The Higher They Fly

by Christopher Hodder-Williams

  On the radio he said: ‘I’m here, in position.’

  ‘Good. Get a firm grip on the rubber with those jaws.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘We’ll count it down together, Jack. Say when you’re ready.’

  ‘Ready.’

  ‘Right. One, two, three, heave!’

  ‘Almost.’

  ‘Next time should do it, then.’

  ‘I’ll . . . have to stop a moment to get my breath back.’

  Fleming didn’t quite manage to keep the anxiety out of his voice. ‘We’d better not stop too long, old chap. You know how bored the passengers get.’

  *

  Fleming turned to Gregg, who had entered the dimmed-out room quietly and now sat on Fleming’s left. ‘We’re nearly fifteen minutes behind and Hubb is getting weak.’

  ‘I know. I’ve been listening on the monitor downstairs.’ Gregg’s jaw was held tight in its thrust-out position.

  There was no one in this room you could kid along. Scrivens looked white. He was tapping the top of the panel with ticking fingers. ‘His undercarriage—Crooke’s undercarriage—is still up?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’re still going through with this?’

  Fleming looked at Scrivens carefully, and could see that it was purely a question. Nothing else. He said in reply. ‘It’s up to the captain. If he wants to override this he’ll come up on the air. I can’t ask him without Hubb hearing it. That would completely scupper Hubb’s morale if Crooke wanted to go on with this plan.’

  Gregg said tonelessly: ‘We could call Crooke on the other frequency. That way Hubb wouldn’t hear.’

  Scrivens didn’t hesitate. ‘No, I agree with Fleming. Leave it to Crooke. He must be just as aware of the problem as we are.’

  Hubb’s voice, taut and breathless despite the break, ripped out of the speaker above their heads. ‘Okay. I’m ready for another attempt.’

  Fleming picked him up on the word this time. ‘This isn’t going to be an attempt. We’ve had enough of those.’

  Hubb’s voice, angry, aggressive: ‘Damn you! To hell with your smugness! You’re safe on the ground. I’m doing the job.’

  Fleming came back instantly with: ‘That sounded like energy! Use some of that!’

  ‘Too right. I’ll use it. Here goes. This time I’ll count. One . . . two . . . three . . .’ He went off the air.

  Fleming and Gregg exchanged rapid glances.

  Then Hubb’s voice, triumphant. ‘We made it!’

  Gregg couldn’t help grinning. After the outburst, Hubb still used the pronoun ‘we’.

  Fleming didn’t pause over this. Once again, he didn’t see Gregg or Scrivens, or any of the operators in the room. He was standing on a thin, wet piece of metal and trying not to slip. He was hampered by turbulent gusts of air breaking into the skin of the aircraft, tormenting him with cold whiplashes. He was badly starved of oxygen, tense from the time-factor, fatigued from the effort

  He said: ‘Well done. Very well done. Now climb back into the systems bay. We’re all set to get the undercarriage down.’

  Fleming said to Gregg and Scrivens: ‘This is it. If Crooke gives the order to lower the gear it’s shit or bust from now on.’

  Scrivens said: ‘Hubb sounds better.’

  Gregg’s hooded eyes fixed Fleming through tobacco smoke. ‘Don’t give him time to think about it. Call him now.’

  ‘Will do . . . Captain Crooke?—You there?’

  ‘Speaking.’ Crooke’s voice sounded almost irritatingly casual. ‘We’ll go through with it, Fleming.’

  ‘It’s your aeroplane!’

  Crooke turned to Geoff and said: ‘Don’t worry, even in the very best surgery you have to take a few chances.’

  ‘Are the odds still in our favour?’

  It was a good question, and made Crooke pull at his beard. ‘In theory, no. In practice, I think Hubb will manage somehow.’

  ‘Without pills?’

  ‘Somehow.’

  ‘Captain, I hate to say this, but . . .’

  ‘I know, old boy. I’m not a fighter pilot now. Still, I’ve never lost my faith in the illogical.’

