Skyhook

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“Whoa! What’s this thing doing?” Captain Gene Hammond asked.

The chief test pilot’s unexpected question snapped Ben Cole upright in his seat, drawing his attention from the maze of computer screens. Instinctively, he pressed the right side of his headset closer to his ear, as if trying to recapture the comment.

“I don’t know,” he heard the copilot respond.

Ben’s eyes flickered to the forward bulkhead of the converted business jet’s cabin, imagining the civilian test pilots hunched over their controls in the cockpit some thirty feet away. He felt the Gulfstream pitch down slightly, the white noise of the slipstream rising as the jet gained speed, the unexplained maneuver sharpening the isolation of being all alone in the stripped-down cabin.

“Crown, are you purposely descending us?” Hammond queried the test director by radio link. “I don’t think that’s the plan.”

Ben felt a sparkle of chills as he forced his eyes back to the display, confirming the lowering altitude and rising airspeed.

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