Stuart took his eyes off the horizon and glanced back at his relief copilot. “I bet we could find some eager young new-hire pilot to take your place. He’d probably type faster, too.” Stuart smiled, but he had been pointedly serious. He had little patience for the new breed. They had a job that was fifty times better than what had come before, yet they seemed to complain constantly. Did they realize that thirty years ago Alan Stuart had to hand-plot each and every route segment before climbing into the copilot’s seat? Spoiled, Stuart said to himself. Telling them about it was a waste of time. “If we land in the teeth of a monsoon at Tokyo, you’ll earn your day’s pay, Carl.”
McVary closed his copy of Playboy and put it into his flight bag. Reading was not authorized, and Stuart was starting to get into one of his Captain moods. “That’s right, Carl. Or if one of these lights starts blinking, we’ll find something useful for you to do real quick.”
Fessler could see which way the wind was blowing. “You’re right. It’s a good job.” He swiveled his seat slightly toward the front. “In the meantime, are you guys any good at trivia? What’s the capital of Rwanda?”
McVary looked back over his shoulder. “Here’s a trivia question for you. Which one of the stews has the hots for you?”
Fessler suddenly looked alert. “Which one?”
“I’m asking you.” He laughed. “Look, I’ll press the stew call button, and if fate brings you your secret lover, I’ll nod. If not… well, you have ten left to wonder about.” He laughed again, then glanced at Captain Stuart to read his mood. The old man seemed to be taking it well enough. “Skipper, anything for you?”
“Might as well. Coffee and a pastry.”
“Coffee for me,” Fessler said.
McVary picked up the ship’s interphone and pushed the call button.
Flight attendants Sharon Crandall and Terri O’Neil were in the first-class galley in the main cabin below when the light blinked. Terri O’Neil picked up the phone. After a brief exchange with McVary, she hung up and turned to Sharon Crandall.
“They want coffee again. It’s a wonder they don’t turn brown with all they drink.”
“They’re just bored,” said Crandall.
“Too bad. Walking all the way upstairs every time the cockpit crew needs a diversion is no fun.” O’Neil took out a dish of pastry and poured three coffees.
Crandall smiled. Terri was always carrying on about something. Today, it was walking to the cockpit. “I’ll go, Terri. I need the exercise. I have to go down to the pit pretty soon to help Barbara Yoshiro.” She nodded toward the service elevator that led to the lower kitchen. “There’s no room to move down there.”
“No. Take a break. If anyone needs the exercise, it’s me. Check these hips.”
“Okay. You go.” They both laughed. “I’ll do the cleaning up,” Crandall said.
Terri O’ Neil picked up the tray, left the galley, and walked the short distance to the circular staircase. She waited at the base of the stairs while an elderly, well-dressed woman worked her way down.
“I’m sorry I’m so slow,” the woman said.
“Take your time. No rush,” O’Neil answered. She wished the woman would move a little faster.
“My name is Mrs. Thorndike.” She introduced herself with the automatic manners of the old, not recognizing or caring that modern travel didn’t require it. “I like your piano player. He’s quite good,” the woman said. She stopped on the bottom step to chat.
O’Neil forced a smile and balanced the tray of coffees and pastry against the handrail. “Yes. He’s good. Some of them are even better than he is.”
“Really? I hope I have one of the better ones on the flight home.”
“I hope you do.”
The old woman finally stepped aside and the flight attendant trudged up the stairway. Strands of “As Time Goes By” floated down to O’Neil over the normal inflight noises. With each step the singing of the more gregarious passengers got louder.
When O’Neil reached the top of the staircase, she frowned. Three of the male passengers stood arm-in-arm around the piano. So far, they were content to sing softly. But she knew that whenever men acted openly chummy while they were still sober, they were certain to become especially loud after they began to drink. Alcohol released the Irish tenor in them. O’Neil knew they would soon get their chance, since she was supposed to open the bar in a few minutes. She wished the airline would go back to the old-fashioned lounge instead of the aerial nightclub.
“Hello,” O’Neil called to the young piano player. She could not recall if his name was Hogan or Grogan. He was too young for her anyway. She edged her way around half-a-dozen passengers, across the heavily carpeted lounge, and toward the cockpit. With the tray balanced in her hands, she tapped against the fiberglass door with the toe of her shoe. She could see from the shadow that someone in the cockpit had leaned up against the door’s tiny section of one-way glass to see who had knocked.
Carl Fessler unlocked the door for her, and O’Neil walked into the cockpit.
“Coffee is served, gentlemen.”
“The pastry is mine, Terri,” Stuart said.
Everyone took a plastic cup, and she handed Stuart the pastry dish.
Stuart turned to Fessler. “Carl, see if the passengers’ flight-connection information has come in yet.” Stuart glanced down at the blank electronics screen on the pedestal between the two flight chairs. “Maybe we missed it on the screen.”
Fessler looked over his shoulder toward the right rear of the cockpit. He had left the data-link printer’s door open. The message tray was still empty. “Nothing, Skipper.”
Stuart nodded. “If we don’t get that connection information soon,” he said to Terri O’Neil, “I’ll send another request.”
“Very good,” said O’Neil. “Some of the first-class passengers are getting nervous. Having a printout of connection updates works even better than giving them Valium.” While she spoke with the Captain, O’Neil could see out of the corner of her eye that Fessler and McVary were looking at each other in a peculiar way, evidently conveying some sort of signal. Terri realized that the First Officer and Second Officer were playing a game-and that she had become part of it. Boys. After everyone mumbled his thanks, O’Neil left the flight deck and closed the door behind her.
Captain Stuart had waited for the coffee and pastry as though it were a special event-a milestone along a straight desert highway. He ate the pastry slowly, then sat back to sip at his coffee. Of the three of them on the flight deck, only Stuart remembered when everything they ate was served on real china. The utensils then were silver and the food was a little less plastic as well. Now even the aromas were a weak imitation of what he had remembered as a new copilot. The whole cockpit smelled different then. Real leather, hydraulic fluid, and old cigarettes; not the sterile aroma of acrylic paints and synthetic materials.
Alan Stuart’s mind wandered. He had flown for Trans-United for thirty-four years. He’d crossed the Pacific more than a thousand times. He was a multimillion-miler, although supersonic speeds had made that yardstick meaningless. Now he was losing count of his hours, miles, and number of crossings. He sighed, then took another sip from his plastic cup. “I don’t know where the company buys this lousy coffee,” he said to no one in particular.
Fessler turned around. “If that’s a trivia question, the answer is Brazil.”
Stuart didn’t answer. In a few seconds his thoughts had slid comfortably back to where they had been. Supersonic transports were not actually flown; they were just aimed and watched. What modern pilots did mostly was to type instructions into onboard computers, and that was how actual flight tasks got accomplished. It had become such a passive job-until something went wrong.
In the old days, there was much more work, but much more fun. There were the long layovers in Sydney, Hong Kong, Tokyo. Some days in the Straton he would sit in his twelve-mile-high perch and look down on the routes he had flown as a young man. Old Boeing 707s-the original jets. And the captains that he had flown with had once flown the DC-4s, DC-6s, and DC-7s on those very routes. Even with the old 707, they needed to make refueling stops everywhere. The lighter passenger loads meant that the flights operated only a few times each week, so they had several days’ layover in lots of remote and faraway places. Life, he was certain, had been simpler yet more exciting then.
Carl Fessler tapped his pencil on the digital readout of the Total Airframe Temperature gauge. He was beginning another round of required entries into the portable backup computer, entries of their mid-flight aircraft performance numbers. Records of every sort, to be fed into the company mainframe computer and never to be seen