  Hubb said: ‘I’m clear of the undercarriage.’

  There was a tight smile on Crooke’s face now. He looked briefly at Perkins, then at Geoff, who suddenly shot one of his rare smiles back.

  That was all Crooke needed. He said, quietly for him: ‘All right. Gear down.’

  The air sliding along the underbelly of the Jet-Four broke away abruptly as the doors folded downwards and the bogies of the undercarriage took a first look-out from their hiding place.

  Beneath the cockpit the undamaged nose-wheel protruded without effort and locked itself into position.

  Further back, the main gear took its time. Hampered by a hydraulic leak which spewed fluid from the emergency tank over two clumps of useless wheels, the legs unbent arthritically and offered a formidable barrier to the slipstream, which roared into turbulent spirals, filling the hollow where Hubb stood with churning cyclones.

  Hubb listened to the whine of machinery and watched the knee-joints unfolding. The whole process could clearly be seen through the incisions he had made in the floor of the bay.

  In the tourist class people looked at each other in naked alarm. A sudden change in sound touched off palpitations like a gun fired for the starters of a race.

  Till Crooke said over the speakers: ‘The noise you can hear is simply the wheels being lowered. Not to worry!’

  Keith and the girl looked sharply at each other. He said: ‘The captain was a bit late with that!’

  Pen sought his hand over the back of her seat. ‘Aren’t you frightened?’ she asked.

  He interlocked his fingers with hers. ‘Not officially,’ he explained.

  *

  Hubb found himself on the floor and didn’t know how he had got there.

  He heard a voice shouting in his ears, and was vaguely conscious that it was Fleming. Hubb pressed the switch and just managed to say: ‘You’ll just have to hang on. I fell somehow . . . Feel very dizzy.’ He vomited.

  ‘Hubb!’

  In the cockpit Crooke stared at the instruments. He just felt he had to look at something. Something familiar and reassuring. The flight instruments fulfilled this function. They showed all was well . . . for the moment.

  Geoff said tonelessly: ‘Hydraulic pressure dropping in undercarriage system. The wheels are down and they stay down.’ Geoff had to do something with his hands; so he flicked the fuel temperature switch through its positions, knowing already that the readings would be normal. He had checked them five minutes before . . . If Hubb were to crack up now, they were helpless. In one act they had committed themselves; the hydraulic fluid had drained from both tanks and that was that. Here was four million pounds’-worth of machinery; the whole of it, together with the people who depended on its integration, was imperilled because one lousy wheel-rim had penetrated into its own guts.

  Just one lousy wheel.

  Perkins moved a banana skin off the chart and picked up the computer. The exact wind velocity, had become an important factor; for when it came to the point where they must be positioned to land it wouldn’t be much use if, through a miscalculation in speed over the ground, they found themselves miles away from the airport.

  You calculate the effective speed of the wind and you add or subtract this figure from your airspeed, according to whether the wind is assisting or retarding your progress. Doing this, you can guarantee that you will arrive at a certain point at an estimated time.

  The computer was simply a flat metal object with some discs which you could rotate. The discs had numbers on them and so did their surrounds. The thing did all your sums; and once you got used to using it you didn’t bother to add two and two in your head.

  So Perkins rapidly fingered the discs to the required position, and then he frowned in annoyance. A shadow had fallen across the instrument and he couldn’t see the numbers prope
rly.

  For a moment he couldn’t see what the shadow was.

  Then he looked round . . .

  *

  Truman had left Mr Valentine in the alcove bar and proceeded with his customary gait toward the cockpit. Before he reached it he looked back at Valentine, who gave him an encouraging smile. Then Valentine seemed to brace himself in a way that Truman couldn’t understand. But then, Valentine was only a shadow, as all the rest of them were shadows. They belonged in a dream, and he had the feeling that he had dreamed all this before.

