Chandler felt his ears popping. He got up, holding on to the back of the seat across the aisle. It had been a long time since he had been in an airplane. For a moment he thought he might be airsick, but the moment passed. The children had no such worries. They were acting like a class trip as the plane headed into the sun.
He counted and discovered there were fifty-two of the children. They were all around him, squeezing past in the aisle, calling to each other; but they didn’t speak directly to him, nor he to them. They were in the coach’section of the plane.
Chandler explored. The connecting door to the first class compartment was closed, but it was only fabric on a skeleton of metal rods. Chandler did not debate the advis-ability of breaking his way in; he just kicked it open and squeezed through, while the children watched him, and laughed and whispered to each other.
Most of the first class seats had been removed. A thin scatter of crates and boxes were strapped to the floor. In the lounge section the divans were still in place, though, and Chandler cast himself down on one and closed his eyes.
He thought that it would be very easy to weep for Ellen Braisted. In a couple of hours she had come very close to him.
For that matter, he thought, turning his head to the back of the divan, the Orphalese were worth mourning too. Crazy, of course. A kinder term would be cultist. But out of their oddness had come an attempt to organize a life on a plan that worked.
Worked too wellfor beyond doubt, the success of their defenses against the “flame spirits” was what had doomed them. The destruction of Orphalese was no lunatic caprice.
It had been planned and methodically carried out, by a concerted effort involving at least a dozen At least a dozen what?
If Ellen Braisted were to be believed, human beings.
If a person wanted something to weep about, thought Chandler, the thought that it was human beings who had done all this was cause for tears enough… .
He slept. In spite of everything, he dropped off and did not wake for at least two or three hours, until the noise of the children woke him.
He stretched and sat up, feeling unutterably weary.
Neither terror nor worry could stimulate him any more.
He had reached that point of emotional exhaustion when the sudden thunder of shellfire or the unwarned banzai charge has lost its power to pump adrenalin into the blood; the glands were dry. He stared without emotion at the children standing before him.
“Mister!” cried one of them. “We’re hungry.”
He remembered having seen the boy before, getting out of the truck in his Boy Scout uniform, a child of about twelve, dark and dark-eyed.
“Yes,” said Chandler, “I’m hungry too.” He wished they were not therewished they weren’t on the plane at all; Chandler was not prepared to load his fragile confidence with the responsibility for fifty-two, children, not when he could think of no way to take care even of himself. As a delaying tactic he asked, “Where’d all of you come from?”
But the boy would not be swerved. “St. Rose of Lima.
That’s a school out Venice way. Do you know if there’s anything to eat?”
Chandler shook his head heavily. “I doubt it.” He could not help trying to find something to discharge his responsibility, though; he added, “We ought to be landing pretty soon. Probably they’ll feed you then.”
The boy nodded, accepting the word of the adult “Where we going, mister? China?”
Chandler almost laughed. But it might just be China, he thought; and admitted, “I’m not entirely sure. It might be Hawaii.”
“Hawaii!” cried the teen-age girl behind him. “Keen!
Say, there’s surfing in Hawaii, right, mister?”
Chandler looked at her. Although he couldn’t be sure, he thought she was the one who had been driving the truck and issuing the orders; but evidently the experience of being occupied had not left her with any extra information.
He chose his words with care. “As a matter of fact, that’s where surfing was invented, I think.”
“Hey, that’s great! But really,” she added, “we’re awfully hungry”
Chandler roused himself. “Well, let’s take a look,” he said. He had no real hope of finding food, but anything was better than doing nothing while the children stood there looking at him. Just across the aisle was the flight kitchen.
It contained, as a matter of fact, a great deal of food.
Most of it was useless, in stacked trays in the warming ovens, so thoroughly decayed that it hardly even smeUed any more. But there were also little packages of crackers, cheeses, jellies, macadamia nuts… and cigarettes. Real cigarettes! Factory made!
Chandler put the Scout in charge of handing out the rations and, with trembling fingers, lit a cigarette. It was dried out with age, but it was delicious. Before he did anything else he filled his pockets with the little cardboard packs. Then he made himself some instant coffee with cold water, opened a can of the nuts and abandoned himself to his fate.
The children were far braver than he. At first Chandler thought it was merely the ignorance of youth. But he was wrong. They knew as much of what was ahead as he didknew at least on what summons they were traveling, and how vile some of the creatures that summoned them could be; they had seen it happen in their own school. They almost reassured him with their careless pleasures in the food and the excitement of flying… until the hiss of the jets changed key, and Chandler realized his ears were popping again.
Outside the windows it was almost sunset again. Some of the children had been asleep in the reclining seats, others talking or playing with the empty cups and boxes of their feast. But they all waked and stared and comment-ed. “It is Hawaii!” chortled the girl surfer. “Right, Mr.
Chandler? I mean, look at those combers!”
“I think sonear as I can tell from the flying time.” He raised his voice. “All of you! Sit down! Fasten the seat belts!” Surprisingly they obeyed.
The horizon dipped below the wingtip and straightened again, and there was a chorus of yells as they beheld land.
Chandler never saw the airfield. Only water; then beach; then water again, and some buildings. Then the plane staggered, slowedtrees appeared underneath them and to the sidesthe wheels touched with a squeal and a jolt, and there was a roar of jets as the clamshells deflected their thrust forward to slow the plane down.
As the plane stopped. Chandler reached to unbuckle his seat beltand found himself once more possessed.
His body strained to rise, surged against the belt and fell back. His lips exclaimed something irritable, in a language he did not understand; his hands went back to fumble with the buckle.
The girl surfer rose stiffly and said, “All right, children!
Stay together now. Come with me.” She glanced incuriously at Chandler and opened the door. The movable steps were there already and the children filed out.
Chandler’s body, mumbling to itself, got the belt open, picked up the book and waited impatiently for the children to get out of the way. Chandler was conscious of a horde of men off to one side, pushing steps toward the other door, but he could not turn his head to look.
As he descended the steps, out of the comer of his eye, he saw the Boy Scout look toward him and wave, but Chandler could not respond. Another swarm of men was waiting for him to clear the steps. As soon as they could, they hurried up and began stripping the aircraft of its cargo.
He wondered at the rush but could not stop to watch them; his legs carried him swiftly across a paved strip to where a police car was cruising.
Chandler cringed inside, instinctively, but his body did not falter as it stepped into the path of the car and raised its hand.
The police car jammed on its brakes. The policeman at the wheel, Chandler thought inside himself, looked startled, but he also looked resigned. “To de South Gate, qvickly,”
said Chandler’s lips, and he felt his legs carry him around to the door on the other side.
There was another policeman on the seat next to the driver. He leaped like a hare to get the door open and get out before Chandler’s body got there. He made it with nothing to spare. “Jack, you go on, III tell Headquarters,”
he said hurriedly. The driver nodded without speaking. His lips were white. He reached over Chandler to close the door and made a sharp U-tum.
As soon as the car was moving Chandler felt himself able to move his lips again.