lose them and we are all screwed.”

“I’ll bet my life on it,” the designer said. “Besides, it’s good training, they’ll be spending a lot of time up there soon. Victoria, do you have your logbook with you? We might give you a few minutes in the copilot seat and it should be noted.”

The young woman was standing before one of the greatest heroes of the current aviation age.

“It’s on board Mr. Smith’s plane,” she said. “I can go get it.”

“No time for that now. But we’ll have the captain of your flight make a log entry after you get back. Now come on, either get a move on or we’ll call down and have them take off without you.”

The way Victoria looked at her parents, Gary knew they’d never be forgiven if they backed out. And besides, he wanted to go, too: it was a childhood dream about to be fulfilled.

The prospect even overwhelmed Eva’s protective motherly instincts, and the three ran out the door like kids embarking on the adventure of a lifetime … which it most certainly was.

9

The Flight

“Sixty seconds to separation and drop.”

Victoria was unable to even remotely contain her excitement. The six passenger seats were arrayed port and starboard along the bulkhead walls, each with its own window, surprisingly large, oval, and slightly bigger than a standard airplane window, while overhead were half a dozen more view ports, which at the moment showed only the underside wing of the mother ship that was hauling them up to the drop altitude of 53,000 feet.

For the last hour they had climbed in a wide circular pattern, clearing past 40,000 feet, near the maximum altitude for commercial airlines, then up through 50,000, their pilot announcing that if they looked forward, literally over his shoulder (there was no barrier or door between pilot, copilot, and the six passengers), they could actually begin to detect the curvature of the earth.

It was a far cry from the thrill of being nine hundred feet above sea level on her solo flight of this morning. Victoria grinned, wondering what Professor NeSmith would say at this moment! Her parents were sitting behind her, and she craned her head to try to look back, but was securely locked in with a four-point harness and could barely move. From the corner of her eye she caught a nervous smile on her mother’s face; behind her, her father was actually grinning and gave her a thumbs-up, which she returned.

The aisle separating the port and starboard side of the cabin was ninety inches wide, a bit more cramped than Franklin’s Gulfstream. Getting aboard and strapped in had required a bit of gymnastics, including maneuvering through a very narrow pathway between the six seats. Across from her was a middle-aged couple, Brits and relatives of the owner, accompanied by their son, Jason, a history major at Oxford with a keen interest in early aviation and turn-of-the-twentieth-century industrial technology who had interned with Franklin to do historical research on nineteenth-century technological advances and their societal impacts. She caught his eye; he was nervous, eyes wide, but forced a smile and gave her a thumbs-up as well.

“Thirty seconds to drop,” the pilot announced. “Keep your arms folded across your torso. Legs tucked in under your seats. The mother ship will nose over ten degrees and then release us. We’ll be in free fall for ten seconds, just like if you were skydiving, and then I’ll fire up our engines. Then the fun really starts! The pad screen mounted in the seat in front of you will provide readouts of engine performance, velocity, g-force, and elevation. Emergency sickness bags are in your right vest pocket.”

He chuckled.

“Don’t be embarrassed; use them if you need them, though you’ll all be OK: that little shot we gave you before you boarded usually does the trick.

“Ten seconds to drop,” and even as he spoke, the mother ship, with their craft still secured, nosed over into a shallow dive.

Victoria had been reluctant to take the shot, but when running over her flight experience, the medical tech urged it, assuring her she might feel a touch drowsy but not like the old days when the med would all but knock you out. She felt secure and ready.

“Edith, I don’t give a bloody damn if he is your cousin who built this damn contraption,” the elder Brit snapped to his wife, who just laughed with delight as they continued to nose over.

“Drop in five, four…”

Victoria looked out the window again. The pilot of the mother ship was looking down at them and actually gave a formal salute, which was quickly returned by their pilot.

“Drop!”