  He had dreamed that one day he would talk to a man like Valentine and smile and understand and forgive life for what it had done to him. He had dreamed that there would be people like Jill and Julie who would taunt him in a way he would never show, and cause him indescribable pain that was now utterly numbed. And he had dreamed that he would be walking toward a cockpit, like this one, knowing where to find the key to his immortality.

  He had seen this key, many times, strapped to the bulkhead by the cockpit door, waiting for him. It seemed now that he had always recognised it for what it was: a symbol of Olympian power for him to wield in retribution for the shadow-men who had stood in the way of his divinity. And he knew, for certain, that the gods were on his side; for if it were otherwise, why should Crooke have chosen to instruct the American to use the other axe, leaving this one free for its one true purpose?

  He entered the cockpit, and stood for a moment, watching the shadow-men within. They were motionless, passively submitting to a fate over which they had no control. Stealthily, Truman unstrapped the axe.

  Perkins whipped round and yelled: ‘Look out!’

  Geoff’s reactions were surprisingly fast. He jerked his heavy body round and saw the red flash of the axe blade as it glistened in the glow from the instrument lights.

  Crooke saw it too. He saw Truman taking a tremendous swipe at the engineer’s panel, where a blow in the right place would bring havoc and disaster within seconds.

  The axe-blade came down.

  As it did so, Crooke grabbed the control yoke and flung the aircraft into a steep bank that flexed the wingtips through ten feet.

  The aeroplane lunged and tried to snap its wings off.

  The axe-blade came down—and carved deep into the engineer’s table.

  With a metallic thud that knocked a thousand hours off the life of each main spar the wings flipped back like unleashed steel springs.

  But the spars held.

  Truman fell back, screaming in a nightmare that had come alive on him. He split his head open on the edge of the racks and the scream stopped as if someone had slammed a soundproof door in his face. Perkins caught his knees and pulled his feet from under him.

  Crooke levelled the aircraft and prayed there was enough strength left in the wings to hold them in flight. To do this he rammed the throttle levers hard forward, using all his strength on the right-rudder pedal and forward on the stick to ward off the final thump of a fatal incipient spin.

  The handle of the axe was still vibrating as Crooke restored those tender wings to level flight. He nursed them very gently now, till the instruments testified that a structure stressed three times the maximum rated load was still capable of flying.

  And as he did so, something rolled across the floor.

  It was a bottle.

  Without speaking, Perkins stooped down to pick it up, and studied the chemical inscription on the label.

  When Dulcie, who had been called forward from the chaos of the cabin, had examined the capsules, she said: ‘It’s a funny thing. I thought Valentine might have had these on him. I didn’t think of Truman.’

  Crooke said: ‘How is he?’

  ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘Poor chap. Doctor, give those pills to Susan, will you, and ask her to take them down to Hubb. She’s slim enough to make the journey; and I expect she’ll do just as much good as any pill.’

  Dulcie said: ‘She’d better not stay down there too long if he takes any of these. They’re pretty potent!’

  Crooke replied deadpan: ‘Who needs pills?’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Susan burrowed through the inner carcass of the aeroplane and wished the manufacturers hadn’t been quite so generous with the stuffing.

  She had never seen so many cables, such a variety of tubes and pipes, or such jagged bits of metal which had clearly been put there in order to ruin her uniform.

  But she wriggled in and out of struts and between box members and ignored the ominous rending noises that testified to the havoc being wrought upon her neatly pressed uniform and a new pair of nylons. ‘I hope the airliner stands me some new undies,’ she thought, ‘but I bet they won’t be like these.’ Susan had bought hers in Paris on the last trip there. Eventually she gave up trying to save her clothes and just ploughed on.

  Above her the cabin was still in a turmoil. Many of the passengers had been alarmed to the point of petrifaction by Crooke’s unadvertised manoeuvre, though no one had been seriously hurt. Passengers’ belongings were all over the place, having fallen from the starboard racks and littered themselves in the gangway and on some of the seats. Jill, Eddie and the other steward were trying to restore order; but morale had dropped like a column of mercury plunged into a deep freeze. The captain had not yet attempted to explain matters over the speaker system; and it was open to question, now, just how much reassurance could be introduced into the tense atmosphere that or any other way. It would be hard to explain in cool gentlemanly terms exactly what had happened.

