The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories (39 page)

Craig shook his head. “Everything looks fine, Skipper.”

“Magellan,” Farver said to the navigator, “give us a speed check with your Loran.”

“Right,” Hatch answered. He watched the grid lines of the black box in front of him, where the two pinpoints of light appeared and disappeared. His jaw tightened and perspiration appeared on his forehead. “I’d better do it again,” he said.

“What’s going on—”Jane began.

Hatch waved her quiet. “Hold it a minute.” Again he studied the Loran. “Skipper,” he said tersely, “Loran indicates a ground speed of 830 knots.” He shook his head, mystified “I’ve never heard of a tail wind like that.”

Farver’s voice was tight. “Check it again.” Then he turned to Wyatt, “See if you can raise OSV Charlie, air defense radar Ask them to give us a fix and check our ground speed.” Then he turned back toward the navigator. “Hatch, you sure about that Loran?”

Hatch’s eyes were glazed with concentration as he studied the instrument. “Skipper, I’m not only sure—but we’re still accelerating. 980 now.” He hunched closer over the Loran. “1120. 1500.” His lips began to tremble and his face suddenly looked white. “Jesus God,” he half shouted, “I can’t even keep up with it.”

“Anything from air defense!” Farver barked at Wyatt.

“No, sir,” was the answer. “I can’t raise them.”

Hatch half rose in his seat, his voice trembling. “2100. Honest to God…2100...and still increasing.”

“I hope the wings stay on.” It was more than just a statement from Craig. It was like a prayer.

“They will,” Farver answered grimly. “Don’t worry about the wings. Just watch that true airspeed. Ground speed doesn’t mean a Goddamned thing. We’re just in one helluva jet stream.” He looked down at the instruments and then shook his head in total disbelief which was almost shock. “Magellan,” he said, his voice raised. “My needle just reversed on Gander Omni.” He looked up. “How in God’s name could we get past Gander? Give me a fast position check.”

Hatch stood on his seat in order to put his head into the tiny astrodome over the cockpit. He took a fast fix on the sun. For a moment be was silent. Then he said, “Skipper—we
are
past Gander. We must be doing 3,000 knots.”

Taut, suddenly lined faces looked at one another and fear, like an airborne virus, infected the room. Farver’s voice cut into the silence.

“Try to raise Harmon control,” he ordered Wyatt. “If you can’t raise them try Moncton or Boston. And at this speed...you might as well try to get Idlewild!”

Wyatt again went on the radio. “Trans-Ocean 33,” he said, his voice trembling slightly. “Trans-Ocean 33. Harmon Control, come in please...Harmon, please acknowledge. Trans-Ocean 33 Moncton. Trans-Ocean 33 Boston control, come in please...Trans-Ocean 33 to Idlewild control...can you hear us, please!” Wyatt lowered the mike. “No soap,” he said quietly. “I can’t raise
anyone.
”

Fear was the silence that followed the announcement. It was the sweat on Wyatt’s forehead. It was the grim set to Craig’s face. It was the panicky fluttering of Jane Braden’s heart. And to Captain Farver it was an interloper threatening his coolness, his presence of mind, his ability to think and make decisions. The instruments in front of his eyes told him a lie. They
couldn’t
be going that fast. Not and stay in one piece. Not and have the wings remain on the aircraft. Not without being shaken to pieces and disintegrating into so many tons of falling metal.

And yet they were continuing to accelerate. And the big 707 shot through the sky in a denial of logic and truth and mathematical equations. And inside its aluminum hull, the five crew members stared at their instruments. Deep inside they acknowledged their fears and gave silent assent to their helplessness.

A few moments later Jane Braden closed the flight-deck door behind her and went into the lounge. Her assistant, Paula Temple, a short, attractive brunette, was pouring coffee in a tray in a small galley adjoining the lounge. Paula looked up and winked.

“I hope you prodded the fly people. I’m seeing the
Ride of the Valkyrie
tonight.” Then she saw the look on Jane’s face. “What’s the matter?” she whispered.

Jane Braden entered the galley and pulled the curtain around them, closing them off from the lounge.

“Janie,” Paula persisted. “I’ve always had a thing about Valhalla.” Her voice shook slightly. “Be a good egg and tell me if I’ll be there in time for the curtain.”

Jane leaned closer to her. “Let me put it to you this way,” she said. “It’s my most earnest wish that the Valhalla you’re talking about is at the Metropolitan Opera in little old New York.”

