The Higher They Fly

by Christopher Hodder-Williams

  Susan smiled at him and said gently: ‘It’s okay—you’re allowed that!’ Then she burrowed her way back into the tunnel without looking back. She was aware that Hubb’s eyes were riveted on her as she kicked her way out of the systems bay, and her smile persisted for most of the journey.

  Then she suddenly stopped smiling because she enjoyed living and there was this unmistakable smell of danger. It was the first time she had noticed it to the full, though she had seen it in Jill’s eyes, and in Eddie’s eyes, and in the eyes of many of the passengers.

  It caught at her skin, and plucked at her so that she tingled all over her body. Panic seized her, and she frantically struggled through the metal channel toward the hatch. It would be better, somehow, to be among people than in this cold, narrow prison.

  During the last few feet of the journey the full impact of terror caught her and gripped her in the manner which so urgently alerts the nerves of the bladder.

  ‘Help!’ she said aloud, and could think of nothing else except to climb through the hatch as fast as possible and get to the toilet.

  Crooke observed this as he turned to speak to Perkins. He grinned and said: ‘Isn’t it funny? When it comes to the point, all people ever get really scared about is their dignity!’

  *

  Bill Scrivens walked out of the Tower building into the light rain outside. A truck from Flying Control was awaiting him. ‘Let’s get over there,’ he said to the driver. The man assented and slammed the truck into gear.

  They cut across the parking apron and took the taxy track up to the runway ten-right.

  The wide path lay before them, and receded in geometric perspective to the south-east boundary of the airport. Only the white marker lights, placed at regular intervals on either side of the runway over its entire length, signalled the extent and breadth of the strip. But you could see glistening patches of wetness, where the rain had formed reflectors for the truck’s headlights.

  The runway had been checked and cleared of debris. The foam wagons were in place, ready to saturate concrete with fire-quenching chemicals. Later, fire tenders, ambulances and rescue squads would be positioned, on Scrivens’ instructions, at strategic points along the runway and—more ominously—beyond it, beyond the antenna with its pairs of red lights, beyond the hut which contained the radio-beam equipment, beyond the point where any aircraft of a respectable weight could touch alien ground without alerting ambulance drivers and fire-trucks alike to skid their wheels in their haste to get there before burst fuel tanks could illuminate a square mile of airfield to near-daylight.

  After twenty minutes of detailed inspection, Scrivens declared himself satisfied with the arrangements and took the truck back to the Tower at Central.

  When the truck arrived there Scrivens hesitated for a while. He looked at the luminous dial of his wrist-watch and said: ‘Two hours at the outside. That’s all the fuel they’ve got.’

  The driver said: ‘I wonder what it’s like? . . . I mean, being the captain . . . thinking about it?’

  Scrivens gave him a cigarette, and didn’t reply until there were two glowing coals in the darkness. ‘I used to be a radar controller,’ he said, watching his cigarette. ‘It was in Germany, not long after the war.

  ‘I was looking at the scope and I saw two targets converging. The radio had gone dead and I knew the two aircraft were at the same altitude. I sat there, and watched.’

  The driver inhaled, then asked as he emitted two trails of smoke from his nostrils: ‘What happened?’

  ‘I lived ten years in three minutes. And as those two little blips of light moved across the screen, I suddenly realised they weren’t just blips of light—they were aeroplanes and human lives.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I couldn’t just sit there. I couldn’t just wait for something that my eyes told me was inevitable . . .’ The coals were fanned as Scrivens drew thoughtfully on the cigarette. His face was lit and showed the strain. The driver noted it with surprise, then wondered what quality it was in a man which elevated a person like Scrivens to the position he was in now. The driver felt no jealousy. You can’t go wrong, he thought, driving a truck. Provided you looked where you were going and didn’t get drunk you did not hold human lives in your hands. He respected and sympathised with those who did.

  Scrivens went on: ‘The Berlin crisis was on. We were fully manned for defence. I remembered the boys on the searchlights. I don’t know why I thought of it at that moment.’

