Gander acknowledges my position report, and as soon as he finishes, a TWA pilot calls for Gander's attention but is inadvertently blocked by an Air Canada pilot. Gander advises Air Canada to stand by, and directs the TWA pilot to proceed while light years in the electronic distance I hear another MAC flight, operating farther south, pleading for a higher altitude from Santa Maria Center.
Such is the business of the HF airways. I relax, glad that the position report went off easily. Sometimes we try for fifteen minutes to get a word in. Happily, the next report is almost an hour away.
The HF is filled with more static than usual tonight, and I think I see why. I dim the instrument lights just a little more and look to the north. At first I see only a long faint brightness stretching along the horizon. But as my eyes adjust I can pick out the subtle colors and geometric patterns of the aurora borealis, the northern lights. The lights seem to hang from the starry heavens in swirling, cascading curtains with bluish green and purple tints.
I look away and then back in a minute, and the patterns have changed shape and tint. I revere the lights. I know that the physicists explain that they are generated by solar energy reacting with atmospheric particles, as it is funneled into the polar magnetic convergence. But they are a majestic display of divine power to me, much too choreographed and beautiful to be simply a freak of nature.
This same northern horizon, so gracefully adorned with aurora in winter, is the domain of the sun in summer. When the north pole is tilted toward the sun, we watch a different production on this grand stage.
In the summer months as we fly east across the north Atlantic, the sun will set behind our left wing. But it doesn't fall vertically; it angles toward the north and disappears like a brilliant submarine diving as it plows ahead. It submerges to a shallow depth, voyaging beyond the North Pole only slightly below the horizon, its cosmic glow hovering above it, holding back the night. And because we fly in the same direction as the turning earth, the sun hurries its journey as if to beat us to Europe and flaunt its victory by casting searing rays into our night-weary eyes. In a few hours it emerges to our left in a dazzling rebirth and climbs across our nose toward its commanding perch.
But this is a spring night, here in the polar latitudes. The sun is deeply buried in the Southern Hemisphere, opposite the planet. Yet our night sky is alive with vitality. The aurora is being upstaged by a newcomer.
A spike of orange light pierces the darkness ahead. With a suddenness far greater than you'd expect of any celestial event, the slender, sharply pointed spire, rises boldly out of the sea and dominates the night. My young copilot, searching his mind desperately for an explanation but becoming impatient with himself, begins to fidget. He turns to me and asks haltingly, 'Wha?' He pauses, looks back, and gestures at it and continues, 'What is it?'
In another minute the answer to the question asked with a childlike innocence would become apparent. But I've seen it before and remember that I had the same inadequate feeling.
'It's a moonrise, Steve. Looks to be about a quarter moon. Really pops up there, doesn't it?'
It rises swiftly and hangs in front of us, sheds its orange glow and grows white hot as it climbs from the distorted atmosphere. We are flying directly toward it; it's centered in the windscreen as if it were our target. I've never outgrown my childhood imagination and make no apologies for it. For a minute I forget about the earth and the atmosphere. I'm voyaging through the cosmos in a great starship, and the lunar destination looms aheadmore evidence for George's allegation that I'm an oblivious dreamer. If so, I'm in good company; Lindbergh too felt it: 'At times you renounce experience and the mind's heavy logic, it seems that the world has rushed along on its orbit, leaving you alone, flying above a forgotten cloud bank, somewhere in the solitude of interstellar space.'
Soon the moon's brilliance drives away the aurora and the dimmer stars and commands our absolute attention. I can see details beginning to break out of the side shadowed from the sunmountains and clusters of craters. The dark side of the moon is being bathed in the soft light reflected from Antarctica.
The moon is a trusted companion to the night flier. It gives substance to the unseen world beyond the windscreens. It draws his mind out of the confines of his metal cocoon and nourishes his awareness. Without it, blackness encroaches on the windows and isolates the mind. One night long ago when I needed the moon, it wasn't there.
I had taken off in my Yankee from a dark country airport, John Bell Williams Field down near Raymond, with my two-year-old son aboard. There was nothing but forest and pasture around the airfield.
