To the Wild Sky

by Ivan Southall

  He snatched for her hands and felt fingers fasten on his wrist. He kicked, he scrambled, he clawed into the cockpit, and landed in the seat partly dazed and giddy, in a way marvelling that he had ever got there, in another way terrified that he had.

  He had never held the controls except in straight and level flight, and this aircraft was going down, still going down, yawing from side to side, its attitude constantly changing, its instrument readings meaningless, and the pressures relayed from the wheel and the rudder bar wholly alarming, wholly confusing.

  He didn’t know where to begin. All he could see was red earth and a leaning horizon apparently above his head, a horizon that leaned first one way and then another. He didn’t even know how high he was; couldn’t find the altimeter on the instrument panel; couldn’t think because of the screaming of the engine, the crying of the engine winding to a higher and higher note; couldn’t reason because of fear, his own fear and the fear in the others. Their horror was an actual force, like a thing wrapping itself around him, not urging him to master the Egret with a calculated shuffling of hands and feet, but freezing him into helplessness, turning his muscles to stone and his limbs to unmoving, unyielding clay.

  There was a pause, not in movement or in time or in events, but in the processes of Gerald’s thoughts, a pause when nothing happened, when his only awareness was the dull and approaching certainty of death. It numbed him as though his body and brain had suffered a crushing physical blow. It held him motionless, transfixed, hypnotized, stiff-necked, and stiff-backed. His mouth was dry; his lips, parted, were stuck to his teeth. His eyes were rounded and protruding. He had become something solid, almost lifeless already; but the leaning horizon moved leisurely back and lay straight, high on the windscreen, and the slewing instrument needles steadied, and degree by degree, unseen by Gerald, the horizon crept down the windscreen like a slowly receding wave until it passed from sight and nothing was left but sky, pale sky, quite empty.

  And the engine note changed; it was no longer screaming, no longer crying. It slid down and down the scale like a sigh.

  And suddenly the boy felt blood in his veins, felt it thundering in his head, and he became aware of his mouth, of his tongue swollen, of his lips apparently cracking like oven-baked paper, of sweat starting in streams from his brow and armpits and back and abdomen and legs.

  He saw the sky, nothing but sky, and heard the engine labouring as though panting up a steep hill, and felt the almost unbearable tension snap in his limbs.

  His understanding leapt into the present. The aircraft was climbing far too steeply; struggling for lift, squashing, only a second or two short of the stall. This was something he knew. This was something he knew how to put right. His father, and Jim, too, had allowed him to reach the same position before.

  Clumsily, but correctly, he edged the control column forward and the Egret sagged almost breathlessly and shook herself. There was a shudder in her wings, even in the floor, but the moment passed and the horizon came up and placed itself neatly above the base of the windscreen, just above the nose, almost exactly where it should have been.

  Gerald realized it was there, not so much with amazement, but with awe. His father had always said that the Egret would fly herself if given half the chance, that a stable aeroplane was stable because of itself, not because of its pilot. If the controls were held at neutral, he maintained, then the Egret, like any good aeroplane, would sort out almost any tangle for herself. That was what he must have done! He must have held the controls at neutral or thereabouts, not because of what his father had said to him but because his fear had frozen him there.

  Or was he being unfair to himself? In seconds, in flashes, his mind raced from conclusion to conclusion. Perhaps he had done it that way because his father had told him it was the right way. Perhaps he hadn’t been frightened at all, not really. Perhaps his behaviour had demonstrated his presence of mind. Perhaps he had been master of the situation all the time. It was obvious, surely. A fellow couldn’t fool himself about a thing like that. They were alive, weren’t they, not dead? That should be proof enough for anybody.

  He turned, then, to Jan, half expecting from her a smile or a warm and thankful hand, but Jan had been sick again. She was green. Funny, he had never noticed it before. Her face was like Bert’s – common.

  It was most disappointing and quite disgusting.

  6.

