T he Straton leveled, and in the cockpit the sensation of the slight increase in G force lessened, then disappeared. The cockpit returned to a straight and level altitude.
John Berry smiled, and Sharon Crandall smiled back. “We did it! John, that was great. Very, very good.”
Berry couldn’t suppress a small laugh. “Okay. Okay, we’re heading in. Great. The control surfaces respond. We can turn.” He felt the wide grin still plastered across his face and knew he looked foolish. He thought ahead to the landing he would have to attempt, and the grin faded without much effort. Flying, he reflected, was like walking a high wire. One slip and it’s finished. No do-overs. “All right, let’s bang out a message.” He reached out and typed.
FROM FLIGHT 52: TURN COMPLETE. HEADING 120 DEGREES. ADVISE.
He pushed the transmit button.
The incoming message bell sounded almost immediately.
TO FLIGHT 52: VERY NICE WORK. STAND BY. RELAX. EVERYONE HERE IS WORKING ON BRINGING YOU HOME.
Berry nodded. Home. An evocative word. Its meaning was changing every minute. “Relax,” he read. “Okay. I’m relaxed. How are you?”
Sharon Crandall nodded. She looked at Berry out of the corner of her eye. Very nice work. Very cool. Competent. Most people would be in a complete state of panic by now. She’d seen men-macho types-whimpering in their seats during an electrical storm. She’d seen a whole football team on the verge of hysteria as their aircraft hit heavy turbulence. She glanced at John Berry. Here was a man who was a sort of low-key salesman who occasionally flew his company aircraft-and he’d acted admirably. More so than she or Barbara had, in fact. She thought she liked John Berry very much. “Do you want something to drink? A glass of water? Something stronger?”
“No, thanks.”
She nodded. There were undoubtedly all types of powerful forces at work up here that would draw her to him, but even on the ground, she thought, he would be a person she would want to know. “I’ll call Barbara.”
“Yes. She should be on her way. Try one of the closer stations.”
“Okay.” She switched to the mid-ship station and pressed the call button.
There was no answer.
She tried every station, including the below-decks galley.
Berry looked back into the lounge and shouted, “Harold. Call down to Barbara.”
Stein called down. He looked up at Berry and shook his head.
Berry reached for the PA microphone, then hesitated. “No. That makes them excited.” He tapped his fingers impatiently on the steering column. “She’s probably between stations. Or in the galley elevator. We’ll wait.” He glanced at Sharon Crandall before he turned his head back to the windshield. If she were a bit older… But why was he thinking about that now? It was odd how people made long-range plans in terminal situations. His father had planned his spring garden the winter he was dying of cancer. “Sharon, what are you going to do after this? I mean, would you fly again?”
She looked at him and gave him a very big smile. “After this, John, I’ll take one week off. Maybe even two weeks.” She laughed, but then her expression turned serious. “After that, I’ll report for duty as usual. If you have a bad experience in flight, you have to go back. Otherwise, the rest of your life becomes a series of avoidances. Besides, what else would I do at my age? Who’s going to pay me this kind of money?” She looked out at the horizon line. “And what about you? Will you stop flying that little whatever-it-is for your company?”
“Skymaster. No. Of course not.”
“Good.” She hesitated, then leaned over toward him and placed her hand on his arm. “How do you feel about landing this plane?”
Berry looked directly at her. Her countenance and the language of her body were unmistakably clear and had little to do with the question. Yet there was nothing brazen about her. Just an honest offering. Within hours they might be alive on the ground. More likely, they would be dead. Still, her offer did not seem out of place. “You’ll help me. We can land this plane.” He felt slightly awkward, a little flustered at her touch and her sudden intimacy.
Sharon Crandall settled back in her seat and stared out her side window. She thought briefly about her last live-in lover, Nick, from crew scheduling. Emptiness, boredom. Sex and television. In the final analysis, they’d shared nothing, really, and his leaving left no emptiness, no loneliness beyond what she’d felt when he was there. He had left the same way he had arrived, like a gray afternoon sliding into a dark night. But she was still lonely. “Why don’t you send a message from each one of us to someone on the ground?” she said. She instantly wondered whom she would send her message to. Her mother, probably.
Berry considered the idea. “No,” he finally said. “That would be a little… melodramatic. Don’t you think so? A little too terminal. We have some time yet. I’ll send one for everyone later. Who do you want to…?”
She ignored his question. “Your wife must be frantic.”
Berry considered several answers. My insurance is paid up. That should take the edge off any franticness. Or, Jennifer hasn’t been frantic since she lost her Bloomingdale’s charge card. He said, “I’m sure the airline is keeping everyone informed.”
“That’s true.” She changed the subject abruptly.
“You’ve got good control of the airplane,” she said with some authority. “The flight controls are working okay. And we’ve still got nearly half our fuel.” She nodded toward the fuel gauges.
“Yes,” Berry answered, recalling that he had pointed that out to her only ten minutes before. “That’s true. It should be enough fuel.” But he knew that headwinds or bad weather could change that. As far as the flight controls were concerned, all he knew for certain was that he could make a right-hand turn and level out. He had no information about turning left or going up or down.
“I remember,” Crandall added, “how Captain Stuart once told me that as long as the flight controls worked and the engines had a steady supply of fuel, then the situation wasn’t hopeless.”
“That’s true,” said Berry. The mention of Stuart’s name made him look back over his shoulder. At the far end of the lounge, the two pilots still lay motionless on the thick blue rug, near the piano. Berry turned and scanned the Straton’s flight instruments and autopilot. Everything was steady. He stood. “I’m going back to the lounge to see what’s going on.”
“Okay.”
“Scan the instruments. If anything seems wrong, yell.”
“You bet.”
“If the data-link bell-”
“I’ll call you.”
“Okay. And watch the autopilot closely.” He leaned over her seat and put his right hand casually on her shoulder. He pointed with his left hand. “See this light?”
“Yes.”
“It’s the autopilot disconnect light. If it shows amber, call me-fast.”
“Roger.” She turned her head toward him and smiled.
Berry straightened up. “Okay. Be right back.” He turned and walked into the lounge.
The flight attendant in the upper lounge, Terri O’Neil, was walking around now. Berry didn’t like that. The attractive woman on the horseshoe-shaped couch had unfastened her seat belt and was staring out the porthole. The remaining three men and one woman continued to sit on the couch, making spastic, senseless movements with their arms. One of the men had unfastened his seat belt and tried repeatedly to stand, but couldn’t seem to manage it.
Berry could see that, as Barbara Yoshiro said, they were all getting better-physically. Mentally, they were more inquisitive. They were beginning to think, but to think things that were not good. Dark things. Dangerous things.
The Straton, reflected Berry, was a protected environment, like an egg. Puncture the shell of a fertilized egg with a pin and the embryo would not survive. And if it did, it would be changed in some terrible way. He formed a mental picture of the Straton sitting serenely on the airport ramp, two small holes on the sides the only outward indication of anything being amiss. The stairs were wheeled up. The crowd cheered. The doors opened. The first passengers appeared… He shook his head and looked up.
