To the Wild Sky Page 7

  Really and truly, someone should take that kid out and drown him. Shout, shout, shout. Jumping up and down all the time. Jigging around as though he had ants in his pants. Honest to goodness, you’d think that he’d have worn himself to a frazzle an hour ago. Having Jan for a sister was bad enough; having this little horror for a brother would be just about the end. Maybe that was why Col was such a quiet type; the poor fellow was probably beaten half stupid with noise. Probably Col was shamming, too. Probably keeping his eyes shut and his ears shut out of sheer exhaustion. Poor old Col. He sure looked terrible. He’d be in for some shocks when he woke up. Col didn’t know about Jim. Didn’t know about old Gerald up there, fighting. Didn’t know about the climb, either, that had just about frozen everybody solid, or about the dust.

  That dust was bad; getting worse, if anything. How was old Gerald ever to find Coonabibba? Three hours to Coonabibba, Jim had said. Only fifteen minutes to go, but everywhere there was only dust. The ground wasn’t there. It had melted away.

  There were no landmarks, no water-courses either dried up or flowing, no artesian bores or tanks in little oases of trees, no homesteads. Gerald peered into the dust haze until his eyes smarted, until his brain was weary, until he ached with foreboding, but saw nothing.

  He hardened his resolve and took the Egret down to 2,000 feet (though bodily tired he was handling the controls with more confidence), but still saw nothing. And he was afraid of hills. There weren’t many, but there were some. And he might not be near Coonabibba, anyway. He might be farther west, near the ranges on the South Australian border, or farther south, near the ranges round Broken Hill, or farther north, near the Queensland ranges, or even west. And in the east there were great mountains. There was no saying where he really was, no knowing, no guessing. He hadn’t seen a mark on the ground that he could recognize for two and a half hours. And though he had stuck on course, on 315, or as close to it as he could, it was not the course that he was flying that determined his position, but the unknown gale that was raising dust even to 2,000 feet above the earth. He could have been almost anywhere over the state of New South Wales or across its borders.

  Nor could he be sure that the altimeter was right. Altimeter readings varied according to the weather. Although the altimeter said 2,000 feet, he might have been 3,000 feet above the invisible ground. On the other hand he might have been only 1,000 feet above it. There was no safe way of finding out, and if this were Coonabibba country, hills were lurking in the dust to heights greater than 1,000 feet; age-worn, flat-topped hills that on a clear day and from a distance looked like picnic tables set for giants. On a day like this, though, they were walls of crumbling rock that might be met head-on, that might smash an aeroplane into tiny bits and pieces in a rending instant of time.

  Was he to press down lower and lower, taking a chance on finding flat ground, on landing in a gale without people standing by to help if he crashed, or on coming down in wild country hundreds of miles from the nearest homestead?

  There was nothing like that he could do except fly on and on and on and wait for the dust to clear. But it was after four o’clock and what dust storm ever cleared in two or three hours? It would have to get worse before it got better, and in three hours’ time it would be dark. There’d still be fuel left, enough to last another hour beyond that, but what was the use of fuel after dark? He couldn’t land in the dark. Even at a proper aerodrome, with lights and everything, he wouldn’t be able to land in the dark. He didn’t know how. He’d have to be able to see! To take his sight away was to take his life away.

  What course was he to fly? If the winds were set in such a way that he was actually tracking over the ground on 315 he might end up over the deserts, the real deserts of rock and salt and sand, and if he landed there no one would ever find them. No one lived out there, not even animals or birds, or so he had been told. It hadn’t rained out there for years, except for a shower or two the Christmas before last.

  If he turned south he would be sure to fly into the range country. He would have to go up to be safe, and the higher he went the less chance he would have of sighting a homestead or an area of level ground. It would be a case of sight by chance and swoop without delay. That was unlikely above 3,000 feet. The dust would have obscured his sighting before he could take advantage of it.

