"I didn't expect myself to go up," Al said. "But if one knows precisely what to expect, it's much less frightening than before."
The thing that Al feared most when he looked down from that height was the distance to the ground. He feared falling down the entire way and taking the full brunt of impact with his face and... nothing else after that, because he suspected that everything would be rather empty and over.
He narrowed his eyes now. He had to know, had to experience this unknown as well and analyse it and learn every part of it. Otherwise, he'd always wonder and worry and never ever know the facts.
He bit his lip and steered the broom halfway to the height he was before, the height which even Al's paranoid senses deemed relatively safe. "Um," he said to Rose, "Do you think you could Shuntbump me from here? I'll stay still. I want to try something."