IV BLASTOFF

The morning of the launch was surprisingly free of fanfare. The four astronauts gathered at an airfield in the vast volcanic wasteland of Eastern Washington, outside of Tonasket. They uttered a few words to journalists, and then boarded an unassuming, rather ugly aircraft that had begun life as a medium-sized passenger jet but was now covered with overlapping scales of heat-armor. Once on, the astronauts were examined by a military official who firmly instructed Oleg not to activate the escape drive until they were in international airspace, and any failure to do so would lead to an immediate grounding order from the United States Air Force. Oleg had been in the Navy for a long time and knew that appropriate solemnity was called for, but he was unable to totally mask a Slavic expression of cold disdain that crept over his features. Both he and the military man knew that once the escape drive was activated, this plane would be completely and totally out of reach of anything the Air Force could muster.
The four travelers were crammed into the foremost part of the plane. Ranatra sat beside Oleg in the cockpit, and Howard and Emily faced each other directly behind them. All their belongings were already in orbit, along with the mission leader, Dr Terry Mang. This vehicle was designed only to shuttle them up to Farnsær, the orbiting platform; afterwards, it would fall into the atmosphere and burn up.
The vast majority of the jet’s volume was taken up by a huge cylinder studded with wires, batteries, and tanks of fluid. This was the escape drive, reverse-engineered from alien technology found in Antarctica. It had been successfully employed several times to carry materials and materiel up to Farnsær. Typically it fell into the ocean and was recovered, but this time, the shielding had been stripped off so it would incinerate during re-entry. Dr Mang was no longer going to be able to supervise its recovery, and he had no wish whatsoever for it to fall into the hands of any military.
They lifted off, and the cracked yellow-and-black landscape sunk beneath them. Ranatra had still been on an airplane less times than she had fingers on her hands, and the giddy, sickening thrill still seized her. She looked out at the innumerable miles of sere, rocky terrain, and reflected on how little it looked like the Earth she knew. They climbed into the sky, so dizzyingly high that all clouds were below them. Above, a depthless dark blue, free of feature or blemish. By the time they were over the green and fertile western edge of the continent, clouds blanketed the entire landscape, save for the snowy cones of volcanoes that emerged like islands from the cottony mat of moisture. Then, soon, they were over the Pacific, and the entire visible world was rumpled, fluffy white clouds and deep blue sky.
“Ten minutes to escape,” Oleg announced. Emily and Howard were already asleep, sagging against their safety restraints. Ranatra looked at the array of buttons and instruments in front of her.
“How does the escape drive work?” she asked.
“We go up to 49000 feet, increase to maximum speed with the normal engines, then I press this blue button,” Oleg said.
“And?” Ranatra prompted.
“And we accelerate to eight miles per second,” he said. She looked at him and slowly raised her eyebrows. “To tell you the truth,” he admitted, “I don’t know exactly how it works. There is a tank full of sea urchins in the very middle, and a big steel propeller that unfolds out of the back of the plane. Power goes into the sea urchins, and something comes out that I don’t understand, and that turns the propeller. I do know that Dr Mang had to get help from a team of Japanese metallurgists to build a propeller that wouldn’t burst into flames because it was turning so fast.”
“What about the sea urchins?” Ranatra asked, “Will they fall down with the rest of the plane?”
“No, they are our little friends, we bring them with us,” Oleg said. “We need the water, too. We’ll take everything apart when we get to Farnsær, then we let the spare parts turn into shooting stars.”
Ranatra thought about the hundreds of creatures, spineless and brainless but still animate and motile, crawling about on their tube feet and wiggling their spines. They had come so very, very close to extinction on Earth, down to a few dozen juvenile individuals, all of them together small enough to be held in her cupped hand. Now they were setting out for another planet.
She shifted her gaze to Oleg, dressed in a jumpsuit. He had seemed very intimidating for a long time, with his great height and bearlike physique, his cool efficiency and relentless resolve. But now they had spent months together, and she’d glimpsed a light of warmth and humor flickering inside the granite façade. Her eyes traced over the planes and angles of his face, the wide cheekbones and the protruding flat forehead, the strongly-bridged nose, the slightly-pointed ears. How different he looked from the men in her world.
He turned and looked at her, his gray eyes flickering under the heavy brow. A hint of a smile played around his mouth. She reminded him of the new students who showed up in his childhood classes, whose parents had moved into the city from the Siberian wilderness. Besides being dark of eye and hair like her, these new students bore themselves with a quiet pride and bravery, even though they were clearly uneasy to find themselves in these new surroundings. Oleg recognized the marks of hard work and difficulty on Ranatra’s soul, had seen the pain in the depths of her black eyes, eyes so dark the pupil was indistinguishable from the iris. Despite all that, there was an undeniable joy of existence and discovery in her being, that no sadness would ever completely overwhelm.
The plane could climb no higher with its earthly powers. Oleg quickly unstrapped himself and moved through the cockpit, checking everyone’s safety straps. He unlatched Emily’s chair and swung it around so it was facing forward. She opened an eye and squinted at him.
“Time for blast-off?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Oleg, rotating the still-unconscious Howard ninety degrees and locking him in place. Then he returned to his seat, cast an eye over Ranatra’s buckles, and put on his reflective sunglasses. “Here we go,” he said, and pressed the blue button.
There came a heavy, shuddering mechanical noise that they heard as well as felt, as large parts slid into place somewhere behind them. Then they heard a high-pitched electric whine, accompanied by a tingling sensation in their ears and noses. There was a bass thrumming they felt in the deepest part of their chests, and the airplane leapt forward and upward. The breath was crushed out of them, and they labored to inhale. Their eyeballs were compressed and the cockpit became blurry, and their organs began to ache inside their bodies. It was as if huge sheets of elastic were being stretched tighter and tighter over them. But, soon enough, the elastic relaxed and the deep blue of the sky gave way to the black of space, and stars spread out in front of them. They could not see the earth from this angle, but its radiance made the front window glow blue around its margins.
The four of them panted and wheezed as the air and life returned to their bodies. As they recovered, Farnsær hove into view before them. It looked like nothing more than a colossal fried egg, slightly convex on the yoke side. The “white” of the egg was made of tangles and braids of some kind of ropy green-gray fiber, and the “yolk” was a huge hemisphere of opalescent material pointed away from the sun. They circled around the yolk side and approached from the rear. They saw the vast tangled mat was covered with dark globes about three meters across. Oleg maneuvered the plane around to a cavernous chamber that yawned open on the rear side of the station, and the passengers felt a great heaving force as they were drawn into the hangar.
The plane settled into a mat of the green-gray fibers, and they waited as the hangar was flooded with warmth and oxygen. Then they saw a round door open and a figure in a yellow jumpsuit hurried toward them.