  To the Wild Sky

  Carol was ill; not air-sick or anything like that, but shaking uncontrollably and sobbing, frightening Bruce, bewildering Mark. She was shaking all over: her hands pressed to her eyes, her sun-glasses like bird’s wings broken beneath her feet.

  For a while she had been all right, no more terrified than the others, no more shocked than they were, no more helpless, but something had given way when it was all over.

  She had tried so hard to stop it because she was not a baby. When it got down to things like real merit of character she was far stronger than many grown-ups. It was because of Jim mainly. She had never been confronted by death before and she sobbed at the indignity of it, for the way a nice man with nice eyes and a clean square jaw had been thrown aside by children when the spark of his life had gone out, when his usefulness had come to an end.

  Bruce couldn’t console her, though he tried, because he didn’t really know what it was about. He knew it was Jim, but he didn’t know in what way. He was upset, too, but girls were different from boys. His mother was always ramming that down his throat and he had come to accept it years ago, because Jan was his sister. She’d been born the same day, a twin with a brain that got much the same things right and much the same things wrong – but they had different hearts; one the heart of a boy, the other the heart of a girl.

  Something drew Bruce’s eyes to the front. It was Gerald, looking back from the cockpit. It was uncommonly difficult to see his face, for it was indistinct, almost hazed. Yet it was only seven or eight feet away. There seemed to be a smile on Gerald’s face that said, ‘Look what I’ve done! Aren’t I clever? You’d all be dead like Jim but for me.’

  That was true enough, but it was odd how the slant of Gerald’s head seemed to say it out loud; and it was odd how arrogant, how unnecessary it seemed to be. Bruce liked Gerald. At other times, Bruce thought Gerald was marvellous; clever and rich and different. Normally, he would never have criticized Gerald, unless someone else had put a critical thought into his head.

  Bruce smiled back, awkwardly, but only with his mouth. He didn’t feel like smiling inside. And Gerald turned his eyes to the front again, still with that odd slant to his head, and Bruce stared at the back of his neck, strangely ill-at-ease. Gerald had always said he could fly and Bruce had never questioned him. He’d never doubted, even when death had seemed so close, that Gerald would bring the Egret under control if he could get into the pilot’s seat, with his hands to the wheel. And Gerald had done that; Gerald had done everything that Bruce had expected of him, even though he had been terribly slow to start. There was no cause to doubt Gerald now. How could he doubt a boy who had proved himself? But he wished he wouldn’t sit with that slant to his head, that cocky slant, like a show-off. Not while Jim was behind him, dead, on the floor.

  Bruce had to do something about Jim. Jim had to be covered up. It wasn’t decent the way he was. When people died they were supposed to be private, shut away, with something over them. And it wasn’t right that Colin should be down there with him. It wasn’t decent the way Colin was, either. Poor old Col.

  Poor old Jim. Fancy a fella dying like that. Out like a light. And flying an aeroplane, too. It was awfully careless of somebody. Surely if a fella had to die he could die in bed or while he was having his dinner or taking a walk or something. Fancy dying in an aeroplane. Crikey, if he’d died on the outward trip instead of the homeward one, no one would have been the wiser. If he’d been in an empty aeroplane he’d have crashed and everyone would have said that he’d been stunting or something.

  But fancy dyin
g at all? So sudden. So quick. Did people always die like that? Out like a light?

  Bruce looked at Jim again. He had to lean forward to bring him into view. He wasn’t frightened of him, but he was very sorry, very sad in a way, and Carol didn’t help. If anything really worried him it was Carol and the way she was carrying on. She seemed to feel it so much. Perhaps girls always kicked up a fuss. Perhaps boys felt it that little bit less because they were different from girls. Mark wasn’t crying, or didn’t seem to be. He was sitting almost erect in his seat, with ashen cheeks and his mouth open, and his head turned a little to one side. But big, slow tears were channelling down the side of Mark’s nose and were sharp on his tongue. He was so frightened. His heart thudded against his ribs, almost taking his breath away. He just couldn’t believe that it had happened. Every time he tried to think of it, it overwhelmed him. But he was determined not to cry. He would die before he would cry. These tears weren’t really crying. They were different. He wanted to ask Bruce: ‘Can Gerald really fly? Will he get us there? And Jim’s not really dead, is he? Not really dead?’

