He eyes me, but I don’t say anything more.
‘So it’s just us?’ I say. ‘Me and Z?’
Chuck nods slowly. ‘You and Z.’ He doesn’t look all that excited. He slams the back of the four-wheel-drive. ‘Get in.’ Chuck jumps into the driver’s seat. A few minutes later we’re bumping along an unsealed track back to the spaceport.
It feels like my blood has been replaced by pure adrenaline, like I’m still falling. After what I’ve just done, I figure I can do anything.
20. Judgement Day
I wake with a start before first light and stare at the ceiling of my sleep capsule. I’m breathing heavily. I was in the middle of a skydiving dream. As I jumped out of the plane my mouth hit the rim of the door and knocked my front teeth out. I started freaking as I fell and then, halfway down, I realised I had no chute on my back. I screamed and I think that’s what jolted me awake.
‘Happy birthday,’ I whisper to myself.
I feel for my front teeth. They’re still there.
I stretch.
Everything else is quiet – apart from a few distant birds. I hear Zarif roll over in his capsule and then there’s stillness again. I wait to hear the others. But they’re not here. That makes me feel bad. We went up to the rooftop to say goodbye to Raf last night. Even Z came. Every time someone goes home you feel like you’ve lost part of your body, an arm or a leg or something.
This is the day.
I’ve been waiting for it since I was six, the week my mum left. I’ve been thinking about it, dreaming of it, trying to imagine my way into it.
‘I’m going into space today,’ I say quietly to myself but, even as I say it, I don’t believe it.
I try again. ‘I’m going into space today.’
I start laughing.
Space.
Me.
It’s ridiculous. No one as normal as me should be allowed to go into space. Space should be reserved for superheroes and astronauts and stuff.
And you know what’s weird? After everything I’ve been through in the past month – even after falling from a plane – I feel sick today, rather than excited.
I pull on my black launch suit. I look like a rock star astronaut. The back of the suit has a chute built into it in case of emergency exit. Zarif has a locker on the other side of the dressing room. He and I don’t speak as we get ready.
I reach into my bag and undo a little zipper in the lining. Marv’s moist, curious little nose shoots out of the zip and his shiny eyes gaze up at me. I flick a look at Zarif, who is turned the other way. I undo the zipper of the bag a bit more and grab Marv. I turn my back, too. But as I go to put Marv inside my flight suit something stops me. What if we crash? Is it fair to take an animal up there, when he doesn’t know what he’s getting himself into? What would the Space RSPCA say? I think back to Marv skydiving, his whiskers whipping back against his furry cheeks. I know that he would totally dig space. But, still, for some reason I can’t bring myself to take my best friend today, not when I have this weird feeling in my gut. I look into his eyes for a long while, then I place him carefully back in the zippered pocket and I make a plan to set up my locker with food and water and a nest. Marv is not coming with me. Not now.
Zarif and I stand just inside the door of the departure lounge. Madeleine Standish holds my hand and squeezes it hard. I don’t know if that’s why my heart is thumping, or if it’s because I’m about to go into space. Zarif looks like a boxer ready to fight: focussed, hungry.
Madeleine’s phone beeps. She checks the message.
‘Okay, we’re go,’ she says. ‘Are you guys fine?’
I nod, but my blood runs cold.
‘Godspeed,’ she says. ‘And happy birthday, Dash!’
She pushes open the door that leads from the hangar out onto the tarmac. Planet earth’s first child space travellers step out and, immediately, a brass band starts up, 4th of July style. There are cheers from hundreds, maybe a thousand, people who have won tickets to sit in a temporary stand set up not far from Galactic 7.
I swallow hard. I have never seen so many people staring at me before. Zarif waves. They all cheer. I try to calm the nerves that are eating me alive by muttering, ‘I’m going into space’ over and over but every time I say it I feel a bit sicker. People call to me from the gallery. Protestors scream abuse from the fence line. I feel like I’m emerging from the space school cocoon. We’ve been totally protected from the outside world, but it seems that the outside world knows all about us. The band plays on. I stare up at the mothership with the rocket plane on its back. It looks like an angry bird, a falcon, hunched, ready to devour.
