No one stood waiting on the platform to see him off.
The rocket might have been the only pillar separating the grey concrete and sky. Once he removed it, there would be no coming back.
No one stood waiting to ask, one last time, if he was sure. The final briefing, before dawn, had been terse and perfunctory, black coffee and firm handshakes. They’d barely looked at him; he’d drunk little, said nothing, and only now felt why.
Not just the sleepless night loading down his stomach with that stale, dense nausea, like the air in a sealed bunker. Everyone who was going to say goodbye had done so.
From the director of operations to the blue sky. That silver sheet of cloud, pulled not quite taut by the breeze, was the last way he would ever see it.
No stopping now. No one who would speak to him, even if he turned back. They might just stare at him like stopped animatronics. They might not be there at all.
The whole base, a production put on for his benefit. All to bring him there. To the last step; the last thing he’d said to any of them was thanking a woman from logistics as she’d held the door for him.
She’d smiled, and he hadn’t known her name. All the halls he’d walked after that had been empty.
He stepped up from the roll-away metal stairs to the platform’s edge. One giant leap…
Between the concrete and sky. He strode towards the rocket.
White and smooth as bathroom porcelain. No windows. Of course not. No looking back.
No room for a second person. If he said it’s beautiful when he made it up there, would the radio take it anywhere? Would the people who didn’t know he didn’t have windows believe it? Fire had been set to the imaginations of whole generations with less.
He would try. It would be the last thing he said in reach, radio crackle or otherwise, of anyone who might hear. It’s beautiful.
I can see the sky.
