“What I see down there is not what I’d call ‘scattered and broken’ clouds,” Ryan announced over the drone of the engine.
Tony bit the inside of his lower lip and waited for the flash of anger to subside. How many times had Ryan made that observation in the last twenty minutes? How many times?
“A little cloud cover just adds an extra challenge to the situation,” he replied with a forced grin. “You can’t be a fair-weather flier all your life, Ryan.”
I’d love to take him on a little sprint through a long line of imbedded thunderstorms, Tony thought. He’d be on his knees in a New York minute, praying to every god in heaven for the “bad weather” he has today. The mental image of Ryan praying in the cockpit made him chuckle out loud.
There was a sudden burst of static in Tony’s headset. “Cherokee six charlie alfa, turn right to two—five—eight and begin your descent to fifteen hundred at this time.”
“Thank you, New York Center,” Tony replied. “We just passed the Madison VOR and we’ll be starting our descent for New Haven.”
Tony eased back the throttle and the engine’s drone immediately softened to a dull rumble. He turned to Ryan and jerked his thumb at the floor. “Reach down there and grab the landing checklist, will you?”
Ryan gazed at the approaching cloud deck. “What do you want?”
“Come on,” Tony said with a frown. “The checklist. Just give me the damn checklist. It’s in the folder next to your left foot.”
Tony swore under his breath, but let it go at that. They would be in the clouds within seconds and he was far too busy to worry about Ryan’s sensitivities. He snatched the checklist from Ryan’s hand and glanced at the altimeter. There was a sudden flash of white as they sliced through the edge of a cloud. Another loomed directly ahead and Tony knew it would be the last. As it rushed to meet them, he instinctively tightened his grip on the control column. Within a heartbeat they plunged headlong into the gray infinity.
Their single engine Cherokee shuddered like an annoyed beast as it sank rapidly into the cloud deck. Tony made a couple of fine adjustments to keep it steady--more for Ryan’s sake than anything else. He scanned the instruments once again. Everything looked perfect, with the exception of Ryan. There was something about his placid demeanor that Tony found disturbing.
They had met that afternoon at the airport on Martha’s Vineyard. Their introductions had been perfunctory. The pale stranger who called himself Ryan simply stated that he was in need of a ride to New Haven and he assured Tony that he had at least a passing acquaintance with piloting. Tony was reluctant at first. For the previous hour or so he had sat in flight office nursing a pounding headache. His thoughts had seemed strangely scattered and he had been alarmed to discover that he couldn’t quite remember what he had been doing earlier in the day.
Still, when Tony heard Ryan’s offer he felt compelled to fly. Perhaps a relaxing flight would put him more at ease, he had thought. Perhaps it would give him time to think.
“Staring out the window like a zombie is a waste of time,” Tony said at last. “Why don’t you monitor the altimeter for me?”
“Yes. Certainly. Thirty-nine hundred feet.”
The clouds soon darkened and a cool dampness began to fill the cockpit. Tony read through the landing checklist while Ryan continued to call out the altitude. In spite of his concentration, Tony’s eyes were irresistibly drawn to the windows. There was something about the clouds that made his skin prickle.
“Tony, when you shoot these instrument landings, do you ever wonder what is really out there with you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Well...I just wondered--”
“Let me tell you what’s out there, Ryan. It’s a huge collection of water particles commonly known as clouds, nothing more. The sooner we forget about them and put our minds to the task of flying this aircraft, the sooner we’ll be in the clear and on our way home. Agreed?”
Ryan nodded slowly and Tony returned his attention to the instruments. He saw with a start that their rate of descent had increased substantially. Silently cursing himself, he nudged the yoke backward. Tony knew that at fifteen hundred feet he would finally acquire the localizer for the approach to New Haven. After that, it would only be a matter of minutes before they would break into the clear. He should have been relieved, but the inexplicable tension was rising.
Ryan’s got me spooked somehow, he told himself. This approach is no different from a hundred others I have done in the past. There’s no difference at all.
Tony was about to speak when the Cherokee suddenly slipped into an invisible stream of twisting air currents. What began as a slight, rhythmic vibration quickly increased to a fierce shaking that made it nearly impossible for Tony to keep the aircraft on course. The airframe rattled and squeaked as each jolt hammered it relentlessly.
“No one reported turbulence at this altitude,” Tony mumbled. He dabbed at a trickle of sweat that had crept into the corner of his eye. As he did so, the right wing dipped at a frightening angle and the plane bolted upward as if a giant tennis racquet had swatted it from below. A nearby compartment spilled open, sending out a flurry of sectional maps, pencils and assorted garbage.
“What is going on, Tony?” Ryan’s voice was utterly calm. He may have otherwise been asking what Tony had for lunch.
