“Just a few more minutes, Admiral.” Sloan was aware of Hennings’s displeasure. It was another factor to be considered. The successful completion of the mission was the first concern, but not alienating the retired Admiral was an important second. He had gotten off to a bad start with the old man, and would need to do some work to get things even-keeled. A successful test firing would make it easy to bridge the gap. Nothing made people friendlier than a shared success.
Hennings sat down on the edge of the console. He gazed blankly across the room at the closed hatchway door.
Sloan found himself tapping his fingers against the glass face of the panel-mounted clock. He shifted positions. Then he coughed lightly to clear his throat. If things went well, it could all be wrapped up within the hour. “Not much longer,” he said to break the silence. “Matos should be just about in visual range of our target.”
Matos’s first sight of the target was routine enough: a black dot that hung motionless against the blue sky. Without anything nearby to provide perspective, size was an indeterminate thing.
The target maintained a steady course of 342 degrees. It had gradually slowed during its descent, and it now held a speed of 340 knots. Flying the F-18 over three times the target’s velocity, he was quickly closing the remaining distance between them. He would intercept the target shortly.
Matos had been splitting his attention between the radar and the windshield, and now that he had the target in visual contact, he kept his eyes fixed on it. “Navy three-four-seven has visual contact,” he transmitted.
“Roger,” Sloan answered, his tone impatient.
Matos paid no attention to the implied message. He had stopped worrying about Sloan, and instead concentrated completely on the job at hand. To stay emotionally uninvolved was the proper attitude in any scientific trade.
Matos’s left hand eased back the F-18’s throttles. He began a reduction that would have his aircraft flying at a similar speed when he pulled alongside the target, thus avoiding an overshoot. Formation flying was still a matter of practice, skill, and gut reactions. In the modern fighter pilot’s repertoire, it was one area that had yet to be taken over by electronics. Peter Matos was particularly good at high-speed formations. He would sometimes lay far astern of his squadron, then zoom up and rapidly tuck into his assigned slot. “Nice showboat,” his buddies would radio, but everyone was impressed. Matos was good.
Yet today he was having a problem. The target stayed its distance. Matos had misjudged. He had begun a speed reduction from a point too far away. The hundreds of subtle clues that went into compiling a pilot’s instinctive reactions were somehow off base. Something was wrong. Matos took his eyes off the black dot on the horizon and glanced at his radar screen.
Six miles. Christ, he thought. How could it still be that far? Matos looked out the windshield. He sped up again, and the distance shortened. The black dot was apparently not a drone. It was too big. That was what had thrown off his speed adjustment and perception. His mind’s eye had expected a ten-foot object, and he had played off his airspeed accordingly.
As the space between them narrowed, the size of the target grew rapidly. It was huge. The first distinguishing mark was a horizontal line across the middle of the structure. A wing line. Then the tail section sprouted from the indistinctness. Matos sat stunned. It was an aircraft. A large jet. “My God!”
A commercial transport! There was no doubt in his mind that this was the target he had hit. The craft appeared ghostly, like a ship abandoned on the high seas. Dead in the water. He closed the remaining distance without any additional thoughts or feelings.
Matos pulled alongside. The Trans-United logo seemed incongruous. Vibrant colors—green, blue, and yellow. Living colors on a dead ship.
The Straton 797 looked eerie, as if the aircraft itself knew what had happened to it and who had done it. It flew with its nose canted slightly upward. Its four jet engines produced a continuous flow of exhaust gases. It was holding steady at 11,000 feet and was making an airspeed of 340 knots. Matos guessed that it was being flown by its computer.
Matos maneuvered his fighter closer. He scanned the port side of the wide-bodied fuselage and saw what he was looking for. The hole. A black spot on the silver body, like an ominous spot on an X-ray. He took his craft around to the starboard side. The exit hole, like an exit wound of a bullet, was much larger. Huge, jagged, ugly. His hands, then his knees, began to shake. He threw his head back and looked up out of his bubble into the sky. “Oh, Jesus. Oh, God.”