  As Susan pushed her way along she imagined the sort of message that Crookey-Boy might have put out by way of explanation: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. Here is a further bulletin which I am sure you will find a most interesting sequel to the pack of lies I dished out earlier on. The co-pilot of this aeroplane just happens to have gone mad, and attempted to wreck this aeroplane by getting hold of an emergency axe and aiming a powerful blow at the works. He missed, ladies and gentlemen, because I indulged a manoeuvre which should have broken the wings off but which fortunately failed to do so by some freak. However, I had to chance it; and I am glad to say we are still flying, which—if you look out of your window—you can see for yourselves. The co-pilot is now dead on the floor of the cockpit. We are now passing over Rugby, the site of the famous school of that name. It might interest you to know that I was educated there myself. We will now sing together Floreat Rugbea . . .’ Susan recognised she was becoming hysterical and checked herself.

  Hubb had been told over the intercom that Susan would be bringing a drug which would help him to overcome the fatigue resulting from working in thin air.

  He felt an enormous wave of relief on being told this; it provided a tangible reason which accounted for failure he had attributed to some weakness of his own. Jack Hubb lacked the one quality which would have made him a first class engineer—imagination. With this vital tool he would have scanned his mind for an answer. He should have known that low-pressure air starves the blood of its proper oxygen content—and you didn’t have to be a mountaineer to know that the human system required acclimatisation in order to adjust and even then it would run more slowly and the brain would be dulled as a result.

  Now that he was in possession of the explanation for his own falterings his confidence was restored at once. Still slowed, still breathless and afflicted with spasms of vertigo, he no longer thwarted Fleming with outbursts of irritability as if in self-defence.

  If Fleming had felt the impact of Hubb’s own self-accusation upon himself, he did not seem to be aware of it now. Hubb had returned almost to normal; and Fleming only recognised this as a working basis which would make it possible to carry on with the job.

  The gnarled fruits of Fleming’s own history remained beneath the top-soil.

  But Hubb had been blaming himself; and via the radio which linked him with the mind that guided him the unspoken message had passed . . .

  It was not yet in Fleming’s v
oice as he said: ‘Your girl friend is on the way to you with some pep-pills. You’ll still feel weak for a while so start that electrical job. Find electrics panel Eighteen.’

  ‘I have it.’

  ‘How many external contacts has it got?’

  ‘Seven.’

  ‘Then that isn’t it. You have your left hand on it now.’

  ‘How the hell did you know that?’

  ‘Remind me to tell you sometime . . . The contacts are colour-coded. You want blue-and-yellow, and green-and-yellow.’

  ‘I have them.’

  ‘All right. Connect a piece of insulated wire to each. But whatever happens, don’t let the two wires touch until all the other jobs are completed. If those wires touch prematurely you’ll jam everything and the wheels won’t lock into the fore-and-aft position.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘It’ll be best not to bare the ends of those wires until we’re ready to make the contact. That way you’ll be perfectly safe.’

  ‘Okay . . . Hang on, Susan has arrived with the pills.’

  Susan jumped down into the systems bay and despite everything couldn’t help returning Hubb’s laugh when he saw her trying to restore the skirt of her uniform to a less revealing state.

  Susan opened the screw-cap of the bottle and tipped out two capsules. ‘These are dangerous. Don’t take more than two more—at the most.’

  Hubb nodded and searched for the yellow cock of the fresh water supply. Then he swallowed the capsules and held his mouth under the draining cock. Fresh water tasted, at this moment, like a million dollars.

  ‘Thanks, Susan. How long do these things take to act?’

  ‘About ten minutes, Dulcie said.’

  ‘How did you get ’em?’

  ‘That would take too long to explain.’

  ‘Well, this won’t,’ said Hubb, and kissed her suddenly and warmly. Then he broke off, and looked a bit sheepish.