Glimpse

“Hoban Washburn!” “Present!” The flight instructor walked along the line of students, his heavy boots clacking on the metal grating of the cargo bay. Wash didn’t hear the other names, didn’t hear anything at all but the beating of his own heart. He was far too excited. Today it was happening, the first time he would go up and out. He would finally leave the atmosphere, leave the smog and the grit and the grime of his homeworld behind. Space was waiting for him. And Wash didn’t like making things wait. It was rude. This was not a training run through the clouds, a test to see if you had the temperament and the reflexes required to fly a ship. There would be no clouds, Wash had been told, no sky. Just space and stars. He had seen the holo-vids, spent hours on the Cortex catching every glimpse he could. Everyone who had been up said the same thing. There was no comparison at all. Seeing space on the Cortex was like a memory of a shadow compared with the real thing. So they said. The flight instructor waved his arm and his eager students followed him inside the cargo ship. With a hiss and a slam of metal the doors shut. If Wash had wanted to go back now he couldn’t have. But that thought wasn’t anywhere in his head. It was all about up and out. Into the black. The engines began their spinning, Wash’s heartbeat rising in speed along with them. Following the flight instructor the students walked in a tight, excited bunch toward the port observation bay. Each alone in their own little worlds the students filed, one-by-one, onto the little cushioned bench’s that had been set up precisely for this purpose. They watched as the colors of the atmosphere sped by, the grey smog fading to the brown haze of the upper atmosphere. There was a second of pull as gravity fought to maintain its hold on the ship, like the fingertips of a man grasping at a moth, then they broke away, up and out. There was a collective gasp from the students. Wash felt his heartbeat slow, as if reflecting the wonderment he felt. Here was the universe, arrayed in all in infinite beauty. The black of space seemed to be richer, more vivid than anything he had ever seen. In seemed so deep like one could fall forever into it. The blackness was somewhat of a contradiction; it seemed both near and far away, infinite yet attainable, aloof yet familiar. Somehow, thought Wash, this seemed right. He had needed this, wanted this, all his life. Then he noticed the stars. He hadn’t seen them at first, entranced by the blackness as he was. But slowly they began appearing before him, little splinters of silver, holes of light cut into a black backdrop. As he watched they more and more seemed to appear as ones he had not noticed at first glance came into his consciousness. And they were not uniform like he had first imagined, rather a dozen different colors and shades. There were subtle pinks that glimmered like exotic pearls, reds that put one in mind of drifting sparks from a fire, blues, electric and brilliant. Some stars had faint yellow tinges, sunflowers of space, others still more pure white than the teeth of a newborn child. Silver stars glittered like the points of knives their light shinning across the Verse. And the patterns. They seemed to form pictures of a million things before his eyes, changing and twisting with each turn of the head. People, animals, glowing pictures in the black sky. Wash could imagine all the ships flitting between the stars, free and unfettered. No more would he live under the grey smog. Now the universe was revealed to him no more would he stay bound to one planet. For Hoban Wahburn the Verse was about to become an endless playground. One that could span the rest of his life, flying free between the brilliant points of light in the blackness of space.