The Higher They Fly

by Christopher Hodder-Williams

  Mr Valentine was, in fact, consumed by a greater loathing of the world around him—as represented by the microcosm of the aeroplane—than Susan thought; and he was only dimly aware of it himself. Locked behind a system of steel doors was the vault of a mind whose conflict had flashpointed an inferno, as if petrol and sulphuric acid, negligently stored in the same warehouse, had come into contact and caught fire. Already the flames had licked through to neighbouring sheds, dynamiting small charges as yet but threatening a major catastrophe. Valentine’s hatred for Jill was a very different response to Jack Hubb’s sense of rebuttal after his unsuccessful pass at Susan. It wasn’t in Mr Valentine to make an overt suggestion of that sort to a woman in any case; his sex-life had depended upon a financial status he no longer had, and with the depletion of his bank resources went also his means of seduction.

  This showed in his eyes when he looked at a woman like Jill—he knew he was licked before the bell rang for the first round. Even if she herself happened to be incorruptible—and she would be the first in his experience if she were—the banker’s order should be there in the background to give him confidence enough to land the fish. And if she didn’t want the cash, so much the better. The enterprise wouldn’t set him back so much.

  And now, by God, they had turned back; which would give him even less time to put through the deal in Washington that was the only chance of saving his back-bacon. ‘But if I do pull it off,’ he thought, feeling a sudden upsurge of lust which pounded at his temples, ‘I’ll show that little bit of c— where she stands.’

  Mr Valentine was both frightened and thwarted . . . and he was drunk. He made unsuccessful knife-stabs of conversation with this woman whose face was pointedly buried in the typescript before her; and as he did so it was as if the wind changed and started to fan the flames in a different direction.

  An idea was forming, an insane idea for which fate had provided a neat opportunity.

  And as he looked towards First Officer Truman, who would be the means of it, Valentine weighed the odds between mortal fear of death itself and its exact converse.

  ‘If I could take them with me,’ thought Valentine, ‘honours would be even.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  When you come up against a brick wall, and there isn’t time to dismember it brick by brick, you either have to find a way around it or else climb over the top. To try and batter your way through, with nothing but your bare hands at your disposal, will leave the wall exactly as it had been, and yourself weakened.

  Mr Sandy Dawlish was a most effective brick wall. Each brick that had been cemented in place through a dedicated study of the rule books comprised a rigid barrier, and disallowed even the glancing blow of the sensible question.

  He pushed his hands deep into his pockets and rocked backwards and forwards on his heels. Too sure of his arguments and of his position to find need of raising his voice, he spoke with a slight smile on his face, as if this might do something to lessen the unkind impact of unquestioned authority.

  ‘You see, Fleming, it isn’t up to us to decide Captain Crooke’s proper course of action in any case. Is it?’

  ‘Obviously not. But he is open to suggestion.’

  ‘Quite. Very sensible of him. All the same, it’s up to me to ensure that the suggestion comes from the appropriate quarter.’

  Fleming said: ‘You have already spoken to him yourself?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And as I understand it, you felt obliged to tell him that I was, at least in your opinion, in no condition to offer advice?’

  ‘I’m afraid that is so.’

  ‘You didn’t feel that the engineering ideas I put forward could be assessed on their own merit, irrespective of who offered them?’

  ‘Mr Fleming, if there existed a panel of experts who had the time at their disposal to study every aspect of the technical detail, that would be one thing. As it is, Captain Crooke has got to consider the advice as it stands, without detailed analysis. Therefore the matter of who expressed the opinions put forward becomes of the utmost importance.’ Dawlish shot him a look. ‘Not to mention their motives for doing so.’

  ‘Surely my motives are pretty obvious, aren’t they?’

  ‘What are your motives, Mr Fleming?’

  Scrivens said: ‘Captain Fleming’s motives are the same as yours and mine, aren’t they? To help Captain Crooke in the most effective way possible.’

  Dawlish couldn’t resist it. He felt the personal urge to say this without really knowing why. ‘Mr. Fleming, you are a discredited pilot. You would, I’m sure, admit that earlier on this evening you made a bit of a fool of yourself. Now you’re trying to make a come-back. Surely isn’t that as much your motive as anything else?’