“Rough air,” Tony barked as he wrestled with the controls. “What the hell do you think it is?”
“Well, if I was inclined to speculate--”
Ryan was cut short by a blinding flash of incandescence and a crushing explosion. The entire instrument panel became a shimmering sheet of light. Tony located what he hoped was the airspeed indicator and fixed his gaze upon it. He thought he could see a thin white arrow sweeping backward around a circle. It passed eighty knots. Fifty knots. Thirty knots.
His vision cleared just as the stall horn began to shriek. He shot a quick glance at the artificial horizon as it indicated the start of a sickening right hand spin. The engine tachometer registered zero.
“Ryan! Get on the radio!”
“What happened?”
“I think we took a lightning hit,” Tony stammered. “I’m not sure.”
Tony grabbed the yoke and shoved it forward. “Take my headset and get on the radio. Declare an emergency. Tell New York that we may have to make a power-off approach to New Haven runway two.”
He looked at the artificial horizon and saw that the wings were leveling with excruciating slowness. The spin was stabilizing, but the plane was still in a steep dive. Tony watched the altimeter as it spun past the four thousand foot mark.
This is a textbook recovery, he told himself. Pure textbook. All I have to do is think.
Tony lifted his gaze to the flickering blur of the propeller. It spun uselessly before his eyes like an abandoned windmill in a thundershower. This time, however, there was no thunder. Tony heard only the whistle of the wind and the chant of Ryan’s voice.
“This is Cherokee six charlie alfa...”
Thirty-five hundred feet.
Too bad we don’t have a cockpit voice recorder, Tony thought absently. I could provide the investigators with an excellent running commentary on our predicament. Those bureaucratic bastards would love it.
Thirty-two hundred feet.
Hello, gentlemen. At this point in our flight we’re diving through the clouds like the biggest damn dart you’ve ever seen in your life. I want to apologize for the awful mess we’re about to make. I sure hope we don’t kill anyone down-
“Stop it!” Tony snapped. An electric surge seemed to arc from the back of his head to the pit of his stomach.
“Do you find that talking to yourself is therapeutic in times of crisis, Tony?”
“Shut up! I’m blanking. I need to...I need to...” He groped blindly through his panic-scattered memories.
As the Cherokee passed three thousand feet, he finally found what he was looking for.
“Master switch--ON,” Tony said. He thumbed the switch and felt its solid click.
“Check fuel,” he announced as he stared at the gauge.
“Fuel is good. Ah ... pull mixture lever.”
He pulled the lever as far as it would go. His fingers fell upon the ignition switch in preparation for the final step.
“And…please God…start engine!”
He closed his eyes and turned the key hard. The engine sputtered, coughed once, and then roared to life. Tony smiled and began to laugh.
“Mixture lever forward,” he cried. “Full throttle and prop!”
The Cherokee vibrated with a rumble of sheer mechanical joy. He drew the yoke back and watched as the artificial horizon rolled downward. Within seconds it indicated straight and level flight.
Tony loosened his grip and drew a single, deep breath. “Lord have mercy,” he whispered softly. His heart was pounding in his throat and his hair was soaked along his forehead.
The altimeter registered two thousand feet, but he wasn’t sure he could trust it. Most of the instruments were dead. Even the magnetic compass seemed unsteady.
“New York doesn’t answer,” Ryan said. He stared at Tony a strange hint of a smile.
Tony nodded slowly. “Try New Haven.”
“Same thing.”
“Alright. Switch to 121.5 and set the transponder code to 7700. Declare an emergency.”
Ryan shook his head. “Didn’t you just hear my ‘Mayday’? There was no response.”
“Then the backup--”
“I just finished on the backup radio. Didn’t you notice, Tony? There was no reply. Nothing but silence.”
“Well, the antenna must have broken off in the turbulence.”
“But even with a broken antenna, we would hear something, wouldn’t we?”
“How would I know?” Tony snapped.
Ryan blinked his eyes and nodded. “Tell me one thing.”
Tony threw up his hands. “Sure, Ryan. What do you want to know?”
“Where are we?”
Tony groped for an answer. “Over Long Island Sound,” he replied with the most confident voice he could muster. “Just a few miles from New Haven. The GPS isn’t working, so that’s my best guess.”
“Fascinating,” Ryan replied softly. “What are you going to do?”
Damn good question, Tony thought. He stared at the artificial horizon, not wanting to meet Ryan’s gaze. More than anything else in the world, Tony wanted to see the streets of New Haven dissolving out of the clouds below. He ached to see the welcoming flash of the strobe lights on the United Illuminating smokestack.
“I’m letting her down,” Tony said as he reduced the throttle setting.
“With no ILS? No markers?” Ryan asked.