  ‘No. I suppose it wasn’t your job, sir.’

  ‘I had . . . maybe twenty-five seconds to act. So I picked up the phone and yelled that there were enemy aircraft overhead.’

  ‘Why did you say enemy aircraft?’

  Scrivens stared at the clock on the Tower. ‘Oh, otherwise they wouldn’t have acted in time . . . I dashed to the window and saw those beams converge. You never saw anything like it! Two big ones on a collision course.’

  ‘Why didn’t they see each other?’

  ‘Well, they couldn’t have been looking, could they? Anyway, one of them turned, and they passed wingtip to wingtip.’

  ‘Jesus! I bet that answer wasn’t in the book!’

  ‘Some of them aren’t. But at least I didn’t have to sit there. Yet that’s what Captain Crooke is having to do now. So if you want to know what it feels like, you’d better ask him when he gets down.’

  ‘If he gets down.’

  Scrivens opened the door. ‘Don’t think about it. Just keep driving your truck, and be thankful.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Gregg met Scrivens by the elevator, and Scrivens said: ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I don’t know, exactly. You’d better come up.’

  ‘Fleming?’

  ‘Yes. He was all right until Hubb got a bad dose of high altitude fatigue.’

  ‘That affected Fleming? Why? It wasn’t his fault.’

  ‘It’s no good telling him that.’

  ‘Is Hubb all right now?’

  ‘Yes. But he won’t be much good if Fleming goes on as he is at the moment. He’s finding it difficult to concentrate and it’s coming across to Hubb.’

  ‘I see. Do you understand this kind of thing?’

  ‘No; but it’s not the first time Fleming has shown this streak.’

  Scrivens threw him a grim look as they left the elevator. ‘It could hardly have happened at a worse moment. Can you do anything?’

  ‘Not yet. I’ll have to pick my moment.’

  Scrivens said drily: ‘Well do me a favour and don’t leave it too late. We’d better go in and see what’s happening.’

  ‘Yes.’ Gregg added thoughtfully: ‘We may have to leave Fleming on his own.’

  ‘People throw him? . . . I’ve noticed that too. Well, we only have one or two other flights to cope with. I’ll keep them on the Tower frequency and they can handle them from up top.’

  ‘Good. But don’t send the men out yet. There’s a reason. Just be ready, if you will.’

  ‘I’ll be ready.’

  Fleming saw Gregg and Scrivens enter. He saw the expression on their faces and he fought himself because of it . . .

  I’ve got to fight down this pressure. I’ve got to keep myself going, just for now, just long enough to be Hubb’s eyes and hands and to know what he is doing as he does it.

  I’ve got to concentrate and forget what my father said to Trenadin and what went through my mind by the monument and how I felt when I climbed out of the prototype of the plane that’s up there now.

  I know there have been moments like this in my life and I haven’t always known about them myself. Or else I haven’t remembered them. But whenever it’s happened I’ve always looked at the faces of the men around me and they have always accused. I have seen contempt in their eyes when they couldn’t even have known that there was anything to be contemptuous about.

  And sometimes Clare looked into my own eyes and saw fear in them which she didn’t understand. And Julie had once sai
d—what was it?—oh yes, that the person I feared most in the world was myself. I couldn’t make any sense of it myself; and I don’t think she really understood it all either, because she couldn’t explain what she meant.

  But we didn’t make love that night . . .

  I am sitting here trying to give lucid instructions to a man who must understand them and respond to them and carry them out accurately and deftly. To do this he must have complete confidence in me. If I betray my own weaknesses now, he too will fail. And if that happens I will be murdering eighty-six people I claimed I could save.

  Steady! My voice has got to sound the same! Even though half of me is floundering the other half must seem unaffected. Yet I know it is getting worse; and if I go on as I am I can’t last.

  Gregg is looking at me. I know he realises something is going on in my mind that has nothing to do with the precision instructions that seem to be drying on my lips.

