Acid Sky (25 page)

And the procedure for abandon ship, the last one of all.

He knew what would be happening, through the ship. Men and women would be hastily throwing on an extra layer of clothing and running to their muster stations, lining up in the long corridor to be counted, pulling on facemasks before going through the airlock into the hangar, to be loaded onto the waiting Frigates.

Less than one hour to go, before the
Langley
flew straight into the storm and was torn apart by Venus’s fury.

‘Sir?’ Conway’s voice interrupted his thoughts.

‘All muster stations reported. Eight crew unaccounted for; seven in the tower, plus Lieutenant Foster. No one has reported seeing her since yesterday. It’s possible she’d gone up to the tower to watch the landing.’

‘Yes … yes, I guess so. Pity. She was a promising young officer.’

‘It’s time to go to the muster station, sir.’ Conway was watching him carefully.

‘You go. I’ll remain here for a bit longer. Don’t worry, there’s plenty of time for me to get back there.’

‘I’m not worried about that.’

‘I’m not stupid,’ Donaldson said, more sharply than he had intended. ‘Go to the muster stations. Help organise the evacuation. Without the tower, they’ll need some help to get all the aircraft away. That’s an order.’

‘Yes sir.’ Conway stared back at the captain for a long moment, then turned, and without another word left the control room.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Inside the main hangar of the
Langley
, it was a scene of organised chaos.

When the incoming spaceplane hit the flight deck, the reinforced deck plating and the enormously strong box section of the
Langley’s
central spine shrugged off the impact, as the careful engineers that designed it all those years ago had intended. Now those design decisions were paying off.

On a flying carrier in the skies of Venus, there was only one escape route in the event of any emergency, and that was into the air. That meant that there had to be enough aircraft available to get everyone on board off the carrier and away to safety.

In addition to its operational complement of 102, the
Langley
had four visitors on board – including Clare – and fourteen passengers in transit. With the loss of the crew who had been in the tower when it went over, that still made 112 people to get off the ship. With eight serviceable aircraft on board, that meant everyone could get off safely, but Conway wasn’t taking any chances. He ordered the Frigates to be loaded up to capacity, with all the jump seats occupied, so that they could get off in six aircraft, plus one for the stretcher cases. That left one spare aircraft in case there were any issues with the others.

They had practised emergency evacuations before, but not like this; this was
real
. The ship was going down, and as if to remind them, every few seconds a new surge of turbulence rocked the hangar. With the tower gone, everything had to be done from the hangar, with the deck elevator raised and lowered by manual command, and the pilots releasing the hold down clamps manually. The elevator worked continuously, so that while one aircraft was raised for launching the next was in the hangar taking up position for the next lift.

The noise inside the open space of the hangar was incredible. There was no time to use the tugs; they had been parked out of the way and the Frigates moved towards the elevator under their own jet power. The remaining deck handlers had to marshal the aircraft for takeoff and somehow get the lines of waiting people aboard without anyone being blown over by the jet blast. The doors to the pressurised maintenance hangar had been opened to make it easier to move the aircraft about, and the roar of air from the open elevator pit echoed round the enormous space like a tornado.

Suddenly, an incredible noise from the raised elevator made the hangar shake; the third Frigate was spooling up its engines to full power on the flight deck above them. The sound of the turbofans rose to a deafening, buzz-saw roar as they gulped in air, then there was a loud clang as the hold down clamps released, and the noise diminished as the aircraft climbed away.

Immediately, the empty elevator started to lower, while the fourth Frigate, sitting in readiness in front of the elevator pit, spread its wings ready for takeoff.

Conway watched as the deck handlers exchanged urgent hand signals, and as the elevator stopped, the Frigate rolled forward briskly onto its surface and into the waiting hold down clamps. The moment they closed, the elevator started to rise up again towards the flight deck.