  Gregg said: ‘I must disallow that as totally uncalled-for.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Dawlish, ‘we all know Fleming is one of your bright young men.’ He crimsoned immediately he had said this, for he had obviously gone too far.

  Scrivens restored the situation. ‘We’re all getting het up and there’s only fifteen minutes to go. The one thing I must insist on, gentlemen, is that we stick to the point.’

  Mr Dawlish drew from his breast pocket a handkerchief which would have done credit to a detergent commercial. With it, he blew his nose with surprising force. The action seemed entirely out of character, and made him go puce in the face. Then he stuffed the handkerchief back in his pocket and said: ‘It seems to me very much a relevant issue; though perhaps I phrased it a little harshly. My thesis is that it isn’t so much the plan, it’s the man.’ He leaned back on his heels again. The quip had restored his self-confidence. That would have been very impressive in the board room.

  Gregg said: ‘You pick your own men?’

  ‘Indeed yes. No pilot joins the company over here without being interviewed by me.’

  ‘So you picked Truman.’

  Dawlish hesitated. He had to think hard to prevent the trap snapping shut behind him. Then he had it made. ‘Yes, I did. And when he was with your company, didn’t you pick him too?’

  ‘I did. And I was wrong.’ Gregg smiled very slightly. ‘So we were both wrong about him, weren’t we?’

  Dawlish gazed into space. ‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s by no means clear what happened up there tonight.’

  Gregg rapped: ‘Come off it, Dawlish! Your own captain slung Truman out of the cockpit!’

  Dawlish conceded the point by being belligerent over another. ‘I have to remind you,’ he said, keeping his eyes well averted from Fleming, ‘that the man you are asking my captain to trust was also slung out of a cockpit.’

  ‘And don’t you know by whom?’

  ‘The fact,’ said Dawlish carefully, ‘that Truman appears to have . . . annoyed the captain on this particular trip doesn’t necessarily mean his own reluctant admission that a fellow pilot had failed in his duty becomes null and void.’

  Scrivens said to Gregg: ‘Did you believe the report which Truman filed against Captain Fleming?’

  ‘I had to accept it. Personal preferences aside, you cannot take chances on the reputation of a test pilot. I also removed Truman at the same time . . . just in case.’

  ‘And what do you think now?’

  ‘I suggest you ask Captain Fleming direct. I’m sure he will tell the truth.’

  Three pairs of eyes triangulated on to Fleming. He looked at each face briefly, chucked a cigarette away, and said. ‘I handled him badly. There was something weird about the man which I didn’t see in time. When I did he snapped out of it and got us down.’

  Mr Dawlish seized on to this. ‘He got you down. Why him?’

  ‘For various reasons which I’ll tell you later, but not now, the safety of the aircraft and ourselves depended on his recovery from panic.’

  Dawlish: ‘And you’re asking us to believe that? Why didn’t you say so at the time?’

  ‘That’s a question which only a psychiatrist can answer.’

  ‘Ah! So you do adm
it that you were in need of medical help?’

  ‘Not entirely, no. I never underwent any kind of treatment.’

  ‘So we have no proof that you are of a sound mind now?’

  ‘None. Except your own judgement.’

  There came a pause.

  ‘Mr Fleming, this plan of yours. It means, doesn’t it, that if Captain Crooke lowers his undercarriage upon your advice, and it fails to lock-down and align the wheels in the manner you suggest, the last state of that man, so to speak, is worse than the first. That’s right, isn’t it?’

  ‘Perfectly right. We know that there is a break in the hydraulic line, downstream of the selecting gear. Under the circumstances the shuttle-valve wouldn’t operate until both the main tank and the emergency tank ran dry. So every time Crooke selects an undercarriage movement he’s spewing fluid right out of the system.’

  As if it were a breach of good taste to mention the mechanics of the thing, Dawlish said: ‘It’s no good baffling me with the technicalities. We are discussing a simple decision, yea or nay.’

