The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories (46 page)

“That’s something we’ll have to find out,” Farver said. He turned to Craig. “And quick too.”

“What was the shaking?” Craig asked. “Turbulence?

Farver shook his head. “I doubt it. It was more like a...like a—”

“Like a what? Craig asked impatiently.

“Like a sound wave,” Farver said. “
As if we’d gone past the speed of sound
”

Craig was incredulous. “You mean we hit Mach I? We broke the sound barrier? But how the hell could that happen? We didn’t get any Mach I warning.”

“We probably wouldn’t,” Farver said, “not with a true air speed of only 440. I don’t know what it was. I just don’t know. Magellan’s last speed check showed 3,000 knots. We could have broken some kind of sound barrier, but...” He hesitated. “But not any sound barrier I’ve ever heard of before. Magellan, can you give me a Loran fix now?”

Hatch checked his equipment. “Whatever that bump was, Skipper,” he said, “it’s really knocked out everything. Loran’s inoperative.”

“Altimeter and rate of climb steady, Skipper,” Craig announced, checking the dials in front of him.

Behind them Wyatt fiddled with the radio. “Skipper,” he said, “I still can’t raise Gander or Moncton or Boston or any place. It’s like I said...either they’re off the air or we are...or both!”

Farver took a deep breath. “Hatch—give me a sun fix. I’ll need a heading to Idlewild from our last known position. If we can’t raise anybody, we’ll have to go down and establish visual contact!”

Craig looked at him, amazed. “Skipper,” he said, “we can’t do that. If we leave this altitude we’ll land smack dab in the middle of twenty other flights.”

“Anybody got an alternative?” Farver asked. “Sooner or later we’re going to have to find a landmark or go VFR. With no radio contact we’re like a deaf and dumb man. As long as we stay up here we’re also blind.”

Purcell entered from the flight deck. “No damage aft, Skipper,” he announced. “Everybody’s shook up a bit and they’re curious. A few of them are plenty scared too.”

Farver took a deep breath. “Them and me both!” He reached for the hand mike. “Ours not to reason why. Ours but to do or die...into the valley of public relations.” He flicked on the cabin P.A. switch and wondered how his voice sounded as he spoke into the mike. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Farver. I want to assure you that everything is fine.”

Craig closed his eyes and shook his head.

Farver grinned, but his mouth looked as if it had been cut out of paper with a scissors. “There is no danger,” he continued on the mike. “We encountered a little clear air turbulence back there along with some kind of...atmospheric phenomena. There’s been no damage to the aircraft.”

His eyes moved up over the mike to scan the cockpit. The radio equipment. The silent black box that had once told them precisely where they were and where they were heading.

“I repeat,” he said, “There is no cause for alarm. We’ll keep you posted. If we run according to schedule, we should be landing in Idlewild inside of the next forty minutes.”

He flicked off the switch, put the mike aside. Jesus God, he said to himself, I should put on a gray flannel suit and sell toothpaste. There was a point, he thought to himself, where the passengers and crew should link arms and face whatever there was to face. They could be milk-fed and reassured to a degree. But then you had to come clean and tell them it was altogether probable that catastrophe was about two city blocks away, and all of them had better start making their peace. This is what he thought, but what he said was “Purcell—what’s our fuel?”

Purcell checked his instruments. “29,435 pounds,” was the answer.

Farver shook his head, scratched his jaw. “With that Loran out I don’t know what our ground speed is. But I’ve got a hunch we’ve left that tail wind. I don’t have that feeling of speed any more. Do you, Craig?

Craig shook his head.

Farver looked over his shoulder. “How about the heading to Idlewild, Magellan?”

Hatch scribbled furiously on a clipboard, adding, subtracting, estimating and guessing. “Part of this is scientific,” he announced finally “Part of it’s Kentucky windage. Try two-six-two. That’s as close as I can make it,”

Again the silent faces stared toward the Captain. The whistling of the jet engines sounded normal and natural and yet strangely foreboding. Farver took a long, deep breath, like a man heading into an icy shower.

“All right, gentlemen,’’ he announced, keeping his eyes straight ahead. “You know what we’re up against. We have no radios. We’re apparently out of touch with all ground radar points. We don’t know where we are. We don’t even know if we’re on airways. This beast gulps fuel—you know that only too well. We’ve got one chance—go down through this overcast and look for something familiar. It’s very possible, not to say probable...we may hit something on the way down, but we’ve got to take that chance.” He paused.

“I just want you to know where we stand. Everyone keep a sharp look out for other traffic and keep your fingers crossed.” He reached over and flicked on the seat-belt sign. His fingers tightened on the wheel in front of him and he said quietly, “I don’t think a few prayers would be out of order either.” Then his voice was a clipped command. “All right, Craig...we’re going down!”

The 707 raised its right wing and, like a monstrous yet beautiful bird, nosed down through the clouds and headed toward the earth. Inside the cockpit no one spoke a word. Eyes stared through the small windows—eyes that strained like overworked optical machines, desperately trying to x-ray through the billowing clouds. It was as if, by some miracle of concentration and effort, they hoped to see another airplane in time to avoid the blinding hell of a midair collision. But there were no other aircraft. There was nothing—only clouds that gradually became thinner and more transparent. Suddenly they had broken through, and below there was land.

Purcell spoke first. He shook his big, curly head, looked sardonically over toward Hatch and said, “Hatch, you dumb, silly bastard! Who the hell taught you to navigate?”