He did not look at the Straton for a long time. Finally he forced himself to study it again. There were no people visible at any of the windows. No eyes looked back as he flew parallel with the rows of Plexiglas, only thirty feet from where the people should have been. He had flown intercepts on transports before, and he knew he should be seeing the people. Matos nudged the throttles and flew forward to get beside the cockpit. No heads in the cockpit, either. There were no people anywhere. No passengers, no crew. No survivors.
“Three-four-seven!” the radio shouted, and Matos jumped. Sloan’s sudden transmission had startled him. “Are you there? What the hell’s happening?”
“I . . . Homeplate . . .” Matos’s thumb stayed locked to the microphone button. As he allowed his F-18 to drift aft and fly a looser formation, the shadow from the transport’s upper fuselage crossed his canopy. From below, the 797 appeared incredibly immense. Matos’s F-18 seemed an insignificant speck. He was piloting a toy compared to the mammoth machine he hovered beneath.
Yet the unimaginable had happened. Matos’s toy had destroyed a great airliner. Beyond all doubts and all talk lay the reality of what was in front of him. His face was covered with sweat, and his eyes welled up with tears. “Homeplate. We have hit a transport. A Straton 797. Trans-United.”
There was no reply from the Nimitz.
4
John Berry lay unconscious in one of the first-class lavatories of the Straton 797. His breathing, which earlier had been forced, had relaxed to its normal rate again. He was motionless except for the involuntary trembling of his left hand. His mind wrestled through layers of troubled dreams triggered by his unnatural sleep. Slowly, like the imperceptible lifting of an early-morning fog, John Berry awoke.
He opened his weighted eyes. He turned his head slowly and looked around the small room without comprehending where he was. At first he could recall nothing beyond his own identity.
John Berry attempted to raise himself from his slumped and uncomfortable position on the floor, but his muscles would not respond. No strength, he said to himself. That had been his first rational thought. Lying on the floor while he gathered the energy to get up, he spotted a shiny object near him. His wristwatch. He picked it up. 11:18. It jarred his memory, and all the missing pieces fell into place. Gradually, he remembered where he was, and then why. He realized that he had been unconscious for fourteen minutes. Decompression, he thought. An opened door. A blown-out window. He could figure out that much. He had read articles about it in aviation magazines.
Still flying. His senses told him that the Straton airliner was being held straight and level, and he could feel the reassuring pulses of engine power through the airframe. The knowledge that the crew still had the ship under control was comforting.
Berry grabbed at the rim of the washbasin and pulled himself up. His legs were still wobbly, and he was light-headed. He vaguely recalled having vomited, and he saw the evidence of it in the corner. But he had already begun to feel better. He looked at his reflection in the mirror. He looked all right. No cuts or bruises, although he had dark circles around his eyes. The eyes themselves were red and watery.
Berry took a few deep breaths and shook his head to clear it. He felt as though he had a giant hangover, except that the symptoms were disappearing rapidly. He would be all right, he assured himself. Decompression was a temporary thing. No permanent damage. It was like passing out from too many martinis. Too many martinis was probably worse.
He already felt nearly normal.
Berry reached for the door handle. He pulled on it tentatively, remembering that he could not open it earlier. But the Straton’s pressurization system had automatically shut down once Flight 52 had reached a life-supporting altitude, and there was no longer any airflow coming from the vents behind him. To Berry’s surprise, the door yielded easily. He opened it and stepped into the passenger compartment.
John Berry had no preconceived notion of what to expect in the cabin. He had not let his mind get that far ahead, yet subconsciously, he certainly expected nothing too far from the ordinary. As his eyes took in the scene, what he witnessed caused him to step backward against the fiberglass wall. The appalling sight filled his brain, and a primeval scream rose from the depths of his soul. Yet he made no outward cry.
