To the Wild Sky

by Ivan Southall

  Gerald blinked, dazed, sleepy. His ears were hurting. His feet and toes were numb. Ahead was nothing. Blankness. Emptiness. He lurched to the side to look down, but the earth had gone. The sun had gone, too. Imagine that? And he felt sick, in a vague sort of way, and sore and short of breath. He could have been struggling in mud or drowning in ice.

  It was so cold and bleak. It was winter-time, but everything was wrong. Something in him clung desperately to that thought. The only thing right was the knob of the throttle lever hot against the palm of his hand. Everything else was cold. Even his hand was cold, but the knob of the throttle lever was like the bowl of his father’s pipe, warm and reassuring. He knew that something had to be done with the throttle, something he hadn’t wanted to do.

  He pushed it. It was faintly surprising how strongly it resisted him, but the engine responded. He heard its roar gather more power but then a voice said to him, ‘That’s not right, either.’ So he pulled it back again and something seemed to be cut away from beneath him. He seemed to be sitting in mid-air. He seemed to be suspended. It was a funny feeling. The engine note had receded as though it had gone away somewhere; into another room, perhaps, or round the corner of the street.

  After a while he got used to it and rather liked the sound of it. It sounded like the rhythm of a dance-band, though sometimes it was as though the drummer lost the beat and thrashed about a bit. Then, just when Gerald thought he had lost it completely, the rhythm would come in again. That happened several times. And there was another sound, as though there were two drummers, one with sticks and the other with a switch, and gradually the one with the switch became stronger. It was a rushing sound, like water or wind, or the toboggan that had swept him down the mountainside at the snowfields last year.

  Then it sounded like the Egret in the hands of his father as it turned into wind for landing, as it glided steeply with the engine throttled back towards the dusty red earth, half a mile from the homestead. But his father wasn’t there and the homestead wasn’t there and the earth wasn’t there either. All the world was grey except for a red mist below. Cloud above him, open air around him, and wind-driven dust beneath. And 9,400 feet on the altimeter.

  Gerald was very calm, as though an invisible hand stroked his brow. The Egret was controlled; she was not plunging wildly towards earth. She was dropping at a hundred knots and dropping straight.

  The boy thought back, but there were recent minutes of some obscurity. He could remember them, but not clearly. Yet something had happened. He had entered those minutes in a state of terror; he had emerged from them self-possessed. He was so sore all over, inside and outside, but he was calm.

  His father had thrashed him once with straight-faced and unwavering severity, and afterwards Gerald had been calm. He had known why he had been thrashed and it made sense. This made sense, too. In a way, he had been thrashed again. And now he was calm; confident enough to allow the Egret to continue its downward path; humbled enough to regard his former self with some distaste.

  It was senseless trying to forget that the throttle existed. He had to use it and he would never begin to understand its operation until he did use it. The idea was to use it very gently, a little at a time. He had to do the same with the trimming tabs – a little at a time. Everything in the cockpit, in fact, had to be handled that way; then, with any sort of luck, he should be able to keep out of serious trouble. No more of this business of getting above 10,000 feet, nor of getting below 5,000, either. At one extreme of height there were the curious dangers of rarefied air and at the other extreme he would be too close to the hard ground to correct mistakes. All he had to do was to remain safely in the air and practise the different drills. He could even practise landing in the air, up to a point. He had to keep his head and take his time. There was all the time in the world. The Egret’s tanks were almost full; she certainly carried sixty gallons; and that gave him six hours in the air. No; it didn’t give him six hours. That would take him on to 8 p.m. and it would be dark sometime between 7.00 and 7.30. So he had five hours in which to prepare himself for landing.

  Six thousand feet. Time to start working on the throttle.

