Stories tagged “pilot”
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Falling Home
Reentry is a tricky thing at best. The Ph.D.s on the ground tell us that we’re always falling, in a manner of speaking. Way I look at it, orbiting the planet’s got nothing to do with the soul-shaking fall back into the atmosphere. Come in t...
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Flying Fortunes
Everything was hazy, nebulous, ill-defined… But one thing was certain. She was here. She was alive. Everything seemed so delightfully mundane – a trip to the market? A evening of reading? A quiet lunch? He couldn’t be sure… But ...
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Prepping to Launch
So we’d been sent up to screw the bulb back in. A routine mission. But even now, two hundred years after Gagarin and Glen, nothing about space travel is ever routine. There’s too much that can go wrong. It’s funny to say that, given t...
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Ambition's End
“When I grow up,” I told Grandfather, “I want to be a pilot, just like Slim Tyler.” I was ten and had just finished a very thick book by Richard Stone, called Aviation Stories For Boys, in which Mr. Tyler had vanquished his enem...
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The Ascent
The sun shone through the shades hanging from the window, laying streaks of light on the Captains face. He woke, rubbing the light from his eyes. It wasn’t long before he was shaven and dressed. His wings glistened on the front of his jacket as the s...
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Human Factor
Reve sipped his coffee, quietly scanning the darkness ahead, as the engine carried on across barren wasteland. Just over 200kph and humming right along without a feature in sight. It was flat nothingness after more nothingness, and Reve calculated that...
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Keywords
This campfire society is a call to isolation. Away from technology’s test, no need to duck bullets. Sequestered away from that teeming death hole, One may take pride in life and philosophy, comedy and fears. It is a speed run from darkness to lig...