"They don't make rocketships like back in the day." The grizzled space hillbilly took one last long draw on his hand-rolled katoon cig and tossed it down, ground it into the orange dust with his heel.
There was no more need for rockets. They were outlawed almost everywhere. But not here. I'd travelled halfway across the galaxy to take a ride in one, but I was starting to question my sanity. The ole koot continued his safety briefing.
"It's manual controls only." He pointed at them. "Ignition. Throttle. Steering. Parachute. Capsule eject. Seat eject." I shook my head. "Manual?"
"We're a holdout world. No automatic systems here. The groundcars, trucks, aircraft - we drive them ourselves." The brochure had made Aarsk sound like some kind of theme park. This was getting real.
He hoisted a bulky pack and held it out. "Parachute. You ever operated one before?" I shook my head. "The only antigrav on this planet is on the off-world transports. Down here we live by the olde ways."
"Space suit?" I inquired, seeing none nearby.
"You won't go that high, least not for long. Capsule's pressurized. Ride it back down and if its chutes don't deploy, you bail out and pull this handle." He pointed to a silver D-ring on the pack's front strap.
I'd read about parachutes and skydiving. I was kind of a nut for reading about ancient thrill tech. "Isn't there a reserve chute in case the main one doesn't open?"
"Not on this rig. Just try to deploy it stable. You know - " He spread his hands wide over his head and arched his hips forward. "Like this." But how could I do that while reaching for the deployment handle, I thought.
"Now let's get you in the capsule and begin the countdown. Time's still money, even down here."
...
The cramped capsule was getting hot already. "Once you launch you'll get plenty of air," the koot said in my headset, "The cabin air is pressurized by the turbopump. Last chance to back out. You ready to do this?"
I'd come too far to back out. "Yeah. But give me just a minute." I dug into the vest pocket of my jumpsuit and pulled out a handful of tabs. Memory tab, sensory enhancement tab, and three slowdown tabs. I would experience every bit of this thrill ride and would remember it forever. I swallowed them, choking a bit with my dry throat. No liquid to wash them down. One broke apart. Its acrid taste made me gag. They would kick in fast now, no time to waste. "Ready for launch!"
"5... 4... 3... 2... 1..." It was just a formality. An anachronism. A bit of theatre to emulate the rocket launching rituals of Olde Earth.
"Launch! Go to launch! Godspeed and safe journey, son!" More excitement in his voice than I expected. Wasn't this all pretty routine?
I mashed the button and heard a rumble. The rocket vibrated and swayed. The com antenna on the rocket's nose whipped side to side. Then a dull roar and I was pushed back in my seat. The rocket lifted. Slowly at first, then picking up speed. Through the capsule's broad clear tritanium windshield I had a great view. The junky agrarian surface of Aarsk disappeared below me replace by puffy white coulds and deep blue sky. I punched through a layer of clouds like wispy cotton candy at 900 meters, steering slightly to keep the rocket going straight up.
A flock of large birds wafted lazily far above me. I would miss them. Or would I? As I neared them time seemed to slow down. The slowdown tabs were kicking in. It would be close. I nudged the joystick left to steer ahead of the flock. Too late. I saw the leather and hairs of their wings.
BOOM! The capsule shook and I was showered with a cascade of fine sparkling bits. The windshield wasn't tritanium at all. Some kind of glass or plexiglass. Part of it had given way. A ragged hole fringed with blood and feathers let in a roar of air.
I glanced about. The whole cockpit was filled with windshield shards and bird guts. I was streaked with blood but I couldn't tell if any of it was my own. The rocket's nosecone tip had been torn off and the com antenna with it. My headset was filled with static.
"Ground control, birdstrike!" I yelled into the headset microphone. Only static. "Birdstrike!" No response. I was on my own. The controls and gauges seemed undamaged.
The altitude was 2 kilometers and climbing. Speed 110 meters per second and increasing. I pulled back on the throttle but there was no response. The throttle was stuck wide open. The fuel tank was still nearly full. I had enough fuel to reach 38 kilometers where I would see the curvature of Aarsk and earn my rocketnaut wings. They'd pin them on me and take my picture in a celebration ceremony. The brochure had been clear on that point.
But with no spacesuit and a breached windshield I'd surely die at 38 kilometers. I'd pass out long before that. Would my skin boil from the low pressure? Would I get the bends like some deep ocean diver who came up too fast?
Skydivers of Olde Earth used oxygen above 4 kilometers, I'd read that. Much higher and the air got too thin. I was at 3 kilometers already.