  Gerald flew on still getting the feel of things, still trying to remember what all the different instruments meant. Which lever, for instance, was throttle? Which was mixture? Which was pitch? You could tell best by sense of touch. Oh, it was easy enough to read the labels on the throttle-box, but that was a mug’s way of doing it. But the instruments on the flying panel caused him most concern; the rate-of-climb indicator for one. He couldn’t get it back to zero. Even when the horizon was level and the airspeed more or less right, the Egret continued to climb at about 800 feet a minute. It had doubled its height in only a few minutes. When everything had settled down, his height had been 5,000 feet; now it was over 10,000, and the only way he knew of getting down again was to push the nose forward. But then the Egret started going faster and faster: 130 knots, 140 knots and then 150, and that was much too fast. There was a metal plate riveted on to the instrument panel that said:

  Take-off

  ·

  50 knots

  Climb

  ·

  90 knots

  Cruise

  ·

  120 knots

  Maximum

  ·

  140 knots

  Glide

  ·

  90 knots

  Stall

  ·

  40 knots

  And then there was another batch of speeds for use with flaps; quarter flap, half flap, three-quarter flap, full flap. Flaps? Gerald didn’t even know what to do with them.

  It was very handy having all this information plastered on notices round the cockpit, but it was worrying when the figures wouldn’t fit. He’d never worried about figures before. When he had flown with his father, his father had done all the worrying about that sort of thing. He was always screaming at Gerald: ‘Watch that airspeed. Watch your altimeter. Can’t you see your turn-and-bank? Look at your artificial horizon. For heaven’s sake, boy; airspeed, airspeed. Now what course are you supposed to be flying? Not that. Check your gyro against your compass. Airspeed, airspeed! Do you want to kill the lot of us? Get out of that seat. Come on, out of it! You couldn’t fly a kite.’

  Sometimes it had been a blessed relief to get out of the seat, away from those fiendish instruments, but he couldn’t get away now. Now there was no one beside him to take over; no one to scream and shout; no one to push the wheel forward or pull it back; no one to straighten it up when he dropped a wing; no one to adjust the throttle!

  The throttle!

  That’s what it was. That was why he kept going up and up. Jim must have been climbing when he died, and the throttle hadn’t been altered. It was still set for the climb.

  But what sort of adjustment was it that he had to make?

  His father had always done it for him. He’d never noticed. He had always been so busy keeping the aircraft reasonably straight and level.

  That was why everything was so noisy. The engine was set for the climb. Golly, if he climbed at the proper speed, at ninety knots, he’d be going up like a rocket. What the dickens was Jim climbing for at that rate?

  He had to alter the throttle. It was no good looking to anyone else to do it for him. No one else aboard knew the first thing about it.

  Gerald closed his eyes for a moment, tightly. He was not a fool. He knew the game was over. Just for a minute or two it had been a game, in a way; a big thrill. Just for a minute or two he had had a sense of power, of mastery, of absolute control.

  It wasn’t going to be as easy as that, because his arms were aching already and his legs to the rudder bar were trembling and there was this fear of touching anything, of altering anything, even the trim. That was why there was so much pressure on the wheel, that was why his arms were aching. The aircraft was trimmed for the climb. It was not only a matter of altering the throttle; the trimming tabs had to be adjusted, too, and probably the pitch of the propeller as well. Flying an aeroplane was so much more than holding a wheel. So very much more. There was even the danger of climbing so high that people would start getting sick, start fainting. People coming up quickly from lower levels were supposed to use oxygen over 10,000 feet and he was up to 12,000 already.

  ‘Oh, Jim,’ he groaned, ‘What am I to do?’

