sure.”
Wilson was silent. It seemed incredible that London had been transformed into some kind of nightmare world in such a short space of time.
Peterson cleared his throat uncomfortably and said, “So that’s why we need you.”
“Need me?” he asked, startled. “Why?”
“We want you to go to London, Dr. Wilson. We want you to find your wife, if she’s still alive. If she’s not we want you to locate her notes.”
Wilson stared at him in horror. “Go to London? After what you’ve been telling me? No way.”
“Dr. Wilson, no one knows your wife better than you do. You have the best chance of all of finding her. You’re also a mycologist—you’ll know what to look for among her notes. You are, I’m afraid, indispensable to this mission. And pray you’re successful. We are under increasing pressure from other countries—France in particular—to authorize the use of nuclear weapons on the mainland. They want H-Bombs dropped not only on the affected areas but on every part of England, Scotland and Wales to stop the fungus completely.”
“I don’t care! I’m not going and that’s final!” cried Wilson.
Contemptuously O’Connell said, “You don’t understand, Doctor, you have no choice in the matter. The Acting Prime Minister has already decided you are going.” He glanced at his watch. “In less than eight hours, as a matter of fact.”
5
Ilya Nechvolodov glanced at his co-pilot Terenty who was dozing fitfully. Every now and then Terenty would jerk awake, glance in momentary panic at the control panels of the TU144, then grin sheepishly at Ilya. Within seconds his eyelids would slip down again and a faint but irritating snore would bubble up from the back of his mouth.
As usual, Ilya reflected with annoyance, the younger pilot had been overdoing his night life again. The myth of supersonic aircraft pilots being romantic, devil-may-care, sexual superman had instilled itself too deeply into Terenty’s brain. From what Ilya had heard he was trying to prove it with every woman under 30 in Moscow but the effects of all these sexual marathons on Terenty’s concentration was seriously worrying Ilya.
He’d tried speaking to Terenty about it, warning him that he was putting his career, and all its accompanying privileges, at risk but he wouldn’t listen. Had the TU144 not been carrying an important, if junior, Soviet fisheries official to a conference in Iceland he might have risked creating a fake emergency involving some simulated turbulence to give Terenty a beneficial jolt. As it was he would have no choice but to report him when they returned to Moscow. Terenty was a friend, true, but Ilya could not afford to put his own career at risk because of him. There was Alina to think of. She would leave him at once if they lost their five room apartment.
As the Russian version of the Concorde flew far to the north of Britain it passed through an area where high altitude winds were saturated with minor detritus that had been dragged up from the earth’s surface in a series of stages by means of gusts and updrafts. Anything smaller than a speck of dust was trapped there forever. Bacteria, microscopic seeds, and, of course, fungal spores and fragments of the thread-like hyphae that make up a fungus.
A few, a very few, of the latter contained the Jane Wilson enzyme. But it only took one to produce the subsequent disaster.
The cone of turbulence created by the passing of the TU144 swept this particular particle near the superstructure of the aircraft. There, by chance, it entered one of the ventilation ducts that aerated the fuel tanks.
The tank it had entered was part of a system transferring fuel around the plane in order to maintain the aircraft’s trim during flight. The tanks and their fuel had another purpose too, apart from feeding the hungry engines; the vast quantities of liquid were used to dissipate the friction-created heat from the surface of the fuselage.
In the partially-filled tanks the temperature was high but in those that remained full it generally never rose above about 40 degrees centigrade. At that temperature a certain fungus called
The system had always worked, until now.
When Jane Wilson’s super-enzyme came into contact with the
They began to exploit the tremendous food potential of the fuel. They broke it down and used it to grow. When all the fuel in that tank had been exhausted it sent hyphae out across the tank’s surface until it located a way out. The strands thickened and began to probe through the pipes that connected the tanks until they found more food. As the fungus grew it started to block the movement of fuel. This caused the aircraft’s computer to try and reroute the dwindling supply that was still accessible through different pipes, but it soon ran out of alternatives.
It was at this point that Ilya became aware of what was happening.
The instrument display screen in front of him, which had been showing simulations of the airspeed indicator, the altimeter, the horizontal situation indicator, and the attitude director, suddenly displayed just a single simulation of the fuel flow indicator. It was outlined with a flashing red square and a loud buzzing sound filled the flight deck.
A jolt of alarm shook Ilya and he saw that the flow from the tanks was nil. And yet a glance showed him that the tanks still held plenty of fuel according to the fuel capacity indicator. That meant a blockage of some kind. But surely not in all of the flow pipes?
At that moment there was silence as the Tupolev TU 144’s powerful Kuznetzov engines abruptly cut out. One second the afterburning turbofan engines were providing 44,000 pounds of thrust; the next they were nothing but dead weight.
As Ilya frantically tried to think of what to do Terenty stirred and said, “Hey, what’s the matter?”
Ignoring him Ilya reached for the auxiliary fuel tank switch. The auxiliary tank should have been cut in automatically by the computer but he guessed that because the computer still registered the other tanks as full it saw no reason to do so.
He threw the switch but nothing happened.
“Ilya, what the fuck is happening?” cried Terenty, staring at the display screens. “Why have we lost power?”
The TU 144 was rapidly losing air speed. Ilya knew, as he pulled back on the elevons controls to keep the nose as high as possible, that it wouldn’t be long before their glide turned into a dive.
The engines roared back into life. The fuel from the auxiliary tank, which was not connected to the trimming system, had finally reached them. llya gave a sigh of relief and turned to Terenty. He spoke quickly and calmly, “Fuel blockage. But a simultaneous one in all the pipes—which makes me think it’s a computer malfunction. Remember that American 747 a couple of years back that almost crashed when its computer simply switched off its fuel supply?”
Terenty nodded, his face gray with shock. “What can we do?”
“We must override the computer. There’s not sufficient fuel in the auxiliary to get us to Reykjavik.” He glanced at his chart. “We could just make it to Scotland, but that’s off-limits because of the quarantine.”
“What if it’s a real blockage?” asked Terenty.
“Pray that it’s not.”
The flight deck door opened and Yaroslav entered. Yaroslav was the flight engineer and had been taking his break in the main cabin, socializing with the VIP passenger and his entourage.