Conway blinked; there were dark specks swirling in his vision. He glanced at the hangar bay lighting and saw an astonishing sight; it looked like there was
snow
blowing into the hangar, coming in like a blizzard from the open elevator pit. He looked curiously at the flakes landing on his jacket. It certainly looked like snow, but on a world with almost no free moisture in the air, it just wasn’t possible. Then he realised what it must be; the eruption far below them on the surface must be belching out millions of tonnes of water vapour, and here it was, condensing and freezing into snowflakes high in the atmosphere. It lent an eerie, ethereal aspect to the scene. This wasn’t something he was ever going to forget in a hurry.

The Frigate seemed to be taking its time to reach the flight deck, and he realised with alarm that the elevator was not moving as fast as it ought to. Conway went over to the engineering chief and pointed to the elevator. ‘‘I don’t like the look of that,’ he said, ‘it’s getting slower. Are we losing power?’

Neale consulted his comlink for a moment, and nodded. ‘You’re right – number two generator’s tripped – we must have been pulling too much power. Number one’s fine. We should be able to do it, there’s only three more to raise.’

Conway nodded, and looked around. The fifth Frigate was waiting by the elevator pit, and the last two were being readied. ‘Where’s Donahue? We need to load the stretcher cases.’

The chief thumbed in the direction of the airlock door, where the diminutive shape of the medical officer crouched over three stretchers, one with a drip. Conway strode over and touched Donahue on the arm. ‘Are you ready to load up?’

‘In a moment.’ She withdrew a needle from the arm of the crewman she had been working on, and rolled his sleeve back down. ‘Okay – we’ll need some help to get them aboard, and take it easy.’

‘Okay.’ Conway looked around ‘Hey, you – and you!’ he shouted to the last two deck handlers. ‘Give us a hand here.’

They took turns to carry the injured crewmen to the waiting Frigate. Inside, the seats had been removed to make space, and they manhandled the stretchers aboard and set up jump seats for Donahue and a nurse. When they were all strapped in and the drip set up, Conway closed the hatch and signalled to the pilot that they could move off. He retreated, keeping low to avoid the jet blast as the Frigate gunned its engines and moved off down the hangar.

He glanced round the hangar. Besides himself, there was only the engineering chief, the two deck handlers and ten other crewmen left in the line. The last Frigate stood by the doors to the maintenance hangar, the crew in the cockpit, running over the pre-start checklist. There was no sign of the captain. He pulled out his comlink and keyed the captain’s ID.

‘He’s not going to come, you know,’ the chief said, watching what Conway was doing. ‘If he’d intended to leave, he would have been here by now. He knows the procedure as well as you do.’

Conway looked at Neale. ‘I’m going back for him.’

‘No, you’re not!’ the chief said, grabbing him by the arm, ‘Your place is with the people here, to get them off the ship. Don’t put people in more danger by going back for the one man who knows the rules better than any of us!’

Conway wrenched Neale’s grip away. ‘Don’t you tell me what to do!’

‘You’d do the same if it was me!’ Neale said urgently, staying close and keeping his voice down. ‘Look at these men! Donaldson doesn’t need you, but
they
do!’ He gestured to where the last few to leave waited in a frightened line, watching the medical Frigate lumber onto the lowered elevator and spread its wings in the whirling snow.

Conway glanced at the departing aircraft as the elevator started to lift it towards the flight deck, and then back at the airlock door. ‘All right. Get everyone aboard and get the aircraft onto the elevator. That’ll take you six minutes at least, and I’ll be back here by then. You’ll need someone to operate the elevator and jump on board at the last minute.’

‘One of the deck handlers can do that just as well as you can.’

‘I know that. Look, just let me do this, okay?’

‘If we’re ready to go and you’re not on that elevator, I have to give the order to leave. We can’t risk waiting.’ Neale’s face was grim.

‘Understood.’ Conway turned and ran for the airlock. The chief stared after him, shaking his head. In his book, heroics just put other peoples’ lives at risk. The real men had the courage to follow orders, even when it was hard.