“Instead of?” Paula’s voice was a whisper.

“Instead of a...conducted tour into the real thing. We’re in trouble, Paula.”

“How bad?” Paula asked.

“They don’t know yet.” She looked down at Paula’s tray. “Go ahead and serve it.”

Paula lied up the tray in shaking hands and started to pull the curtains apart.

“Paula—” Jane said to her.

Paula turned.

The beautiful blonde winked at her. “Like...coffee, tea or milk...and with a smile!”

Paula nodded, forcing a tight smile of her own as she gripped the tray tighter. “You got a deal,” she announced, “but I wish to God I’d gone to acting school!”

She pulled the curtain apart and carried the tray past the lounge into the first-class compartment. She walked down the aisle conscious of the faces on either side. Men, women, a sleeping infant, an RAF officer. Innocent, guileless faces of human beings who felt a total trust in the omniscient father-figure at the controls of this complex vehicle. They felt safe because the alternative was a panicky insanity.

A stout, mouth-flapping, middle-aged woman, who was every tourist who’d ever complained about cold water in a London hotel and trumpeted America’s pre-eminence in the field of plumbing fixtures, spewed out a monologue to the tall, gray-haired RAF pilot beside her.

“It’s as my late husband used to say,” she gurgled. “The only problem with the British, aside from the fact that you’re perhaps a little behind the times, is this awful coldness of you people. You just don’t seem to...to emotionalize anything. You’re such cold fish about everything. And you know it’s a fact—a person gets sick holding things in.” She swept on without dropping a beat. “You know, you talk about ailments—I had a cousin once in Boise, Idaho. She had one of the worst livers in the medical history of the state. When that woman passed on, rest her soul, would you believe it? There were five medical associations bidding just to get her liver in a bottle on display. But her mother...my father’s sister...absolutely refused to let them show her liver. And it’s like I always said to my late husband—” She broke off suddenly and stared at the epaulets on the officer’s shoulders. “What did you say you were?” she inquired.

The officer, with tired eyes, smiled thinly. “A captain, madam. I’m a military attaché to our British Consulate in Los Angeles.”

“Now isn’t that wonderful,” the woman gushed at him. “Nephew of mine was in the navy during the Second World War. He was on a cruiser, or PT boat or something like that. Or was it a battleship?”

The RAF officer suddenly stared straight ahead. He first looked down at the floor then out toward the wing. There was no loss of power. No telltale shimmying. No flame or smoke. Nothing. And yet there was this feeling.. .this feeling that he couldn’t describe even to himself. There was something wrong. This he knew. It was simple and unequivocal. There was something going wrong with this plane.

He turned to look down the aisle at the stewardess who was picking up coffee trays. Were her hands shaking as she went by him? Was there an odd look on her face? Imagination can spawn one nightmarish hallucination after another. This he knew. But the sensation persisted. And there
was
an odd look on the stewardess’s face as she passed him.

“What’s the matter? his stout seat companion asked. “Airsickness? I’ve got some wonderful pills in my bag here—”

“Do you feel anything?” he interrupted her.

The woman stared at him blankly. “
Feel
anything? Like what?”

The RAF captain averted her look. “Nothing,” he said softly. “I...ah...I just thought I felt something.” He looked at the woman briefly out of the corner of his eye and decided that he’d keep this one to himself. He smiled at her and said, “What about this nephew of yours in the navy?”

In the rear seat of the first-class compartment, a middle-aged man smiled at his wife. “Notice how nervous that little stewardess was? Probably got some kind of big heavy date or something when we land in New York.”

His wife nodded sleepily and closed her eyes. The man picked up a magazine and began to read.

In the cockpit of Flight 33 the tension was like a big block of some material that could be cut with a saw. At intervals each man looked toward Farver, hunched over his instruments, and then to Hatch the navigator who continued to study the Loran, shaking his head in disbelief as each moment passed. Second Officer Wyatt fiddled with the radio and kept speaking quietly into the mike.

“What about it?” Farver asked him.

Wyatt shook his head. “Not a thing, sir. Not a bloody thing. Either they’re off whack...everybody out there—” his voice was meaningful “—
or we are”

Craig whirled around in his seat. “Why the hell don’t you check your equipment—”

“I checked it four times,” Wyatt shouted back.