  The same applied to the east. That was where the mountains were. They might be hundreds of miles away but they might be very close. He might run out of the dust sooner in that direction, but who was to say that he would? Who was to say that the dust would not hide the mountains until the moment that he hit them?

  He had to fly north or he had to fly in a circle, one or the other. There were ranges north of Coonabibba, certainly there were, but he could fly for hundreds of miles in that direction before the hills became mountains. No matter where he was, or so he reasoned, he could fly north in comparative safety until dusk. Heading in that direction, providing he was above 2,000 feet, he could not possibly come to grief on high land. But if he chose to fly a circle he would be flying in all directions continuously, drifting with the wind, perhaps into the gravest danger.

  He had to fly north.

  He had to fly away into heaven alone knew what, because he dared not do anything else. Dared not even go down, groping for the ground, hoping for a miracle, hoping for the homestead, for any homestead to appear like a harbour bar after a rough crossing.

  Gerald set 000 degrees on the compass and eventually settled on course, due north, though he knew that if the wind was on his port beam he still could be drifting east into the mountains, and if it was on his starboard beam he still could be drifting west into the desert. That was the chance he had to take. There was no way under the sun of avoiding it.

  At five-twenty-one, Colin stirred weakly in his seat and opened his eyes. He had stirred several times during the past hour – as Jan had – but he had dropped off again, breathing heavily, rasping through the side of his mouth, his face still bloodless; even his hands crossed limply in his lap were grey, as though the long summer had not touched them.

  He felt foul. His throat was hot and dry, his tongue was like a piece of leather. He longed to swallow, but couldn’t; longed for a drink of water, longed for a cool bath. He wasn’t a thinking creature at all, just a feeling one. He felt as though he had slept for a long day, exposed to the hot sun, as though heat had wrung the last drop of moisture out of his body.

  For a while he stared at his blurred hands in his lap, unable to account for his attitude or for the noise that hammered at him, unable to remember why he should feel so ill, so absolutely wretched. Then he remembered; and an awful sensation of nausea swept through him. He fought it off grimly and his eyes shifted from his lap to the curious shape on the floor that looked rather like a man but couldn’t have been.

  It was covered with a coat, but it had the legs of a man.

  Colin stared at it and heard a shrill voice at his ear. ‘It’s Jim. He’s dead.’

  It was Carol. He couldn’t see her very well, because she was too close. Either she was raving mad or he was dreaming. That was Gerald up in front, flying. There was cloud outside, an endless ocean of cloud stretching to the limits of visibility. They were riding over the top of it as they would skim on skis across snow or sea. It was a dream.

  But there were the unquestionable matters of reality; the vibration of the engine and the sound of it, the movement of the aircraft and the presence of it, the smells, the sensations of flight, the existence of himself, and the sun. That great big sun hanging low over the clouds was hot and real.

  That meant Jim was there, dead. It meant Gerald was there, flying. It meant that he had slept for a long time while terrible things had happened.

  He saw the water-bag in the bracket on the wall and groped for it. When he closed his hand over it and felt it, damp and cold, he knew that everything truly was real. He fumbled for the neck of the bag and for the plastic beaker and lifted them into his lap.

 
; ‘Careful,’ Carol cried. ‘Don’t spill it.’

  He peered at her, trying to put her words together, trying to get the sense of them. Water was important. That was the meaning that came through to him. He nodded and gave her the bag then held the beaker out to her with a silent appeal. She half-filled it for him but wouldn’t give him any more, shaking her head firmly, with pursed lips and narrowed eyes.

  He made the water last, made it go as far as a pint, holding it in his mouth, barely allowing it to trickle down his throat. Colin had got the message. He was a bright boy. His scattered senses were coming together, were pin-pointing. No one had to tell Colin that they were lost; that if they were to have reached Coonabibba they would have done so one hour and fifteen minutes ago. No one had to tell him that that ocean of cloud cut them off from the earth. It might as well have been an ocean of rock. It was impregnable. No aeroplane flown by a boy would ever get down through it.

