Yalda usually had no trouble with heights, but as she descended the ladder she felt a kind of sympathetic vertigo at the thought of the altitude the cabin would soon reach.
On the ground, she pulled the ladder away and let it fall to one side. The recruits were quiet now; even Leonia was subdued as they started back toward the bunker.
When a gust of wind rose up and sprayed stinging dust into their faces, Fatima said, “Someone should make a truck that runs on compressed air.”
“They should,” Yalda agreed. It had probably been discussed at some point, but then slipped off the agenda; that had happened with a lot of good ideas. Compounding the problem of the project’s sheer complexity, some of Eusebio’s fellow investors had insisted that their funds could only be spent directly on the rocket itself, lest they be viewed as mere secondary players when the descendants of the travelers returned. Yalda found it hilarious that anyone believed that such choices could guarantee them access to the project’s ultimate harvest. If the Peerless really did come back after an age in the void—with the kind of technology that could defeat the Hurtlers and everything that threatened to follow them—they’d trade with whomever they liked, on whatever terms they wished. A certain amount of compassion for their distant cousins was the most she was hoping for; any prospect of scrupulous adherence to contracts signed by their long-dead ancestors was just a fantasy Eusebio had encouraged so the plutocrats could part with vast sums of money without having to confront the horrifying reality that it was actually being spent for the common good.
Frido was waiting by the bunker. “How was she?” he asked anxiously.
“Calm,” Yalda said. “She was joking with me.”
Frido stared back across the plain. Yalda decided that they were the ones who were getting the real taste of cosmic determinism; Benedetta could still decide either to launch the rocket or back out, but nothing her two friends did now could influence her choice.
Everyone clambered down into the bunker. It had been years now since a rocket had exploded at launch, but these precautions weren’t arduous, and though the dust was even thicker down here it was good to get out of the wind.
Yalda lay between Frido and Fatima, watching the mirrored horizon. The rocket was almost lost in the brown haze. She glanced over at the clock; there were three lapses still to go.
Leonia said, “What if she loses her resolve, then regains it? If we come out of the bunker and that thing goes off—”
“That’s not going to happen,” Yalda replied. “She’ll launch at the agreed time, or not at all.”
“What if something jams inside the engine feed?” Ernesta asked. “How can you walk away from that safely, if it might unjam at any time and fire the engines?”
Yalda said, “There’s a backup system to close off the liberator tanks. And if that doesn’t work, Benedetta knows how to take the whole engine feed apart.” Can’t you all be quiet, and just let this happen? She closed her eyes; her head was throbbing.
Time passed in silence. Fatima touched her arm warily. Yalda opened her eyes and looked at the clock. Frido counted softly, “Three. Two. One.”
The radiance of burning sunstone burst through the haze and lit up the plain. Benedetta hadn’t flinched; she hadn’t waited one flicker past the chime. As the rocket rose smoothly into the sky the walls of the bunker shook, but it was no more than a gentle nudge. Yalda felt a rush of empathetic delight. This courageous woman had pushed the lever, and the rocket had done her bidding. Cool breezes would be flowing over her skin, her weight would be no more than half above normal, and with her tympanum held rigid the noise of the engine wouldn’t trouble her too much. Yalda, braced the same way, barely registered the sound of the launch as it reached her.
When the rocket went off the edge of the mirror, Yalda scrambled out of the bunker and stood watching it ascend. Frido followed her, and though she gave no instructions to the recruits everyone soon joined them.
In less than a chime Benedetta would be four slogs above the ground—almost nine times the height of Mount Peerless. From her bench, she would be peering through the window and watching the horizon growing ever wider. Yalda’s skin tingled vicariously at the thought of this foretaste of the greater journey: to ascend and return, without the bitterness of parting from the world forever.
Frido had a theodolite on a tripod set up beside the bunker, but Yalda was content to use her naked eyes, merely checking the time on the clock that sat behind them both. Distance soon dimmed the rocket to a faint white speck, but it was not so pale that there was any ambiguity when the engines shut off and it vanished entirely. Now Benedetta would be weightless, as if she’d stepped into the skin of one of her descendants from the generations who would know nothing else.
The rocket would rise another two slogs before gravity brought it to a halt. As five lapses passed, Yalda pictured it slowing, approaching its peak. Would Benedetta have any way of knowing that she’d reached the midpoint of her journey, apart from the reading on her own clock? How well could you judge your speed, when the landscape that offered the only cues was at such a great remove? Yalda tried to imagine the view from this pinnacle, but the task defeated her. She would have to wait to hear it in the traveler’s own words.
For five more lapses the rocket would fall freely, then the engines would start up again, burning more fiercely than during the ascent, slowing the vehicle sufficiently for the parachute to take over and ease its fall. Yalda kept her rear eyes on the clock and her forward gaze raised to the zenith, trying not to be distracted by the Hurtlers.
Where was the speck of light? She glanced at Frido, but he hadn’t spotted it either. She forced herself to remain calm; the wind was whipping up dust all around them, and it was always easier to track the rockets to burn-out than to catch sight of them as they lit up again.
There! Lower and westwards from where she’d been looking, faint but unmistakable. The cross-winds would have given the rocket an unpredictable horizontal push, keeping it from retracing its trajectory precisely—and Yalda suspected that she’d lost her bearings a little, telling herself that she’d kept her gaze fixed when she’d really been following some slowly drifting streak of color in her peripheral vision.
Frido spoke quietly, his words for her alone. “Something’s wrong,” he said. “It’s coming down too fast.”
Yalda couldn’t agree. He had watched more launches then she had, but he was more anxious too; his perceptions were skewed.
The flame grew closer, its intensity becoming painful; in her mind’s eye Yalda followed it down to a point just a few strolls from the launch site. Benedetta would meet them halfway across the plain, waving and shouting triumphantly.
She waited for the flame to cut out, watching the clock as the moment approached. But when it had passed, the engines were still blazing.
“Something’s wrong,” Frido repeated softly. “The burn must have started late.”
As he spoke, the flame went out. Yalda fixed the clock’s reading in her mind: six pauses after the scheduled time. If the entire burn had been delayed for six pauses, the rocket would have been moving more than ten dozen strides per pause faster than intended when the engines cut out and the parachute was unfurled. Falling faster, from a lower altitude.
“What can you see?” Yalda asked him. The recruits were starting to notice their whispering, but Yalda ignored them and watched Frido searching the sky with the theodolite’s small telescope. The unlit rocket itself would be impossible to make out from this distance, but if the parachute was open the white fabric would catch the sun.