Conway pounded up the stairs and through the pressure doors, and ran along the diagonal corridor into the upper deck. There was no direct route from the lower hangar level to the lower deck, so he had to go down the next set of stairs before he was in the long corridor leading to the main control room. Sweat trickled down his neck. He had no doubt that the chief would leave him behind, and he knew he was being foolish; if the captain wanted to stay behind then nothing he could say was likely to sway him. But he had served under Donaldson for a long time and liked him, and he knew he would never forgive himself, in the years to come, if he hadn’t tried.

He ran past the rows of cabin doors, and the larger rooms, filled with the hum of communications equipment and air conditioning plant. The ship plunged to the left, and he cannoned into the wall, nearly falling over, before the ship rolled level again and he could continue. The control room was dead ahead, past a set of stairs in the middle of the corridor.

He banged the door to the control room open. The room with all its consoles and instruments and displays was empty except for the figure of the captain, sat at the helm console, holding the
Langley
steady while the aircraft launched. His comlink, the message light flashing, lay ignored on the console.

‘Sir, the last Frigate’s leaving; you’ve got to come now,’ Conway gasped.

Donaldson turned to face him, and shook his head, and the look in his eyes told Conway that he wasn’t going to leave.

‘Sir, you must. This – throwing yourself away, it’s
pointless.
’

‘Get on the aircraft, Colonel, and that’s an order. Will you allow me still to give orders?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Conway’s voice was thick in his throat.

‘You’ve been an excellent first officer. Now do your duty and leave the ship. For the record, I stayed aboard to hold the ship steady and refused to leave. Do you understand?’

Conway nodded, stood up straight, and saluted; he didn’t trust himself to speak.

‘Goodbye, Michael.’ Donaldson returned the salute, and turned back to the console. Conway stared at the scene for a few moments; he couldn’t tear himself away, and the details burned into his memory. The captain, sitting upright in the helmsman’s seat, watching the ship’s attitude; the radar display on the chart table in the centre of the room, now just a sea of flashing red warnings, and the scene through the front windows: an enormous bank of looming black and grey cloud, laced with vivid lightning, filled the sky.

A terrible sense of loss and despair descended on Conway. He made a move to go back to the captain, to reason with him, but halfway across the room he faltered and stopped. It wasn’t any good, and in the time he might spend arguing fruitlessly with the captain, the last Frigate would have gone. Neale had been right; his place was with the people who wanted to be saved. He turned, and with one last backward glance, started back at a run towards the hangar.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

After Conway had gone, his running footsteps disappearing down the corridor, Colonel Donaldson sighed deeply and bowed his head. Now, at last, he could be at peace.

He had come to his decision to stay with the ship, almost at the same moment that he had realised the
Langley
was doomed; it was as if fate had presented him with an obvious – if tragic – way out.

There could be no further investigation if all the evidence was destroyed. And if he, Donaldson, went down with the ship, then there would be no point in any case. All he had to do was make sure that he behaved with the highest standards of honour and dignity. If he did, then not only would the investigation be dropped, but he would spare Marion back on Earth the pain and humiliation of finding out how he had cheated on her, and what he had done to try to conceal it. The only other person who knew what had really happened would be an unrecognisable, smoking mess on the surface of the planet now. He realised that he was glad Shaffer was dead, and he let the thought run round his head without the faintest feelings of shame. He found that the imminent prospect of his own death brought considerable perspective, and with that thought, he came back to the present and looked around himself.

The
Langley
pitched again as it hit another ridge in air density, and he moved the controls gently, letting the mass of the ship ride out the turbulence. He could have let the autopilot try, but it wasn’t as good as a human pilot at anticipating the turbulence, and he wanted to keep the flight deck as stable as he could while the aircraft were getting away. He could hear them as they took off overhead, and see them appear to the right and left as they banked away; heading for the
Wright
, he presumed.

The heaving was getting more frequent now as they flew closer to the storm. He adjusted the heading slightly, to keep the wind moving directly along the line of the flight deck.

He clicked to one of the cameras showing the interior of the main hangar. There was the last Frigate, sitting on the lowered deck elevator, its wings outstretched. And there was Conway, running across the hangar, operating the elevator controls before jumping on to the rising platform. He watched as Conway climbed hurriedly aboard, the hatch closing behind him.