They were currently over the Pacific Ocean, the sea invisible through endless layers of thin cumulostratus cloud.
The vessel lurched to port and dropped vertically, as though someone had pulled the plug. Jim’s hands gripped the stick to pull her back onto an even keel. Behind them he was vaguely aware of a low moaning sob coming from Jeff Thomas. He caught Marcey Cortling grinning at him from the adjacent second-officer’s seat and managed a thin, tense rictus of amusement back at her.
Pete Turner was doing his usual job as captain’s backup, checking the input flight data that was still available from the master consoles. “Last orbit, Skipper,” he said.
“Thanks.”
The Aquila was gradually losing altitude, dropping back toward its home planet, struggling and bucking every foot of the way. Jim was literally fighting the controls, sweat beading his forehead.
“Hold steady, you bitch!”
The clock was clicking down toward the estimated landing time. At the radio Romero was still going through the motions of trying to raise Stevenson Air Base, finding every channel was still dead. Some offered the whispering of open-line static, but the others were silent as a grave.
“Clear-air turbulence, Skip,” warned Carrie Princip from her scanning radar screen. “Fifteen, twenty miles ahead.”
“Terrific.”
“DOESN’T TIME GO real quick when you’re having fun, Jim?”
Henderson McGill was the only crew member, apart from Jim Hilton himself and Marcey Cortling, who hadn’t given into the lure of the pale purple, opaque plastic sick bags.
Each sported a neatly printed label: Oral-Excretion Container. Use And Dispose.
The touchdown clock had jammed at twenty-four minutes and eighteen seconds, though the tenths of seconds still whirled around in a ceaseless cascade of blurred white numerals.
It crossed Jim Hilton’s mind, as he wrestled to hold the clumsy vessel on an even keel, that the whole ship was breaking up around him. At school he remembered leading the story of the wonderful hundred-year dray that lasted without a single problem for precisely a century, and then totally disintegrated on the very next day.
Mike Man, his face like stretched parchment, called through on the intercom. “Ground clock’s showing Pacific time, fifteen forty-one, Captain.”
Altitude was still a little over nine and a half thousand feet.
They were close enough to see the distant jagged line of the high Sierras, the white splash of Death Valley and even pick out, very faintly, the ruler-straight lines of the freeways.
“Nothing showing up on air-traffic warnings, Skipper.”
“Thanks, Carrie.”
“Look at the red color daubed on the sides of the mountains to the west.” Marcey pointed through the side observation window. “Should be dark green conifers there.”
“I don’t have the time to look. Don’t even have time to breathe.” He half turned so that his copilot could wipe the slick beads of perspiration away from his eyes.
“Won’t get down on this approach,” she said quietly. “Too high.”
“Yeah. Would’ve been… Whoa!”
“Got her?”
“Yeah. Wanted to go off to port all on her own. Would’ve been good to get down in one. At least we got plenty of fuel… maybe too much fuel if we come down hard,” he said, peering at the dials. Raising his voice so everyone would hear him clearly, he added, “Case you didn’t catch all of that, we’re going to do a wide, sweeping circuit. Try to lose some height and also use up more fuel. Reckon we should be touching down in around half an hour from now.”
“WIND SPEED ten miles per hour. Wind direction north northeast, veering easterly, gusting to fifteen miles per hour.” Carrie Princip’s voice was calm, unflustered. “Cloud cover below one-tenth, high. Visibility is ten-tenths. Outside temperature now seventy-eight degrees. No precipitation. Can’t see any potential problems.”
Jim acknowledged the information with a curt nod. His wrists were aching from the long battle with the recalcitrant shuttle, holding her steady and on the course coordinates that Kyle Lynch was chanting out to him, with Marcey calling any variations on bearing, speed or altitude.
They were approaching this time from the southwest, heading into whatever wind there was. Without instructions from the absent ground control, Jim was simply picking up what was the main runway at Stevenson Air Base.