his family up the stairs, too.
A peculiar sensation, a mild vibration, began to inch into his awareness. He turned and laid a hand against the bulkhead. The vibration was coming from inside the enclosure, and it was getting stronger. It was the rhythmic hum of a slow-turning electric motor. He remembered that there was a galley elevator adjacent to the lavatories. He quickly went around to the galley opening on the other side of the enclosure. He looked in at a small metal door. The motor stopped. He took a step back as the handle rotated. The door opened.
Stein stood face-to-face with two women. Flight attendants. One tall brunette, the other Oriental. They were huddled close together in the small elevator. He could see pure terror on their faces. Their eyes were red and watery, and traces of smeared vomit clung to their blue jackets? “Are you all right?” Stein asked. “Can you… understand me?”
“Who are you?” asked the brunette flight attendant. “What happened? Is everything okay?”
Stein took a deep breath to get his voice under control and replied, “There’s been an accident. Holes in the airplane. We lost pressure. A few of us were trapped in the lavatories. The lavatory doors held the air pressure,” Stein said, remembering Berry’s words. “I guess where you were held its air pressure, too.”
The brunette flight attendant said, “We were in the lower galley.”
The Oriental girl asked, “Did a door open?”
“No. A bomb.”
“Oh, God!”
Sharon Crandall stepped out of the elevator and brushed by Stein. She turned and looked down the length of the cabins. “Oh my God, oh no! Barbara! Barbara!”
Barbara Yoshiro came quickly out of the elevator and stood behind Crandall. She screamed, a long primal scream that died in her throat as she blacked out and collapsed into Stein’s arms.
Sharon Crandall put her hands over her face and took a series of short breaths. She turned quickly toward Stein. “The pilots. The pilots! ”
“Dead. Well… unconscious. But there’s a passenger who’s a pilot. Come on. We have to get out of here.”
“What’s happened to these people? ”
“Brain damage… Oxygen loss. They might get violent. Come on!”
A dozen passengers began walking up the aisles toward them. A few more passengers near them tried to stand, but their seat belts held them down. But through trial and error, or because of some vague recollection, some people were beginning to unfasten their belts and stand up. A few of them moved into the aisles. A tall man stood up right next to Stein.
Stein was becoming frightened. “Go ahead! Go first!”
Sharon Crandall nodded and moved quickly up the stairway. Stein dragged Barbara Yoshiro toward the stairway. A male passenger suddenly stood in his seat and stepped into the open area in front of the staircase. With his free hand, Stein straight-armed him and the man spun away, wobbling like a malfunctioning gyroscope.
Stein, dragging the unconscious flight attendant, took the stairs slowly. Someone was behind him. A hand grabbed his ankle. He kicked loose and moved faster up the spiral stairs, almost knocking Crandall over as he reached the top. He laid Barbara Yoshiro on the carpet and slumped over the rail. A half-dozen grotesque faces stared up at him. He thought he saw the top of his wife’s head, but he couldn’t be sure. His breathing was heavy and his heart raced wildly in his chest. “Get away. Go away!”
Sharon Crandall looked around the lounge. “Oh my God!”
Stein stood by the staircase and wrapped the belt around his hand. “I’ll stay here. Go into the cockpit.”
Berry looked over his shoulder into the lounge. “Come in here!”
But Sharon Crandall’s attention was focused on the flight attendant sitting on the carpet with her legs spread out. “Terri!” She ran over to the girl and knelt beside her. “Are you okay? Terri?”
Terri O’Neil opened her eyes wide and looked toward where the sound had come from. It was an involuntary response to the auditory stimulus. Her rational mind had been erased by the thin air at 62,000 feet. The sight of Sharon Crandall’s face meant nothing to her. The memory of the hundreds of hours they had flown together had evaporated from her brain like water from a boiling kettle.
“Terri!” Sharon shook her friend’s arm.
“Forget it!” yelled Berry. “Come in here!”
Sharon glanced into the cockpit and saw a man sitting in the captain’s seat. His voice was vaguely familiar. But she was too shocked to think clearly. She ignored Berry and moved back past the stairwell over to the sprawled bodies of Stuart and McVary beside the piano. She shook the pilot’s shoulders. “Captain Stuart!”
Stein watched as a man in the main cabin mounted the spiral staircase. Another man, then a woman, followed. Soon a line of people were walking clumsily up the circular steps. “Go down! Down!”
“Aaahh!”
Stein braced himself on the rail and brought his foot down on the head of the first man.
The man fell to his knees and toppled back, sending the whole line stumbling and falling backward.
Linda Farley knelt beside Sharon Crandall. “They’re very sick. I tried to help them.”
Sharon glanced at the girl blankly, then looked at Harold Stein by the rail and the unconscious body of Barbara Yoshiro. She walked to the bar and recovered a first-aid box. She carried a vial of ammonium carbonate to Barbara Yoshiro, broke it, and held it under the girl’s nose. “Easy, now.”
Barbara Yoshiro made a gasping sound, then opened her eyes. Crandall helped her sit up.
The two flight attendants held onto each other, Sharon Crandall comforting Barbara Yoshiro as she began sobbing. “Easy now, Barbara. We’re going to be all right.”
Stein looked down at them. “Go into the cockpit and see if you can lend a hand there. Okay?”
Crandall helped Yoshiro to her feet and steadied her as they walked toward the cockpit. “Don’t mind these people. Come on. Into the cockpit.”
Berry glanced quickly over his shoulder. “Do either of you know anything about the cockpit?”
“I thought you were a pilot,” said Crandall.
“Yes, I am,” answered Berry. “But I’m not familiar with this craft. I can fly it with a little help. Do you know anything about the cockpit?”
“No,” said Crandall. She helped Yoshiro into Fessler’s seat. They both noticed the blood on the desk but didn’t comment on it. “How bad are the pilots?”
“They’ll be okay.”
“There’s no need to lie to us,” said Crandall.
“They’re brain damaged. Maybe-just maybe-the copilot will come out of it with enough faculties left to help.”
Crandall considered this for a long few seconds. She’d liked McVary. Liked all of them, actually. Now they were all gone, including the other flight attendants she’d spent so many hours with. Flight crews rarely spoke about accidents, but she had heard talk about decompression incidents. “What exactly happened?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t make a lot of difference, does it?”
“No.”
Berry turned and looked at Barbara Yoshiro. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. I’m feeling better.”
Berry nodded. He had the feeling, no more than intuition, that she would remain calm from here on. It was a good thing to know, and it didn’t especially matter if it was true or not. He asked her, “Do you know the cockpit at all?”
Yoshiro shook her head. “I usually stay downstairs in the kitchen. Below the main cabin.”
Crandall spoke. “I come to the cockpit often, but I never really noticed much.”
“You probably know more than you think. Sit down.”
Sharon Crandall sat in the copilot’s seat. “This is not going to help.”
At first Berry had no special recollection of her, but as he looked at her profile closely, he knew who she was. He felt a smile form on his lips. He was happy that she had made it. It was a conversation that had taken place a century ago, but it had brought him a few minutes of pleasure and he was happy to pick it up where it had ended. “Do you remember me?”
She looked at him. “Yes. Of course. The salesman. I was going to sit with you.” Crandall paused. “You’re not
