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Two Sunsets

The sun was setting as we travelled towards it. Being at the front, I had the best view and the view was everything I'd expected it to be. Spectacular, I suppose you could call it, for we'd been climbing steadily for some time.

Don't tell anyone, but the navigation part isn't that difficult. Not really. I mean – all I had to do was watch the little screen, and the arrowhead point where two black lines intersected. It's all there, with distance-made-good, and distance-to-waypoint, and course-and-speed, and lots of other information that no-one needs to know.

I could do that. What I would do when I got to the point indicated, was another question. It was my first time, you see. The first time for all of us.

We'd talked about it beforehand, of course: what would you do; and would it be difficult or simple; and Terry said he wouldn't even have to think about it - which made no sense: not to me, anyway.

When the black lines start getting close together, you can zoom in on the screen to make them move apart again. This works for a while, and then it doesn't any more. Because we were finally there and what Terry had said made sense after all.

I pushed the button, saw two green lights on the panel and that was it. There was no sound, no sense of anything departing. A slight pause and then we were banking steep and falling, with the engines on maximum power: diving to shelter behind the curvature of the earth.

For an instant our own six vapour trails shadowed against the stratosphere, and then they were fanned and dissolved by the sleet of ionizing radiation.

Pure white light over a black horizon, fading to orange-red.

I send two sunsets - Day and I, in competition ran I finished two - and several stars, While He was making one. (Emily Dickinson: “I send two sunsets” 1862)