Free Solo by Clyde Edgerton Page A

a ladder into the front seat. A ground crew member followed, helped strap me in, and handed me my helmet. In the T-37 my seat had seemed almost on the ground. Now I was sitting very high in the air, as if I were almost out on the end of a long pole, with no outside reference points. The wings were so far back I couldn’t see them without looking over my shoulder.
    Lieutenant Jackson climbed into the backseat. He’d be piloting from back there on this ride. I was along only to see what this bird could do. As we taxied out, I thought about how I’d watched pilot after pilot taxi out in the T-38, dreaming of my chance.
    Lieutenant Jackson was talking as he taxied us intoposition for takeoff. “You’re going to feel a little more power here than in the Tweety Bird. Follow through on the controls if you like.”
    I placed my right hand lightly on the stick grip, my left on the throttles, and my feet on the rudder pedals.
    We taxied out and into position on the runway. The throttles moved forward. I felt him on the brakes—as in the T-37, the brakes were under the toes of the rudder pedals. The aircraft, so much newer than the old T-37s, felt clean, tight, and very powerful.
    The engines roared as the aircraft, throttles at 100 percent power, held stationary while Lieutenant Jackson checked the instrument readings. This was not a gentle, high-pitched roar; it was a deep, constant thunder. This airplane was almost four times as powerful as the T-37, yet not much heavier.
    Lieutenant Jackson released the brakes, and after an initial few feet of slow roll, we began to pick up speed. I felt pressed back in my seat. The throttles went on beyond 100 percent, and the engines roared louder: we were in afterburner (raw fuel is dumped into the burning exhaust for added thrust). Almost before I could think about what was happening, we were airborne, gear up, flaps up. Rather than pulling the throttles out of afterburner and into 100 percent power as usual, Lieutenant Jackson left them in afterburner for a “burner climb.” We climbed at a very steep angle.
    I’d seen burner climbs from the ground. The aircraft climbs almost like a rocket. I looked outside, down at the earth, which seemed to be shrinking, and then I lookedat the altimeter. The altimeter is like a clock (numbered one through ten in a circle) with an hour hand (1,000 feet between numbers) and a minute hand (100 feet between numbers), and the minute hand was making one revolution every two seconds! We’d be leveling off at 15,000 feet
thirty seconds
after takeoff. (That’s about 360 miles an hour, measured
vertically.
) Well, this was the most amazing . . . I was itching to fly it.
    Just before reaching 15,000 feet, Lieutenant Jackson pulled the throttles out of afterburner. We flew around a bit. He did an aileron roll and a loop. Then he pushed the throttles into afterburner again as he pointed the nose slightly down to pick up speed rapidly. I watched the airspeed indicator. Four hundred fifty . . . 480 . . . 520 . . . 570. I felt a slight bump as the aircraft went supersonic—faster than the speed of sound, a speed at which some experts once believed an airplane would fall apart.
    When I was fifteen, I’d counted down, day by day, for nine months until the day I got my driver’s license—I was mad to drive. Had I known about this, how long would I have counted? Lieutenant Jackson raised the nose of the aircraft and entered a rapid climb, still in afterburner. The altimeter showed 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 feet. The sky turned a darker and darker blue. At 52,000 feet the sky was a very deep blue, unlike any sky I’d ever seen. The airframe began to buffet a bit. We were as high as we could go and as high as I’d ever again be from Earth.
    A winding-down sound brought my eyes to the instrument panel. The left engine instruments were winding backward. Engine failure?!
    “Oh,” said Lieutenant Jackson. “I forgot to tell you this might happen. Lack of oxygen.