My rhythm is out. I feel like I want to be back at the laundromat, drinking powdered soup and doing the delivery rounds. I suddenly want the order of ‘wash, dry and fold’. I want neatly ironed piles of giant skidmarked underpants. I want everything that used to drive me crazy. But, instead, I have to face the feral crowd, the too-loud band, the jeering protestors, the flashing cameras. Then I have to be blasted out of earth’s atmosphere at some crazy speed.
I wish Karl was here.
The sky above is thick with cloud. There is no wind.
‘Do you think the weather’s okay to launch?’ I ask Madeleine, who is walking behind us.
‘We’re good to go. And all three international abort landing sites are good, too,’ she says.
‘How about the protestors? Have they had any luck trying to stop the launch?’
She smiles. ‘No, they haven’t.’
‘Do you really think it’s safe to send kids into space?’ I say.
Zarif turns and looks at me. ‘Are you scared?’
I lick my lips. ‘No.’ My voice cracks as I say it and he frowns.
‘You look scared,’ he says.
‘Thanks.’
We stop at the stairs. Our rocket-powered plane is on the back of Galactic 7, ready for launch. James Johnston stands and poses for the gang of press photographers, jostling for positions behind a red rope a few metres away.
‘Welcome,’ Johnston says. ‘And congratulations, lads. Let’s get these photos out of the way. You two will be on the front page of news sites everywhere in a few moments’ time. And life, I am afraid to say, will never be quite the same again.’
He takes me by the shoulders and says, ‘May God speed you,’ then he does the same thing to Zarif. I look out over the runway, past the band and something catches my eye. There’s someone standing over behind the press photographers. It’s a boy. He is alone and quite still. I step forward to see him better. Robert White. He waits. Maybe he’s been waiting these 40-something years for this one day, to see a kid, finally, leave earth.
I realise that he’s trying to tell me something. He’s not speaking. He’s just shaking his head. This totally creeps me.
‘Can you see that kid?’ I ask Zarif in a loud voice. He glances over as he smiles for the cameras. Flashes flicker. The band plays on. Confetti rains down.
‘What kid?’
Robert White stops shaking his head. I look up at the plane, looming above us. Then I look back at Robert White, but he’s gone. I look around, searching desperately for him. The photographers are probably wondering what I’m looking at. And I wonder whether I’ve really even seen this kid. Maybe my nerves are making me think I’ve seen him. Maybe, somewhere inside, I want him to tell me not to go, so I can back out. I feel totally weird, like I’ve just had blood taken or something. I need to sit down.
James Johnston puts his hand on my shoulder one last time before we board and, as he does, I know something for sure.
I don’t want to go.
‘I can’t do this,’ I say quietly. I know this is a ridiculous thing to say, based on a dead kid’s head shake.
‘What?’ Johnston says, still smiling for the camera
s.
‘I can’t go,’ I say, turning to him. My mind rushes with thoughts. I’ve come so far. I’m meant to be on that plane.
‘You’ll be okay,’ he says. ‘I get nervous, too, on a launch day.’
I want so badly to go. But I know I can’t.
‘No. It’s not just nerves. I don’t think we should launch.’
He keeps smiling and looks around, motioning for Madeleine Standish to join us.
‘Yes?’ she says.
‘Dash is just having some last-minute nerves—’
‘I’m not going,’ I say. ‘I know it sounds weird, but I’ve got this feeling. I don’t think it’s safe to launch.’
James Johnston closes his eyes for a moment and sucks in a deep breath. ‘Let’s – look, can we have the psychologist speak with Dash. We’ll send him back to the port and we’ll continue to prep for take-off. We’re at T minus one hour, so we need him back here and on-board pronto.’