  The point is I had no right to volunteer to do this in the first place. I am a grounded pilot, and although I am now aware of the falsity which led to my disrepute, it doesn’t make any difference because the fact remains that I am unfit to fly, whatever the reason.

  Yet here I am, virtually controlling the destiny of the very type of aircraft in which was enacted my own defeat . . .

  Now Scrivens is looking at me. He’s wearing a raincoat and I can see the droplets of water. Please God, don’t let it rain hard enough to impede Crooke’s visibility. With a weak undercart he’s going to have to put her down on eggs.

  Hubb is asking me something impatiently. He’s repeating his question, now. What was it? What was it? God, I’ll have to ask him again. Shall I say there is interference on the radio? Shall I make some excuse for myself?

  Or shall I admit that he’s dealing with a sick man who isn’t quite with it? Shall I say: ‘Hubb, I suddenly realise I was wrong. The whole thing was wrong. I should have left this in the hands of those who would have decided the issue their way in any case if I hadn’t been on the spot. It was sheer chance, your bad luck, that I was here. And trying to—what was it Dawlish said?—oh yes, trying to make a come-back.’ Shall I say that, and admit the defeat I feel so strongly, as the relentless rising of the tide?

  There was something about that walk along the corridor to this room which I could sense but couldn’t understand. Whatever it was, it’s got something to do with this helpless state I’m in now.

  It was that ghost archway, the one after Julie’s archway: the one that almost wasn’t there because I didn’t want to see it.

  . . . You’re like a man with a stammer . . . Gregg’s words again. What did they mean? Did Gregg know? . . . Do I?

  *

  Hubb gripped the mike tensely and yelled it again: ‘Captain Fleming! Did you hear what I said?’

  ‘Yes . . . yes. I heard what you said.’

  ‘Well for Christ’s sake what do I do?’

  Crooke’s eyes were dead steady. They just held exactly on the metal division that separated one part of the windscreen from the next. Listening for inflection, he checked the degree of despair expressed in the voice that clamoured through his headphones; and waited for the recovery of the man in whom he placed an illogical but supreme trust.

  Geoff spoke with brittle impatience. ‘Captain, we’ll have to send Perkins down to free him.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But Hubb has got his foot caught in the locking jaws and he can’t free himself without using the jury-strut.’

  ‘And he can’t reach the strut without releasing his foot?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘That’s like having to go out to buy a pair of trousers when you haven’t got a pair to go out in.’

  ‘Someone has to get them for you. There’s no other way.’ Geoff stared at the captain, awaiting the inevitable order.

  But Crooke still waited. To interfere now, without a request from Fleming, would be a weakness. Hubb wasn’t in pain. Fleming had built up his method of instructing Hubb with skill and a sense of purpose. Crooke had allowed Fleming to play his unpredictable hand in his own way, and had thrown all his chips on to the table to be gambled by proxy. To withdraw them now, to demand a view of the cards and intervene between teacher and pupil when death itself was the opponent would provide the means for the insecure bluff of the longshot to be called forever.

  Geoff Simmonds knew the gigantic strength of character which was being tested by silence. It takes a captain indeed to take a back seat . . . and then stay there when the man at the wheel faltered at the most perilous bend on the escarpment.

  The Jet-Four, ignorant of the situation that had developed under the anaesthetic of the emergency operation, did not quiver as the vital seconds were marked off and erased for all time by the accusing finger of the red second-hand.

  Perkins, who wasn’t listening on the speech frequency, heard in his own earphones the steady note of the Daventry NDB. He watched also the visible indication which came from the same source—the green vernier of the automatic direction finder which showed on the dial in front of him that their heading was exactly correct. Dead centre of the airway, Flight Forty-Six flew with precision, only slightly embarrassed by her reduced speed. So Perkins knew nothing of the breathlessness of those eighteen seconds which ticked around the navigation clock and measured the survival stakes of a man on the ground, and therefore Perkins’ own future and Jeannie’s future and all those involved with all those aboard the aircraft.