I had a joystick and I could use it. I pushed forward on the stick, levelling off for horizontal flight just under 4 kilometers. Fuel was down to 3/4 of a tank but I still had a long way to go.
The rocket shuddered and coughed, then went silent. If not for the roar of air through the shattered windshield and the static in my headset, it would have been serene. Ground control must have seen there was a problem and cut the engine by remote. I glanced out the window to take in the view. The shacks, hangars and junkyards of Aarsk were far enough below that it looked like a pristine wilderness planet. A rosy glow speckled the horizon as the sun began its lazy afternoon descent toward sunset.
KA-ROOM! The galaxy itself seemed to quake and my teeth rattled together hard. A massive fireball of burning rocketfuel spittle expanded from the rocket's base past my windshield, engulfing the whole capsule.
I mashed the capsule eject button and felt my back nearly break as explosive charges ignited just meters below me, detaching the capsule and hurling it out of the billowing fireball. Spots and blotches danced across my sight like fireworks. The capsule tumbled through clear air and I experienced weightlessness for a few seconds as it began to freefall down.
The capsule pitched and wobbled but continued to tumble. I watched the altitude decrease to 1.5 kilometers hoping it would stabilize, but it continued unstable. I could wait no longer.
I pressed the parachute button. From a hatch on the capsule's front side the white parachute cloth slithered out and trailed in a long tangled stream. That stabilized the capsule, but the chute didn't inflate. A few sections billowed and puffed out but lines were wrapped in tight bundles that constrained the deployment. 1 kilometer came and went.
I braced for another explosive jolt and pressed the ejection seat button. Then pressed it several more times. Nothing.
I unstrapped from the seat and pushed at the edges of the windshield hole, cutting my hand deeply. The windshield was weakened but the hole was too small to dive through. I turned around in the cramped space and kicked at it. Felt shards pierce my calf. Kept kicking... and a major portion of the windshield tore away.
I threw myself at the hole and balled up as I went through. Suddenly I was in the full force of freefall air. The headset was ripped off my head. I was pulled upward into the tangled parachute lines and they grabbed me like tentacles. Hadn't the parachutists of Olde Earth carried knives for just such an emergency? I'd been given no knife. Calmly as I could I untangled from the lines and rose higher into the snivelling mass of white. My ankle was gripped only by one line now, looped around it. Tightening.
Turbulence shook the parachute cloth and I was blinded by white cloth jittering manically. But I felt the grip on my ankle loosen. I pulled my foot free and pushed away.
I rose above the capsule and its tangled chute, but the upward movement was only relative. The ground was now visibly getting closer. What they called ground rush. By the time you could actually see the ground getting closer you were in danger of hitting it. I tumbled unstable.
I spread my hands wide above my head and arched my hips forward. Bent my legs partway, like I'd seen in those old pictures. It worked!
In this stable position I would have the best chance of getting a good clean deployment of my parachute. There would be no second chance.
I reached for the deployment D-ring on the front of my harness. As soon as I moved my hand inward and toward my chest, my body pitched diagonally forward and began tumbling. I returned to the stable position with both hands above my head and the tumbling stopped. I tried again, same result. Every time I moved my hand out of stable position to grasp that D-ring on my chest, the tumbling began again. I could now make out buildings, sheds, vehicles. A cow. I was too low.
What had I read that might help me? Skydive priorities of Olde Earth: pull stable. But failing that, pull. The ultimate skydive sin had been to become preoccupied trying to solve problems in the air and slam into the ground without ever activating your chute.
I grabbed the D-ring and pulled.
White fabric billowed out in a stream above me, then caught the air and jerked open with a sharp jolt. Suddenly the sound of roaring air was gone. I was suspended 50 meters over the ground under a perfectly inflated parachute. It had cheerful multicolored stripes sewn into its cells. A rectangular parasail.
There were steering toggles attached to the lines above me. I recognized those and pulled them down. Steered gently into the middle of a plowed field. Pulled them both down to slow with a flare, then touched down gently as stepping off a bus.
I had ridden a rocket for the first time and skydived for the first time on the same day. I'd survived both. The orange dirt of the plowed field glowed like neon. Combination of the tabs and the adrenaline I supposed.
The ole koot came up in an old school hovercraft truck. "Them rockets gotta stay vertical til the fuel runs out. Rocket conks out if it gets too sideways."
"I noticed."
"I hope you took out the full insurance pack for that rocket ride, cause you're liable for the cost."
"Fuck you!" I said, then smiled. He smiled back.
"Can I do it again!?"
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