It was a 'black hole,' as fliers like to say. Shortly after we broke ground, a violent, flapping noise of metal beating against metal erupted near the engine, and the little plane began to vibrate. Shaken, I grabbed the flashlight, shined it forward, and saw that the engine cowling had broken loose and was flapping in the slipstream. But I was reassured by the arc of the propeller in the beam of the flashlight and by the steady rpms on the tachometer. I held the light on the cowling for a few seconds, as the Yankee bored through the night, and pondered whether to turn back to the field or continue to the larger Hawkins Field, a few miles away, which was my destination.
Then I glanced at the vertical velocity indicator. The needle was indicating a 500-feet-per-minute rate of descent. Another quick glance at the altimeter showed our altitude was 500 feet. I remembered that the airfield elevation was 330 feet, and the trees must be 50 to 100 feet high. Instead of being a pilot, I had become a passenger. I had violated the cardinal rule: fly the plane first, thenand only thenwork on the problem.
Instinctively, I pulled the yoke back and reversed the terminal dive into a redeeming climb. Scott and I would have become statistics in another few seconds. I learned a valuable lesson that night. But I wish my old companion the moon had been there. If the countryside had been awash with its soft light, maybe I would have been more aware.
My fixation on the moon is suddenly broken by a familiar voice coming through on the HF. Buster Swinney, one of our squadron's aircraft commanders, is giving a position report. Checking the chart, I determine that Buster is within UHF radio range of us. I switch my transmit selector to UHF radio number one, which is tuned to Channel 10, and transmit into the vast oceanic sky.
'Buster, you up on button ten?'
'You bet. Who's this?'
We exchange the usual questions. Where are they headed? From where did we depart? How long have we been out? Who's on your crew? The last question reveals that one of his loadmasters is Duane Hall, a senior master sergeant with about thirty-five years' service. He had a good job in the business world and was thinking of retiring. But then the balloon went up, and now it was too late. He could have retired years ago, but something kept him clinging to the Guard.
Duane's offspring is sitting back in my cargo bay. The Guard is like that, often literally family and not just figuratively. Mike is a clone of his dad. Both are red-skinned, thin-haired, and sometimes boisterous but always jovial and good company. They love to work hard and play hard and are always eager to rap about the things and ideas that keep them going. They're the epitome of southern friendliness.
Mike can't hear the radio transmissions from his station in the cargo bay, but he is hooked into the plane's interphone system with his headset. Hearing those of us on the flight deck banter about the contact with Buster, he shouts into the interphone. 'Hey, that's my daddy's crew!'
In an instant Mike is on the flight deck, plugging his headset into a communications station. Within a couple of minutes he is talking with his dad. The conversation is low key and clipped, about family news and such. Mrs. Hall, Mike's mom, isn't taking this wellhusband and son both flying under wartime conditions day and night. Too much is at stake for her.
'How's momma?' Mike asks into the radio.
'She's OK,' comes the answer. But Mike knows better.
Then, by the moon's brilliance, we spot their jet below and to the left, at the point of a great silver contrail, racing opposite our direction. They are flying a 'random route,' beneath the NATS. Mike is glued to the side window behind my seat. There is a long pause in the radio conversation while father and son watch one another's craft pass. Then the oceanic night seems lonelier. Being short on words was never a problem with this family, but in the silence I can sense the lump in Mike's throat. I feel it with him.
Maybe it's how Lindbergh felt when St. Johns fell away behind him.
A flicker catches my eye. It originated almost straight ahead, maybe a few degrees left. Straining my eyes, I can make out the silhouette of billowing cloud formations far ahead, their edges painted a soft blue by delicate strokes of moonbeam. There it is again. They light up with a momentary orange glow. The cloud must be home to some colossal giant who just struck a match to light his cigar. Early spring thunderstorms are rare out here, but they can have teeth in them, just as the forecaster back at McGuire cautioned. I tweak the gain knob on the radar and the churning, fiery cells begin to break out on the scope 125 miles ahead, a line of them lying across our course.