Utter devastation. The worst of the damage was in the forward section of the tourist cabin, only twenty feet from where he stood. That was where his eyes were instantly drawn and his attention riveted. The curtain that had separated the first-class from the tourist sections had been torn away, exposing the entire length of the Straton’s huge cabin.
Through the ragged hole in the left side of the 797, Berry could see the wing, and below that, the blue waters of the Pacific Ocean. Spread out from the hole for a distance of ten feet lay an unrecognizable heap of debris. As he focused on the mound, he began to separate the component parts: chair rails, seats, and hand luggage.
While his eyes darted around the boundaries of the rubble, he tried to understand what he was seeing. There were two holes in the aircraft’s fuselage. The hole in the right sidewall was considerably larger and more irregular than the hole in the left. On both sides there were sheets of metal that vibrated continuously in the slipstream. They added a strange undertone to the noises of the howling wind. There was no evidence of there having been a fire. But John Berry did not connect what he saw to any probable cause. His inexperienced eye could not separate the pieces of the puzzle into suitable clues.
Berry slowly realized that the puddle beneath the mass was actually blood. He was suddenly covered with cold sweat. From the pile of debris he recognized what seemed to be chunks of flesh, sections of arms and legs. A mutilated torso rested against the edge of the hole in the fuselage.
A movement from beneath the debris caught Berry’s eye. A woman. She was pinned beneath the wreckage. Berry took a step toward her. As he did, the wind that blew through the gaping hole shifted the wreckage.
Berry froze. The woman’s face, which appeared unmarked and unhurt, turned. Beneath the falls of her blonde hair was the bloody stump of her neck.
Berry turned his eyes away. His throat constricted and he began to gag. His heart pounded. For a moment, he thought that he might pass out. He closed his eyes and steadied himself against the bulkhead.
John Berry looked to the front of the airliner. At first glance it seemed normal enough, except that oxygen masks dangled from the overhead compartments above each seat. Briefcases and pieces of clothing were jammed in the corners. But what caught his attention was the thing that was glaringly absent: life. The passengers sat motionless in their seats, like a display of mannequins strapped into the mock-up of an airplane.
Berry walked to where his seat had been. In the row ahead was a man Berry had exchanged friendly words with. Pete Brandt, from Denver, he recalled. Berry reached for the man’s wrist and felt for a pulse. Nothing. He put his hand up to Brandt’s mouth. He felt no breathing.
Berry looked around and then realized that Brandt, and all those seated within five rows of him, had no oxygen masks. For some reason the masks had failed to drop from the compartment above each seat in that section. Berry looked down at the seat he had been in. No mask. I’d be dead, he thought.
He turned around and looked across the cabin. Most of the passengers on that side had their oxygen masks strapped on. Berry went directly toward the row where a balding, elderly man was seated. They had nodded politely to each other when they had boarded the fight.
Even before Berry laid his hand against the man’s chest, he knew. The white clamminess of his flesh and his frozen facial expression told Berry he was dead. Fear and agony were etched into his face. Yet he wore an oxygen mask, and Berry could feel the trickle of life-sustaining air still being pumped through its plastic tube. Then why had he died?
Berry looked to the next man. It was Isaac Shelbourne, traveling with his wife. Berry knew the famous pianist by sight and had recognized him while they waited to board. He had hoped to strike up a conversation with him during the flight.
Berry laid his hand on Shelbourne’s shoulder. The man stirred. Alive, Berry thought, and his heart filled with hope. He could hear Shelbourne mumble incoherently beneath his oxygen mask, and Berry slipped the mask off the man’s face.
He grabbed Shelbourne’s shoulders with both his hands and shook him. “Wake up,” he said in a loud voice. He shook him again, more violently. Shelbourne’s eyes were open, but his gaze was blank. The pianist’s eyes teared and blinked involuntarily. Saliva ran out from one corner of his mouth. Sounds emanated from the depths of his throat, but they were no more than unintelligible noises.
“Shelbourne!” Berry screamed, his own voice taking on an ominous sound as it cracked. In a sickening moment, Berry understood how totally and irrevocably impaired Isaac Shelbourne was.
