Science Fiction: Drabbles and assorted babblings

Ignition Sequence

At first, the world is nothing but sky and sea; Florida has a way of tricking the human mind into thinking that. Maybe it's all the flat marshland, or gently rolling, sun-limned waves of the Atlantic breaking in some undefined distance. A crescent of birds glides low over the horizon, winged silhouettes picked out by the morning sun; trawlers and fishing boats flock in cliques, shimmering from across the expanse of water between you.

There's nothing to suggest that anything out of the ordinary is going on. Except, perhaps, for the muffled boom of a synthesised voice, and the metallic speck of a launch gantry to the east.

The rolling mumble of the countdown passes thirty. Your pulse picks up, thundering in your ears and drying the saliva on your tongue. It's a superb rush, the thrall countdowns have over us, like some inbuilt genetic instinct. Gooseflesh prickles your forearm: you resist the urge to cheer in excitement.

At T-minus sixteen, a faint whoosh is heard: miles away, hundreds of thousands of gallons of water are cascading into the trenches under the pad, in order to protect the fragile tangle of aluminium alloys and its squishy human payload from the coming storm; ten seconds later, the main engines start up. A dirty white explosion slams meaty fists against the crust of the Earth, a boiling crescendo of chemical energy. Three sequential blasts of percussion hurl themselves through the spring morning, like a punk rocker slamming their head into the world's biggest drumkit. To call it a sound implies some sort of pattern, some kind of distinguishing feature to the ear. This is pure noise; raw energy that rattles your teeth in their sockets, pulses through the ground, accelerates the senses, and it is glorious.

You're so busy getting lost in your audial maelstrom that you don't notice the countdown ending. Checklists are primed, sequencing systems chime, and the immense bulk of the two white solid rocket boosters wake up, shrouded in steam. Half a million tons of ammonium perchlorate and atomized aluminium powder are compressed, ignited and forced out of the booster's gaping engine bell. The world seems to take a collective breath in preparation.

Then it screams.

It's a cacophony that defies explanation: it's as if Heaven, Hell, the judge and the devil have all broken loose and started to argue.

The speck resolves itself into two objects; the reeling, steaming obelisk of the launch tower and a white winged arrow the size of an apartment block, hurled overarm into the sky. Gravity's inexorable claim to her subjects is shrugged off like a surly child batting away a parent's hand: the entire stack is propelled into the air, a two-thousand-ton lead at the end of a shimmering pencil of white vapour. It's so bright and blinding that it seems to steal the colour out of the world.

Dimly, you're aware that you're hollering and whooping like an idiot at the top of your lungs, an instinctive primal competition with the peals of man-made thunder rippling through the sky, to no avail. You wish you could control your trembling hands and juddering legs to take a photo like you planned, but in reality, you know it would be pointless. No matchbook-sized rectangle of coloured celluloid could ever hope to encapsulate this fistful of moments.

The Shuttle is already miles downwind, orange external tank glistening in the sun, tearing the atmosphere aside as it climbs to space. You can't decide whether to laugh or cry, so you stand there dumbly, listening to the ringing in your ears and watching all the shades of blue seep back into the sky.