“Precisely, Your Honor,” Sculley said. “That has been the state’s contention…”
“Don’t gloat, counselor. You’re as much a part of this as they are.” Sculley went from gloating to wilting in one smooth transition.
Judge Schumann cocked an eye at McWilliams. “Anything from the petitioner?” McWilliams was more experienced than Sculley and he knew when to keep his mouth shut Hanborn shrank into his chair and devoutly wished he was somewhere, anywhere, else.
“All right I’m going to grant this petition. That makes it a matter of public record. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the newspapers don’t get hold of this.” She glared at Hanborn and McWilliams. “As a judge I can’t comment on the matter to the media. That means you two will have to explain this pile of horseapples to the taxpayers.”
Sculley shifted in his chair. “Ah, Your Honor…”
“Mr. Sculley, you are trying my patience. That is the second time today and no one has ever done it a third time. Now get back out there, all of you, and let’s get this farce over with.”
They were still in the traffic pattern when Charlie got a radio call that obviously displeased him. He reached over to the microphone jack and wiggled it firmly. “Say again tower, you’re breaking up. Over.” Thanks to Charlie’s fiddling the transmission was nicely garbled.
The old pilot chewed his mustache for an instant as he listened to the transmission, then he reached down and switched off the radio. “Pissants,” Charlie yelled to Mick.
Charlie did not waste a lot of time gathering altitude. While they were in the tower’s control zone he made a pretense of staying above the FAA minimums. As soon as they were beyond visual range of the tower and over the open desert he pushed the wheel forward.
As an ex-fighter jock, Mick Gilligan was a member of the high-and-fast school of flying. Charlie, on the other hand, belonged to the “low and slow” school. Gilligan had no objection to flying low—within reason. But he considered having to pull up to get over barbed wire fences decidedly unreasonable. A couple of times Gilligan saw puffs of dust where the Colt’s wheels had touched the ground. After that he tried not to look.
Back in the cabin the other passengers had their own problems. Flying sideways is unsettling, the noise and vibration were terrible, and the humans were sharing the space with a dragon who’d never been in an airplane before.
Fluffy didn’t get airsick, but he wasn’t a very good traveling companion. Although he was too young to fly the dragon had the reflexes of a flying creature, which meant he kept trying to use his body to control his “flight.” Moira tried valiantly to keep the body under control, but with very mixed success. Every time the plane lurched, Fluffy instinctively tried to spread his wings. After being smacked in the face a couple of times, the occupants of the seats learned to duck when the plane lurched.
“They’re not responding,” the air traffic control supervisor told his visitors.
Lake most air traffic controllers, the supervisor had a strong sense of what was proper. In his book having a bunch of police and other gawkers invade his control center was highly improper. However, as an ex-Air Force controller he was disinclined to argue. The best he could do was keep them out of his people’s hair, be civil to them and hope they would get out of his control center soon.
“Isn’t that illegal? Ignoring air traffic control?” asked one of his visitors, a blocky middle-aged man in an expensive suit. The supervisor had already sized him up as the one who was running this show. The police captain and other officers, as well as the gaggle of civil servants from federal and state agencies, didn’t seem to count for much.
“Maybe their radios are out,” the supervisor said, more to annoy his unwanted guests than out of any belief. Charlie had only been in town for a couple of weeks on this visit, but already the controllers knew him and his plane.
“Where are they going?”
The supervisor glanced over a controller’s shoulder. “North and a little east.”