  As soon as one control was altered everything else had to be altered, too. He’d be pushing at this and pulling at that and he might never get things back into balance. The fact that everything had been balanced for the climb was the only reason the Egret was still in the air, instead of lying crushed on the plain. As things were, she would continue to climb but would remain stable. Once anything was altered, Jim’s dead hand would cease to control it. One mistake would lead on to the next, then to the next, and finally to disaster.

  The altimeter reached 13,000 feet and crept on farther round the dial. Gerald’s hand had gone indecisively to the throttle lever; he had rested it there, but he just wasn’t brave enough to draw back the throttle. He’d removed his hand, then replaced it, and taken it away yet again. Oh, how he wished for someone to help him; for the voice of a man to say, ‘All right, son. Pull it back. If you get into trouble I’ll put it right.’ But there was no voice, no reassuring hand, no presence.

  Perhaps he could edge it back a little, a minute amount. Surely that wouldn’t upset everything? After all, he was holding the nose down now, against the pressure of the trim, and managing it all right, even if his arms were tiring. Golly. That was something he mustn’t forget. He mustn’t tire himself out. There was no automatic pilot on the Egret – not that he would have known how to use it. Oh, glory. The complications. Was there no end to them?

  The altimeter read 14,200 feet, far higher than he had ever been in the Egret before; far, far higher.

  If he did throttle back, the trim would still be wrong, quite wrong, and he’d have to hold the nose up. Then he’d lose airspeed and the slower the Egret flew the harder she would be to handle. Speed was safety. He had started talking to himself and didn’t realize it. And there were hours still to go, no radio to send a distress signal, and Coonabibba homestead to find!

  He peered down, almost with a touch of giddiness. The ground seemed to be a thousand miles away, a blur, meaningless, featureless, endlessly flat, endlessly monotonous, no rivers, no roads, no hills, no big broad arrows saying, ‘This way to Coonabibba’.

  Gerald looked away, right away from it. It frightened him and weakened him. His breathing was quickening, a dull ache was gathering in his ears and his eyes were playing tricks. They must be, otherwise he’d surely be able to see something on the ground and the sky would be blue, not white. Even the sun had paled.

  Cloud! He was flying into cloud, brushing at the edges of it, cloud like mist on a pond, acres of it, miles of it. Cloud in layers like magic carpets for as far as he could see.

  He whimpered. He knew he would never fly blind. In cloud he would lose his balance. There was an almost irresistible impulse to drag the throttle off an
d drop away from it all, but he was too scared. His fear was even stronger than his impulse.

  ‘What am I to do?’ He cried it out, screamed at the windscreen, and, distraught, turned suddenly on Jan. ‘What am I to do? I don’t know what to do.’ But Jan was huddled in her seat, dull of eye and disinterested. She looked almost stupid. He had half hoped for a miracle, that he’d find his father sitting there, but instead it was a stupid, slow-witted, heavy-lidded girl shivering from head to foot. He detested her. Jim should have been there. Yes, Jim. It was unfair. It was crazy. Jim should have been there. It was his job to have been there. He was paid good money to be there.

  He shouldn’t be down on the floor, not down near the door. What the dickens was Bruce doing with him? Bruce shouldn’t have left his seat. Jim had particularly asked him not to do so. What did Bruce mean by moving around? Bruce was in his shirt, looking frozen. Laboriously, as though his coat weighed a ton, he placed it over Jim’s head. His eyes, wide eyes, looked up and his lips formed the word, ‘Cold!’

  Ridiculous. Was there no end to the silliness of people? Cold? What did cold have to do with it? How could Jim be cold on a beautiful day like this?

  Gerald sneaked a look at the altimeter again. He had been trying not to. He hadn’t looked at it for quite a while. For how long? One minute? Ten minutes? A timeless interval. 17,300 feet and not a mountain to cross. He peered closer. Perhaps it was upside down. In that instant sunlight vanished and the Egret shook. It was as though she had run over a bump in a road.