  Gregg remarked drily: ‘I should have thought what Captain Fleming has just said had some bearing on it . . .’ He turned to Fleming. ‘Captain Crooke reported that hydraulic pressure is reading normal.’

  ‘It would do. With the selector in the neutral position the pressure will remain normal.’

  ‘Did he lose fluid on take-off?’

  ‘Yes. We found some on the components lying around the runway, but evidently not enough to drain the system.’

  ‘I see. Thank you.’

  Mr Dawlish had simulated indulgent patience through this. He went on: ‘So if your engineering ideas are wrong—or shall we say impractical in the circumstances—what are Crooke’s chances of landing his passengers safely?’

  ‘Not very good,’ said Fleming.

  ‘I mean,’ continued Dawlish, ‘are they better or worse than they would be if Captain Crooke ditched in the sea or landed on his belly?’

  ‘Probably worse.’

  Dawlish raised his eyebrows and felt surer of his ground. ‘I see. And you know, I have no doubt, that Captain Crooke puts your plan third and last within three possible choices?’

  Fleming laughed shortly. ‘I think I would too.’

  ‘Why, Mr Fleming?’ Dawlish’s eyes thumbscrewed into his.

  Fleming drew a deep breath. He knew it would be hard indeed to make Dawlish understand something so fundamental to a pilot. ‘It’s the natural instinct of a captain to follow his own bent. Captain Crooke is alone responsible for the aircraft——’

  ‘—as I have already said.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Fleming patiently, ‘—and the answers he has at his own fingertips, the ones he has been taught, as I myself was taught, are the ones most under his control, and therefore uppermost in his mind. He knows he has a sporting chance of ditching her . . . but a sporting chance may be anything up to the odds of ten-to-one against. I say he’s open to persuasion, and I’m thinking myself into his shoes. But what he must be sure of to go against his instinct is that those who advise him from the ground are confident in me; because at the moment my reputation stinks to high heaven. I’m afraid you didn’t do much to reverse this when you spoke to him over the radio.’

  ‘Do you blame me?’

  ‘I’m asking you now to change your opinion. That’s all.’

  ‘On what basis? What have you done which could possibly reverse it?’

  Scrivens glanced up at the clock. There were seven minutes to go, and no decision in sight. He said: ‘The licensed engineers available on the airport and who are responsible for maintaining Jet-Fours operating from here have examined Captain Fleming’s proposals.’

  ‘And what,’ said Dawlish, ‘do these men say?’

  ‘Their first reaction was that it couldn’t be done in the air. Captain Fleming had a further talk with them and they are now divided in their opinions.’

  ‘But at least,’ put in Gregg, ‘nobody has said that what Fleming proposes is not possible?’

  ‘It’s got to be a lot better than possible,’ said Fleming.

  Dawlish said: ‘Well, exactly!’

  Scrivens addressed Fleming. ‘And you think it is?’

  This was the last moment Fleming had in which to reconsider. If the wisest course would be to rescind, then he must do so—however much this might compromise his position both with himself and those others present.

  He tried to picture things as they would be in the aircraft. He tried to imagine himself, working in the confines of the Jet-Four’s belly, stiffened by cold and impeded by hydraulic pipes and electric cables and the unforeseen. There would be a strut which unexpectedly made it impossible to reach the affected machinery; slipstream, howling through the undercarriage doors, would flay at your skin, rip at the tools, flip over the pages of the engineering manual, blow your hair into your eyes just when you most needed to see clearly.

  Who would be doing the job? The flight engineer, apparently, was a large brute who couldn’t worm his way along the bottom of the hull. Truman was presumably right out of commission. The captain, deprived of a co-pilot, couldn’t possibly leave the cockpit.

  That only left the navigator, who was unlikely to be a good enough engineer. Or, of course, a volunteer recruited from among the passengers. But he would have to be adept with his hands, capable of working under almost impossible conditions, and in possession of one hell of a lot of guts.

  Scrivens looked-on while Fleming went over the facts in his mind. The Ministry man, who was not in the habit of making impatient decisions himself, recognised the same brand of caution in Fleming’s disposition now.