  Everything was so terrifyingly clear to Colin. Even the sun. The sun wasn’t right. It didn’t look like his sun. It looked like a sun that belonged somewhere else, that shone over an alien world.

  Then the water turned his stomach and he was sick again and his vision clouded over and his brain dulled and the one boy aboard who might have had the mind and the ingenuity to grapple with figures and angles, with courses and with winds, lapsed again into uselessness.

  Gerald had run into cloud shortly before five o’clock. It had pressed down and down until he had had no choice but to steel himself to fly up through it. He had gone up through it on instruments for twelve fearful, almost endless minutes, and had broken out into glorious sunlight at 11,000 feet. By then his nerve had been close to breaking point. Looking back, he marvelled that he had had the courage or the resolve or the ability. Almost numbed with fear he had set the Egret for the climb and allowed her to climb, allowed her to feel her way up, allowed her to fly herself. How he loved her. She was beautiful. She was marvellous. Oh, she was working so hard for him. It wouldn’t be her fault if they came to a sticky end.

  It was after he had got there, after he had sat himself on top of the cloud, that he had started thinking about ice. Oh, golly; if he had thought of it sooner he would never have got through to 11,000 feet. He’d have turned back. He could so easily have iced-up in that cloud. His controls would have frozen, his engine would have choked out, and they would have plunged in terror to their deaths. There were ways of beating ice and the Egret could beat it, but only if one knew which buttons to push, which switches to turn. Gerald knew now, he had read round the cockpit until he had found them, but during the climb he had not known. How dangerous a little knowledge could be. How often the gods had smiled upon his ignorance when they should have struck him down. Oh, she was a lucky aircraft, the Egret. She always had been. She’d never failed, never faltered. Not in four years and two months, from the day that Gerald’s father had bought her and flown her proudly home to Coonabibba.

  But what was happening down below?

  What changes were passing across the face of the unseen countryside? Were there deserts down there, or pastures, or mountains, or towns? Was there a dusty silence or a roaring storm, tossing trees and driving rain? Or were there people occupied by their own work and their own thoughts, unaware of the helpless children two miles above them flying into nowhere? Or perhaps cocking their ears, listening?

  They wouldn’t be working now, if they were in towns. Shops would be shutting their doors because it was five-thirty exactly. Office workers would have gone home. Boys and girls would be listening to the children’s hour or watching T.V. Mothers would be preparing the evening meal. Fish would be frying. Steaks would be grilling. There would be onions in the pan.

  Gerald was so hungry. And tired. He ached and ached. His arms were so heavy. His legs felt as though they were breaking in two through the shins. Never, since the day of his birth, had each hour been so long. For nearly four hours now he had sat in this seat, wavering between terror and nerveless calm, adding up miles, or trying to add them up. It was so difficult to fly and calculate in figures at the same time. At 120 knots, how many miles did he cover in an hour? Give or take a few, he thought about 140. Multiplied by four hours that made 560, multiplied by five hours it made 700, and by six hours about 850. Then there were the periods when he had gone faster and the periods when he had gone slower, the periods when he had wavered about trying to settle on course, the long beginning when he had flown no set course at all. And the wind! That was the vital reckoning. Depending upon its direction, the speed of the wind had to be added on or taken off. After six hours aloft, by which time he would have to land somehow, he might have covered over the ground less than 500 miles or more than 1,000, or any intermediate distance. He couldn’t reckon it up. He got lost in its byways.

  Glory, a thousand miles? Where would that put him? Into the dead heart of the continent or into the sea?

  What if he broke cloud over the sea?

  What sea would it be and in what direction would the land lie?

  He was imagining things again. Pilots shouldn’t have over-active imaginations. It was a stupid and dangerous thought. It was the sort of thought that could lead to a panic decision to push down into the unknown, through the cloud, looking for the ground. He had to resist that temptation. Indeed, he had to resist the temptation to think of anything that he feared. That sort of thinking was sabotage. Anything that affected his nerve or his confidence was a threat to the lives of six people.

