by Desmond Cory
So many of them, thought O’Brien. So very many. And now his turn was coming. And he would die as they had done, in the air. That was what he wanted. That was what mattered.
“Five. Four. Three. Two. One …”
O’Brien’s hand moved towards the firing-button. Closed upon it. It made no sound, no click. But gradually, irrevocably, the Bandit began to shudder. To shudder and slowly, reluctantly, to move. To drag itself clear of the earth. To rise from the watching hangars into the air …
At last. At last he was off. In a sudden and totally unexpected wave of exaltation he spoke to Control:
“Hullo, Control. Hullo, Control. Take-off seems to be steady. Monitor reading three-seven-zero, increasing. Increasing steadily. Over.”
“Good,” said Mr. Mitchell, a far-away Mr. Mitchell, a Mr. Mitchell already having little to do with the reality of the flight. “That’s the idea, O’Brien. Confirm monitor three-seven-zero. Carry on climbing steadily at two gee, until you get further instructions. Over and out.”
O’Brien leaned sideways to peer backwards towards the station. It was receding from him giddily now, at what seemed an unbelievable speed; the widespread circular bruise of Bir Azahara was diminished to the size of a plate, of a saucer, as he stared; dwindled before his eyes; and the desert around it flooded outwards, vaster and vaster, brown and blue; already to the north he could see the distant Mediterranean shine …
He turned back to concentrate on his instruments; the Bandit was beginning to sway now, as an express train sways thunderingly on its rails, and was shrieking on its journey through the air … A shriek transmuted to O’Brien’s ears as a painful high-pitched whine. He eased the rudder bar slightly; resistance was very considerable.
“Monitor eight-two-zero,” he said. “Eight-two-zero. Am levelling out.”
“Confirm monitor eight-two-zero. You should level out at eight-two-four, O’Brien. Level at eight-two-four. Acknowledge. Over.”
“At eight-two-four,” said O’Brien. “Very well.” His hands moved on the controls, as delicately and instinctively as a jockey’s hands on the reins of a racehorse. “She’s behaving very well indeed. But beginning to sway a bit. She’ll probably stop that when I level out. Cutting rockets.” His hand closed, opened again over the power key. “Am now levelling. Now levelling.”
… The Bandit came over, with the slightest perceptible change in the tone of her whining. O’Brien looked up at the sky; violet, almost black. Down at the earth, a mystery spinning beneath him. “On level flight,” he said. “Going over to jets.”
“Yes, you may switch on your jets. Your reading is eight-nine-eight. Set course, please, at zero-nine-four.”
“Zero-nine-four,” said O’Brien, frowning down at the compass indicator. The Bandit, running on three-quarter power, began to bank; steadied again on an even keel. Within, one had an impression of being at rest; only that constant whine told of velocity through a thinly resistant air.
“Steady on course,” reported O’Brien. “Jets on full power now, building up steadily. Present reading six-eight-two. At seven-zero-zero I shall commence a five-degree dive, which I shall hold to ten-two-zero. If I can. Over.”
“I don’t advise that.” The Director sounded agitated. “Listen very carefully. At seven-zero-zero you should commence a three-degree dive - don’t attempt a steeper angle. And your change velocity is nine-eight-zero; there’s no point in continuing your build-up unnecessarily. Confirm at once, please.”
“That’s what Revie did.” O’Brien knuckled dampness from his cheeks. “I’m going to execute a five-degree dive because I’m eliminating all safety factors. For the same reason I shall hold the dive as far as possible beyond change velocity. I hope in this way to ease acceleration strain, and - if I don’t burn up - it should work out all right. I shan’t require any further reports, and I shall leave the transmitter on ‘Send.’ So … wait till you hear from me.” He smiled maliciously to himself “Monitor now reading six-nine-six. Six-nine-six. Well, I’m commencing my dive.”
Gently he eased the control-column forward, and the Bandit began to topple from the skies. Smoothly at first, with a swiftly increasing momentum; then running through a series of tiny joggles … that increased in force and speed until the whole craft was being shaken as though by hammer-blows from a machine-gun. O’Brien, stolidly indifferent, watched the monitor needle rising; his sight was misted by the excessive vibration and his head ached with the strain … It was unbearable. It was almost unbearable. Then it was over, finished, and the Bandit was careering soundlessly downwards towards the great bloody sweep of the Sahara desert, outstretched beneath it …
Nine-six-four. Eight. Seven-zero. Two. Four. Six … O’Brien counted the numbers out loud, though more to himself than to the listeners below. He had reached change velocity. And the wing-tips were trembling ominously, helpless to evade the intolerable pressure that increased with every second …
It was hot, it was burning hot. O’Brien was damp with sweat; his face, his shirt, his trousers; now he could feel that painful prickling of perspiration that is dried even as it emerges from the pores. The Bandit’s bullet nose before him was shining, glowing as though incandescent. He was travelling at a little less than a thousand miles an hour.