“Knock it off,” Farver interrupted. “We’ll just have to bull it through and see if anything—”

He never completed this sentence. Not then or ever. There was a sudden, blinding flash of hot, white light. For one fragment of a second they seemed caught up in some kind of giant picture negative in reverse polarization. They looked foggy and indistinct. Then the cockpit shuddered and bucked. Purcell was flung from his seat. The clipboards overhead tumbled down on Hatch’s head. Both Farver and Craig instinctively reached for the controls, but the light had dissipated and the plane was once again in easy, level flight.

“Did we hit something?” Craig asked breathlessly.

“I don’t know,” Farver answered briefly. “Check for damage.”

Craig looked out the side window. “Numbers three and four are still on the wing,” he announced. “They look okay.”

Farver turned from studying the left wing. “Ditto one and two,” he said tersely. “Everything seems in one piece. Purcell, go aft and check for any cabin damage. Report back as fast as you can. I’ll get on the horn and try to calm everybody down if they need calming. Tell the girls to stay with it.” He turned back to the instrument panel and his eyes traversed the maze of levers and dials. “We’re in trouble,” he said softly, as if to himself, “but I’ll be Goddamned if I know what
kind
of trouble.”

“That light,” Hatch said in a strained, tight voice. “That crazy light. What was it?”

“That’s something we’ll have to find out,” Farver said. He turned to Craig. “And quick too.”

“What was the shaking?” Craig asked. “Turbulence?

Farver shook his head. “I doubt it. It was more like a...like a—”

“Like a what? Craig asked impatiently.

“Like a sound wave,” Farver said. “
As if we’d gone past the speed of sound
”

Craig was incredulous. “You mean we hit Mach I? We broke the sound barrier? But how the hell could that happen? We didn’t get any Mach I warning.”

“We probably wouldn’t,” Farver said, “not with a true air speed of only 440. I don’t know what it was. I just don’t know. Magellan’s last speed check showed 3,000 knots. We could have broken some kind of sound barrier, but...” He hesitated. “But not any sound barrier I’ve ever heard of before. Magellan, can you give me a Loran fix now?”

Hatch checked his equipment. “Whatever that bump was, Skipper,” he said, “it’s really knocked out everything. Loran’s inoperative.”

“Altimeter and rate of climb steady, Skipper,” Craig announced, checking the dials in front of him.

Behind them Wyatt fiddled with the radio. “Skipper,” he said, “I still can’t raise Gander or Moncton or Boston or any place. It’s like I said...either they’re off the air or we are...or both!”

Farver took a deep breath. “Hatch—give me a sun fix. I’ll need a heading to Idlewild from our last known position. If we can’t raise anybody, we’ll have to go down and establish visual contact!”

Craig looked at him, amazed. “Skipper,” he said, “we can’t do that. If we leave this altitude we’ll land smack dab in the middle of twenty other flights.”

“Anybody got an alternative?” Farver asked. “Sooner or later we’re going to have to find a landmark or go VFR. With no radio contact we’re like a deaf and dumb man. As long as we stay up here we’re also blind.”

Purcell entered from the flight deck. “No damage aft, Skipper,” he announced. “Everybody’s shook up a bit and they’re curious. A few of them are plenty scared too.”

Farver took a deep breath. “Them and me both!” He reached for the hand mike. “Ours not to reason why. Ours but to do or die...into the valley of public relations.” He flicked on the cabin P.A. switch and wondered how his voice sounded as he spoke into the mike. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Farver. I want to assure you that everything is fine.”

Craig closed his eyes and shook his head.

Farver grinned, but his mouth looked as if it had been cut out of paper with a scissors. “There is no danger,” he continued on the mike. “We encountered a little clear air turbulence back there along with some kind of...atmospheric phenomena. There’s been no damage to the aircraft.”

His eyes moved up over the mike to scan the cockpit. The radio equipment. The silent black box that had once told them precisely where they were and where they were heading.

“I repeat,” he said, “There is no cause for alarm. We’ll keep you posted. If we run according to schedule, we should be landing in Idlewild inside of the next forty minutes.”

He flicked off the switch, put the mike aside. Jesus God, he said to himself, I should put on a gray flannel suit and sell toothpaste. There was a point, he thought to himself, where the passengers and crew should link arms and face whatever there was to face. They could be milk-fed and reassured to a degree. But then you had to come clean and tell them it was altogether probable that catastrophe was about two city blocks away, and all of them had better start making their peace. This is what he thought, but what he said was “Purcell—what’s our fuel?”