  So did Gregg, who sat back in his chair and only displayed with a slight asthmatic catch in his breath the tenseness of the moment. He would, in fact, have been less easy in his own mind about Fleming had the man answered the all-important question without final appraisal. Fleming had been a pilot and so had Gregg. Both of them had met emergencies in the air and both were feeling for the captain now. If they were to be his advisors then they must achieve the decision which would have been equally valid to them in the sky as it seemed on the ground. Such transplantation of thought was not easy; it signified the difference between the actual and the hypothetical. If air thinking and ground thinking failed to merge then it would show up the moment they got on the radio to Crooke, resulting in uncertainty and dilemma and lack of faith, each in the other.

  Dawlish thought Fleming was playing for time. Faced with the direct question he wouldn’t commit himself. He was just like one of those people who would spend thousands of other investors’ money on a project they wouldn’t consider financing themselves. Mr Dawlish was frankly amazed that Scrivens was making such a show of giving any consideration to the views of a man who so clearly could not make up his mind. He could only presume that the presence of Gregg on the scene introduced a diplomatic complication.

  Dawlish heaved an impatient sigh and tried to engage Gregg’s eyes in a stare of mutual forbearance, as if Gregg too had come to similar conclusions about Fleming’s hesitation. Dawlish noted, however, that Gregg was too tactful to respond to this; but rather he seemed preoccupied—studiedly so—with the abstract.

  Fleming had walked to the window and was looking out. From this room you could see a large section of the airport, which at night is a stellar system curiously cold for its richness in colour. The spectacle contributed nothing tangible to Fleming’s thoughts, but people seldom make decisions with their eyes closed.

  In fact, the view of the airfield seemed to mean something because it appeared so different from when Fleming had gazed, bewildered, at the confused sea of lights when Forbes had run out of the darkness calling his name. Three years of confused living had played itself out on the cinema screen of Fleming’s cortex, since then. Thoughts and memories, squeezed into a tightly compressed kernel within his mind, had erupted like a firework display, and the coloured sparklers now lay on the airfield, spread out clear
ly defined, in an orderly fashion.

  Each position of each light had its meaning; they did not merge into a carousel of despair, throwing you off your balance until you felt like praying for the machine to stop so you could shed-off the giddiness. There was none; and the decision was clear.

  ‘If,’ said Fleming as he turned to face them, ‘there is a man on board that aircraft, who is not needed in the cockpit and can carry out certain repairs and use the tools available then yes, the proposals I have put forward offer a better chance of safely landing that Jet-Four than any other method that has been considered.’

  Scrivens nodded immediately and said ‘I’ll buy that.’ He turned to Dawlish. ‘Do you agree?’

  This was betrayal. Mr Dawlish couldn’t understand why Scrivens had suddenly changed his attitude. They were dealing with a discredited man. What had changed? He was still the same man, wasn’t he? The man who had cracked up, the man who was a coward, the man who had taken so long to make up his mind you could have dealt a hand of poker in the time? . . . Then, suddenly, Scrivens agrees with him as if he had done so all along. It didn’t make sense.

  Dawlish looked at Gregg. Was it the power in this man’s presence, which had so swayed Scrivens from his original line?

  Gregg realised Dawlish wasn’t going to commit himself yet. So he said: ‘Fleming isn’t making any promises. All he’s saying is that there would be very considerable risk attached to any type of landing, with an aircraft in this condition. But if we ask Captain Crooke on the RT if there is such a person aboard—and of course he may have taken steps in that direction already—then we can put the case. The decision will still—very properly—be the captain’s. We are only here to advise him but we must be unanimous. What do you say, Mr Dawlish? Will you go along with us?’

  Dawlish suddenly felt himself to have been manipulated. He did not know how it had been done, but he felt no longer in charge of a situation he had been sure was under his command.

  He thought of his chauffeur-driven limousine outside, of his director’s salary, of the respect and servility he commanded at the office. Respect? He suddenly wondered. Supposing that in reality they didn’t respect him at all? Had he ever really taken a decision, an important one, entirely on his own? Was the act of holding his hand up in the board room, sometimes slowly and falteringly after sidelong glances at the hands of others, as great a decision as the one he was being forced into now?