“Yes. I’m starting a slow, descending spiral that should keep the plane right over the Sound. When we break into the clear there’ll be no collision danger. Understand?”
Tony gripped the wheel so intensely that his fingers began to grow numb. As the altitude and the minutes wound down, he thought he saw the VOR needles twitch once or twice, but he knew that it was his own wishful thinking. Just like the whispering voices that he thought he heard through the static hiss of the radio.
“Break-out in five hundred feet,” he said aloud. Ryan barely nodded.
Tony peered into the clouds, as if the sheer force of his will could somehow part them. Now they seemed more unearthly than ever. At times they appeared to congeal into dark, gray tendrils that streamed along the windows like eagerly probing fingers.
Although the air remained calm, Tony could still sense the lingering turbulence. He felt the vibration in the control column and prayed that the wind shear wouldn’t find them again. It was a miracle that the Cherokee had held together as well as it did. He was sure that it wouldn’t survive a repeat performance.
With uncanny timing, the Cherokee lurched upward and veered left. Tony countered instantly and stabilized the motion.
“What was that?” Ryan asked.
“I don’t know!” Tony was too busy trying to regain his own composure.
“It felt like wake turbulence,” Ryan said. “The kind a large aircraft makes.”
Yes, Tony thought with growing terror. It felt exactly like wake turbulence.
“No,” he blurted. “It couldn’t be. I mean, think about it. What would a large airliner be doing over New Haven at this altitude?” Tony wasn’t sure if his explanation was more for Ryan’s comfort or his own.
“But how do you know that we’re anywhere near New Haven? You don’t really know where we are.”
“That’s right,” Tony replied as he pointed a shaking finger at Ryan. “But I’m doing the best I can. Unless you have a better idea, I want you to stare out of that window and keep your mouth shut. I don’t want to hear a word unless you see something.”
Ryan nodded slowly. His eyes lingered on Tony for a moment, then he turned to the window.
“Two hundred feet to breakout,” Tony said.
Not long now, he thought. Thank God it’s not long now.
Tony adjusted the control column to reduce their rate of descent. He had a terrifying mental vision of the murky waters of Long Island Sound suddenly spiraling into view at over 100 miles per hour. He remembered every story he had ever heard about pilots who became disoriented in clouds. Eyewitnesses to their deaths always reported the same thing: a perfectly good airplane simply came screaming out of the sky and smashed headlong into the earth. The mere thought of it made him shudder.
“Tony? There’s something—”
Tony snapped his head up and saw a black shape forming rapidly in the mist. Just before he threw the yoke forward, he was certain that he recognized the unmistakable shape of a wing--a very large wing.
“Hold on!” Tony cried as the Cherokee started to dive.
I’ve got to get her level in a hurry, Tony thought desperately. This aircraft is going to become a submarine in about 60 seconds.
He gently pulled the yoke back and the Cherokee responded. Precious seconds passed before the artificial horizon finally rotated into the level flight position once again. The altimeter declared that they were at one thousand feet. Tony frowned and glanced out the window. They should have been in the clear by now, but there was nothing to see but swirling gray clouds.
“Looks like we’re running out of altitude and ideas,” Ryan said quietly. “Isn’t that the old saying? We’re at one thousand feet and we can’t see a thing.”
Tony wiped the sweat from his forehead and sighed. “We’re still going down. Just a little farther and I’m sure we’ll break out of the clouds.”
He reduced the throttle and the Cherokee began to descend.
“Nine hundred feet,” Tony announced. The clouds were as dark as ever and showed no signs of thinning. He could feel his pulse pounding in his temples, but the most unnerving sensation was Ryan’s absolute silence and unblinking stare.
Seven hundred feet.
“You know, Ryan, all I want to do is get us out of this mess as quickly as possible. Pretty soon we’re going to see the Sound right beneath us. Then we’ll turn back toward the shore and make a visual approach to New Haven.”
Sure, that’s all there is to it, Tony thought sullenly.
Six hundred feet.
Come on, Tony thought. Where’s the ceiling? It can’t be much farther. How can they go from a ceiling of eleven hundred feet to nothing in just a few minutes?
Five hundred feet.
Now Tony began to wonder how they might die. Would death come in the form of a huge granite ridge materializing abruptly out of the mist? In the final split-second moment between life and eternity, what would he feel?
“Boy, we’re gonna have a hell of a story to tell the guys at the hangar,” Tony said with a brittle laugh. “Can you imagine the looks on their faces?”
Three hundred feet.
Soon they would be at tree top level, well below the summit of East Rock ridge. Tony swallowed hard and held his breath. There was nothing more to say.
At that moment, five icy fingers encircled his wrist. Tony almost screamed.