Zarif is watching. I look away to avoid his gaze. I know that this is stupid and that I’ve had a month to make this decision, but everything feels so wrong today. I woke up feeling sick, then I decided not to bring Marv, I felt all out of rhythm, then Robert White warned me. I know it was a warning. Maybe that’s why he’s been hanging around, to warn me. It just doesn’t feel right and if I’ve learnt anything here, it’s to follow my gut.
‘Go and have a sit down, some water,’ Johnston says, patting me on the back. ‘We’ll wait for you.’
‘What’s up?’ Madeleine asks, putting a hand on my back as we walk.
‘Dash, where are you going?’ someone screams from the crowd. Someone else screams, ‘Dash! We love you!’
I don’t look back.
‘I just – You know how there were people who knew they shouldn’t get on the Titanic?’ I say.
‘No, I didn’t know that, but—’
‘Well, I have that feeling.’
‘Okay, let’s go and have a chat to Dr Nicholson, see if he can talk you through this. You’ve invested so much effort, Dash. I’d hate to see it end like this.’
As we walk back to the hangar Chuck Palatnik and his co-pilot walk towards us. Chuck stares at me intently.
‘What’s going on?’
‘We’re just . . . We’ll see you back there,’ Madeleine says.
He stops and watches us walk by. I flick a look back over my shoulder. He looks disgusted, like he knew all along that I would do this.
21. Into the Unknown
‘T minus four minutes,’ says the flight director, a short, sharp-looking man with silver spiky hair and bright blue eyes. The director co-ordinates the takeoff and, later, the launch of the rocket plane. He’s pacing around at the front of the room. James Johnston is standing out front, too, arms folded, looking edgy. They are both wearing headsets. There are dozens of people all seated in rows, staring at computer screens and video monitors.
I sit, watching from the back of the room. Madeleine Standish is next to me. So are Zarif’s parents. Madeleine has her arm around Zarif’s mother, who does a pretty good job of pretending that she isn’t crying.
On the wall at the front of the room there are four giant screens. One shows the view of the side of the rocket plane, tarmac and desert from a camera mounted on the wing. Another camera shows the pilot in Galactic 7, the mothership that will piggyback the rocket plane to 18,000 metres for launch. After the mothership launches the rocket plane it will return to the runway. There’s a screen with Palatnik and his co-pilot in the cockpit of the rocket plane. Finally, there’s Zarif’s face.
As I sit here in the control room four minutes from launch, I feel stupid. I stare at Zarif’s monitor. He’s the only one tough enough to make it through. Well, I was too, but then – I don’t know. It’s not even like I don’t want to go, or like I’ve changed my mind. I desperately want to go. But I just don’t feel good about it. I’ve had these feelings before and I’ve been wrong, but my life has never been on the line like this.
Robert White, whoever or whatever he is, has tried to stop me from going. I guess things went so wrong on his attempt, I can understand him trying to stop another kid from going. Right now, sitting here, I wonder if I even saw him. I wonder if I’ve ever seen him.
I tried to tell them not to go ahead, but what was I supposed to say? I feel a little bit sick and a friendly ghost that only I can see shook his head, so let’s not launch?
‘I wish I was in there,’ I say, without thinking. Madeleine flicks me a look. I shrug.
Zarif looks super-serious on his screen. Maybe even a bit scared. It’s the first time I’ve seen real fear in his eyes. I wonder if it spooked him that I backed out. The flight director does final checks and asks everybody if they’re ready for take-off.
All on board say yes. My stomach leaps.
‘T minus 30 seconds,’ he says.
I feel adrenaline race through my gut, as though it’s me on board.
Thirty seconds later the plane starts to move slowly along the runway. Time slows down for me as the plane picks up speed. I watch the screen showing the view from the wing-mounted camera. I still feel like I want to stop it from going, but it’s too late now.
The engines create an intense rumble that shakes the earth.
‘V1, rotate,’ says the pilot. V1 is the point at which it’s safer to take off than to try and stop the plane. If you were to abort take-off you’d hit the end of the runway.
