A brief surge of power announced that first one, then the other pair of afterburners had been activated on the Concorde’s Olympus engines. He felt the new acceleration, and the aircraft began to climb again as she passed through mach-1, and the airliner gave meaning to her call sign prefix: “Speedbird.” Jack looked out the window — they were over water now. He checked his watch: less than three hours to touchdown at Dulles. You can put up with anything for three hours, can’t you?
Like you have a choice. A light caught his eye. How did I miss that before? On the bulkhead a few feet from his head was a digital speed readout. It now read 1024, the last number changing upward rapidly.
Damn! I’m going a thousand miles per hour. What would Robby say about this? I wonder how Robby’s doing . . .He found himself mesmerized by the number. Soon it was over 1300. The rate of change dropped off nearly to zero, and the display stopped at 1351. One thousand three hundred fifty-one miles per hour. He did the computation in his head: nearly two thousand feet per second, almost as fast as a bullet, about twenty miles per minute. Damn. He looked out the window again. But why is it still noisy? If we’re going supersonic, how come the sound isn’t all behind us? I’ll ask Robby. He’ll know.
The puffy, white, fair-weather clouds were miles below and sliding by at a perceptible rate nevertheless. The sun glinted off the waves, and they stood out like shiny blue furrows. One of the things that annoyed Jack about himself was the dichotomy between his terror of flying and his fascination with what the world looked like from up here. He pulled himself back to the book and read of a period when a steam locomotive was the leading edge of human technology, traveling at a thirtieth of what he was doing now. This may be terrifying, but at least it gets you from place to place.
Dinner arrived a few minutes later. Ryan found that the champagne had given him an appetite. Jack was rarely hungry on an airplane, but much to his surprise he was now. The menu carried on the annoying, and baffling, English habit of advertising their food in French, as if language had any effect on taste. Jack soon found that the taste needed no amplification. Salmon gave way to a surprisingly good steak — something the Brits have trouble with — a decent salad, strawberries and cream for dessert, and a small plate of cheese. A good port replaced the champagne, and Ryan found that forty minutes had slipped by. Less than two hours to home.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain speaking. We are now cruising at fifty-three thousand feet, with a ground speed of thirteen hundred fifty-five miles per hour. As we burn off fuel, the aircraft will float up to a peak altitude of roughly fifty-nine thousand feet. The outside air temperature is sixty degrees below zero Celsius, and the aircraft skin temperature is about one hundred degrees Celsius, this caused by friction as we pass through the air. One side effect of this is that the aircraft expands, becoming roughly eleven inches longer in midflight –”
Metal fatigue! Ryan thought bleakly. Did you have to tell me that? He touched the window. It felt warm, and he realized that one could boil water on the outside aluminum skin. He wondered what effect that had on the airframe. Back to the 19th century, he commanded himself again. Across the aisle his daughter was asleep, and Cathy was immersed in a magazine.
The next time Jack checked his watch there was less than an hour to go. The captain said something about Halifax, Nova Scotia, to his right. Jack looked but saw only a vague dark line on the northern horizon. North America — we’re getting there. That was good news. As always, his tension and the airliner seat conspired to make his back stiff, and the cast didn’t help at all. He felt a need to stand up and walk a few steps, but that was something he tried not to do on airplanes. The steward refilled his port glass, and Jack noticed that the angle of the sun through the window had not changed since London. They were staying even, the aircraft keeping up with the earth’s rotation as it sped west. They would arrive at Dulles at about noon, the pilot informed them. Jack looked at his watch again: forty minutes. He stretched his legs and went back to the book.
The next disturbance was when the cabin crew handed out customs and immigration forms. As he tucked his book away, Jack watched his wife go to work listing all the clothes she’d bought. Sally was still asleep, curled up with an almost angelic peace on her face. They made landfall a minute later somewhere over the coast of New Jersey, heading west into Pennsylvania before turning south again. The aircraft was lower now. He’d missed the transonic deceleration, but the cumulus clouds were much closer than they’d been over the ocean. Okay, Captain Higgins, let’s get this bird back on the ground in one solid piece. He found a silver luggage tag that he was evidently supposed to keep. In fact, he decided to keep the whole package, complete with a certificate that identified him as a Concorde passenger — or veteran, he thought wryly. I survived the British Airways Concorde.
Dumbass, if you’d flown the 747 back home, you’d still be over the ocean.
They were low enough to see roads now. The majority of aircraft accidents came at landing, but Ryan didn’t see it that way. They were nearly home. His fear was nearly at an end. That was good news as he looked out the window at the Potomac. Finally the Concorde took a large nose-high angle again, coming in awfully fast. Jack thought, as she dropped gently toward the ground. A second later he saw the airport perimeter fence. The heavy bumps on the airliner’s main gear followed at once. They were down. They were safe. Anything that happened now was a vehicle accident, not an aircraft one, he told himself. Ryan felt safe in cars, mainly because he was in control. He remembered that Cathy would have to drive today, however.
The seat belt sign came off a moment after the aircraft stopped, and the forward door was opened. Home. Ryan stood and stretched. It was good to be stationary. Cathy had their daughter in her lap, running a brush through her hair as Sally rubbed the sleep from her eyes.
“Okay, Jack?”
“Are we home already”” Sally asked.
Her father assured her that they were. He walked forward. The stewardess who’d led him aboard asked if he’d enjoyed the ride, and Jack replied, truthfully, that he had. Now that it’s over. He found a seat in the mobile lounge, and his family joined him.
“Next time we go across, that’s how we do it,” Ryan announced quietly.
“Why? Did you like it?” Cathy was surprised.
“You better believe I like it. You only have to be up there half as long.” Jack laughed, mainly at himself. As with every flight he took, being back on the ground alive carried its own thrill. He had survived what was patently an unnatural act, and the exhilaration of being alive, and home, gave him a quiet glow of his own. The stride of passengers off an airplane is always jauntier than the stride on. The lounge pulled away. The Concorde looked very pretty indeed as they drew away from it and turned toward the terminal.
“How much money did you spend on clothes?” Jack asked as the lounge stopped at the arrival gate. His wife just handed him the form. “That much?”
“Well, why not?” Cathy grinned. “I can pay for it out of my money, can’t I?”
“Sure, babe.”
“And that’s three suits for you, too. Jack,” his wife informed him.
“What? How did you –”
“When the tailor set you up for the tux, I had him do three suits. Your arms are the same length, Jack. They’ll fit, as soon as we get that damned cast off you, that is.”
Another nice thing about the Concorde: the airliner carried so few people, compared to a wide-body, that getting the luggage back was a snap. Cathy got a wheeled cart — which Sally insisted on pushing — while Jack retrieved their bags. The last obstacle was customs, where they paid over three hundred dollars’ worth of penance for Cathy’s purchases. Less than thirty minutes after leaving the aircraft. Jack proceeded to his left out the door, helping Sally with the luggage cart.
“Jack!” It was a big man, taller than Jack’s six-one, and broader across the shoulders. He walked badly due to a prosthetic leg that extended above where he had once had a left knee, a gift from a drunken driver. His artificial left foot was a squared-off aluminum band instead of something that looked human. Oliver Wendell Tyler found it easier to walk on. But his hand was completely normal, if rather large. He grabbed Ryan’s and squeezed. “Welcome home, buddy!”