Too early or too late would be just as disastrous. When the wall loomed up above the jet and I could see the joints between the blocks I figured it was about right and I hit the eject button. Bam! The sequence was almost too fast to follow—but it worked. A transparent shutter snapped down over my face, the still tilted up canopy blew away with a crack of explosives, and the seat slammed up so hard against me that it felt like my spine had shortened to half its length. Almost in slow motion I sailed up and out of the jet and, for a hideously long second, saw the raw stone of the wall directly in front of me. Then I was over with only the dark sky ahead. At the highest point in my arc there was another sharp crack at my back and I looked up to see the white column of the parachute swirling up above me. I was falling and the roofs of some buildings looked very close below. The chute opened with a rustling snap, the seat pushed up against me and, a moment after this jarring deceleration, the wall of a building was rushing past and the seat hit the ground and rolled over.
