Some of us have pulled in a 9-suffix to our code name and they don't bother to make us sign anything: we've proved we can't be broken this side of unconsciousness, so we don't carry capsules on this kind of mission unless we've actually asked for some, to avoid possible unpleasantness during the operation. Not many directors have the 9 because they're far less exposed in the field than their executives and I knew Loman hadn't got one because there's a list and we know who's on it.
So he must have signed the form on this trip. There'd be no point in ordering him to put the tape in a bang-box if he was liable to get snatched and grilled. They're usually brightly-coloured with a distinctive pattern, so people don't confuse them with indigestion pills or anything.
Perhaps that was why he'd been so nervous. We all get a bit ragged towards the end-phase and this time we were having to cope with the heat as well.
The sweat was coming freely now and the pulse was about right so I told him I was ready to go.
Very well. We shall be off the air for a few minutes.
Going to signal Control, tell them we'd found the plane, three jolly cheers. I picked up the set and the camera and walked into the sun.
The first one had a thin moustache, rather well trimmed, bit of a lady's man and hardly the type who'd want to go into the album looking like this. Three shots from three angles and don't ask me why they wanted actual pictures, there was something important I was missing but there wasn't time to worry it out. The second one had either been pecked or caught his face on something sharp when he'd flung himself out of the cabin. A couple of close-ups of the dead vultures and one shot of the doorway making a hole in the dune.
A lot of dry cackling again, I suppose they were frustrated because I wouldn't let them get at the two cadavers. But their shadows were bigger and I looked up and saw they'd come quite a bit lower: their heads were turning on their long gristly necks to keep me in sight as they circled.
Then I had to wait, squatting by the transceiver and covering my neck against the sun, thinking of nothing in particular, how hot it was, what the hell did the snails eat, the way she'd looked at her fingertips.
Tango.
Hear you.
I'll be keeping open for you from now on.
All right. I'm immediately outside the freighter and I'm going to leave the set here and take the mike inside on the extension.
Understood. Will you -
Then there was a quick fade, as if he'd suddenly put a hand over the mike, and I thought the last two words had probably been spoken to Diane as he asked her to leave the radio-room before I began reporting for the tape.
Onset of chill, the hairs lifting on my forearms. The bodily changes due to the heat were being modified by the psychic unease aroused when I'd turned them over and looked at their faces.
Aircrews are practical men with a high threshold of fear and the durable brand of philosophy that is learned by living with the elements and acknowledging their infinite power. I would expect them, as the mountainside loomed through the fog or the explosion shook the airframe, to show natural and momentary fear before they concentrated on whatever action remained open to them. I would expect to find, on the faces of men who had died in a plane crash, an expression of anguish, fear, or resignation. Not of terror.
The brain is concerned with practical considerations: facts and figures, the interplay of kinetics and mechanical forces involved in high-speed collision. The psyche is more subtly concerned with abstracts ranging from ecstasy to nightmare, including terror. The raised scalp, the trickle along the spine are induced by things strange to us, or abhorrent: the silence of a slowly-winding snake, a leaping shadow, a howl in the deep of night.
I could think of nothing like this that could have struck terror in these two men before they died. But our people in London could.Photograph their faces, Loman had said.I am merely passing on instructions from London.
The birds cackled above me, wheeling lower, perhaps because I'd stopped moving. I wondered if I ought to go over and do something to protect the two bodies: Holt and his navigator wouldn't know what was happening but I didn't want to have a thing like that on my mind as well. In the end I did nothing because there wasn't anything to throw over them and even if I buried them the birds knew now that they were there.
Loman.
Receiving.
Your voice faded out on that last signal.
Yes, I covered the microphone.
Telling her to go?
Yes.
Just checking.
Understood.
I disconnected the microphone-lead and coupled it to the coiled extension, reconnecting.
Testing.
Receiving you.
I'm going inside.
14: FRENZY
Silence.
Heat.
Darkness.
A faint smelclass="underline" the rubber casing of the torch. I slid the switch and light hit the skeleton framework of the fuselage. I went forward and stopped in the next second and stood off-balance listening to the steady hiss from somewhere below. Forebrain desperate for explanation: a stream of images out of sequence. The sound becoming fainter.
Sand. Sand dislodged by my feet from the drift the wind had brought in and pouring on to the metal trough of the mid-section here between the pilot's deck and the freight compartment.
Pulse slowing again. Rhodospin was concentrating and my eyes were adapting to scotopic vision, the torchlight growing brighter. Other senses finely adjusting, hyper-receptive to stimuli: heat on the skin, marked absence of motion or even vibration as my weight shifted on to the floor of the pilot's deck. The entombing sand was deadening the motion normally set up by people entering a vehicle with sprung mass and pneumatic tyres.
The door to the freight section was ajar and I moved the torch beam through the four-inch gap in a vertical sweep but it lit nothing except the ribbed wall of the fuselage. The urge was to go in there first, kick the door wide open and go in ready for anything, so I moved in the opposite direction because the urge was emotionaclass="underline" I was afraid of going in there and wanted to get it over. It was safer to follow the instincts and reason.
London wanted to know things.
Loman.
Receiving you.
I'm now in the pilot's compartment. Throttle closed, undercarriage control in the raised position, flaps at full. Fuel reserve at one quarter, all lamp switches in the off position. Instruments and controls compatible with a forced-landing situation by daylight. The crew got out of their 'chute harness, the 'chutes still on their seats. Radio is switched to 6 MHz, one set of headphones on the floor and an earpiece smashed: evidence of impact effects or possible haste to leave the plane.
The torch beam went on moving, sometimes: reflecting from polished surfaces. Pair of worn flying-gloves, photo of a Eurasian woman tucked into a panel over the left-hand seat, packet of chewing-gum sticking out of the map-pocket.
Can you see anything not normally found in the cabin of an aircraft?
This was obviously the first question on a list they'd given him. I spent a full minute on it with the torch.
No. One or two personal effects: pair of tennis shoes in an open locker, carved teakwood statuette in one of them, copy ofPlayboy.Nothing else.
Thank you.