The Higher They Fly

by Christopher Hodder-Williams

  There were the experts:

  ‘I know exactly what this is, Tony. Severe icing. I’ve had the same sort of trouble myself. As a matter of fact I hold a PPL.’

  ‘What’s a PPL?’

  ‘Private Pilot’s Licence. Done quite a lot in Cessnas. If our friends up front are having trouble with the de-icing boots they’re bound to have to come down into warmer air for a while.’

  Someone chipped in: ‘De-icing boots went out with the New Look, my friend. How many hours did you log in a Cessna fitted with boots, I’d like to know?’

  ‘The trouble I had wasn’t in a Cessna. I was merely saying . . .’

  Others employed the technique of Business As Usual. They simply failed to acknowledge that anything unusual was happening at all. Discussion ranged from football results to the price of avocado pears in Chelsea. Only an almost imperceptibly tightened larynx or a tapping finger showed that some part of the mind was alerted to the animal smell of danger.

  Dulcie, who was a doctor, studied the various displays with a cool intentness.

  She could not study the reflexes of Mr Valentine, who was sealed beyond the sliding door that demarked luxury from mere comfort. He being in a better position to observe the preparations being made yonder on the flight deck was now fully at the mercy of the seething vortices of panic that competed in his mind for priority. Once again he had rung for the stewardess. This time Jill came.

  ‘Where’s the other stewardess? I wanted a word with her.’

  ‘I’m afraid she’s busy at the moment, sir. Can I get you anything?’

  The girl annoyed him. She didn’t care what happened to him—that was obvious. He was also aware—even in the tenseness of the moment—that she was acutely attractive in an obvious, cheap sort of a way. He dismissed her as cheap because it was evident from her attitude toward the first officer that she would not serve to keep his mind off things with her coquettish appeal. She would feel pleasant enough on his lap, in the semi-darkness of the first class; and a hand resting on her sharply defined breasts might make all the difference to his morale.

  This being out of the question, he must get even with her and make her pay for being young and attractive and not his.

  ‘Young woman, I’m used to getting what I want. How much experience have you had as an air hostess?’

  Jill thought, More than enough to weigh up a creep like you. Aloud she said: ‘I’m sorry, sir. Have I said something to upset you?’

  He saw the antagonism in her eyes. She was acting. She wasn’t sincere at all. She was probably laughing at him. But the question was technically justified; and he didn’t see for the moment how he could make things awkward for her without making them equally awkward for himself. So he said: ‘Get me a large whisky.’

  Jill nodded her obedience and went to the forward galley. ‘I see what you mean about your Mr Valentine,’ she said to Susan. ‘He’s even worse when he’s scared. And he’s one of those men who make you feel you’re naked.’

  Susan was busy checking first-aid equipment. Without breaking her actions she commented: ‘The best way of dealing with him is to get the stewards to look after him. I haven’t got time to cope and nor have you.’

  ‘Okay.’ Jill stood there for a moment. ‘Susan?’

  ‘Yes, dear?’

  ‘It is going to be all right—isn’t it?’

  Susan smiled kindly. ‘You trust old Crookey-Boy. He’s got quite a reputation for flying out of tight corners. We couldn’t have a better bunch if they’d been hand-picked for a Royal flight.’

  ‘And . . . Jimmy?’

  Susan’s motions stopped. ‘I thought you knew him pretty well.’ She realised at once that sounded wrong, so she added: ‘I didn’t mean——’

  Jill cut her short. ‘It’s not that I mind that. Except . . .’

  ‘Except you’re going to get hurt.’

  ‘Why are you so sure?’

  ‘I just don’t want you to have any illusions.’

  ‘I don’t. I just hope he doesn’t have any illusions about himself.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know what I mean.’

  The two girls exchanged a look for a moment.

  Susan said: ‘Crookey-Boy trusts Jimmy completely. I know that. Keep your mind off it. God knows, there’s plenty to do.’

