backward and looked in wonder at him.
Berry was hardly aware of the girl. He had guessed correctly at Fessler’s condition as soon as he saw that the engineer’s mask was off. The Captain, who was still strapped to his oxygen mask, was Berry’s concern. He approached the man and tried to shake him into consciousness. Their survival depended on it.
Captain Alan Stuart was breathing, but comatose. Slowly, Berry accepted the fact that the Captain was probably beyond help.
Berry looked toward the copilot. He, too, was unconscious. Berry and the girl had survived this far, only to discover that there was no one left to fly the aircraft.
Berry glanced around the cockpit. The walls that surrounded the pilot stations were crammed with instruments. He understood some of what he saw, but entire panels and rows of gauges were a total mystery. The difference between a giant jetliner and his four-seat private propeller airplane was like the difference between an airliner and the Space Shuttle. All they had in common was that, on occasion, they flew through the sky.
John Berry knew that he could not fly this huge supersonic aircraft. He was backed against an insurmountable wall of anguish and despair. All he now cared about was their immediate survival-to stay alive within the confines bounded by the sweep second hand of the cockpit clock.
The copilot stirred in his seat and his arm swung off his lap. It fell, with a thud, onto the center console. Berry held his breath while he waited to see what would happen. If the man moved again, he might inadvertently disengage the autopilot or do some other harm to their stable flight condition. In that maze of switches, Berry knew that he could not hope to find the proper combination to set things straight.
“Quick. Help me get him out of the seat,” he said to the girl. She came over and grabbed clumsily at the copilot’s legs as Berry lifted McVary’s limp body out of the chair.
“Don’t let him touch the controls.”
“I won’t.” She raised his feet above the equipment on the center console as Berry lugged the man backward.
“I’ll do the lifting. Don’t let his legs touch anything.” Once they had cleared the center console, Berry let the copilot’s feet drag on the floor as he pulled the man back into the lounge.
“Is he sick?” the girl asked. She could see that he was not dead. He was breathing and his head occasionally swayed from side to side, although his eyes were shut.
“Yes. Lay him there. Pull his legs out straight. Give me that pillow.” Berry propped the pillow under the copilot’s head. He rolled back the man’s eyelids. The pupils seemed dilated, although he wasn’t sure. Berry looked at the girl. “He might get better. Make him comfortable. That’s all we can do.”
“I’ll get a blanket.” She pointed to one wedged beneath a nearby seat.
Berry nodded. The copilot might come out of it, at least enough to help Berry fly the airplane. With the copilot talking him through it, Berry thought he might be able to steer the 797. Maybe.
The young girl brought the blanket over. The two of them knelt in the center of the upper lounge and busied themselves at making McVary comfortable. Berry glanced back at the cockpit. He knew that, shortly, he would have to get the girl to help him take the unconscious Captain out of his seat, and also drag the lifeless body of the flight engineer out of the cockpit. But he could put those things off for a few more minutes. In the meanwhile, he focused his attention on the copilot. He was, without question, their best hope.
Berry asked the girl, “What’s your name?”
“Linda. Linda Farley.”
“Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
“How old are you?”
“I’ll be thirteen in four days…”
Her voice trailed off, and Berry forced a smile. He thought, Happy birthday, Linda.
Berry and Linda worked on making First Officer Daniel McVary as comfortable as they could. They remained oblivious to the aircraft outside the cabin windows that had flown within sixty feet of where they knelt.
“Homeplate, I see no life in the cabin.” Matos split his attention between the long row of windows and the technical needs of flying a close formation. His hands played constantly with the throttles and control stick as he made the corrections to keep his F-18 as near to the Straton’s port side as he dared.
His position in the formation was a little higher than optimum, but to put his aircraft in direct line with the fuselage windows would have been tricky. The airflow across the Straton’s giant supersonic wing made that region too turbulent. Matos opted to fly in the smoother area a dozen feet higher.
“It’s hard to see clearly. The cabin is dark. Stand by.” With the bright Pacific sunlight shining down on them, any attempt to look across the intervening distance through one of the small windows and into the cabin was bound to fail. Matos already knew that it would. His first guess had been that the two holes in the fuselage would give him a clear view. But they did not. Too much debris and too many shadows. Even if someone were alive, they certainly couldn’t be expected to get close to the holes. The wind alone would keep them back. Matos knew that all he could hope to see were those people who wanted to be seen. Those on the 797-if anyone was left alive-would need to press themselves against the windows to become visible. Once they moved a foot or two back they would vanish into the relative darkness inside.
Surely they would try to be seen. They would want to get Matos’s attention. To get Matos’s help.
“Okay, Matos. Nothing in the cabin. Go to the cockpit.” Sloan’s voice was again impatient. Commanding. Bullying, according to most of the Nimitz ’s pilots. The man obviously wanted the job done quickly. For what purpose, Matos could not even guess. He wondered for a moment what sort of orders he would receive next.
Matos nudged the throttles and maneuvered his aircraft slowly forward. As he passed the widest section of the Straton’s fuselage, he inched his F-18 to the right, placing his wingtip within a dozen feet of the 797’s flight deck.
As he finished his maneuvering, something caught his eyes. He had been directing most of his attention toward his wingtip clearance, but suddenly he had an impression of movement. Something on the Straton’s flight deck. Someone in the cockpit. Someone alive, Matos said to himself.
He stared intently at the Straton. The relative narrowness of the cockpit and its broad expanse of glass made it easier to see into than the cabin. Far side. Copilot’s seat.
Something on the right side of the 797’s cockpit had moved. At least he thought that it had. Now he was not sure. On closer scrutiny, he could see nothing. No one. If anyone was still there, they were slumped down below the window line.
It must have been a reflection. A glint of sunlight. A distortion in the cockpit glass. No one alive, Matos thought. He sat there for another minute and looked at the Straton, then he maneuvered the F-18 outboard and slightly away.
Lieutenant Peter Matos’s emotional wound had reopened. “Homeplate. There is no one in the cockpit. There is no one alive.” As much as he tried to control himself, Matos could not be the uninvolved technician any longer. His heart had risen to his throat. Es tu culpa, Pedro.
The F-18 slackened its formation on the Straton. It drifted aft. As it did, it flew alongside the upper lounge and within sixty feet of the rows of windows that lined it. Unable to force himself to look at the devastated Straton airliner any longer, Peter Matos kept his eyes focused straight ahead.
5
Jack Miller sat at his long, functionally modern desk in the center of the starkly lit, windowless room. He glanced at the wall clock-11:37-then looked over at his assistant, Dennis Evans, who sat at a smaller desk, flipping desultorily through some papers. “I’m breaking for lunch in five minutes, Dennis.”
Evans glanced up from his desk. “Okay.”
The Trans-United Airlines dispatching office at San Francisco International Airport was experiencing its usual midday lull. The morning departures were well into their routines, and it was too early to begin the flight plans for the late-afternoon trips. The half-dozen dispatchers read newspapers, their assistants made an attempt to look occupied, and the junior aides tried to appear busy and eager.
