I couldn’t escape the poignant stench of burning rocket fuel combined with smoke. It made bile rise in my throat as I struggled against my restraints. The cockpit seat failed to eject, leaving me to crash land on… where was I?

  The XR-7’s windshield cracked and fractured so many times it turned from a transparent color to a white I couldn’t see through. Debris caked on it from the outside, though the sun shone outside into the compartment, casting rays of light through several cracks. Inside, the cabin filled with smoke. I coughed as it became hard to breathe.

  The lights from the instruments flickered, turning on and off from the short power somewhere behind me. I had to get out of here, or I’d asphyxiate from the smoke.

  I tugged at my restraints again. This time, I managed to find the clasp, my hands shaking as I worked hard to undo it. I wiggled out of the harness and reached for the manual release for the cockpit windshield.

  It wouldn’t budge.

  I gripped the handle with both hands and yanked, but it wouldn’t budge. Smoke burned my lungs. Everything seemed to blur around me, spinning in a haziness. I couldn’t survive much longer in these conditions.

  Desperate, I slammed my fists against the cockpit windshield, futilely hitting it repeatedly to try to get it to break. Nothing happened. This would be the end for me.

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  Then, a loud thud came from outside the cockpit. Something out there returned my knocking like an echo, though hitting harder than I had struck the windshield. Whatever was out there hit it again, rattling the entire craft.

  My mind went fuzzy then. I couldn’t tell what was real or what wasn’t anymore. I tried to focus on what had just occurred to keep myself conscious. I’d gone on a mission testing a new rocket for the Space Force that the higher-ups told me would transform the way the United States conducted space flight. Something had gone wrong during the flight, shorting out my instruments. The compass had gone haywire in the process, and I ended up…

  …where had I ended up? I had no idea where I’d landed. The last several minutes had been a complete blur, making it harder to focus.

  A crash sounded. Someone broke through from outside. A pair of hands reached in, pulling me up and out. I coughed my lungs out, hardly able to see what was going on. The hands dragged me out of the cockpit, pulling my limp body out of the craft and jumping down into tall grasses where I landed. Though the ground was hard beneath the grass, it cushioned me from any fall.

  Everything was so bright. The sun shone above, and trees swayed in the wind, yet my world spun.

  A face peered over me, fair-skinned, round, soft, and it may have been a hallucination from inhaling too much smoke and the oxygen deprivation, but I swear I could see a halo around her. It was her. She had a lithe form and high breasts. I could see the tops of her low-cut, white blouse. Long, red hair draped down below her shoulders. Her black eyes gazed at me with curiosity.

  She was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen, with pointed ears sticking out from under her hair. I had to be hallucinating.

  That was when the world went completely dark, and I lost consciousness.