  *

  Crooke did a to-and-fro on the control yoke and said: ‘Christ, it’s choppy down here. I forgot what it was like at this obscene altitude.’ He tugged at his beard to emphasise his disapproval of turbulent air in general, then peered around at Perkins, as if it were all his fault. ‘I hope you’ve finished all those filthy bananas.’

  ‘I’ve got one left.’

  ‘Well do me a favour and save it for the next flight. I was frightened by a banana at the age of two. I’m sure of it. How long can we stay down here and still have sufficient fuel reserve?’

  ‘At this altitude you’re fairly eating it up.’

  ‘Figures, Perk!’

  ‘If we fly at our most economical speed—say 230 knots—we can still make Gander and the alternate if we go back to cruising altitude within two hours.’

  ‘I’m sorry I asked. I certainly don’t propose to hop about like this for very long. It’ll spoil all the publicity about being able to balance a pencil on end.’ He thought for a minute. ‘You’d better plot a course back—just in case—and work closely with Jimmy, who’s getting the weather from all sorts of places I have no intention of going to.’

  Perkins sounded hurt. ‘I have already worked out the diversion routes.’

  ‘Oh, I thought you might be writing more of that poetry.’ Perkins produced a thin smile which only made Crooke guffaw. ‘I bet you don’t pout at Jeannie like that, Roger!’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ said Perkins slyly, ‘she rather likes it.’

  ‘Well, you never bloody well know, do you! My wife has a fetish about picnics on Hampstead Heath. Hampstead Heath! . . . I mean, I ask you!’

  Truman checked the altimeter and said: ‘Levelling off at ten thousand.’

  ‘Right. Cut the speed back to two-three-oh indicated.’

  Truman eased back the throttle levers. ‘Two-thirty knots it is’—and watched the airspeed indicator as the needles began to clock-back to the lower speed.

  Crooke gazed humorously at Geoff Simmonds, who now looked more like someone on a polar expedition than he did a flight engineer. He had collected three sweaters from somewhere and wore a denim suit over the top. Crooke said: ‘I wouldn’t have thought that rig would improve your chances of getting through them there holes.’

  Geoff didn’t think this funny. Curtly, he said: ‘It’ll be about minus thirty centigrade down there.’

  ‘Yes.’ Crooke played with his beard a moment. He was wondering whether anything could be done by way of a patch-job in flight, should it turn out that something really was wrong down there. If so, it would be tough working down in the systems bay at such a low temperature. Aloud he said: ‘You’d better take my gloves. Over there, on top of the VHF.’

  Geoff took them. He also took a quick look at the captain, who—he felt—was rather overdoing the facetiousness.

  Crooke caught this at once. As if snapping over a switch, to change frequency, he said: ‘I’m not leaving anything to chance. All I want you to do is to take a quick look—no more. We’ve been warned not to lower the undercarriage, so we can’t study the mechanism by operating it. This is the only way.’

  ‘If I don’t see anything it won’t prove anything.’

  ‘I know. We’ll have to think again when you get back if there’s nothing showing. Are you ready now?’

  ‘Yes.’ Geoff took a brief look at the engineer’s panel. ‘We’re on cross-feed at the moment, plenty of fuel in all tanks. Pressure is at atmosphere and valves open. Can I go?’

  Crooke thumbed affirmation. Geoff left the cockpit.

  Truman was flying the aircraft manually. In rough air and at this very
low speed the responses of the auto-pilot would be unnecessarily over-anxious, as it were, and human judgement was preferable.

  Crooke took a quick glance at the instruments, satisfied himself that Truman was steady on course at the correct airspeed and altitude, and indulged his blessed facility for relaxing. If his full prowess was going to be needed later then the quick revitalising effect of letting go—even if only for five or ten minutes—would pay a bonus dividend beyond all proportion to the modest outlay. To remain tense at this moment merely because he was in command would drain him of nervous energy and contribute nothing. The time to go back into action, full swing, was when Geoff came back with the facts.

  Crooke had always been able to do this. Those who didn’t know him well were sometimes disconcerted at his sudden cat-naps—until they noted how rapidly he could awaken, apparently by some inborn instinct, should any slight change in sound, pressure, or the feel of his bottom alter the perspective.

