Four Past Midnight

aircraft sits higher, I'll be able to lay our right wing right over the Delta's left wing. While I do that, four of you are going to bring over a hose cart - there's one sitting by the other jetway. I saw it before it got dark.'

'Maybe we better wake Sleeping Beauty at the back of the plane and get him to lend a hand,' Bob said.

Brian thought it over briefly and then shook his head. 'The last thing we need right now is another scared, disoriented passenger on our hands - and one with a killer hangover to boot. And we won't need him - two strong men can push a hose cart in a pinch. I've seen it done. Just check the transmission lever to make sure it's in neutral. It wants to end up directly beneath the overlapping wings. Got it?'

They all nodded. Brian looked them over and decided that Rudy and Bethany were still too blown from wrestling the stretcher to be of much help. 'Nick, Bob, and Albert. You push. Laurel, you steer. Okay?'

They nodded.

'Go on and do it, then. Bethany? Mr Warwick? Go down with them. Pull the ladder away from the plane, and when I've got the plane repositioned, place it next to the overlapping wings. The wings, not the door. Got it?'

They nodded. Looking around at them, Brian saw that their eyes looked clear and bright for the first time since they had landed. Of course, he thought. They have something to do now. And so do I, thank God.

3

As they approached the hose cart sitting off to the left of the unoccupied jetway, Laurel realized she could actually see it. 'My God,' she said. 'It's coming daylight again already. How long has it been since it got dark?'

'Less than forty minutes, by my watch,' Bob said, 'but I have a feeling that my watch doesn't keep very accurate time when we're outside the plane. I've also got a feeling time doesn't matter much here, anyway.'

'What's going to happen to Mr Toomy?' Laurel asked.

They had reached the cart. It was a small vehicle with a tank on the back, an open-air cab, and thick black hoses coiled on either side. Nick put an arm around her waist and turned her toward him. For a moment she had the crazy idea that he meant to kiss her, and she felt her heart speed up.

'I don't know what's going to happen to him,' he said. 'All I know is that when the chips were down, I chose to do what Dinah wanted. I left him lying unconscious on the floor. All right?'

'No,' she said in a slightly unsteady voice, 'but I guess it will have to do.'

He smiled a little, nodded, and gave her waist a brief squeeze. 'Would you like to go to dinner with me when and if we make it back to LA?'

'Yes,' she said at once. 'That would be something to look forward to.'

He nodded again. 'For me, too. But unless we can get this airplane refuelled, we're not going anywhere.' He looked at the open cab of the hose cart. 'Can you find neutral, do you think?'

Laurel eyed the stick-shift jutting up from the floor of the cab. 'I'm afraid I only drive an automatic.'

'I'll do it.' Albert jumped into the cab, depressed the clutch, then peered at the diagram on the knob of the shift lever. Behind him, the 767's second engine whined into life and both engines began to throb harder as Brian powered up. The noise was very loud, but Laurel found she didn't mind at all. It blotted out that other sound, at least temporarily. And she kept wanting to look at Nick. Had he actually invited her out to dinner? Already it seemed hard to believe.

Albert changed gears, then waggled the shift lever. 'Got it,' he said, and jumped down - 'Up you go, Laurel. Once we get it rolling, you'll have to hang a hard right and bring it around in a circle.'

'All right.'

She looked back nervously as the three men lined themselves up along the rear of the hose cart with Nick in the middle.

'Ready, you lot?' he asked.

Albert and Bob nodded.

'Right, then - all together.'

Bob had been braced to push as hard as he could, and damn the low back pain which had plagued him for the last ten years, but the hose cart rolled with absurd case. Laurel hauled the stiff, balky steering wheel around with all her might. The yellow cart described a small circle on the gray tarmac and began to roll back toward the 767, which was trundling slowly into position on the righthand side of the parked Delta jet.

'The difference between the two aircraft is incredible,' Bob said.

'Yes,' Nick agreed. 'You were right, Albert. We may have wandered away from the present, but in some strange way, that airplane is still a part of it.'

' So are we,' Albert said. 'At least, so far.'

The 767's turbines died, leaving only the steady low rumble of the APUs -Brian was now running all four of them. They were not loud enough to cover the sound in the east. Before, that sound had had a kind of massive uniformity, but as it neared it was fragmenting; there seemed to be sounds within sounds, and the sum total began to seem horribly familiar.

Animals at feeding time, Laurel thought, and shivered. That's what it sounds like - the sound of feeding animals, sent through an amplifier and blown up to grotesque proportions.

She shivered violently and felt panic begin to nibble at her thoughts, an elemental force she could control no more than she could control whatever was making that sound.

'Maybe if we could see it, we could deal with it,' Bob said as they began to push the fuel cart again.

Albert glanced at him briefly and said, 'I don't think so.'

4

Brian appeared in the forward door of the 767 and motioned Bethany and Rudy to roll the ladder over to him. When they did, he stepped onto the platform at the top and pointed to the overlapping wings. As they rolled him in that direction, he listened to the approaching noise and found himself remembering a movie he had seen on the late show a long time ago. In it, Charlton Heston had owned a big plantation in South America. The plantation had been attacked by a vast moving carpet of soldier ants, ants which ate everything in their path - trees, grass, buildings, cows, men. What had that movie been called? Brian couldn't remember. He only remembered that Charlton had kept trying increasingly desperate tricks to stop the ants, or at least delay them. Had he beaten them in the end? Brian couldn't remember, but a fragment of his dream suddenly recurred, disturbing in its lack of association to anything: an ominous red sign which read SHOOTING STARS ONLY.

'Hold it!' he shouted down to Rudy and Bethany.

They ceased pushing, and Brian carefully climbed down the ladder until his head was on a level with the underside of the Delta jet's wing. Both the 767 and 727 were equipped with single-point fuelling ports in the left wing. He was now looking at a small square hatch with the words FUEL TANK ACCESS and CHECK SHUT-OFF VALVE BEFORE REFUELLING stencilled across it. And some wit had pasted a round yellow happy-face sticker to the fuel hatch. It was the final surreal touch.

Albert, Bob, and Nick had pushed the hose cart into position below him and were now looking up, their faces dirty gray circles in the brightening gloom. Brian leaned over and shouted down to Nick.

'There are two hoses, one on each side of the cart! I want the short one!'

Nick pulled it free and handed it up. Holding both the ladder and the nozzle of the hose with one hand, Brian leaned under the wing and opened the refuelling hatch. Inside was a male connector with a steel prong poking out like a finger. Brian leaned further out ... and slipped. He grabbed the railing of the ladder.

'Hold on, mate,' Nick said, mounting the ladder. 'Help is on the way.' He stopped three rungs below Brian and seized his belt. 'Do me a favor, all right?'