Berry looked around the cabin. Others had awakened, and they too exhibited the same signs that Shelbourne had: dysfunctional speech, spastic muscular action, and no apparent capacity for rational thought. Brain damage! The hideousness of that notion hit Berry full force. He released his grip on the man he had attempted to revive.
John Berry took a few steps away from where he stood. He was now both afraid and revolted. The people in the cabin were apparently all brain damaged. He understood that a sustained lack of oxygen could do that. Having an oxygen mask on was evidently not enough protection. Vaguely, he recalled an article about pressure versus the percentage of oxygen. Above a certain altitude, even pure oxygen wasn’t enough. No pressure, no flow, was the line he remembered. He wondered if it applied to the Straton’s cruise altitude. Sixty-two thousand feet. Yes, that was it. Of course. They had been traveling in subspace.
He knew for certain that everyone he had seen without an oxygen mask was dead, and those who had worn them had lived—only to become brain damaged. Yet he was alive, and capable of rational thought—and he had not worn an oxygen mask. Why had he not been affected? The idea that the brain damage might be progressive jarred him. His mind might still begin to fade, as the results of oxygen deprivation began to have its affect.
Nine times seven is sixty-three, he said to himself. Newton’s first law concerns bodies at rest. He was rational. That was no illusion. He had the impression that brain damage caused by oxygen deprivation was not progressive. He was sure of that. At least he felt that he was sure of it.
Some of the passengers had gotten up from their seats. Berry saw that those who moved around were disabled to varying degrees. Some had difficulty walking, while others seemed to move normally. But up close, he could see that even those who retained normal muscular control had been affected; he could see it in their eyes.
Berry stepped aside to allow a college-age boy to move down the aisle. The boy stumbled a few times. Several feet past Berry he suddenly stood rigidly upright, then fell to the floor. His body writhed in convulsions. An epileptic seizure. Berry remembered that he should do something to prevent the boy from swallowing his tongue. But he could not bring himself to step toward him. He turned away feeling disgusted and helpless.
A young girl, hardly more than eleven or twelve, moved slowly down the aisle. She had come from somewhere in the rear of the airplane. Her face showed that she was afraid, and that she understood the horror. She turned to Berry.
“Mister. Can you hear me? Do you understand me?” Her voice was tenuous and her face was covered with tears.
“Yes” was all that he could think
to reply.
They looked at each other for a brief, intense moment. In a flash of recognition, she suddenly understood that Berry was like her and not like the others. He was no threat. She ran up to him, buried her face in his chest, and began to cry.
“We’ll be okay,” Berry said. His words were as much for himself as for her. For the first time since he had awakened he allowed himself a small measure of emotion. “Thank God,” he said to himself, choking back tears of gratitude for this small miracle. The child continued to cry, but more softly. He held her small, tense body against his.
While his attention was focused on the young girl, he failed to notice that several of the passengers had gotten up and were moving toward them. John Berry and the girl huddled together in the center of the forward cabin as the silent passengers encircled them.
Commander James Sloan was transfixed by the radio message that had come from his pilot. He stared at the towering panel of electronic gear as if he expected to find a way out of the situation in its switches and meters. Yet there was nothing on the console but the neutral data of frequencies and signal strengths. What Sloan wanted to know was available from only one source.
“Matos, are you sure?” Sloan asked. His perspiring hands gripped the microphone. His normally stern voice had a strange, new tone woven through it, and his words sounded out of place.
There was no immediate response from the F-18, and while he stood in the silent electronics room, Commander James Sloan realized that he was suddenly afraid. It was an emotion he was not accustomed to, and one he seldom allowed himself to experience. But too much had happened too quickly. “Matos,” he said again, “take your time. Look again. Be absolutely certain.”
Retired Rear Admiral Randolf Hennings, who had remained silent since Matos had sent his first startling message, stepped closer to the radio. He could hear the loud rhythm of his own heartbeat, and he was sure that Sloan could hear it too.