  He advanced it a fraction, judged its effect, and advanced it a bit more. It wasn’t difficult. By the time the aircraft was down to 4,700 feet he had found the balance between engine power and level flight, and very cautiously had reached up his hand for the trimming tabs. He started turning the handle, first the wrong way. There was no mistaking that build-up of pressure in the flying controls, so he wound the other way, and little by little the pressure eased out. It was a marvellous feeling. It was such a relief, such a thrill. He couldn’t remember anything, ever, that had given him a greater sense of well-being and satisfaction. He had to smile. He couldn’t help himself. But there wasn’t arrogance in his smile now. That had gone; the cocky slant to his head had gone, too. His pride now wasn’t for himself; it was for the Egret. He felt a sudden affection for her, different from what he had known before, something like the affection one had for a friend as distinct from the feeling one might have had for a possession. The Egret was working for him, just as she worked for his father, just as she had worked for Jim; even though Gerald knew the propeller pitch was not quite right. The Egret was working for him, despite that. She had made allowances for him. She was on his side. And it was not that conditions were good. The air was disturbed and she was moving around a lot but she always came back to an even keel. Even when the bumps were bad and she dropped a wing, he tried not to help her too much. ‘Let her fly herself.’ It was his own voice, his inner voice, but they were his father’s words.

  Of course he still had to find Coonabibba. That wasn’t going to be easy. But there was time, time enough. And when he found it, he would circle and make a few runs over the homestead and drop a note. Yes, a note, telling them what had happened. Then he’d give them time to get out to the strip and to make everything ready for a crash landing. He tightened a little when he thought of the landing, but the certainty of a very heavy, very rough touchdown had to be faced. It was good that the Egret was rugged; it was good that she could take punishment, for she would certainly have to take it this day. Landing wasn’t easy. Landing was the hardest job any pilot had to do. Even good pilots made bad landings sometimes; bad pilots made good landings hardly ever.

  Gerald looked over the side, looked down, half expecting to see the River Darling near Louth. They usually crossed the river within sight of Louth. It was the one landmark that Gerald could be sure of. There wasn’t much else he could identify with certainty; one boundary fence looked the same as another, one homestead the same as another, one station track the same as another; but Louth was unmistakable.

  But the Darling wasn’t there. There was no river. There was nothing.

  That struck a chord in him, even if it startled him. He had seen the dust before, but in some odd way its significance had not registered. The dust wasn’t lying in clouds, not exactly; it was a haze, like a filmy curtain laid over the land. There were a few shadows beyond the curtain, a few irregular shapes, probably earth of changing colours or vegetation of different kinds, but nothing recognizable. Certaintly no river. Not anywhere.

  Gerald thought about it, and step by step, moment by moment, an awareness of danger of the gravest kind shaped up in his mind. The aircraft was working for him, it wasn’t fighting against him, but he had let it down. He had made a calamitous mistake.

  Not once, not from the instant that he had assumed control, had he consciously attempted to fly in a straight line. He didn’t even know what heading he was supposed to be flying.

  Gerald sank back in his seat, appalled. He had been flying round the sky for half an hour, perhaps longer, without once checking his course. And you couldn’t do that sort of thing in an aeroplane. Why, he had heard that echo of his father’s words: ‘Check your gyro against your compass!’ – and had failed to act upon it. He had been worrying about height, about throttle, about pitch, about trim,
about practically everything in the cockpit except the compass.

  He was afraid to look at it – at the compass or the directional gyro.

  Oh, what a shocking thing to have done.

  What a stupid, stupid thing to have done.

  He forced himself to look down to the compass mounted on the side of the cockpit close to his left knee, and the needle was lying across the grid lines, not parallel to them as it should have been. He was just about as far off-course as it was possible to get, short of turning round and flying in the opposite direction.

  If Jim had set the course! Perhaps he hadn’t done so. Jim mightn’t have bothered; he might have been flying by eye, by instinct, map-reading his way along from landmark to landmark. There was a map, too, on the floor at the base of the seat, probably where it had slipped from Jim’s lap.

  The course set on the compass was 250 degrees. The course Gerald was flying was about 100 degrees off it. Which way? Here was a block. Which way should he read an aircraft compass? He couldn’t say, not with certainty, for he had never had to read a compass with accuracy. His father had always checked the course. But 250 degrees – even if he had been steering it – couldn’t take him to Coonabibba. Impossible. 250 degrees was roughly south-west. Coonabibba was north-west. His fears were well grounded. Jim had not set the course!

