He was eighteen. He didn’t need his father’s rocket anymore. He had his own gravity now.
The roar was biblical. Dust and dead leaves tornadoed around the launch pad. For five seconds, nothing happened. Then The Sisyphus lifted—not gracefully, but violently, like a bird that had forgotten how to fly but remembered it had to. teen 18 yo
The g-force pressed Leo into his seat. The sky turned from blue to indigo to black. At 110,000 feet, the engine cut, as planned. And then—silence. He was eighteen
Leo’s hands stopped shaking. He adjusted the port thruster mix—0.3% lean. Then he keyed the ignition. the engine cut
Then he fired the retros and began the long fall home.