Silence, as the eyes of the entire spaceport, the eyes of the world, watch. From this day forward I know that Zarif Ejogo, first kid in space, will be a household name. I’ll be like the guy who stayed up in the command module on the first moon landing, while Buzz and Neil did all the cool stuff – the guy Scott said he never wanted to be.
Everybody waits, holding their breath, wishing the plane upward. Then suddenly that big metal bird lifts and a second later it’s tearing off toward the clouds.
‘We’re up, heading towards 18,000 metres before rocket plane launch,’ says the flight director.
‘Farewell, Galactic 7. Farewell, Zarif Ejogo, first kid in space,’ James Johnston says to the room.
Everybody explodes in applause.
Zarif clenches his teeth on screen, but his eyes are steel.
I turn and look out the window of the control room, wanting to see if it’s real, not believing the screens. And there it is. I just catch the tail of the plane as it disappears into the cloud. I stand, open-mouthed, staring at the place where it vanished. I feel as though my heart disappeared with it. My dream is over and reality hits me like a hammer.
That could have been me. It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do and, at the last minute, I choked. I want to run out of the room and go and hide for the rest of my life. I want to fly away, leave the planet, disappear. I want to escape like my mum did, leave no trace. I feel so stupid and embarrassed and hopeless. I walk towards the door.
‘Where are you off to?’ Madeleine asks.
‘It looks as though we are experiencing problems. Stand by, over,’ says a voice from on board the plane.
I turn around to watch the screens.
‘On board temperature is increasing rapidly, over,’ says the pilot of the mothership.
‘We are monitoring,’ says someone in the control room. ‘It appears that you have a small fire in engine number one, over.’
‘We’re standing by for further instruction. Over,’ says the pilot. ‘No, this is – we’re experiencing an intense heat here in the cockpit. We are looking to abort, over.’
Madeleine and I are standing behind the bank of people, all watching screens and overseeing different parts of the launch.
‘We require further information on the state of the craft prior to aborting,’ mission control responds.
‘We are about
to abort,’ says the pilot.
‘We must first deploy the rocket plane,’ says the flight director.
I take a shaky, staggered breath. ‘What’s happening?’ I say to Madeleine.
She doesn’t answer.
‘Ohhhhhhh!’ the entire room shouts as the screen showing the shot from the wing-mounted camera fills with flames, then smoke and plunges to black.
‘What?’ I ask.
‘Mission control to Galactic 7. Abort ship immediately.’
‘Is that— Are they okay?’ I ask.
‘Oh, my God!’ someone in front of a monitor shrieks.
‘What happened? Did they get out?’ I say, louder.
‘Get the kid out of here!’ somebody snaps.
Zarif’s mum is crying and rocking. His dad is holding her and saying, ‘What? What?’
‘Come on,’ Madeleine says to me. She has worry lines carved into her forehead.
‘Did the plane—?’ I ask as she leads me to the door.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did it?’
‘We’ll have to wait,’ she says. ‘Come with me.’
We exit the room and travel down a bright, white corridor that seems to go on forever.
22. Real Life
Bright colours spin, weave and blur in front of me. If I look hard enough, I can see my own reflection in the chaos. Then it stops and the clothes rest on the bottom of the dryer, but I keep staring, seeing my face more clearly now. I’ve been doing this a lot lately, just sitting, staring.
‘Dash!’ Karl says. I turn to the front of the laundromat, where he’s ironing a mountain of clothes. ‘I’ve called you five times. You’re so vague, mate. I need you to get the clothes out of number 5 and fold them. They have to go to Schulz this afternoon.’ He shakes his head and clicks his tongue. ‘Get with it, mate.’
I stand and open the dryer door, scoop clothes and chuck them on the old brown Laminex folding table. It’s about 4 o’clock. I’m still wearing my ugly green and grey school uniform with black shoes. The spaceport seems like a million years ago now.
Galactic Adventures Page 10