  Or had he? Perhaps there was something else that he hadn’t reckoned on. Quietly, now, quietly. Work it out.

  How did a pilot set a course?

  Oh, there were so many things that Gerald didn’t know; so many mysteries; so many perfectly ordinary things that he had never bothered to inquire about.

  What influenced the heading of an aircraft? Of course, wind! And something else; variation, or deviation – a word something like that, but what did it mean? Could wind and variation – whatever that was – cause a pilot to steer south-west instead of north-west? Surely not.

  Gerald shivered. This was awful. Jim hadn’t set the course, unless there were factors that Gerald could not account for.

  He looked down again into the dust haze. There was a real wind blowing down there, half a gale at least. Was it blowing up here, too? How was he to find out? If he couldn’t see the ground, how could he tell? Oh, golly, golly, golly. This meant they were lost. Not just half-lost, either. There’d be no landing at Coonabibba.

  Of that there wasn’t a hope in the world. Not by inventing all sorts of fancies, all sorts of miracles, could he expect to find Coonabibba, for even if he flew over it he wouldn’t know it was there. He wouldn’t be able to see it for dust.

  He had to keep his head. They might be lost but they weren’t doomed to die. He had to look for some other station, some other homestead, and land as soon as he could before the dust got worse. There was no need to panic. In fact, the dangers were no greater than before. The only real danger was landing, and that danger became no greater or less because it had to happen at Point B instead of Point A. He could still fly over the homestead, any homestead, and buzz it, still drop a note, still wait until they were ready for him. Then the people could send a message to Coonabibba to let them know that everything was all right. After all, the Hennessys knew everybody in the west. Everybody knew everybody else. No matter where he landed he would be sure to find friends.

  Well then? What course should he fly? North-west, he supposed. At least that would take him into his own part of the country. Obviously he should aim to come down as close to Coonabibba as he could.

  Gerald looked carefully at the compass, then reached down, unclamped it, and turned the ring until 315 degrees came up against the arrow. He was not a great distance off-course, after all. There he locked it, and little by little skidded the aircraft round until the compass needle lay between the parallel lines of the grid. It took a very long time. It was really quite extraordinary. The needle played the most peculiar tricks. It didn’t turn at the same rate as the aircraft. Sometimes it went faster, sometimes slower. Time and again he thought he had it right, but then a few moments later the needle would swing off again, to one side or the other, by as much as ten or fifteen degrees. He tried to make it easier by using the directional gyro, but the figures didn’t make sense. It was so hard to read the gyro.

  After a while he looked at the clock and it was 2.38. There must have been something wrong with the thing. He couldn’t have taken more than half an hour to alter course. The very thought was absurd. He checked it against his wrist-watch. The clock was correct. Then he remembered the altimeter. It registered 8,700 feet.

  He felt a flutter of the old concern, of the old panic, but resolutely stifled it and gently closed the throttle until the Egret began unmistakably to descend. By then he was twenty degrees off-course again and his airspeed had slipped back to seventy knots.

  7.

  Flying into Nowhere

  Gerald had changed. Bruce could see that; Bruce had known it for a long time. Gerald wasn’t arrogant any more. Gerald was a boy again; the sort of boy that Bruce had always liked. Perhaps courageous was the word that Bruce was thinking of.

  Gerald was hunched in the cockpit wholly engrossed, like the driver of a racing car or an express train. There wasn’t a thought in his head except the needs of the Egret. Bruce could see that; no one else in the aircraft existed to Gerald. He was alone. Jan was beside him apparently asleep or exhausted, so close that Gerald perhaps could have woken her simply by looking at her, but not once did he turn to her. Not once did he turn back to look at the others in the cabin. Nor glance at Jim. (Bruce wished that he would turn round. He had a longing, an almost insatiable curiosity to see his face.)

