' Turn back, Brian, you have to turn back!'
Did Nick have a reason for what he was saying, or had Bob's panic been infectious? There was no time to make a decision on any rational basis; only a split-second to consult the silent tickings of instinct.
Brian Engle grabbed the steering yoke and hauled it hard over to port.
18
Nick was thrown across the cockpit and into a bulkhead; there was a sickening crack as his arm broke. In the main cabin, the luggage which had fallen from the overhead compartments when Brian swerved onto the runway at BIA now flew once more, striking the curved walls and thudding off the windows in a vicious hail. The man with the black beard was thrown out of his seat like a Cabbage Patch Kid and had time to utter one bleary squawk before his head collided with the arm of a seat and he fell into the aisle in an untidy tangle of limbs. Bethany screamed and Albert hugged her tight against him. Two rows behind, Rudy Warwick closed his eyes tighter, clutched his rosary harder, and prayed faster as his seat tilted away beneath him.
Now there was turbulence; Flight 29 became a surfboard with wings, rocking and twisting and thumping through the unsteady air. Brian's hands were momentarily thrown off the yoke and then he grabbed it again. At the same time he opened the throttle all the way to the stop and the plane's turbos responded with a deep snarl of power rarely heard outside of the airline's diagnostic hangars. The turbulence increased; the plane slammed viciously up and down, and from somewhere came the deadly shriek of overstressed metal.
In first class, Bob Jenkins clutched at the arms of his seat, numbly grateful that the Englishman had managed to belt him in. He felt as if he had been strapped to some madman's jet-powered pogo stick. The plane took another great leap, rocked up almost to the vertical on its portside wing, and his false teeth shot from his mouth.
Are we going in? Dear Jesus, are we?
He didn't know. He only knew that the world was a thumping, bucking nightmare ... but he was still in it.
For the time being, at least, he was still in it.
19
The turbulence continued to increase as Brian drove the 767 across the wide stream of vapor feeding into the rip. Ahead of him, the hole continued to swell in front of the plane's nose even as it continued sliding off to starboard. Then, after one particularly vicious jolt, they came out of the rapids and into smoother air. The time-rip disappeared to starboard. They had missed it ... by how little Brian did not like to think.
He continued to bank the plane, but at a less drastic angle. 'Nick!' he shouted without turning around. 'Nick, are you all right?'
Nick got slowly to his feet, holding his right arm against his belly with his left hand. His face was very white and his teeth were set in a grimace of pain. Small trickles of blood ran from his nostrils. 'I've been better, mate. Broke my arm, I think. Not the first time for this poor old fellow, either. We missed it, didn't we?'
'We missed it,' Brian agreed. He continued to bring the plane back in a big, slow circle. 'And in just a minute you're going to tell me why we missed it, when we came all this way to find it. And it better be good, broken arm or no broken arm.'
He reached for the intercom toggle.
20
Laurel opened her eyes as Brian began to speak and discovered that Dinah's head was in her lap. She stroked her hair gently and then readjusted her position on the stretcher.
'This is Captain Engle, folks. I'm sorry about that. It was pretty damned hairy, but we're okay; I've got a green board. Let me repeat that we've found what we were looking for, but - '
He clicked off suddenly. The others waited. Bethany Simms was sobbing against Albert's chest. Behind them, Rudy was still saying the rosary.
21
Brian had broken his transmission when he realized that Bob Jenkins was standing beside him. The writer was shaking, there was a wet patch on his slacks, his mouth had an odd, sunken look Brian hadn't noticed before ... but he seemed in charge of himself. Behind him, Nick sat heavily in the co-pilot's chair, wincing as he did so and still cradling his arm. It had begun to swell.
'What the hell is this all about?' Brian asked Bob sternly. 'A little more turbulence and this bitch would have broken into about ten thousand pieces.'
'Can I talk through that thing?' Bob asked, pointing to the switch marked INTERCOM.
'Yes, but '
'Then let me do it.'
Brian started to protest, then thought better of it. He flicked the switch. 'Go ahead; you're on.' Then he repeated: 'And it better be good.'
'Listen to me, all of you!' Bob shouted.
From behind them came a protesting whine of feedback. 'We'
'Just talk in your normal tone of voice,' Brian said. 'You'll blow their goddam eardrums out.'
Bob made a visible effort to compose himself, then went on in a lower tone of voice. 'We had to turn back, and we did. The captain has made it clear to me that we only just managed to do it. We have been extremely lucky ... and extremely stupid, as well. We forgot the most elementary thing, you see, although it was right in front of us all the time. When we went through the time-rip in the first place, everyone on the plane who was awake disappeared.'
Brian jerked in his seat. He felt as if someone had slugged him. Ahead of the 767's nose, about thirty miles distant, the faintly glowing lozenge shape had appeared again in the sky, looking like some gigantic semiprecious stone. It seemed to mock him.
'We are all awake,' Bob said. (In the main cabin, Albert looked at the man with the black beard lying out cold in the aisle and thought, With one exception.) 'Logic suggests that if we try to go through that way, we will disappear.' He thought about this and then said, 'That is all.'
Brian flicked the intercom link closed without thinking about it. Behind him, Nick voiced a painful, incredulous laugh.
'That is all? That is bloody all? What do we do about it?'
Brian looked at him and didn't answer. Neither did Bob Jenkins.
22
Bethany raised her head and looked into Albert's strained, bewildered face. 'We have to go to sleep? How do we do that? I never felt less like sleeping in my whole life!'
'I don't know.' He looked hopefully across the aisle at Laurel. She was already shaking her head. She wished she could go to sleep, just go to sleep and make this whole crazy nightmare gone but, like Bethany, she had never felt less like it in her entire life.
23
Bob took a step forward and gazed out through the cockpit window in silent fascination. After a long moment he said in a soft, awed voice: 'So that's what it looks like.'
A line from some rock-and-roll song popped into Brian's head: You can look but you better not touch. He glanced down at the LED fuel indicators. What he saw there didn't ease his mind any, and he raised his eyes helplessly to Nick's. Like the others, he had never felt so wide awake in his life.