Jack introduced them as Frank and Joe. Joe had the beard and the JD buckle and he was going to be Bill's pilot. But Bill's flight seemed to be of secondary importance. The big concern seemed to be getting Jack and Ba into the air as soon as possible. After payment was made—a sack of gold coins transferred from the Corvair's front-end trunk to the Ashe brothers' office safe—Joe left Bill and Nick in the tiny office while he went out to help get his brother's Gulfstream air-borne. Twenty minutes later, Bill heard jet engines whine, then roar off into the western sky.
"Shouldn't we be hurrying too?" Bill said when Joe returned to the office.
"I reckon," he said with a heavy drawl. "But it's not as critical for us as for them. If Frank hustles his ass he's got a damn good chance of staying in daylight all the way to Hawaii. Not us. We're heading east—right into the dark. It's about 6:00 p.m. in Rumania now. Already past sunset."
His expression showed how little he relished the trip.
"How did you wind up with us?"
"We flipped a coin."
"And you lost."
Joe Ashe shrugged. "Six o' one, half a dozen of t' other. We're talking round trips here. Frank'll have to fly east on the way home while we're flying west." He frowned. "Maybe I should say it's four of one and half a dozen of the other. We'll have a shorter daylight window on the way back." He grunted. "Shit. I did get the short end of this stick. That Frank's always tricking me. That boy's my evil twin, he is."
Great, Bill thought. I've got the slow one.
"You want to back out?" Bill said, almost hoping he'd say yes.
Joe Ashe grinned. "Nah. Said I'd do it and so it's a done deal. Unless o' course you've changed your mind."
Bill shook his head. "I'm afraid we're stuck with each other."
"Guess so. But what about your friend there. He's lookin' right poorly, I'd say."
"He's…he hasn't been well lately."
"Bummer. Maybe you ought to leave him behind. Things could get a mite hairy on this little jaunt."
"I know. I wish I could leave him, but I need him along."
"You don't say." Joe studied Nick's blank face a moment, then turned to Bill. "What the hell for?"
"I don't know yet." But Glaeken assures me I will.
Joe let out a soft, low whistle through his teeth.
"Okay, pal. You're the boss. Let's roll. I've got the flight plan all worked out. We've got a ten- to eleven-hour trip ahead of us, and a seven-hour time difference between here and Ploiesti."
"Ploiesti? I thought we were going to Bucharest."
"Ploiesti's a little further north, closer to the Alps where this pass you're headed for is supposed to be. I couldn't find it on any of my maps."
Bill handed Joe the packet Glaeken had given him.
"You'll find it on these."
Joe took the packet. "Good. I'll check them out on the way. Get your friend there moving now. Time to rock 'n' roll."
The Movie Channel
Joe Bob Briggs' Drive-In Movie—A Special All-Day Edition.
Beginning Of The End (1957) Republic
The Last Days Of Man On Earth (1974) New World
The Monsters Are Loose (1965) Hollywood Star
Fear In The Night (1947) Paramount
Horror Of The Blood Monsters (1970) AIP
Destroy All Monsters (1968) Toho/AIP
I Drink Your Blood (1971) Cinemation
Jaws Of Death (1976) Selected
Night Of The Blood Beast (1958) AIP
The Day The Fish Came Out (1967) International Classics
Target Earth (1954) Allied Artists
The Blood Suckers (1971) Chevron
OVER THE ATLANTIC
Frying west, night came especially early. As darkness engulfed them, the sky cleared, became a crystal dome that revealed the foreign face of the moon set amid alien constellations.
Bill left Nick sleeping back in the passenger compartment and headed forward to take the co-pilot's seat next to Joe. As he gazed out at the night, he was glad for the lack of clouds and excellent visibility in the moonlight. He could find no sign of anything like the air leviathans he'd seen swooping from the Central Park hole Saturday night. No sign of anything in the air, but the water below seemed alive. It churned with shadows and swirled with phosphorescent flashes.
He turned back to the stars, studying them, trying to make sense of them, or find a familiar pattern.
"Where are we?" he said, wondering aloud.
"Over the Atlantic," Joe replied from his left.
"Thanks. I mean where in space? The sun's fading away, the moon's been turned around, and the stars have been shifted into new formations."
"Not just new formations," Joe said, stroking his beard as he craned his neck to see the stars. "Notice that there's fewer stars up there? And every night there's even less than the night before. I wonder if some night soon I'll take a peek and find there's no stars at all."
The stars do look kind of sparse up there, Bill thought.
"It's almost as if the planet's been moved to a different part of the universe."
"Cosmic, man," Joe said, eyes widening. "Maybe it has."
"No," Bill said. "That would be too logical an explanation, and easier to accept than what we're going through."
"Magnetic north's changed too," Joe said. "Compasses have been pointing anywhere they damn well please for the past couple days."
"Really? I hadn't heard that." And then something occurred to him. "If the stars are changed and compasses no longer point north, how do you know where you're going?"
"Radio beacon. I'm homing in on a signal from the English coast. We're not headed for England, but it's on the way."
"Where are we—good God!"
Bill had glanced off to his right at what had looked like a lone cloud in an empty sky. It wasn't the cloud that had startled him, it was what was under it.
Joe was leaning over his shoulder, squinting into the darkness.
"Shee-it! What the hell is that?"
Far to the south, a huge pillar had risen from the sea. It was made of some grayish substance that gleamed dully in the moonlight and streamed with lightning-like flickers of phosphorescence. Bill guessed it was hundreds of feet across and thousands of feet—maybe miles—high. Its top disappeared into the dark cloud growing above it.
So alien, so Cyclopean in its size, the sight of it gave him a crawling feeling in his gut.
Joe must have felt it too. His voice was hushed.
"Almost looks like it's holding up the sky."
Bill said, "Do we have enough fuel to maybe—?"
"No way, Jose!" Joe straightened in his seat and checked his instruments. "Even if we had plenty to spare, I wouldn't get a foot closer to that thing than I absolutely had to. And I don't have to get any closer than I am now, thank-you-very-much."
As they continued east, Bill's eyes remained fixed on the giant column. The dark gray cloud above it continued to grow, and as it grew it began to sink around the column, eventually obscuring it completely from view.
"I'll be damned!" Joe said. Bill turned in his seat and found him pointing north. "There's another one!"
Bill wished the moon was brighter so he could get a better look at it.
And then the moon went out for a second.
"What was that?" Joe said.
Bill's mouth was suddenly dry. "Something big."
"Yeah? How big?"
"Very big. A body two hundred feet across and square miles of wing."