  Gerald remained hunched, occasionally reaching out an arm to this control or that, sometimes leaning forward to peer at the instrument panel. Sometimes he leant to the window at his side and appeared to look down. Sometimes he sat erect and appeared to look ahead. But always he returned into the pit of his seat, slumped, hunched, as though trying to rest himself, as though trying to support his arms by his elbows, and his legs by the back of his thighs. That was just how he looked; like somebody who was trying to conserve his strength, or perhaps somebody concentrating desperately, trying to pass a too difficult examination.

  Bruce knew that there was trouble, very big trouble. No one had told him; this was something that a fellow knew, perhaps not all fellows, but to fellows with intuition like Bruce’s certain truths were apparent. Bruce always knew, for instance, when a fellow was lying, or when a teacher at school had made a wrong statement and was trying to get out of it, or when his Mum was working up to the point of telling him that girls were different from boys. Jan had weird and wonderful dreams and Mum said she was psychic; but Bruce knew things and Mum said he was impossible. Maybe that was one of the differences between boys and girls.

  But Bruce knew now that Gerald was in trouble. He looked like a boy fighting grimly for something that he believed in. That was a new thought for Bruce, an angle on life he had not considered before. Gerald was in trouble, but he wasn’t giving up, he wasn’t giving in; he was fighting. Not with his fists, not putting on a big show or anything like that, but fighting with his heart and his will and with a slant to his head that no longer expressed arrogance. That slant meant determination. It meant, ‘I will! I will!’

  Bruce warmed to Gerald; continually warmed to him. It was a thrilling feeling, this whole-hearted, unselfish admiration for someone else, and the fact that Gerald had forgotten that Bruce existed didn’t spoil it in the least. In a way it was like being invisible, like drifting round in mid-air in a curl of smoke watching people, but not being seen oneself. He felt he was seeing Gerald as maybe God would see him. That was a strange thought, but it seemed valid, it was like that; it really was.

  Gerald was lost. Bruce knew that, too. He had only to stretch himself and squint through the window to prove it. That was dust down there and cloud up on top. It was a sandwich and the Egret was in the middle. It was a chicken sandwich, and the Egret was the chicken and what chicken in a sandw
ich ever knew where it was going? Bruce played with that thought for a while, then got round to wondering who would eat the sandwich?

  Where would they end up? Where would they land if they couldn’t find Coonabibba? Would the cloud come down and the dust come up? Would they get squashed in the middle and be able to see nothing at all? It wouldn’t be a sandwich then; it’d be a stew. Perhaps they’d crash. Perhaps they’d fly into a mountain. Perhaps they’d go on and on for ever and ever and vanish in the mists of time. It wasn’t funny, really. It was very, very serious. But Bruce couldn’t get worried about it. He felt he should have been worried – if only to relieve Gerald of a little of his worries – but his mind refused to work that way. He could see all the dangers very clearly, but try as he would he couldn’t get upset about them.

  He could see that no one could help them, that they were on their own; but it didn’t frighten him. He supposed it all came back to his faith in Gerald, to that tall, slender, narrow-shouldered boy hunched in the pilot’s seat. This was Gerald’s party in more ways than one. It simply wasn’t Bruce’s party any more than it was Carol’s or Colin’s.

  Colin was still out to it, though Bruce had managed to get him into Gerald’s empty seat. Colin was no good for company, nor was Carol. All red-eyed and tear-stained, she was still huddled in her seat with a handkerchief held to her nose, still sobbing once in a while for no apparent reason. She made him mad. All dolled up as though she was off to church, or to the races maybe, but snivelling all the time. On and off she’d been snivelling for a couple of hours. She was pretty, Bruce supposed, in the way that girls sometimes were, but what a blooming mess she looked. As though she’d been dragged through a bush backwards. And for what? There was old Gerald up there, fighting, because Jim was dead; but Carol was snivelling for the same reason. And Jan? He wasn’t quite sure what to think about Jan. If she hadn’t helped to get Jim out of the seat they’d never have got him out, and if she hadn’t helped Gerald to get into it they’d never have got him in, but surely she could take an interest in things. He was sure she wasn’t asleep. She was keeping her eyes shut because she didn’t want to look. Jan was an ostrich. And Mark was a pest.