  Crooke had learned the hard way. He had been a fighter pilot and he knew and understood the paradox that you always believe the instruments rather than your senses but you use your senses as a stimulus for instrumental cross-checking.

  Your hands are no more important than your arse, which tells you more even than the mechanisms of the inner ear—the landsman’s principal guide to balance. Through your trousered medium you are alerted to side-slip, to climb and descent, to yaw. You can tell, through increase or decrease in your own apparent weight upon the chair, the amount of stress being applied to the wings and tailplane when in a turn and the responsiveness of the aeroplane to a given amount of movement on the controls. In a cat-nap Crooke would never allow the nerves of his buttocks to sleep.

  Vain or not, Jimmy Truman was one of the few co-pilots in whose company Crooke would indulge this technically illegal habit; and to do so during a potential crisis was no mean compliment.

  Jimmy Truman flew with a beauty calculated to match his own person. His attitude to the task was immaculate as the uniform he wore, and equalled in exactitude the care with which he shaved in the morning, so that his face was flanked by two sharply defined frontiers of hair, straight as the razor which cut them.

  He never snatched at the controls of an aeroplane; he never made the error—as so many pilots do—of forgetting that a smooth take-off is as fine an art as a faultless landing. On these points the confidential reports made about him by company captains were unanimous. Usually they added words to the effect that he was good material for promotion.

  He did, in fact, seduce an aircraft into flight; and indeed he was precisely as good a pilot as he was a lover. No woman had ever felt conquered by him against her will.

  The immaturity in Truman lay, however, in the fact that both his flying and his conquests required applause. Crooke had grown used to this; for he had spotted that Truman’s ego was not one that should be deflated if efficiency were best to be served. Some men needed silencing on the subject of their excellence as pilots and—occasionally—their emotional triumphs. Do this to Truman and you would endure a bumpy landing and a sulk in the changing room. It wasn’t worth it.

  ‘The man,’ said a fellow-captain to Crooke one day, ‘is essentially feminine but not remotely effeminate. Work that out.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Crooke had replied. ‘Must I?’

  The other man grinned. ‘You’re too robust for this neurotic age, Crookey-Boy. You’ve probably never even heard of Œdipus.’

  ‘Now, let me see: isn’t he the fellow who flew first officer to his mother?’

  *

  Crooke came out of his cat-nap instantly when Geoff returned to the cockpit.

  ‘There’s trouble all right, sir.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Don’t know exactly. I couldn’t get through . . . you’ll need somebody slimmer. But the first thing I noticed was when I opened the pressure hatch in the floor.’ This was located just forward of the first class. ‘Slipstream.’

  ‘So there’s a hole.’

  ‘Must be. There’s a howling gale blowing along that tube.’

  Crooke turned to Truman. ‘Jimmy? You’re the slimmest.’

  ‘I’ll have a go.’

  ‘Good. My controls.’ He took the wheel and ran his eyes quickly over the flight instruments.

  Truman let go of his wheel. ‘Your controls. I’ve just made a check call on the radio. They’ve got us loud and clear and they’re standing-by for news.’ He got up athletically and started to put on the sweaters Geoff was shedding.

  Perkins looked up and watched the two men swapping sweaters. Somehow, it was a relief to see something happening. It was as if the full ache of an undiagnosed pain had been localized. Geoff had cheered up. Before he had left the cockpit it had looked as if he were pitting himself against the captain. Now the two men seemed relaxed toward each other, and were discussing in short sharp sentences the implications of that sinister breeze which was blowing up through the hatch. As he talked, Geoff was rapidly rigging up an inspection light which could be plugged-in at an electrical outlet in the systems bay.

  While Truman prepared for his journey into the bowels of the aircraft Perkins found himself wondering what they had all been thinking about below the surface . . . survival.

  An airliner’s cockpit has a remoteness about it which does not always suggest the feel of actual flight; and at night especially the illusion of disembodied existence can become strong.