  Only the man whose blood still stained the cockpit floor was permanently immunised. His future and his past were rift apart as are the quick from the dead. A break had cut the continuum of his world-line at its most fragile point; and now he belonged only in that fourth dimension which can only be abstract, once disengaged from the other three.

  Crooke only made one small movement. He noted a very slight deviation in the turn-and-slip indicator, first one way, then the other.

  So he adjusted the sensitivity control of the auto-pilot to arrest this tiny and unimportant dutch-roll . . . just as he would have done, without even thinking about it, on any other flight.

  *

  The moment of decision was no less challenging to Gregg. Though less sharply edged, Gregg was in some respects Crooke’s counterpart on the ground. Neither man had all-the pieces of the puzzle to hand—each had to guess what the other half of the picture would look like, so that the entire jigsaw could be interlocked by radio.

  He looked across at Fleming.

  The man’s face was taut, as if each muscle were pitted against the other in an increasingly tensile effort to hold conflicts in equilibrium. Fleming had heard Hubb’s words over the speaker and he even understood them. But the answer evaded him though he knew it somewhere. He knew it was a simplicity; but like other simplicities it became choked by the sudden, angry undergrowth which the monsoon of doubts had forced up.

  And he was being challenged by his own pupil, just as he had once been challenged by his co-pilot.

  Scrivens stood accusingly still, hands thrust deep in the pockets of his raincoat.

  If Fleming had been able to read his mind he would have found a different answer from the one he assumed to be true.

  For Scrivens was simply waiting—to see.

  The other men in the room were acutely aware of the situation. Most of them avoided looking directly at Fleming. For most of them were sure they knew what must happen. And had been sure, all the way along.

  Fleming threw an agonised look at Gregg. It meant:

  They’ve all been right about me.

  Gregg did not shore up the gaping hole. He rose—rapidly for him—and walked toward the door. On his way he said quietly to Scrivens: ‘Can you clear the room now?’

  Scrivens nodded at once and said: ‘I want everybody out of here. Right now.’

  His word of command was not one whose authority you could mistake. He had them out of there in a few seconds. He looked briefly at Gregg, then followed the men.

&n
bsp; Gregg stood in the open doorway. His expression was harsh, unforgiving, and unforgettable. He said: ‘Let me down now, Fleming, and you’ll never show your face again—in a man’s suit of clothes.’

  He left the room and slammed the door.

  Chapter Twenty

  . . . And you’ll never show your face again!

  Instantly, Fleming knew what that last shadow-archway had meant. It was the stammer . . .

  *

  Julie said: ‘Why do you make excuses when you don’t need to?’

  ‘You’re evading the point,’ said Fleming. Sick with embarrassment and shame, he got out of bed and searched for a cigarette.

  Julie felt angry with him; but not for the reason he thought. ‘You’re just damn selfish! You think about yourself, and then you worry about yourself.’

  ‘Where the hell are the cigarettes?’

  ‘And all because of this. Tonight! What was wrong with the other night? Tuesday? Does tonight cancel that?’

  ‘I can’t find them. Damn it, where did you put the cigarettes?’

  ‘You’re not listening. Where were you all last night?’

  ‘Working at the factory.’

  ‘Did you eat?’

  ‘I can’t remember. I expect so.’

  She pulled an enraged face and spoke through gritted teeth. ‘Jesus Christ! Get out!’

  ‘Do you mean that?’ He felt numb with the thought, but kept it out of his voice somehow.

  ‘Will you listen, then?’

  He found the squashed packet at last, and lit a cigarette with a hand that shook. ‘Okay, I’ll listen. Lay it on thick. God knows, I’m used to it.’

  ‘Robert, you haven’t eaten and you haven’t slept. Then you get in a childish panic about making love. What do you expect?’

  ‘It isn’t that. You know damn well it isn’t!’

  ‘I see. Well, at least we’re not making excuses. If it isn’t that, what is it, then? Is it me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What, then?’ She sighed with exasperation. He didn’t reply. So more calmly, she went on: ‘It was perfectly obvious you wanted to make love to me. Do you deny that?’