“Listen,” said O’Brien, in a kind of croak. “I’m being roasted. It’s no good. The idea’s no good, I can’t hold it. It’s burning up on me. I’m going to have to pull out …”
His hands rested inert on the control-column, obeying a resolution that desire had long discarded. O’Brien’s body could not share the panic that crawled like a legless lizard through his thoughts; dispassionately it watched the monitor needle swinging … ten-o-eight, ten-ten, -twelve … While the cloth on his sleeve, touching the bulkhead, began to turn brown and to char …
“Flattening out,” O’Brien said, or thought he said, or … He leaned back on the control-column. It was stiff, immovable, held rigid by a Titanic pressure; like some legendary sword wedged in a block of stone. O’Brien strained to shift it, his lips pulled back from his teeth, his eyes half-closed. Gradually, it moved. The Bandit lifted its head. A dark stain on the desert below went past in a blink, too fast to be anything seen; the horizon vanished beneath as soon as it was clearly glimpsed. Not that O’Brien was studying the scenery … His fingers groped helplessly for the power-key that switched into gear the nuclear motor …
“On drive,” he said hoarsely.
Simultaneously he felt the seat beneath him buck and leap like a harpooned swordfish. He grasped and tried to steady himself with his hand against the bulkhead; the metal blistered his fingers as he touched it, and he tore them away, leaving most of his skin behind. Then the full acceleration of the nuclear engine took him and pushed him helplessly back into the depths of his seat …
The Director’s fist pounded uselessly on the table. “Take it up,” he shouted to the unanswering microphone. “You’ve got to take it up, or you’ll burn yourself out. You’re too low, O’Brien; you’re too blasted low.”
Emerald’s hands, too, were tightly bunched and threatening to thrust holes through the linings of his pockets. Johnny sat motionless beside him. The silence in the room was profound and terrible after the Director’s outburst; when men looked up, it was in direct avoidance of each other’s eyes …
“I can’t move,” said a voice from somewhere in hell.
“You’ve got to move,” said the Director, but this time in a whisper. “I tell you you’ve got to. Christ, let him move. Oh Christ, make him move.”
... Yet it was not pain nor exhaustion that O’Brien was fighting, but an overwhelming lassitude. He was watching, as though again in his dream, the snowy mountain-tops approach; and all his muscles were relaxed in anticipation of that long sleep … Already they were resting, at peace. And so was the situation reversed. Now it was his brain that was calm and ruthlessly insistent; his muscles that provided mere twitches by way of reply … At first, mere twitches. For long s
econds, nothing more. Then, and as though in response to something exerting a supernatural dominion from outside O’Brien’s body, his hands closed once more over the control-column and began to tense …
Slowly the horizon shifted, began to fall away. Slowly the sky came down, like a curtain, as the Bandit began its meteoric vertical climb. Within the cabin, the angle-of-ascent indicator swung smoothly up to the vertical. And the earth, the hungry earth that had been waiting for all eternity, dropped like a stone out of sight. Until one peered backwards … to see the ragged coast of Africa, the long shady purple of the sea, and in the extreme distance, the clouds of Italy … all standing incredibly on their side …
“Jesus,” said O’Brien. “Jesus.” In another sudden burst of excitement, “She’s climbing, sweet Jesus, she’s climbing. Nothing ever travelled like this, nothing. Nothing, ever.” His words drew themselves out tiredly, reluctant to pass from his throat. “She works all right. She works.”
He raised his blistered hand to rub at his face, which he found no less tender. Eyebrows and lashes were both singed away. And the movement cost him almost as much effort as had his battle with the control-column; when he lowered his arm, he knew that he had raised it for the last time in his life. “This is what happens,” he said, articulating each word with great care. “There’s a fault in the internal construction. That’s all. It’s like I thought; the stress distribution’s uneven. When the nuclear drive comes on, it’s too powerful. You can’t ease it on gently; not by hand. So it seems to kick the cabin forward, and the shield shifts too. That’s what happens. That’s all.” He looked down at the monitor needle; then, as though afraid to do so, at the dial of the Geiger counter. “… Yes. It’s leaking like a sieve. Eight-forty röntgens coming through steadily.”
He lifted his eyes. The sky was black. He could see the stars now, clearly, as tiny unmoving specks of brilliant light. About him was a great stillness. It was difficult to believe that he was now flying at seven thousand miles an hour.
