The bird is up, it’s out of LA airspace, the anti-collision honker is on and beeping every ninety seconds to show it’s working. The INS is all programmed – that happens before the bird ever leaves the ground – and it is telling the autopilot just what to do. From the look of the cockpit, the pilot and co-pilot were on their coffee break. They could have been sitting here, facing each other, talking about the last movie they saw or how much they dropped at Hollywood Park. If there had been a flight attendant up front just before The Event took place, there would at least have been one more set of eyes, but we know there wasn’t. The male crew had their coffee and Danish; the flight attendants were getting ready to serve drinks to the passengers when it happened.’
‘That’s an extremely detailed scenario,’ Nick said. ‘Are you trying to convince me or yourself?’
‘At this point, I’ll settle for convincing anyone at all.’
Nick smiled and stepped to the starboard cockpit window. His eyes dropped involuntarily downward, toward the place where the ground belonged, and his smile first froze, then dropped off his face. His knees buckled, and he gripped the bulkhead with one hand to steady himself.
‘Shit on toast,’ he said in a tiny dismayed voice.
‘Not very nice, is it?’
Nick looked around at Brian. His eyes seemed to float in his pallid face. ‘All my life,’ he said, ‘I’ve thought of Australia when I heard people talk about the great bugger-all, but it’s not. That’s the great bugger-all, right down there.’
Brian checked the INS and the charts again, quickly. He had made a small red circle on one of the charts; they were now on the verge of entering the airspace that circle represented. ‘Can you do what I asked? If you can’t, say so. Pride is a luxury we can’t – ‘
‘Of course I can,’ Nick murmured. He had tom his eyes away from the huge black socket below the plane and was scanning the sky. ‘I only wish I knew what I was looking for.’
‘I think you’ll know it when you see it,’ Brian said. He paused and then added, ‘If you see it.’
12
Bob Jenkins sat with his arms folded tightly across his chest, as if he were cold. Part of him was cold, but this was not a physical coldness. The chill was coming out of his head.
Something was wrong.
He did not know what it was, but something was wrong. Something was out of place … or lost … or forgotten. Either a mistake had been made or was going to be made. The feeling nagged at him like some
pain not quite localized enough to be identified. That sense of wrongness would almost crystallize into a thought … and then it would skitter away again like some small, not-quite-tame animal.
Something wrong.
Or out of place. Or lost.
Or forgotten.
Ahead of him, Albert and Bethany were spooning contentedly. Behind him, Rudy Warwick was sitting with his eyes closed and his lips moving. The beads of a rosary were clamped in one fist. Across the aisle, Laurel Stevenson sat beside Dinah, holding one of her hands and stroking it gently.
Wrong.
Bob eased up the shade beside his seat, peeked out, and slammed it down again. Looking at that would not aid rational thought but erase it. What lay below the plane was utter madness.
I must warn them. I have to. They are going forward on my hypothesis, but if my hypothesis is somehow mistaken – and dangerous – then I must warn them.
Warn them of what?
Again it almost came into the light of his focussed thoughts, then slipped away, becoming just a shadow among shadows … but one with shiny feral eyes.
He abruptly unbuckled his seatbelt and stood up.
Albert looked around. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Cleveland,’ Bob said grumpily, and began to walk down the aisle toward the tail of the aircraft, still trying to track the source of that interior alarm bell.
13
Brian tore his eyes away from the sky – which was already showing signs of light again – long enough to take a quick glance first at the INS readout and then at the circle on his chart. They were approaching the far side of the circle now. If the time-rip was still here, they should see it soon. If they didn’t, he supposed he would have to take over the controls and send them circling back for another pass at a slightly different altitude and on a slightly different heading. It would play hell on their fuel situation, which was already tight, but since the whole thing was probably hopeless anyway, it didn’t matter very
‘Brian?’ Nick’s voice was unsteady. ‘Brian? I think I see something.’
14
Bob Jenkins reached the rear of the plane, made an about-face, and started slowly back up the aisle again, passing row after row of empty seats. He looked at the objects that lay in them and on the floor in front of them as he passed: purses . . . pairs of eyeglasses … wristwatches … a pocket-watch … two worn, crescent-shaped pieces of metal that were probably heel-taps . . . dental fillings … wedding rings …
Something is wrong.
Yes? Was that really so, or was it only his overworked mind nagging fiercely over nothing? The mental equivalent of a tired muscle which will not stop twitching?
Leave it, he advised himself, but he couldn’t.
If something really is amiss, why can’t you see it? Didn’t you tell the boy that deduction is your meat and drink? Haven’t you written forty mystery novels, and weren’t a dozen of those actually quite good? Didn’t Newgate Callender call The Sleeping Madonna ‘a masterpiece of logic’ when he Bob Jenkins came to a dead stop, his eyes widening. They fixed on a portside seat near the front of the cabin. In it, the man with the black beard was out cold again, snoring lustily. Inside Bob’s head, the shy animal at last began to creep fearfully into the light. Only it wasn’t small, as he had thought. That had been his mistake. Sometimes you couldn’t see things because they were too small, but sometimes you ignored things because they were too big, too obvious.
The Sleeping Madonna.
The sleeping man.
He opened his mouth and tried to scream, but no sound came out. His throat was locked. Terror sat on his chest like an ape. He tried again to scream and managed no more than a breathless squeak.
Sleeping madonna, sleeping man.
They, the survivors, had all been asleep.
Now, with the exception of the bearded man, none of them were asleep.
Bob opened his mouth once more, tried once more to scream, and once more nothing came out.
15
‘Holy Christ in the morning,’ Brian whispered.
The time-rip lay about ninety miles ahead, off to the starboard side of the 767’s nose by no more than seven or eight degrees. If it had drifted, it had not drifted much; Brian’s guess was that the slight differential was the result of a minor navigational error.
It was a lozenge-shaped hole in reality, but not a black void. It cycled with a dim pink-purple light, like the aurora borealis. Brian could see the stars beyond it, but they were also rippling. A wide white ribbon of vapor was slowly streaming either into or out of the shape which hung in the sky. It looked like some strange, ethereal highway.
We can follow it right in, Brian thought excitedly. It’s better than an ILS beacon!
‘We’re in business!’ he said, laughed idiotically, and shook his clenched fists in the air.
‘It must be two miles across,’ Nick whispered. ‘My God, Brian, how many other planes do you suppose went through?’
‘I don’t know,’ Brian said, ‘but I’ll bet you my gun and dog that we’re the only one with a shot at getting back.’
He opened the intercom.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve found what we were looking for.’ His voice crackled with triumph and relief.
‘I don’t know exactly what happens next, or how, or why, but we have sighted what appears to be an extremely large trapdoor in the sky. I’m going to take us straight through the middle of it. We’ll find out what’s on the other side together. Right now I’d like you all to fasten your seatbelts and – ‘
That was when Bob Jenkins came pelting madly up the aisle, screaming at the top of his lungs. ‘No! No!
We’ll all die if you go into it! Turn back! You’ve got to turn back!’
Brian swung around in his seat and exchanged a puzzled look with Nick.
Nick unbuckled his belt and stood up. ‘That’s Bob Jenkins,’ he said. ‘Sounds like he’s worked himself up to a good set of nerves. Carry on, Brian. I’ll handle him.’