It’s just me up here. I listen idly to the chatter over the radio, but it’s distant, out of focus. There’s a little interference rolling across the airwaves; the background static roar of the magnetosphere. The chatter ebbs and flows, waves of interference drowning it out slightly before the words become clear again, the cycle repeating.
Through it, I hear them triple-checking the last vectors now. I already did the calculations and recalculations on the back of my arm, but I get it. It’s good to be safe. To a point. If the storm was worse than we anticipated, if we had to call off the dive and lost our chance, I don’t know what I would have done. Maybe I would’ve cast off the safeties and thrown myself into it anyway. I won’t need to, though, because as I listen I hear them confirming what I already knew, what I already feel down to the marrow; we have luck on our side. Time to go.
I flick the scan receiver off just as I hear her come through on the hardline. The noise is quieter behind her voice, a thrush of faraway ocean waves. She reminds me of everything I need to know, and tells me the final checks are good; just a matter of minutes from the window now. I tell her I love her. Her and the rest of the troupe, too. She laughs faintly, off-mic. She tells me they’ll be there to catch me on the other side. I say, "I’ll see you when I see you."
She turns off the hardline, the sudden silence loud, and it’s just me again. The windscreen of the Laplace is sky-dark for now, the cockpit lit only by the coloured blink and shine of rows of little LEDs. It’s barely bigger than a single patched-up seat, barely fit to fly. There’s nowhere in the universe I’d rather be.
Something buzzes behind my head as the van, my little Laplace still attached to its underside, approaches the drop window. The steel-and-ceramic skeleton around me shudders, magnetic locks disengaging. I count down in my head, everything ticking in time with my heart.
Mouthing the numbers as they race by, I reach to the side of the cockpit, past my pen, a yellowed, marked-up atmospheric map, a cider I’ve barely touched– and switch the radio to the other channel I prepared. It sighs static for just a moment before the music resolves from the noise, crystal clear.
I drum my fingers across the dashboard as I feel the opening chords of the playlist wash over me, and I start mouthing along to that instead. I don't remember the title or the album, but maybe I’m singing, a bit out of tune. Out of practice. There’s another buzz and another rumble of heavy machinery rattles the vessel, weightier this time.
All the indicator lights are sparkling bright blue, now. Azure or cerulean, like the sky over the sea, across that unimaginable stretch of space and time.
Three-quarters of a million klicks above Jupiter, the last thing tethering me to the rest of the world lets go, and I fall.
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