Luke followed Chad, with Michael behind him, all offset slightly to avoid each other’s jet engine blast. They left the ramp, turning right in close sequence, and headed along the taxiway to runway 35 Left.
Kaz stayed quiet, observing. Some pilots liked to chat, but Chad was all business. As they reached the wide pavement by the end of the runway, the other two jets pulled alongside. Kaz looked across at JW. Even under the helmet, oxygen mask and sunglasses, he could see the doctor’s broad smile and knew what he was thinking: this crew was going to the Moon, and he was in the thick of it.
Chad leaned to check with Luke and Michael and saw them nod. Takeoff checks complete, everyone ready.
“Ellington Tower, NASA 18 flight of three, ready for takeoff 35 Left.”
“Roger, NASA 18 flight, winds 350 at 11, cleared takeoff. Godspeed.”
Chad clicked his mic button twice, closed his canopy and led the trio onto the runway, Luke lining up on his right wing, Michael on his left, both raising a thumb when in position.
Chad made a wind-up motion with his finger, and they moved their throttles ahead into a detent, giving full thrust just short of afterburner. He glanced left and right, then raised his chin and dropped it. At the signal, all three pilots released the toe brakes and jammed their throttles fully forward to the hard stop. Max thrust for takeoff.
The J85 engines responded instantly. Sparks flew, and like a giant blowtorch, the raw fuel ignited in the afterburners, yellow-gold flame visibly erupting out the exhaust at the rear. Now pushing with 6,000 pounds of thrust, the jets began to accelerate down the runway.
Chad pulled his throttles back a little bit to give the other two pilots some extra margin to hold position on his wings. As the airspeed indicator wound quickly up through 140 knots, he eased back on the stick, and the nose pivoted up. Kaz glanced out to see Michael and Luke doing the same. At 160 knots, the jets’ thin, short wings were generating enough lift to raise the planes’ main wheels off the runway. Chad paused a couple seconds, then raised the gear and flap handles. Staring intently to hold formation, the other pilots found the knobs blindly in their cockpits and did the same. All eyes watched the other airplanes’ wheels fold up cleanly out of sight, the covering doors briskly snapping closed.
The transition was complete: the T-38s were no longer compromised beasts of the ground, but clean birds of the air, accelerating up into their natural environment.
The crews settled comfortably into position, tightly and naturally holding formation, a triangle of roaring metal climbing into the south Houston sky, pointed a little bit south of east. Headed to Cape Canaveral—and launch.
They leveled off at 37,000 feet, the sparkling blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico far below them, and Luke and Michael had drifted their jets out to loose formation. The T-38 had no autopilot, and the constant corrections needed to hold heading, altitude and airspeed were tiring. Soon Chad asked, “You want to fly, Kaz?”
“Glad to.” Kaz lightly rested his hands on the stick and throttle, and glanced at the navigation chart on his knee for orientation.
“Great, thanks. You have control.”
“I have it.” Verbal confirmation was standard practice after several airplanes had gone out of control because each pilot thought the other was flying. Kaz shook the stick very slightly as a secondary confirmation, feeling the T-38 twitch in response.
Conversation in a two-seat jet is surreal and fragmented, yet strangely intimate, even with the background din of rushing air and noisy turbojet engines and having to keep a constant ear to the steady patter of Air Traffic Control. Both people face forward, so you can’t see when the other is talking; the words just suddenly sound inside your helmet, almost as if they were your own thoughts.
Kaz had been thinking about the flying, and also about Laura, when Chad’s voice snapped him out of his reverie. “Kazimieras Zemeckis—it’s an unusual name. Where’s your family from?”
“Lithuania. It’s a Litvak name—Lithuanian Jewish. I was born in Vilnius just as the war started, and my family fled, managing to get one of the last passages to New York.” A short pause, as they both listened to the muffled sounds of flight. Then Kaz added, “Good thing they did. By 1942, the Nazis had killed almost the whole community, seventy-five thousand Litvaks.”
“So, you’re a Jew?”
“Yes, but non-practicing.” Why was Chad asking about this? He tried to lighten the mood. “My mother still hopes I’ll find a nice Jewish girl to straighten me out.”