A white rocket pointed skyward. Earthbound machines groaned and detached from the rocket, and there was a hiss, and the bottom of the rocket glared orange, and sparks showered down in molten drips. The rocket roared a red scream, then a meteoric jet of fire. The fire turned the air hot with chemical heat and pushed the rocket off the ground. The rocket soared fast and was a star in the burning hot sky and was gone. The rocket's scream faded, and the air cooled and the ground cooled, and the blue atmosphere swallowed the red fire and white metal.
It was the age of pioneers and moons and black holes, and ten astronauts felt their limbs grow light with child excitement. The blue nitrogen and ozone peeled back like a dying fog, and the rocket silently spewed out fire in a black orbit not just pin drop quiet but noiseless.
The astronauts worked and floated and flew in the sterile hull like trapeze artists and skydivers. Everything was strapped and bolted in place, and the air conditioning smelled like space and airplane seats.
Benjamin Grimm worked his hands over the cockpit dashboard and held a finger ready on a switch. "Detaching fuel tanks." He flipped the switch, and parts of the rocket fell away and drifted back to earth, to its oceans.
Jonathon Storm, eighteen, was the youngest among them. His laugh was one of confidence, and his blue eyes were ones of mischief. He had no place on the rocket, except that his older sister, Susan, was an astronaut and made many phone calls and arranged him to come with her, just this once, and he did not belong there. She was a virologist and brought vials of phages to study in zero gravity conditions. One of the astronauts jokingly said he didn't realize they let models onboard, and she pretended not to hear it.
The captain was Seamus Heaney, a veteran in his forties but looked not a day over thirty. He liked his hair kept short and his face shaved clean.
The intercom radioed something about a cosmic storm, and Seamus said, "Steady, Grimm." The radio muffled, "From nowhere. Emergency," and an astronaut said "Dear God," and Seamus said, "Steady."
The storm was huge. A cloud of fiery rainbowed dust, whirling and sifting and wafting in and out of itself like a pulsing heart. The rocket was a silver splinter against the storm, like a moon circling red Jupiter.
Seamus Heaney had been an astronaut for over two decades. He did not know anything about cosmic storms nor had he ever heard of them. The intercom died to static, then a silence that seemed to scream. Seamus told everyone to be calm and to put on their clunky white spaceman gear with the American flag patched on the shoulder. Everyone did, and he ordered them to stay calm and to strap themselves in their seats. The ten astronauts strapped themselves in and waited and watched the storm grow bigger as it approached. Seamus talked to the dead radio saying, "This is Minerva, over," and the radio stayed dead, and he kept trying. Benjamin Grimm steered the rocket away from the storm even though the storm moved faster. And Jonathon watched the storm and listened to Seamus repeating himself and saying, "Over." Jonathon looked at Susan, and she was squeezing her seat harnesses, unmoving. She looked almost calm.
The storm overtook the rocket and everyone jerked from the impact. The storm slammed the rocket with whirring dust, and the ship shook and the cargo rumbled. From inside the rocket, the storm sounded faintly like a train. Jonathon wondered if the storm could be heard outside in space, because it was made of gasses and sound moves through gasses.
Seamus told everyone to stay calm and focus on breathing. That the storm would pass and they would be on their way. That the rocket was built for stuff like this. Then one of the astronauts screamed. He convulsed and screamed and thrashed his head against the head rest, and his eyes shone Martian green behind the dark glass of his helmet.
Another astronaut began screaming. He screaming hushed, and his suit became flat and crinkled under the seat harnesses as if it was empty. It sounded like liquid was sloshing in the suit.
Jonathon now felt strange, like fingernail ends were rubbing his skin. Susan started to groan and even Seamus was hunched over with an arm over his stomach.
A gust of the storm slashed the rocket, and the tiles cracked open and let the nitrogen and oxygen vacuum out of the rocket. Benjamin pressed a series of buttons and shouted "Airlock!" as he did it. A vaulted metal door closed behind them and separated the cockpit from the rest of the rocket. And more astronauts started screaming and writhing. The lights died out, and the astronauts were cast in the fluctuating glow of the storm.
"Johnny!" said Susan, and Jonathon saw his uniform starting to smoke. He felt himself burning inside. He suddenly couldn't breathe and plied off his helmet.
Seamus Heaney attempted the intercom again. He stopped and took off his glove. The hand was solid metal. He creakily bent down to the radio again and froze in place. He stopped moving after that.
Susan thrashed in her seat and Jonathon watched scared and passed out, smoke still wafting from his body and limp and floating arms. The strands of smoke didn't rise up but waved like windblown ribbon, long and thin, and would idly change direction. It smelled like the smoke after a long night of fireworks.
Jonathon Storm did not belong on that rocket. He was young and arrogant and dared the gods with wax wings. And now he lay unconscious among the unconscious and the dead. It was forty two hours before a second rocket came and saved him and the other survivors.
When the rescue team came, frost was found on the dead rocket. They sealed the crack in the hull and filled it with some spare oxygen. They opened the cockpit doors. Inside the dark icy cockpit were ten uniformed bodies strapped in their seats. They found that two uniforms were empty: one was filled with a glassy liquid and another with dust. Of the remaining bodies, only four were alive. There was Susan Storm, the virologist. And Benjamin Grimm, the pilot. Reed Richards, an astrophysicist. And last there was Jonathon Storm. Thank God the kid survived. Barely alive, but he'll make it.
As for the captain, Seamus Heaney, he was solid metal, a statue, lurching over the rocket's intercom. More detailed and stoic than Michelangelo's David. The rescue team was terrified.
On earth, the four survivors regained consciousness. They were scrubbed and sanitized and kept in separate containment rooms. Men in sick yellow hazmat suits moved in and out. It was then that Benjamin Grimm turned into a monster. He became immortal stone and starred wide-eyed in horror at his reflection. Susan Storm and Reed Richards demonstrated strange abilities too. Jonathon Storm was the worst of all. He burst into flame and burned alive and almost set the facility on fire before turning normal again, and he was unscathed.
A stone body, a vanishing trick, and elastic limbs. But Jonathon, it was as if he had flown up and gone down with the fire of the sun and the red fire of the rocket back to earth.