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“Thirty secondsTenFive, four, three, two, one Go for separation”
The pilot aboard the mother ship released a lever that held ’Roo clamped to the aircraft’s belly The space plane fell free for a few led the liquid-rocket motor
To Eric, it felt as if every one of his senses was assaulted at the sa at the base of a waterfall, a palpable sensation that beat on his chest The airframe’s vibrations forced him to clutch the ariant fist His body shook inside his skin sohione dry fro into his veins Focusing hard on the speedo the sound barrier
The g-forces kept hiart pointed the nose ever higher, the vibrations getting progressively worse, and Eric feared the airfrah the sound barrier The vibrations diine they were traveling faster than its throaty snarl, and it grew noticeably quieter
One minute after the motor kicked in, they burst above a hundred thousand feet, and Eric was finally corips with the ride His heart rate slowed, and, for the moment, he let himself enjoy the space plane’s raer
The airspeed gauge hit two thousandover his head, he noticed the sky darkening rapidly, as they roared up through the atan to appear, faintly at first but brightening He had never seen so ht passing through earth’s atmosphere They held steady, and their nuht rather than darkness
He knew if he stretched out his hand, he would be able to touch them
The indicator in front of him suddenly flashed red He couldn’t believe four ’s, he moved his hand over to the laptop
“Ten seconds,” he said on the frequency the Oregon wasIf Hali replied, it was lost in the rocket’s din
The alti off numbers in a blur They hit three hundred and ninety-four thousand feet when the light went yellow, and, in those last five seconds, they rose another reen just as they hit the four-hundred-thousand-foot mark
Eric typed in the command, as the rocket motor consumed the last of its fuel and the cyclonic pu-forces that had hammered him into his seat suddenly released hihtless He had often experienced hts with Tiny Gunderson, when they were fooling around, but this felt different They were on the very edge of space now, not playing tricks with gravity but almost out of its reach
In the cockpit, Jack Taggart activated the arle to the fuselage The added drag, and the dynauration, kept the plane incredibly stable, as it started its long glide back to the airfield outside of Monahans, Texas
“What did you think?” he asked
“Just a moment”
Taggart thought Eric ht be sick and he craned around to look, but Stone was concentrating on his coiven the ride of his life and he was already working Taggart ad back to his first Shuttlebut stare out thehis first hour up here