Carrie had not floated more than 10 feet outside the window before she was slammed into by a low-flying jet on its way to the Toonworld air show. She stuck to the leading edge of the wing like a decal. The jet moved so fast her edges didn’t even flap in the wind.
The pilot finished his turn and headed back to the airport on final approach. The runways were unexpectedly clogged, so he stomped on the air brakes. The plane squealed to a stop, hanging suspended in mid-air. Carrie was still stuck to the foremost part of the wing, so the jet transferred its entire load of momentum into her. Her eyes bulged out and she jerked back into three dimensions. Freed from the jet, gravity reached up to snatch her and she plummeted like a rock.
Her tiny paws scrambled madly as she fell, trying to grab onto anything, like a passing bird, or a balloon, or even a cloud.
Or a jet. She landed with a thud on the wing of another jet from the air show. Her claws sank into the wing surface as she clung on desperately.
The pilot sped up, going into a banked turn. Carrie’s arms and legs stretched as the momentum tried to fling her off the plane. Her jowls flapped and rippled as the wind slapped at her face.
The jet went faster still as the curve tightened. The wind howled and roared, her fur sticking straight back. Her arms and legs continued stretching, her taut body indenting and hollowing out in the middle as her lengthening limbs pulled mass from her body. Carrie was stretching and thinning out from the air pressure, looking like an up-side-down teacup attached to the jet with four pipe cleaners. Her head was the only part of her body not distended and pulled out of shape. Her teeth chattered from the vibration.
At the tightest, fastest part of the turn, the pilot sent the jet into a barrel roll. The plane spun dizzily around its axis, the G-forces mounting. Carrie squinted her eyes shut as the skin tightened on her face, the G-forces clawing on everything flexible. The skin on her face slid back, peeling off from around her mouth until you could see her jawbones.
The jet pulled out of the roll and straightened out. Released, Carrie slammed down into the wing with a grunt. She didn’t have time collect more than her wits when the plane accelerated again. The daredevil pilot zoomed past, impressing the cheering crowd below. Carrie was sliding backward, her tiny claws leaving long nail marks in the slick metal surface.
Just as it looked like the pilot was going to crash into the side of the tallest skyscraper, he pulled back on the joystick, sending the jet into a sharp rise. Its nose pointed straight up as it rocketed away from the surface. It climbed higher and higher, headed for the out reaches of the atmosphere.
Carrie gasped and wheezed, partially from panic and but mostly from the thinning air. The deafening growl of the jets quieted as the greedy engines desperately sucked the vacuum for any trace of air. Carrie began inflating like a diver getting the bends. She had no external air pressure to balance her internal pressure. Eyes and cheeks bulged, mouth clamped shut, she fought to keep what little air she had left in her lungs.
People can survive in a vacuum up to 30 seconds with a lung-full of air. 29 seconds later, the jet changed course, setting its nose into a dive to plunge back to the earth miles below. The jet dove, the rapidly thickening air heating as it rushed by. The wings’ leading edges glowing from the friction like a spacecraft on reentry. The air itself glowed as it thundered past, from dull red to bright orange. Carrie hunkered down as the superheated air baked the wing like an open blast furnace.
As Carrie fought the feeling a kernel of popcorn has as it’s about to pop, the jet slowed. Its flight leveled off. Whew! They were coming in for a landing! She tumbled off the wing, landing in the grass median as the jet rolled to a stop. She didn’t have long to enjoy the feel of solid earth as it started rumbling. A crowd swarmed around the jet for pictures and autographs. Carrie scurried this way and that to avoid most of the trampling, but still had her tail stepped on a few times.
The crowd grew thicker as more people came over to see what everyone was crowding around for. She retreated to the only place safe from milling feet – back to the jet and into the cockpit.