Wyatt kept shaking his head as he stared out of the window. “I don’t under—”

Purcell cut him off. ‘Two-six-two,” Purcell mimicked ferociously, “and that’s supposed to take us over New York. Why this dumb bastard couldn’t navigate a kite across a living room!”

Hatch was stunned. Before he could answer Farver called the shot. The captain was staring out toward his left wing and the land mass that loomed beneath it.

“Hold it a minute,” he said quietly. Then to Craig, “Level her off.’’

It was incredible. It was really a monstrous practical joke. It was a bad dream that followed a late lobster snack and an extra quart of beer. But there it was down beneath them, stretched out in sharp and clear relief.

“I don’t get it,” Farver said, shaking his head. “
But that’s Manhattan Island!
”

“Manhattan Island,” Purcell whispered, standing up to look over Craig’s shoulder. “How can it be Manhattan Island? Where the hell’s the skyline? Where are the buildings?”

“I don’t know where they are,” Farver said. “But we’re over New York City There’s only one small item amiss here.”

Jane Braden entered from the galley “The passengers are—” she began.

“I don’t blame them,” Purcell interrupted.

“We’re over land,” Jane persisted, “but I don’t see any—”

Farver turned and stared directly at her. “Any what, Janie? Any city?”

He shook his head. “We don’t either.” He jerked his thumb toward the windshield. “That’s Manhattan Island down there. There’s the East River and the Hudson River. There’s Montauk Point and every other topographical clue we need.” He paused. “The problem is...the real estate’s there. It’s just that the city and eight million people seem to be missing. In short...there isn’t any New York. It’s
disappeared!
”

Craig grabbed Farver’s arm. “Skipper, verify something for me, would you? And in a hurry?
Look!
”

Purcell and Hatch left their seats to look over the shoulders of the pilot and copilot.

“It’s not possible,” Hatch announced.

“What in the name of God is going on?” Purcell asked.

Down below, under the left wing of the 707, was a wild, tangled jungle, but something else was clearly visible, even from three thousand feet, through the window of the speeding airplane. It was a dinosaur nibbling some leaves off the top branch of a giant tree. That’s what it was. A dinosaur. And, when Flight 33 banked around to make another pass over the area, it looked up with huge, blinking eyes, perhaps thinking in its tiny mind that this was some big, strange bird. But it continued to feed.

In the first-class passenger cabin, the RAF pilot started at what he thought he saw sweep by underneath him. The fat lady asked him what was the matter, but he did not answer her. A tourist passenger in the rear of the plane, a zoology professor coming back from a sabbatical, gulped and marred the bridge of his nose, as he thrust his face against the glass to stare down at what appeared to be an extinct animal he had lectured about a thousand times. But a 707 is a rapid piece of machinery. Within moments it had left Manhattan Island far behind and was headed north toward Albany. But Albany, like New York, did not exist. It was jungle and swamp and a maze of low-slung mountains. The plane headed inland toward what should have been Buffalo, then Lake Erie and Detroit. None of it was there. No cities. No buildings. No people. Just a vast expanse of prehistoric land.

Captain William Farver announced to nobody in particular, “We’ve gone back in time. Somehow, someway, when we went through the speed of sound...we went back in time!”

Silence from the crew.

Silence from Jane Braden who, in this crazy, illogical moment, wanted to cry.

Silence from Farver, though his mind worked and probed and sifted and tried to formulate a plan.

Any eventuality. That, in a sense, was the Hippocratic oath of the airline pilot. Be prepared for any eventuality and be ready to meet it in a fraction of an instant without panic or indecision. But “any eventuality” did not include this. It meant a flameout of an engine. It meant a runaway prop. It meant a hydraulic system gone awry But the nightmare that was moving underneath the aircraft in the form of the eastern section of the North American continent, five million years earlier—this was an eventuality not planned for in any manual.

It was Craig who finally spoke. “What do we do about it, Skipper?”

Purcell looked at the fuel indicator “Skipper, we’re down to 19,000 pounds,” he said.

Farver scanned his instruments. “Here’s what we do about it. We rev this baby up until she’s going as fast as she can. We’ll climb upstairs until we hit that jet stream. And then...” He looked at the faces of the men and the girl. “Then we try to go back where we came from.” He turned to Craig. “All right, First Officer,” he said in a voice just loud enough to be heard, “
Let’s do it!
”

The 707 pointed its nose toward the high layer of cumulus clouds and in a moment was immersed in them, pulling away from the earth that mocked them with its familiarity and with its strangeness.

Hatch suddenly noticed that his Loran was working again and he screamed out the airspeed as the ship climbed. “700 knots,” he announced. “780 knots. 800 knots. 900 knots.” He looked up excitedly. “Skipper... we’re doing it, I think. Honest to God, I think we’re doing it—”

The plane screamed through the sky like a projectile from some massive gun. In thirty-eight seconds it was up to 4,000 knots. Farver suddenly looked up, the sweat pouring down his face.

“We’re picking it up again. Feel it? We’re picking it up again.”

They all felt it now. A sensation of such incredible speed...a feeling of propulsion beyond any experience they’d ever had before. And then the white light flashed in front of their faces. Once again the cockpit bucked and lurched and then the light was dissipated and the plane was level, its jet engines sucking in the air and roaring with unfettered power. But the blinding speed had gone. The plane intercom buzzed furiously and when Craig picked it up, he heard the frightened voice of one of the two stewardesses in the tourists’ section at the rear of the plane. The girl was trying to keep the hysteria out of her voice and it took Craig a moment to calm her down long enough for him to tell her that they were all right. It was the jet stream again.