  More and more he was becoming aware of those people, those children, his friends. They’d been marvellous. They really had. They must have been frightened half out of their wits, but they had kept their places, hadn’t been near him, hadn’t bothered him, hadn’t interfered in any way at all. A fellow could be lucky with his friends. Or perhaps with Bruce. It was probably Bruce.

  He turned his back for the first time in hours and immediately met Bruce’s eyes and Carol’s too. He smiled at them and they waved.

  Gerald warmed inside.

  They were marvellous friends; marvellous the way they had trusted him.

  He glanced at Jan, at that funny little girl huddled in the right-hand seat, and for an instant caught her blood-shot eye peeping at him round her nose. In the same instant the eye shut. Poor kid. She was so sick.

  He owed it to them all to keep his mind off things that frightened him. It was better simply to fly, to put his faith in the lucky Egret and to fix his thoughts upon the certainty of a safe arrival somewhere.

  He had to fly on until the sky was clear and the earth was laid out in order and clarity beneath him. And all the time, despite everything, he had to admit to the conviction that when the cloud parted, as soon it surely would, he would find an open road to land on or a town with an air-strip or a homestead paddock, flat and wide waiting for him. Upon that picture he had to freeze his thoughts and dismiss every unhappy alternative.

  The moon rose to the lip of the cloud at a minute after six o’clock and the sun set at 6.08.

  There should be an hour’s twilight, or thereabouts. That was what Gerald thought. It was what Bruce thought. Not that either of them had ever put a stop-watch on twilight before. It was one of those things that you lived with, that you took for granted, that seemed to last about an hour towards the end of summer. Of course, it was not a period of undiminished light, it was a period of fading light, of dying light, which at a certain point rather difficult to determine it ceased to be light and became darkness.

  There was no break in the cloud. Ten-tenths cloud, pilots called it. Its upper surface was like the sea on a choppy day. It was like the sea along a rocky coast, here and there breaking over reefs with towers of spray, with forms like ships of another day sailing past with rose-tinted canvas blooming to the wind. But remarkably level for all that; not often below 10,000 feet, rarely above 12,000 feet. But it was thick and deep; thousands of feet deep. It was still a barrier that would not allow Gerald to go down.

  Bruce knew that. C
loud was their enemy, just as much as the dust had been, but a distinct anxiety was beginning to take root in Bruce. Would the cloud be gone before dark? The optimism in his nature said it would, but a streak of pessimism, foreign to him, said it wouldn’t. What then? Would the light of the moon be light enough to fly by and to land by? It was a half moon, maybe about five-eighths. It was a clear moon, already bright and white. Would it be bright enough for Gerald to see by?

  What was Gerald thinking about? Bruce felt he should be sitting in that seat beside Gerald. Back here he felt useless, but Jan was there and he’d never shift Jan. Ask her to move and she’d be sick all over the place again.

  What was Jan thinking? She was far too restless to be sleeping; she was squirming in her seat, shifting from one side to the other. Bruised. Just as Bruce was bruised. He’d have to eat his dinner off the mantelpiece for a week. (Dinner? Crumbs, he was hungry.) And there was a chill in the air now that the sun had gone. It was surprising how quickly the difference was felt. Surprising, too, how rapidly the red lights, the pink lights and the purple lights were streaking in the sky, immense smudges of colour in motion, red in the west, pink and purple in the east. They were beautiful. It was the sort of sky you wanted to share with people, but how could you share it in silence with a sleepy looking individual like Mark? It was like being in solitary confinement, sitting next to Mark; cut off from everybody else by the sound of the engine and not game to shout anything in Mark’s direction in case he shook himself out of his doze and started performing again. Bruce felt that Mark dozing, or sound asleep, was the only sort of Mark he’d ever be able to take.