Four Past Midnight

Albert replied: 'Pressure. I'm talking about pressure.'

24

Brian's dream recurred to him then, recurred with such terrible force that he might have been reliving it: Anne with her hand plastered over the crack in the body of the plane, the crack with the words SHOOTING STARS ONLY printed over it in red.

Pressure.

See, darling? It's all taken care of.

'What does he mean, Brian?' Nick asked. 'I can see he's got something your face says so. What is it?'

Brian ignored him. He looked steadily at the seventeen-year-old music student who might just have thought of a way out of the box they were in.

'What about after?' he asked. 'What about after we come through? How do I wake up again so I can land the plane?'

'Will somebody please explain this?' Laurel pleaded. She had gone to Nick, who put his good arm around her waist.

'Albert is suggesting that I use this' - Brian tapped a rheostat on the control board, a rheostat marked CABIN PRESSURE -'to knock us all out cold.'

'Can you do that, mate? Can you really do that?'

'Yes,' Brian said. 'I've known pilots - charter pilots - who have done it, when passengers who've had too much to drink started cutting up and endangering either themselves or the crew. Knocking out a drunk by lowering the air pressure isn't that difficult. To knock out everyone, all I have to do is lower it some more ... to half sea-level pressure, say. It's like ascending to a height of two miles without an oxygen mask. Boom! You're out cold.'

'If you can really do that, why hasn't it been used on terrorists?' Bob asked.

'Because there are oxygen masks, right?' Albert asked.

'Yes,' Brian said. 'The cabin crew demonstrates them at the start of every commercial jet-flight - put the gold cup over your mouth and nose and breathe normally, right? They drop automatically when cabin pressure falls below twelve psi. If a hostage pilot tried to knock out a terrorist by lowering the air pressure, all the terrorist would have to do is grab a mask, put it on, and start shooting. On smaller jets, like the Lear, that isn't the case. If the cabin loses pressure, the passenger has to open the overhead compartment himself.'

Nick looked at the chronometer. Their window was now only fourteen minutes wide.

'I think we better stop talking about it and just do it,' he said. 'Time is getting very short.'

'Not yet,' Brian said, and looked at Albert again. 'I can bring us back in line with the rip, Albert, and start decreasing pressure as we head toward it. I can control the cabin pressure pretty accurately, and I'm pretty sure I can put us all out before we go through. But that leaves Laurel's question: who flies the airplane if we're all knocked out?'

Albert opened his mouth; closed it again and shook his head.

Bob Jenkins spoke up then. His voice was dry and toneless, the voice of a judge pronouncing doom. 'I think you can fly us home, Brian. But someone else will have to die in order for you to do it.'

'Explain,' Nick said crisply.

Bob did so. It didn't take long. By the time he finished, Rudy Warwick had joined the little group standing in the cockpit door.

'Would it work, Brian?' Nick asked.

'Yes,' Brian said absently. 'No reason why not.' He looked at the chronometer again. Eleven minutes now. Eleven minutes to get across to the other side of the rip. It would take almost that long to line the plane up, program the autopilot, and move them along the forty-mile approach. 'But who's going to do it? Do the rest of you draw straws, or what?'

'No need for that,' Nick said. He spoke lightly, almost casually. 'I'll do it.'

'No!' Laurel said. Her eyes were very wide and very dark. 'Why you? Why does it have to be you?'

'Shut up!' Bethany hissed at her. 'If he wants to, let him!'

Albert glanced unhappily at Bethany, at Laurel, and then back at Nick. A voice - not a very strong one - was whispering that he should have volunteered, that this was a job for a tough Alamo survivor like The Arizona Jew. But most of him was only aware that he loved life very much ... and did not want it to end just yet. So he opened his mouth and then closed it again without speaking.

'Why you?' Laurel asked again, urgently. 'Why shouldn't we draw straws? Why not Bob? Or Rudy? Why not me?'

Nick took her arm. 'Come with me a moment,' he said.

'Nick, there's not much time,' Brian said. He tried to keep his tone of voice even, but he could hear desperation - perhaps even panic - bleeding through.

'I know. Start doing the things you have to do.'

Nick drew Laurel through the door.

25

She resisted for a moment, then came along. He stopped in the small galley alcove and faced her. In that moment, with his face less than four inches from hers, she realized a dismal truth - he was the man she had been hoping to find in Boston. He had been on the plane all the time. There was nothing at all romantic about this discovery; it was horrible.

'I think we might have had something, you and me,' he said. 'Do you think I could be right about that? If you do, say so - there's no time to dance. Absolutely none.'

'Yes,' she said. Her voice was dry, uneven. 'I think that's right.'

'But we don't know. We can't know. It all comes back to time, doesn't it? Time ... and sleep ... and not knowing. But I have to be the one, Laurel. I have tried to keep some reasonable account of myself, and all my books are deeply in the red. This is my chance to balance them, and I mean to take it.'

'I don't understand what you mea-'

'No - but I do.' He spoke fast, almost rapping his words. Now he reached out and took her forearm and drew her even closer to him. 'You were on an adventure of some sort, weren't you, Laurel?'

'I don't know what you're - '

He gave her a brisk shake. 'I told you - there's no time to dance! Were You on an adventure?'

'... yes.'

'Nick!' Brian called from the cockpit.

Nick looked rapidly in that direction. 'Coming!' he shouted, and then looked back at Laurel. 'I'm going to send you on another one. If you get out of this, that is, and if you agree to go.'

She only looked at him, her lips trembling. She had no idea of what to say. Her mind was tumbling helplessly. His grip on her arm was very tight, but she would not be aware of that until later, when she saw the bruises left by his fingers; at that moment, the grip of his eyes was much stronger.

'Listen. Listen carefully.' He paused and then spoke with peculiar, measured emphasis: 'I was going to quit it. I'd made up my mind.'

'Quit what?' she asked in a small, quivery voice.

Nick shook his head impatiently. 'Doesn't matter. What matters is whether or not you believe me. Do you?'

'Yes,' she said. 'I don't know what you're talking about, but I believe you mean it.'