  You are in a small, dim-lighted box containing a handful of men. There is nothing to see ahead through the narrow windscreen, except a few stars even more remote than you. You might equally well be underground.

  Flying at this low altitude through uneven air there was, of course, some detectable movement; but it wasn’t tangible enough to make you feel insecure. In a crisis you are too busy to assemble a mental picture which makes your box an integral part of an entire aeroplane. The box exists for itself, and in it is displayed all the information you require for the job you are doing. It actually takes some imagination to accept that what is solid and well-ordered around you is, under certain rare circumstances, destructible. You learn that it is through reading accounts of disasters and very seldom from personal experience. Few men step out of a wrecked airliner to tell the tale.

  If an aeroplane falls out of the sky and skewers into the ground because, for some reason, its wings and tailplane have failed to support it, there is no lingering threat of the wheel chair; and for those who fear death most of all, the crash from altitude is the greatest symbol of horror there is.

  But if all that is wrong is that there is no serviceable undercarriage then it means that some form of crash landing is a must; and a crash landing carries with it an alternative threat to that of death.

  Perkins, therefore, found his thoughts bearing on this. He projected his mind onwards through time, beyond that moment when through running out of fuel the Jet-Four must seek the ground somehow. He saw, in this vision, the face of Jeannie beholding his body—smashed. Not to destruction, but to a degree that would deprive him of the need she had so recently evoked . . .

  ‘Roger, stop brooding!’ said Crooke.

  Perkins was startled into saying: ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Because I’m Captain Crooke, and I know everything.’

  Truman announced he was ready. Geoff handed him the inspection lamp and the torch. Crooke threw Truman an appropriate obscenity and added: ‘Don’t fall out. There’s a hole down there. I lose more first officers that way . . .’

  Truman’s pale blue eyes smiled back. ‘You’re forgetting, aren’t you?—My father was with a flying circus, too.’

  Crooke said: ‘All right, cockie. On your way.’ For some reason the remark had annoyed him.

  Outside the cockpit, Truman ran into Jill.

  The doubts she had expressed to Susan were dispersed the moment she saw him, and a look came into her eyes which Mr Valentine would dearly have loved to see, had it been for his benefit. Truman held her
to him for a few seconds, and she said: ‘Darling, for heaven’s sake!’ He manoeuvred her out of eyeline with the first-class section, and as they kissed their reflection was captured in the mirror of the toilet, whose door was open. Truman paid no attention to the mirror until she broke away; but he caught a glimpse of himself then and felt good. Then he looked back at her. She was smiling in just the way he liked.

  ‘Hadn’t you better get on with it?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, but it’s cold down there. I needed warming up a bit.’

  ‘Did I succeed?’

  The answer did not require Verbal expression. Jill went back into the galley and Truman watched her. Then he opened the hatch.

  Truman’s immediate reaction was that Geoff had been exaggerating. It was true that there was a certain amount of air blowing about; but this could be accounted for without assuming that there was a rend in the hull.

  The cavity he was entering was in the unpressurised part of the aircraft, and was normally sealed-off by the airtight hatch he had just opened. In view of this, it was not necessary for the outer casing of the retractable undercarriage to be an exact fit, except from the point of view of maintaining as smooth a surface as possible along the outer skin so that the air could flow past without wasteful friction.

  Truman thought, therefore, that all that was happening was that a little air was leaking in through the cracks of the undercarriage doors, and other removable panels along the underbelly.

  It was a long tunnelling job to reach the Number Three Systems Bay, which was roughly halfway along the fuselage. You had to pick your way through the frames and members that held the aircraft together. Agile as he was, Truman only just had room to weave his way through, pushing the light a couple of feet ahead of him and then hauling his way along to meet it.

  The hollow acoustics in there produced an unnerving sound, not unlike the approach of a tube train as it forced a column of air before it. The sound was louder, however, and more intimate. You were very conscious of the air streaming along the body of the plane. The sound made the atmosphere feel colder than it actually was. But Truman was cold enough for all that, by the time he had reached the halfway mark his face was almost numb.