The autopilot made the corrections in the flight and the Straton began to steady out, except for the bouncing caused by the air turbulence as it continued its powerless descent.
Berry tried to catch his breath and steady his shaking body. He turned back to the panel and scanned the small display of emergency instruments, which were all that remained after the generators failed. He was searching for anything that might spark his memory and set in motion a sequence of thoughts that would tell him what he must do. Circuit breakers. Berry thought that maybe the panel of circuit breakers on the right would be a clue- maybe one of the breakers was out. He flipped off his seat belt, stood up, and moved aft. He knew he had not much more time before the Straton hit the ocean.
Cutting through the sounds of the weather, the blare of the warning horn and the screaming from the lounge, he heard a voice shouting a single word over and over. He looked over at Sharon, who was turned in her seat, gesturing wildly at him. Her mouth kept forming a single word. Autopilot.
Berry looked back at the center instrument panel between the two seats. The amber disengage light now glowed brightly in the darkened cockpit. “Oh, God.” With the generators dropped off the circuits, he knew the autopilot was not getting the proper power to stay engaged. The last chance that they had for staying in control until the ditching was now gone. He shouted to Crandall, “Hold the wheel! Hold the wheel!”
The Straton’s forward momentum had kept the downward glide steady for a few seconds, but the winds began to break up the controlled descent. The Straton pitched nose upward, and the first step Berry took to get himself back into the captain’s chair sent him careening in the opposite direction, backward, into the cockpit door. The door gave slightly under his weight. The aircraft rolled to the right, and he collided with the circuit breaker panel. He lunged at the back of Crandall’s chair, but the aircraft rolled left and he headed straight for Linda Farley. He tried to avoid her, but his foot caught the tautly stretched nylons and he tumbled over and fell onto her, then rolled off and came to rest against the left wall.
Sharon Crandall watched for a second, then turned and faced the flight controls. The copilot’s control wheel moved by itself, as if it were still safely under the command of the autopilot. But the blinking amber light told her it was not. She reached out and took hold of the wheel.
Berry managed to stand and grabbed the back of the captain’s chair. The aircraft remained in a sharp nose- up attitude and he hung on, trying to climb into the chair. He knew that the aircraft’s normal stability would keep it upright for a few seconds longer, but unless he could get to the wheel, the Straton could point itself straight up or straight down, go into a spin, or roll, wing over wing, into the sea. “Hold the wheel, Sharon! Hold the wheel!”
Crandall was trying to hold on to it, but it had begun to vibrate with such force that it broke her grip each time she grabbed it.
Berry climbed head first over the back of the pilot’s chair. The first violent updraft smacked into the Straton like a giant fist aimed at the solar plexus. The huge aircraft lifted like a toy, then dropped sickeningly, straight down. Berry saw himself rise off the chair, almost hit the ceiling, then fall abruptly to the floor between the captain’s chair and the observer’s chair. He lay there, dazed and disoriented, not able to tell up from down, or to determine what he had to do to stand upright. He saw Linda Farley’s face above him, and heard her screaming his name.
Sharon Crandall seized the wheel and held it, letting it move her arms at first, then slowly exerting more and more pressure to steady it. She focused on the largest and most prominent gauge on the panel in front of her, one of the few of them that was still lit. It was marked ARTIFICIAL HORIZON. This was one instrument that was familiar to anyone who had ever spent any time inside a cockpit. It showed the relative position of the aircraft against a horizon line, and she could see that the Straton was far from level. But inside the clouds she was too disoriented to tell if they were pitched forward or backward, or if the wings were rolled right or left. She tried to get a physical sensation of how the aircraft was moving, but the increased Gs kept her pressed to her seat and she had no sensation of backward or forward, left or right. All she knew for certain was that they were going to crash. It occurred to her that if it weren’t for the fact that John Berry was on the floor, they could even be upside down.
She had a firm grip on the vibrating wheel, but her arms and shoulders ached. She knew she had to do something before the aircraft tumbled. She glanced at the artificial horizon, then tried to get a gut feeling based on her thousands of hours in flight. She decided that the aircraft was traveling nose up and the left wing was dropped, though the reverse might be true if she were reading the instrument backwards. She pushed forward with all the strength she had and rotated the wheel to the right.
For an instant, she thought she had guessed wrong as the artificial horizon line traveled even farther the wrong way. Then slowly the line straightened, then moved to align itself. The vibrations subsided and the aircraft flew steady except for the constant buffeting of the winds. She gripped the wheel tightly and held it with every ounce of strength she had left.
Berry pulled himself up and noticed that the aircraft was much steadier. He looked quickly at Linda. She was very pale and her body was doubled over with dry heaves. He climbed quickly into the pilot’s chair. He strapped himself in and grabbed the captain’s control wheel. He held it very tight, his knuckles turning white. It wasn’t the wheel that was shaking, he realized, but his hands. He took several long breaths before he found his voice. “Sharon… Sharon…” He looked at her but couldn’t think of what to say.
Sharon released the wheel and sat back, trying to prepare herself for the coming impact. Several thoughts and memories flashed through her mind, but none of them seemed important. She reached out and touched Berry’s arm, then looked back at Linda.
The girl was staring at her. “Are we going to crash?”
“Yes. Hold on tight.”
14
Commander James Sloan kept up a constant stream of talk into the dead interphones, speaking alternatively to the phantom air-sea rescue and the phantom tanker. He was becoming bored with the charade, but saw no alternative to it. He had to keep Hennings in Room E-334 until Matos was down, and until he could decide what had to be done with the Admiral.
Outside the door of the room, voices and footsteps approached.
Hennings looked up from his chair, an uneasiness in his eyes.
Sloan replaced the green interphone. “Just a changing of the watch, Admiral. Room E-334 is inviolate, off- limits to everyone except the few of us with an official need-to-know. I don’t think even the Fleet Admiral would walk in here without calling first.”
Hennings slumped back into his chair. That had been the problem from the start. An illegal test, shrouded by secrecy, had concentrated an inordinate amount of power into the hands of James Sloan.
Sloan looked at the old man hunched over in his chair. The long years of sea duty had permanently darkened his face, but the last few hours had cast an unhealthy pallor over his features.
Hennings seemed to rouse himself out of his lethargy and looked up. “Why are we taking the transmissions from the tanker and the rescue operation through the interphones? Let’s put a few radios on those frequencies.”
Sloan shook his head; he had already thought of an answer for that. “These are not my operations. They are being handled from separate electronics rooms, separate commands. And I don’t want two more squawk boxes turned on. I have enough to think about without listening to a lot of jet jockeys talking to each other.”
Hennings nodded and slumped back into his chair.
The gold-colored bridge phone rang, and Sloan snatched it up. This was a real call. His heart began to pound. “Yes, sir.”
Captain Diehl’s voice sounded unsure, almost apologetic. “Commander, I’d like a status report on Navy three-four-seven.”
Sloan had known this call would have to come eventually. The Captain wanted to know as little as possible about the Phoenix test, and that was the reason Sloan had kept control so long. But now Diehl wanted to know why one of his aircraft was overdue. “Status unchanged, sir.” He glanced at Hennings.
There was a pause, then the Captain said, “I can assume, then, that everything is going well with three- four-seven?”
“Right, sir. He’s employing fuel-saving techniques at this time.”
