Launch - Chapter One
The canyon looked a deeper purple than usual. The sun was setting, and Derek knew it was nearly launch time. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end as he watched the steam dissipate from around the base of the shuttle. From where he stood he could just make out the countdown clock, which read T-1:49.30. In the evening air, the floodlights reflected and shimmered across the fuselage of the shuttle. Derek knew no one aboard but knew how excited, enthralled, terrified they all must be. Only the third rocket, too, he thought to himself.
“Less than a minute now,” Mai said abruptly, waking Derek from his momentary reverie. She was just as excited as he was. Neither had ever seen a launch in person before, and this being the first launch for the Southwest Region, they knew there was no way they’d miss it. The desert was an ideal location from which to launch rockets, Derek thought. Flat, empty, devoid of people. A twenty-minute ride on the hyperloop had gotten them this close, and without tickets to the event, the desert just in front of the arrival platform would have to be good enough. The newly-constructed Mojave Deep Space Center loomed in the valley below, set against the red-orange cliffs of the surrounding canyon, a deep violet in the twilight. They had walked a few steps down from the station into the desert, a handful of Joshua trees providing them with a bit of privacy.
Derek knew this valley well, having passed it countless times on the loop, but now, having stopped, he felt he could truly appreciate its beauty. Despite the massive crowd of people seated in the grandstands just outside the launch facility, and the hundreds if not thousands of employees working in the facility itself, Derek felt a bit like he and Mai were the only two people on Earth. He felt like he could see forever, that the horizon was only a suggestion, not a hard-and-fast rule. Just the two of them, the launch facility, the shuttle, the mountains, the canyon, the desert until infinity. He liked places like this.
“They’re pulling the support vehicles away!” Mai was grinning from ear to ear. “Oh my God, this is it, Dere!” Derek couldn’t help smiling as well as he put his arm around her shoulder and looked intently down across the valley. The supports indeed had been removed, and straining a bit, he could hear the voice over the loudspeaker. “Tee minus seventeen seconds and counting. Fifteen seconds, guidance is internal. Twelve. Eleven. Ten. Nine. Ignition sequence start. Six. Five. Fou—” A shock wave shot out as the boosters fired, drowning out all other sound. Derek pulled Mai even closer. He could see she was shouting excitedly, but could hear nothing over the sound of the launch. The ground began to shake even harder as the rocket achieved liftoff. A chill ran down the back of Derek’s neck as he watched the shuttle accelerate upward, lifting higher and higher into the air. Mai was jumping up and down now, cheering the rocket on. They turned to one another, tears in their eyes. A quick kiss, and turning back to the sky, they saw the rocket pass out of view, just a small bright light in the evening sky, a star among stars.
A powerful silence overtook them then; something in that moment felt truly sacred and impenetrable. There was nothing to say, nothing worth saying in the face of what they had just witnessed. The moment did not deserve to be interrupted. The crowd below seemed just as awestruck as they were. In that moment, they were part of something greater, were something greater.
Finally, after what may have been an eternity, Derek spoke. “The next one’ll be ours,” he said with a wry smile. Mai rolled her eyes at him and came in for another hug. They stood there a bit longer, taking it all in. In that moment, Derek felt happy to be alive and could tell Mai did too.
Night had fallen and it was getting cold. Pulling his sweatshirt out of his backpack, he handed it to Mai and helped her put it on. As they walked back up to the loop station in the evening desert dark, Derek thought to himself with a sense of conviction he had felt few times in his life: We will join them. I swear to you, my dear love and life, we will join them.