All six of the passengers let out a yell; for some it was a yell of delight, like that of passengers on a roller coaster topping the first climb; for a couple—and Victoria could tell that one was her mother—it was a yell of distress as
Enterprise
dropped free of the mother ship and let gravity do its work. Several seconds later Victoria was looking straight up at the mother ship through a topside window as it banked into a port-side turn at the same time
Enterprise
banked to starboard, the same as with a glider release. The free fall continued for ten seconds, nose pitching down, as they fell a couple of thousand feet and gradually started to level out, now well clear of the mother ship.

“Engine ignition in five … four…”

She took a deep breath, a bit nervous now. This was a hell of a lot different than being in a 172 or even Franklin Smith’s plane. She was strapped in as a passenger, with no control, and did not like the sensation.

And then the hybrid liquid-and-solid-fuel engine ignited.

A “Yeah haaa!” barely escaped her when within five seconds they accelerated up to over two and a half g’s.
Enterprise
, a glider only seconds before, was now a true rocket ship, accelerating with startling rapidity, nose above the horizon, and then just continuing to climb and climb, nose pointed up at forty-five degrees, still accelerating.

“Mach one and climbing!” the pilot announced, his calm voice audible through her headphones, the ship buffeting slightly, nose continuing to point up. A moment of tension on Victoria’s part: at this attitude, her Cessna 172 would be into a full stall and plummeting back to earth.

“Mach 2!”

She could sense the excitement of the pilot even though he was thoroughly trained, like the most seasoned airline pilot, to sound calm and nonplussed no matter what the situation. The nose of the ship continued to rise, the horizon ahead no longer visible. They were heading nearly straight up and still accelerating!

She looked out the side window and gasped. She could see the curvature of the earth! And above it, the light blue band of the atmosphere, the sky above it darkening. On the port side, the sun still shone, kissing the horizon, but on her side it was darkness. And then …

“Oh my God,” she whispered, even as the pilot announced they had just punched through 100,000 feet and were at full thrust, the velocity now at Mach 3, over 2,200 miles per hour. At this speed, if they leveled out, they could hop clear to New York in less than an hour.

The view from the pilot’s position though … The darkening sky was a sea of stars.

“Maximum velocity 2,423 miles per hour.”

They were heading nearly straight up, the three g’s of thrust keeping her wedged in her seat. The pilot offered a soft reassuring commentary, announcing the 150,000-foot mark, 200,000 …

In spite of the headphones she could hear her mother behind her, saying a prayer in Ukrainian, but then repeatedly exclaiming, “My God, ohhh my God,” not in fear, her voice filled with awe.

She wished she could turn around and see her father’s expression but already knew what it was. That wondrous nerdy childlike grin of his. So loving for his daughter, so reassuring when she needed it, so delighted when he knew she was happy, so calming in moments of stress and fear. Her heart filled with love knowing that he was embraced by his childhood dream to reach to the stars.

“Love ya, Dad!” she shouted, and she thought she could hear his reply.

“Five seconds to shutdown!”

It hit with a jolt. One second she was slammed back into her seat, pulling g’s, and then, with the shutdown of the engine, a second later weightless. They were not yet in free fall. The velocity of the ship would continue to carry it heavenward until gravity finally canceled out upward thrust. They would now enter a long parabolic curving climb and then eventual drop. But now came the six minutes or so of total freedom and she did feel a twinge of fear.
Can I handle this?

She had experienced free fall before and never really liked it when Brandon had put her through full-power stalls and accelerated stalls, and, contrary to what most flight instructors did these days, had even taken her through a spin. But at 3,000 feet up in a 172, the sensation lasted only a couple of seconds. In spite of her wild enthusiasm for this flight, the next few moments did scare her a bit.

She felt her stomach rise up. The deep undertone of the rocket astern fell silent. In fact, all was silence for a moment.

“Welcome to space,” their pilot announced, turning to look back at his passengers.

“Everyone OK? If so, give me a thumbs-up!”

