Ejection

• Charlie Greenberger, Grade 5
• Short Story
• 2022

“Five, Four, Three, Two, One, Ignition!” came the crackly voice through the radio, the spacecraft’s engines came to life and roared as they started burning. The dials on my dashboard started turning crazily. After a second or two, a tremendous force pressed down on me, like an elephant was sitting on me, and the gargantuan tube of a rocket lifted off the ground, slowly at first, but getting ever faster.

Through the radio, it was possible that the comms room was trying to contact me, and they could shout their head off all they liked, because all that I was able to hear was the ridiculously loud sounds of the engines. I peered through the triangular window next to me, with little marks and degrees for reentry, if I ever got to that stage.Through it I could see the green fields and paddocks separating the launchpad from the city , but the launchpad itself was obstructed from my view because it was still directly under the rocket. I looked back at the dashboard with all the dials and labels plastered on it and noticed that the fuel level seemed abnormally low, in fact, it was almost empty. I didn’t ponder on it for long, though, and seized the radio from its case.
“This is Explorer, I’m extremely low on fuel. Over!”
the engine coughed and sputtered and the roaring died down,
“Strike that, we’re out of fuel!”

The reply was muffled by static so that I could only catch one word, ‘eject’. I’d trained for this many times, but it still scared me.There was no time to think about it, crashing wasn’t very attractive either, so I reached over, grabbed the case over the lever marked ‘Eject’, pulled it off and yanked the lever towards me. There was a shudder and the capsule promptly flew up again, banked sharply towards the left and the scenery out my window was speedily replaced by the blue ocean off the coast. During this process, my head, which, unlike the rest of my body, hadn’t been strapped down, knocked against my seat and threatened to knock the fishbowl of a helmet off my head.

The capsule whizzed down and pressure bubbles formed in my ears. The water below seemed like it was about to collide with me, but the hatch above me abruptly blasted off in a small explosion and a quick orange flash beneath me followed by a sharp jet of thrust almost pushed me off the brink of consciousness as the seat forming the final stage of ejection started spinning up and away from the cockpit module. The world went dark, but I managed to reopen my eyes in time for a bright flash and an explosion: the sound of the cockpit hitting the water. I looked up as a billowing sound shook the flying chair and a red parachute blasted up. The seat floated down and landed softly near an orange dinghy with navy divers to the rescue. Safe.