“… You can minimise the initial shock by attaining change velocity plus, before you actually change. Plus as much as possible. Though I don’t think you can do much more than ten-two-zero without getting shrivelled up. Like a leaf. Or hitting the deck. Well, that’s your worry, not mine; you’ll have to find some other answer … If you change at nine-o-plus like Revie did, the initial stress must be terrific. Shouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t a visible shift in the shield. Like standing up to an atomic bomb, so far as the pilot’s concerned. Poor old Revie. Just withered away, like a flower. Like the last rose of summer. Poor old Revie.”
Now the Bandit was topping ten thousand miles an hour. The earth beneath it was displaying an obvious curvature. O’Brien had difficulty making out the landscape, for his eyes were too puffed now for him to see clearly; all the same, the Mediterranean was unmistakable, and the African coast still, and Greece … He thought, though he was not quite sure, that he could see the Straits of Gibraltar and the Atlantic.
“Sorry I can’t turn the transmitter over an’ give you fellows a word. Haven’t got the energy, you see. It’s still very warm and all this radioactivity is … rather tiring.” O’Brien’s speech, though he did not recognise it, was becoming very slurred; the listeners on the earth below him were now finding it hard to distinguish his words. “The earth looks rather grand. It shines, you know, like the moon. Or rather glows. I hadn’t realised that. And clouds, there are so many clouds like shadows or one might say shadow-like …”
He had reached thirteen thousand miles an hour. But he was not studying the monitor gauge any more. Nor was he looking back at the earth; he only believed that he was.
One could go on for ever, if one didn’t feel so tired. Though there’s the pain, always there’s the pain. And things like ulcers coming up on my wrists … Well, I’m going to try to level out now. I should be going fast enough now to hit free orbit. I’m going to fire the levelling rockets. Then I think I’ll sign off for a while.
… Was he talking? Or only thinking?
He eased himself forward in the seat, pushed out a stiffened hand. It fumbled, robot-like, along the panel, sending back swift licks of agony along the arm; at last it found the rocket-toggle. Jerked, rather than pulled. Then, like a dead leaf, drifted slowly downwards. The pull of gravity was almost nil; but for that fact he could never have raised it at all.
Yes. That’s all right. We’re levelling, according to the indicator. Though I can’t see it so well. “Yes. We’re levelling now. It gets very dark at this height and that’s why I can’t see. It gets very dark and gloomy. But you can see the mountains now. With snow on the peaks. They look very beautiful, really.”
And for some time he lay still, watching the mountains. Slowly they came towards him; white maidens of ice whose fingers beckoned him nearer and nearer. Behind the peaks he could see the deep blue of water, and beyond the water the plain, the green plain, the low green fields of Africa. He did not need to search for a spot to land; not this time. Anywhere would do. Anywhere. For everywhere was …
“What did he say?” asked the Director, swinging round.
“It sounded like green,” said Johnny.
Johnny and Emerald left the Control Room and stood together on the tarmac. The sun etched their shadows beneath them.
“How long will he stay up there?”
“I suppose for ever,” said Emerald.
“Perhaps they’ll find him. And bring him down again.”
“I hope not,” said Emerald gruffly. “… That’s where he wanted to be.”
They walked slowly across the scorched tarmac to where Emerald’s jeep was waiting.
In his office, the Director was telephoning.
Also by Desmond Cory
Have you read yet?
Secret Ministry
1st Fedora’s assignment.
Germany is defeated but a select group of Hitler's henchmen continue to kill and maim. Their hideout: London. Fedora's assignment: Destroy them! Enter the world of the political assassin.
Download from Amazon
This Traitor, Death
2nd Fedora assignment, this time in Paris.
She was known as "Le Rossignol" - The Nightingale - Hitler's most beautiful and ruthless spy. With access to millions in unrecovered German gold, she's the only person who could lead a successful return to Nazi power. Fedora's single order: crush the Nightingale.
Download from Amazon
Dead Man Falling
Fedora 3rd mission takes him to Austria.
A bizarre honeymoon plunges Fedora into the search for a Nazi killer, and a fabulous cache of diamonds.
Download from Amazon
Next in this series :
Johnny Goes North
Johnny Goes East
For more information:
www.johnnyfedora.com
A gift for you
First of all, thank you for taking the time to read and finish this book. On behalf of the Desmond Cory Foundation, we would like to express our gratitude by offering you a gift voucher for any of Desmond Cory’s other books.
Simply contact us at:
http://johnnyfedora.com/index.php/contact/
If you, like us, crave for a return to well written espionage novels before the dawn of computers, when agents used their craft and guile to defeat the enemy, then we look forward to hearing from you.
For those of you who have enjoyed this book, please spare a moment to post a short review on Amazon.
harethis-inline-share-buttons">share
