Come on, come on. You want to avoid a messy outcome, get to the essence of all this.
He had compromised hydraulics. Gear assemblies stuck in the up position. And an urgent need to bring them down.
No, wait. Not down. Off.
He had to be precise in his thinking. What the hydraulic pressure really did was keep the gear assemblies in the retracted position by making them rest on the uplocks. If he could only get the assemblies cy^the uplock brackets, their own weight load would finish the task, causing them to drop through the well doors. In other words, they would bring themselves down.
Gravity.
Gravity was the problem, and it was also the solution.
Gordian reached for a selector button under his multifunction display and punched up the G-meter screen. The bar was level at one-G — which meant the gravitational force on the aircraft was "normal," or equivalent to that of an object at rest on the ground.
Shooting a glance at the display, Gordian reduced flaps, gripped the control column with both fists, and pulled back on it abruptly, tilting up the nose of the plane, hauling it into a sharp climb. An instant later he shoved forward on the column, dropping the plane toward the runway again.
Gordian's stomach lurched. The airframe shimmied around him. The roller-coaster bump in altitude thrust him back and down into his seat, then up and out so violently he would have smashed into the windshield had he not been strapped in.
So far, so good.
He reached for the landing gear lever, not bothering to check the MFD. With his bottom floating off his seat as if he were being hauled up by an invisible hand, Gordian already knew he was at zero-G. And if he'd reckoned correctly, he would not be the only thing floating.
The gear would be too.
Right off the uplock.
Praying that God, Sir Isaac Newton, and his own common sense were at oneness, he pulled the lever down for the third and last time.
The wide band of his seat belt cutting into his flabby middle, his eyeglasses first clamping down on the bridge of his nose and then flying off his face, his thin fringe of hair flattening out and then sticking straight up, Scull felt like the ball in some maniacal game of ping-pong.
Buffeted by wildly shifting Gs, the cabin pitched and shook. Magazines swept past him in a tumultuous flap. His eyes large with fear and confusion, he saw Megan's briefcase shoot up the carpeted aisle like a stone skipping over water, followed by a file folder Chuck Kirby had been perusing behind her, paper spewing from inside it. A banana somebody had been eating was next, then a pen that fired past like a small missile. He heard bottles of liquor, soda, and spring water clank and rattle in the wet bar, heard Richard Sobel uncharacteristically shouting out invective. Carry bags whumped against the interior of overhead storage bays.
"Shit!" he screamed, attaching his own contribution to Sobel's sting of epithets.
Suddenly he heard a thump under his feet.
Several thumps.
Pure, unalloyed terror leaped into his throat, jetted icily up his spine.
He stopped yelling.
Certain he was going to perish, Scull suddenly remembered that he wasn't alone, remembered there were four other people in the plane with him and — call him a dinosaur chauvinist, what was the fucking difference now anyway? — realized one of them was a woman who might need comforting.
Thinking he would do what he could, he turned toward Megan, reaching out to grip her hand—
And was stunned to see relief beaming from her face.
"It's okay, Vince, calm down," she said, leaning toward him, her hand falling gently over his wrist. 4 'Listen, the cockpit alarm's stopped."
"Huh?"
"The alarm," she repeated slowly. "It's stopped. We're landing."
He perked his ears. It had indeed stopped. And so had the rocking. But what had those thumping noises been about?
Suddenly the intercom crackled to life.
"Everyone, I'm sorry for the jostling. There was a little problem releasing the landing gear, but our wheels are down now and we're fine," he heard Gordian say, as if in answer to his unvoiced question.
"Landing gear," he muttered.
"What?" Megan said. "Couldn't hear you."
He looked down at where she was still holding his arm, and smiled.
"Just saying I love you, too, babycakes," he said.
Chapter Twenty-One
FROM AN ASSOCIATED PRESS WIRE REPORT:
Washington, D.C. — UpLink International Chairman Roger Gordian and a group of core supporters have arrived for a news conference at the Washington Press Club scheduled to coincide with tomorrow's White House enactment of the Morrison-Fiore cryptographic deregulatory bill. It is thought Gordian will restate his well-known opposition to the bill, a stance which has drawn criticism from many quarters of the government and high-tech industry.
The stakes are high for Mr. Gordian amid reports of mounting and widespread stockholder discontent, and Monolith Technologies' recent bid for a large voting share of his corporation. Questioned by reporters soon after his self-piloted Learjet touched down at Dulles International Airport, the besieged defense and communications titan gave no comment on rumors that his press conference will include a surprise announcement of his resignation as CEO of UpLink.
President Ballard and his media aides, meanwhile, have chosen to downplay the crypto bill's significance, wishing instead to emphasize the President's visit to Asia later this week for the signing of the SEAPAC maritime defense treaty, an event to be held aboard an advanced nuclear submarine in Singapore's coastal waters.
FROM THE STRAITS TIMES:
Body Found by Coastal Villagers
Banda Aceh, Indonesia — Local police authorities have reported the discovery of human remains by fishermen operating off Lampu'uk, a remote village at the nation's northernmost point, near a frequently traveled sea lane where the Straits of Melaka open into the Indian Ocean.
There has been no official word about the body's condition, nor any indication whether its identity has been established. However, eyewitnesses present when the corpse was found describe it as belonging to a male who had apparently been afloat at sea for some days.
A forensic examination to determine the cause of death is said to be pending.
While little else about the case is known, the International Maritime Bureau and other regional investigatory agencies are said to have been contacted. It is routine procedure for the 1MB and ASEAN law-enforcement groups, who maintain close cooperative links and shared databases of persons reported missing or lost at sea, to consult when handling incidents of this type.
Gordian remained at the field after the others had gone ahead to their hotel rooms and, accompanied by a couple of Pete Nimec's security aces, met with the airframe and power-plant mechanic at UpLink's leased hangar.
Minutes after being told what had happened to the gear, the shocked A&P man was under the Leaijet's wing on a wooden creeper.
"No sign of exterior leakage, and the fittings seem to be intact," he said now. "Wait, hold it a second, I want to take a closer peek at something."