close, even as he wriggled in her arms and babbled new words she’d never gotten to hear him learn.
Ahmed whispered to her about the ring he was planning to give Shannon and Ryann punched him in the arm one last time for old-time’s sake. Tomas blubbered into her shoulder worse than James was doing and said a bunch of chaotic things about robbing the cradle, so Ryann gave her blessing to all that. Blake smacked Ryann in the shoulder, then crumpled and hugged her tight. When he pulled back his eyes were wet. He blinked until that wasn’t happening anymore.
“We have the same haircut,” he observed, rubbing Ryann’s head. “It looks good, you lady killer.”
Alexandria hung back from the others and waited for Ryann to come to her instead.
Ryann took off her jacket and wrapped it around Alexandria’s shoulders. Tomas hooted obnoxiously in the background and clapped.
Ryann pulled Alexandria close by the collar and closed her eyes, pressing their foreheads together. Alexandria sighed and linked both their pinkies together, then closed her eyes, too.
Ryann smirked. “You gonna kiss me or are we just going to stand here?”
Alexandria opened her eyes. “Nah. I’m sure you’ll get by without it,” she said.
Ryann groaned. “Hideously mean to the very last. Come here.”
Ryann kissed Alexandria on the forehead and on both cheeks and on the tip of her nose, then wrapped her so tight she was sure she’d squeezed a few tears out.
Alexandria cupped Ryann’s face close and said, “I’ll be coming for you. This might be your one shot, but it’s not mine. We are better and smarter than they were, and we have more time. I’ll find a way, and then I’m coming for you.”
When the time came, she was ready.
Ryann Bird walked the hall of ages: from the gates of man to the arches of the gods, and thought about what it meant to be Ryann Bird.
She gazed at Marija’s nape in front of her and wondered who Marija’s Alexandria was. Whether Marija missed them like a burn and felt the time between them stretching …
Omotunde placed a blue-black hand on Ryann Bird’s shoulder and squeezed. Ryann looked back at her, found the same wonder-terror in her blue-black eyes. She saw herself reflected, at the end of all things. Framed in the portrait of Omotunde’s eyelashes as they stood there together, made of all the same things.
“If you cannot walk, we will carry you,” Omotunde said.
Ryann kept walking, because she already knew.
Crews typically joke and banter a bit, the atmosphere is lighthearted, during the short drive to the launch pad. Everyone falls silent as the bird comes into view.
She is beautiful. She is ready, as are we.
Leroy Chiao
May 9, 2009
Anyone who sits on top of the largest hydrogen- oxygen-fueled system in the world, knowing they’re going to light the bottom, and doesn’t get a little worried, does not fully understand the situation.
John Young
1981
And so it’s a very gentle liftoff, contrary to what most people think when they see all the fire and smoke of launch … Then just insertion into orbit, and that’s where the highest strain on the body is, about seven, almost eight Gs at that time.
John Glenn
2012
The liftoff occurs … The shuttle’s acceleration is so great, the force is so tremendous—the raw acceleration is so hard to describe! At the very least, you know you are going somewhere, and that somewhere is up, very quickly.
John Mace Grunsfeld
April 25, 2011
The vehicle shakes and vibrates, and you are pinned hard down into your seat by the acceleration. As one set of engines finishes and the next starts, you are thrown forward and then shoved back.
Chris Hadfield
December 13, 2012
In the last couple of minutes, we actually have to throttle the main engines back to maintain the three Gs on the vehicle and on our bodies, because the rocket just wants to keep going faster and faster, and it would end up tearing the rocket apart.
Mike Good
July 8, 2011
It was the sound of immense power unleashed in barely controlled fury.
Pat Pilcher
July 26, 2016
I realized that all the training we’d had on what to do if something went wrong during launch—how to bail out, how to operate the parachutes, how to make an emergency landing—I realized that all those years of training were completely pointless. It was just filler to make us feel okay about climbing into this thing. Because if it’s going down, it’s going down.
Michael J. Massimino
2016
I wasn’t really scared. I was very excited, and I was very anxious.
Sally Ride
1998
And then