Four Past Midnight

down, but I advise you to put it off as long as possible. It's not ... very nice.'

'Gone, is it?'

'Yes. Everything.'

'The little girl is gone, too. Dinah. Laurel was with her at the end. She's taking it very well. She liked that girl. So did I.'

Brian nodded. He was not surprised - the girl's wound was the sort that demanded immediate treatment in an emergency room, and even then the prognosis would undoubtedly be cloudy - but it still rolled a stone against his heart. He had also liked Dinah, and he believed what Laurel believed - that the girl was somehow more responsible for their continued survival than anyone else. She had done something to Mr Toomy, had used him in some strange way ... and Brian had an idea that, somewhere inside, Toomy would not have minded being used in such a fashion. So, if her death was an omen, it was one of the worst sort.

'She never got her operation,' he said.

'No.'

'But Laurel is okay?'

'More or less.'

'You like her, don't you?'

'Yes,' Nick said. 'I have mates who would laugh at that, but I do like her. She's a bit dewy-eyed, but she's got grit.'

Brian nodded. 'Well, if we get back, I wish you the best of luck.'

'Thanks.' Nick sat down in the co-pilot's seat again. 'I've been thinking about the question you asked me before. About what I'll do when and if we get out of this mess ... besides taking the lovely Laurel to dinner, that is. I suppose I might end up going after Mr O'Banion after all. As I see it, he's not all that much different from our friend Toomy.'

'Dinah asked you to spare Mr Toomy,' Brian pointed out. 'Maybe that's something you should add into the equation.'

Nick nodded. He did this as if his head had grown too heavy for his neck. 'Maybe it is.'

'Listen, Nick. I called you up front because if Bob's time-rip actually exists, we've got to be getting close to the place where we went through it. We're going to man the crow's nest together, you and I. You take the starboard side and right center; I'll take port and left center. If you see anything that looks like a time-rip, sing out.'

Nick gazed at Brian with wide, innocent eyes. 'Are we looking for a thingumabob-type time-rip, or do you think it'll be one of the more or less fuckadelic variety, mate?'

'Very funny.' Brian felt a grin touch his lips in spite of himself. 'I don't have the slightest idea what it's going to look like, or even if we'll be able to see it at all. If we can't, we're going to be in a hell of a jam if it's drifted to one side, or if its altitude has changed. Finding a needle in a haystack would be child's play in comparison.'

'What about radar?'

Brian pointed to the RCA/TL color radar monitor. 'Nothing, as you can see. But that's not surprising. If the original crew had acquired the damned thing on radar, they never would have gone through it in the first place.'

'They wouldn't have gone through it if they'd seen it, either,' Nick pointed out gloomily.

'That's not necessarily true. They might have seen it too late to avoid it. Jetliners move fast, and airplane crews don't spend the entire flight searching the sky for bogies. They don't have to; that's what ground control is for. Thirty or thirty-five minutes into the flight, the crew's major outbound tasks are completed. The bird is up, it's out of LA airspace, the anti-collision honker is on and beeping every ninety seconds to show it's working. The INS is all programmed - that happens before the bird ever leaves the ground - and it is telling the autopilot just what to do. From the look of the cockpit, the pilot and co-pilot were on their coffee break. They could have been sitting here, facing each other, talking about the last movie they saw or how much they dropped at Hollywood Park. If there had been a flight attendant up front just before The Event took place, there would at least have been one more set of eyes, but we know there wasn't. The male crew had their coffee and Danish; the flight attendants were getting ready to serve drinks to the passengers when it happened.'

'That's an extremely detailed scenario,' Nick said. 'Are you trying to convince me or yourself?'

'At this point, I'll settle for convincing anyone at all.'

Nick smiled and stepped to the starboard cockpit window. His eyes dropped involuntarily downward, toward the place where the ground belonged, and his smile first froze, then dropped off his face. His knees buckled, and he gripped the bulkhead with one hand to steady himself.

'Shit on toast,' he said in a tiny dismayed voice.

'Not very nice, is it?'

Nick looked around at Brian. His eyes seemed to float in his pallid face. 'All my life,' he said, 'I've thought of Australia when I heard people talk about the great bugger-all, but it's not. That's the great bugger-all, right down there.'

Brian checked the INS and the charts again, quickly. He had made a small red circle on one of the charts; they were now on the verge of entering the airspace that circle represented. 'Can you do what I asked? If you can't, say so. Pride is a luxury we can't - '

'Of course I can,' Nick murmured. He had tom his eyes away from the huge black socket below the plane and was scanning the sky. 'I only wish I knew what I was looking for.'

'I think you'll know it when you see it,' Brian said. He paused and then added, 'If you see it.'

12

Bob Jenkins sat with his arms folded tightly across his chest, as if he were cold. Part of him was cold, but this was not a physical coldness. The chill was coming out of his head.

Something was wrong.

He did not know what it was, but something was wrong. Something was out of place ... or lost ... or forgotten. Either a mistake had been made or was going to be made. The feeling nagged at him like some pain not quite localized enough to be identified. That sense of wrongness would almost crystallize into a thought ... and then it would skitter away again like some small, not-quite-tame animal.

Something wrong.

Or out of place. Or lost.

Or forgotten.

Ahead of him, Albert and Bethany were spooning contentedly. Behind him, Rudy Warwick was sitting with his eyes closed and his lips moving. The beads of a rosary were clamped in one fist. Across the aisle, Laurel Stevenson sat beside Dinah, holding one of her hands and stroking it gently.

Wrong.

Bob eased up the shade beside his seat, peeked out, and slammed it down again. Looking at that would not aid rational thought but erase it. What lay below the plane was utter madness.

I must warn them. I have to. They are going forward on my hypothesis, but if my hypothesis is somehow mistaken - and dangerous - then I must warn them.

Warn them of what?

Again it almost came into the light of his focussed thoughts, then slipped away, becoming just a shadow among shadows ... but one with shiny feral eyes.

He abruptly unbuckled his seatbelt and stood up.

Albert looked around. 'Where are you going?'