She offered a thumbs-up. Turning to look back, she saw her mother, eyes wide with wonder, thumb up, and her father, that beautiful, childlike smile creasing his face. Jason on the other side by her father, thumb up. Poor Edith suddenly did not look so happy, though her husband, complaining a few minutes before, was laughing.

“Bloody hell, yes!” he cried.

“Unbuckle your harnesses, we have just under six minutes. A real good burn, folks, best yet; you are definitely the top of the club at 117 kilometers up, so we have a few extra seconds. Float about, but be careful. If you feel queasy, do the ground crew a favor and hang on to that bag, and don’t be ashamed to use it.”

The copilot, a young woman—Victoria guessed she was from India—floated up out of her seat, motioning for the others to join her, and, then pushing off from the forward cab, floated past them, laughing, knees tucked to chest, somersaulting over their heads. Victoria fumbled with her harness for a few seconds, unbuckled, took a deep breath, pushed off from her seat, rose up, head bumping against the ceiling, and tried to follow suit, but like a marble in slow motion she bounced back and forth against the cabin. But she didn’t care.

Is this is how angels feel?
she wondered.

Her father was up, and as she drifted past him she reached out a hand, brushing his face.

“How are you, Daddy?” she cried.

“I can’t believe it!” he shouted. She caught a glimpse of her mother. She had unbuckled but still held the armrests.

“Come on, Mom!” Victoria cried as her father floated up beside her.

Eva floated but, as if glued in place, hands resting on either side of the large overhead window, she was looking out, mesmerized. The sun to their port side was setting. To the east, hundreds of miles off, far, far below, the distant surface of the earth glowed with the lights of Dallas, El Paso, Oklahoma City. On the horizon above, the moon, two days shy of full, was rising as their ship glided eastward at over 2,000 miles an hour. And overhead it was a sea of stars. An endless sea of stars.

Eva was crying as she gazed upon it with reverence and wonder.

Victoria felt a hand slip into hers. It was her dad, and she looked at him, the fear of earlier in the day forgotten.

“Come on!” he cried, and, pushing off the ceiling with his other hand, he propelled himself and her down the length of the cabin, both laughing hysterically. The copilot, though joyful in her first somersault, was aft, doing her job now, reaching out to brake them before they slapped into the aft bulkhead, offering a word of caution; then, taking hold of Gary, she gently pushed him forward.

She felt like Superman, floating down the length of the cabin, playing at having her arms stretched forward, floating over her mother, looking down at her. And yet, still her mother was glued to the window and was now openly crying, saying something in Ukrainian.

The British family. The father was trying to somersault like their copilot, without much success, instead bumping back and forth. Jason was up, just floating and laughing, but his poor mother would have none of it, and had her bag out now and, between retches, was soundly cursing her “bloody damn crazy” cousin who had talked them into this.

The copilot, seeing her distress, floated over by her side to offer words of reassurance.

Jason drifted past Victoria and reached a hand out.

“Care to dance, fair lady?” he cried, taking her hands, and for a moment they tumbled head over heels, laughing wildly. She caught a glimpse of her father, just floating, his gaze now glued to a top-side window.

“Excuse me, good sir,” she said with a smile, and, breaking free from Jason, pushed off a bulkhead to float up by her father, reaching out to grab his shoulder as she drifted up to him. He pulled her in by his side, nodding to the window.

“My God,” he whispered, “it is so beautiful. Remember when I taught you the constellations?”

There was a catch in his voice as he looked at her and smiled, pointing to the window.

She looked out and gasped. Never had she seen so many stars.

“Orion, isn’t it, Daddy?”

“Yup!”

“And there’s Gemini. And, oh, that’s Sirius.”

“Two-minute warning,” echoed in the cabin. “Everyone back in their seats at one minute, please.”

“We only have a few seconds, angel,” her father said, and in her heart she suddenly wondered if he was speaking in a metaphor. That against that eternity of stars they did indeed only have a flicker of time, a few seconds to gaze in wonder and questioning and desire.