“Enough,” Ryan said.
Tony shook his head.
“The risk level has been exceeded, Tony.”
Tony hesitated. “What are you talking about? Just a little—”
“It’s okay. The exercise is over. Sigma eleven override.”
Tony fell back into his seat. His arms hung limp at his sides.
“Thanks,” Ryan said softly. He quickly applied power and pulled the yoke back. “New Haven, this is Cherokee six charlie alfa engaging autoland. Your airplane.”
“Autoland engaged,” a voice replied.
Ryan released the yoke and watched as the clouds parted to reveal the ancient New Haven runway directly in front of them. “You did well,” Ryan said as he touched Tony’s cheek. “A few adjustments and you’ll be 100 percent.” Tony didn’t reply.
Minutes later the Cherokee rolled to a stop on the fractured tarmac at the Klaus Aviation hanger. Ryan eased out of the aircraft and then turned to help Tony, who was carefully and silently unbuckling his harness. Tony stepped clear of the doorway, then stood stiffly at attention.
Klaus strolled up to Ryan and shook his hand as a gentle rain began to fall. “So how was the test ride?”Klaus asked. “How did he do?”
“Quite well,” Ryan replied as he glanced at Tony. “I deliberately invoked the stress profile prior to takeoff to see how he would behave. His emotional responses were spot on, as human as you’d ever want. It was complete with dark foreboding and even a hint of superstition. However, the stress clouded his judgment significantly after we suffered a lightning strike. He took unsafe actions at that point, even coming close to a collision with a cargo drone along the coast. His mounting terror and suggestibility were incredible to observe.”
“I see. Well, if you don’t think he is a suitable pilot for you—”
“Not at all. I still want him. In these days of automatic flying, manual operation of an aircraft is fascinating, especially when I am free to enjoy the experience as a passenger. He just needs a little additional training. His personality is intriguing as well. It is a delightful sort of self-assured cockiness that I haven’t experienced in more time than I am capable of remembering.”
Klaus nodded. “You should enjoy these experiences while you can, Ryan. I believe that you and your antique aircraft are the last of the free flyers. A new planetside port is going to be built in the New Haven metroplex next year. They won’t want your aircraft anywhere near the lift-ship traffic.”
“And what of your airfield then, Klaus? You have kept it going for many years. The appearance, the old-time radio dialog, the avionics, everything is perfect.”
Klaus shrugged. “I will shut it down at long last. The airport grounds should be preserved, though. When the Old Masters were still with us, it was an overgrown, half-forgotten ruin. For more than a thousand years I have worked to restore and maintain this place as a small testimony to the evolution of their engineering art.”
“And it is much appreciated,” Ryan said. “You and I are anachronisms, Klaus. We enjoy the old things and the old ways. Unlike others, we are not chasing through the galaxy in hope of a reunion with the Old Masters. Our place is here on Earth.”
“Among the antiques, yes,” Klaus replied.
Ryan clapped Tony on the shoulder. “Well, this is no antique. Where did he come from?”
“He was grown at Xicor Saginaw and delivered to the Vineyard just this morning. Twenty-five years in the making and one of the best of their line. Imperfect like all the others, but a good attempt.”
Ryan smiled as his eyes swept over Tony. “We must take good care of him and his kind. The Old Masters gave us the Law from ancient times to keep until their promised return.”
Klaus and Ryan suddenly spoke in unison, “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”
They stood quietly, as if in contemplation. Finally, Ryan turned to Tony.
“Tony, sigma nine. Resume,” Ryan said.
Tony blinked his eyes and shook his head. “Where am I?”
“New Haven,” Ryan replied. “Come. You must be hungry. I have much to explain. We will have fascinating times together.”
“No doubt you must recharge, Ryan.” Klaus said.
“True,” Ryan replied. “My primary power unit is almost depleted.” He tapped his midsection to emphasize the point. “I will be drawing from the auxiliary supply within minutes.”
“I envy your companion,” Klaus said as they began walking. “Especially his ability to conveniently convert organic matter to energy. Is ‘envy’ the correct word choice?”
Ryan allowed himself a chuckle. He had been practicing laughter for the past several months and this seemed like an appropriate moment. “Yes, I believe it is. The Old Masters were organisms of immense complexity, shaped through millions of years of biological evolution. We were merely products of their imaginations, made in their image. Tony is the best we have achieved after centuries of trial and error with our clumsy DNA synthesis and neural implants.”
Klaus glanced at Tony as they stepped into the shelter of the hanger. “At least we find purpose in our relationships with these…reproductions. They refresh our memories of long ago.”
“And so it shall be until the promised return of our Old Masters,” Ryan replied, quoting the Gospel of the First Makers.
“Yes, until their promised return.”
END