by Kit Pedler
The DNA on Kramer’s pen did not exist free as a chemical but was inside the spores and covering membranes of the fifty-ninth variant embedded in the patch. Each organism was only seven-thousandths of a millimetre in length.
Each was blind and senseless but, nevertheless, possessed in its own frail envelope a complete behaviour pattern to carry it through the brief time interval between birth and death. From the division of one parent cell into two, and the two progressing to four, the four into eight and onwards in a beautiful but totally unappreciated mathematical precision.
Normally bacteria do not divide at an even rate, because events in their own microcosm decree that first they divide rapidly, then they enter a stationary phase which leads finally to a decline and death.
If it were not for three factors preventing the totally disciplined mathematical extension from two to four to eight and so on, it has been calculated that one pair of bacteria dividing every second would cover the surface of the earth in twenty-two hours.
Two main factors can enable bacteria to escape these growth restrictions. First of all if new food is provided at regular intervals and second if they are mutating to survive better in their own surroundings, then division of each cell will accelerate. The rate of acceleration is quite often dependent on the suitability of the surrounding but quite independent of the normal process of evolution. In the early phases of division, each generation may only last minutes and in special circumstances may drop to a few seconds.
The late and unlamented Dr Ainslie had taken advantage of these special properties. The fifty-ninth variant had no stationary or decline phase.
The circumstances surrounding the bacteria on Kramer’s metal pen were special. They had almost dried out and would, had he not touched it, have perished. As his fingertip, damp with sweat, touched the dying life forms, each cell envelope sucked in traces of water. Almost inconceivably small amounts, but just enough to flood the partly dehydrated mechanisms of each cell.
A tumult of tiny signals sped throughout the cells as they swelled. Once again they prepared for their only task, to live, to feed and to divide.
Kramer leant forward and pulled down the folding table from the back of the seat in front of him, his fingers lightly touching the plastic arm surrounding the melamine surface.
On the flight deck, Captain Howard received the ‘engine start’ signal from the control tower. The flight engineer made his final prestart check, noting carefully that the doors were secure.
He double checked with the ear-muffed ground engineer on the tarmac and received the thumbs up sign showing that the external locks were also closed.
He switched the four banks of fuel pump controls to the ‘feed’ position.
Kerosene began to flood out of the complex of wing and fuselage tanks into the four great turbofan units hanging in their pods like bombs, below the wings.
Captain Howard activated the start controls beginning with number four engine on the starboard wing.
Slowly like a reluctant banshee, the low moaning of the turbine filled the aircraft, rising to a shriek.
Number three engine followed as if to add to the baying of the great machine, then two and one, until the whole fuselage was thrown into a low pitched oscillation.
The flight engineer logged fuel pressures and turbine temperatures and P3, the reserve co-pilot, began ‘push-out’ check as the ground tractor backed the aircraft away from the loading gate, its engines singing with the anticipation.
The tractor driver huddled in a hooded anorak and ear-muffs gave the second thumbs up signal, disconnected the bar between the nose wheel of the aircraft and the tractor and drove away.
Slowly, with a tiny six-inch steering wheel on a bulkhead to his left, Captain Howard guided the clumsy bulk of the jet down the taxi-lanes picked out for him in deep blue lights, the steering wheel effortlessly turning the great nose-wheel under his feet. The flight engineer called out the items of the taxi check intently reading off the state of the giant machine as it lumbered unevenly over the concrete towards the main runway.
Then came the ‘pre-runway check’ intoned almost as a ritual, the second pilot ticking off items on a preflight log.
In his seat Kramer paused for a moment and stared out of the window at the wheeling panorama of the airport lights wondering whether they would still be on when he returned.
In the pantry, the cabin crew left the stacks of trays and strapped themselves into their seats, each one dully aware of the danger of their job. Each blotchy and pale beneath carefully applied make-up.
Finally, cleared for take-off, the aircraft wheeled round pointing down over the multitude of black tyre marks on the runway surface.
Captain Howard moved the throttle quadrants forward and the almost relaxing singing of the engines grew to a deep throated thunder. Panels shook and vibrated and the entire machine began to lurch, as the roaring thrust of the engines battled with the brakes. Then releasing his brake pedal, the aircraft propelled itself down the centre marks of the runway. With an acceleration greater than any racing car, it gathered speed, bumping and cracking over the joins in the concrete beneath it. Swinging from side to side, it bit through the icy air, searching for its own elements.
As its speed increased, the controls began to respond to the shrieking airstream and it changed from its earthbound clumsiness into a smooth upward airborne rush. The nose swung up and it leaped on black, jutting streams of smoke from its engines, in one last bound away from the hammering concrete of the runway.
The flight engineer called out the cryptic comment which reduces the pulse rate of all airline pilots: ‘V2’ – the second critical velocity, which a commercial jet must achieve to get safely away from the ground.
Kramer looked up through the window and saw the cloud base billowing nearer and nearer, then, after a last look at the yellow lit spiders of London streets, sank back in his seat as all vision was blotted out by the clouds.
At the rear of the plane the cabin crew unstrapped and went back to arranging their first prefabricated meal.
On the flight deck, the tension and anxiety of take-off was diminishing as Captain Howard dialled up the first beacon station at Falmouth for time-checks and directional readings.
In the passenger compartment, seat belts were released and cigarette smoke sucked gratefully down, the cabin crew moving up the sloping aisle as the aircraft climbed.
Kramer bent in concentration over his report rapidly making notes. For several seconds he was unaware of the stewardess leaning over the empty gangway seat towards him, handing him a tray.
‘Coffee or tea, sir.’
‘Mm? What? – er – coffee, thank you.’
The stewardess fitted an empty foamed plastic cup into an empty depression on his tray.
‘It’ll be along in a moment.’
As he turned back to the note pad, the stewardess tested the table in front of him to make sure it was fixed. Her hand gripped its edge. She moved away to the next bank of seats carrying a separate tray of empty cups.
On the flight deck, the crew were relaxing into the six hours of relative quiet which lay ahead of them over the Atlantic. The cabin door behind them opened and a stewardess entered.
‘First orders gentlemen?’
‘Coffee, but not Metromud – make us a proper cup.’
‘Can I help you wash up?’
The remarks came as an easy joke-habit. The stewardess smiled, noted down what they wanted and went out.
Kramer was writing furiously on the table in front of him unaware of the microscopic nucleus of feral activity on one edge.
The stewardess, seeing a call light on over one seat back, leant over a young dolly girl who had rung and envied the latest trendy plastic mac she was wearing.
In the galley, the other stewards were beginning to distribute the trays of food, one walking ahead of the others pushing a drinking trolley. He handed out small fake cut-glass plastic tumblers and miniature bottles of liquor.
As the Isle of Wight slid past 30,000 feet below it was as if all the passengers and crew had made some sort of peace with the great jet – a deal which enabled all the complex systems of the aircraft and the people on board to fuse together in a common task.
The second co-pilot went through into the passenger compartment and noted with some jealousy, for the hundredth time, that the engine noise level dropped as he entered. Halfway through the first class section he viewed one of the passengers sitting slumped back asleep, mouth slackly open in a face veined and coarsened by years of excess.
Ahead, the last light of the sun picked out the edges of the wings in deep orange highlights. Gradually as the plane bore on westward over the cold grey sea, the sunlight faded, giving way first to a deep violet blue and then finally to total blackness and the ice blue points of the stars.
Outside, the air temperature was ten below zero, inside the warmly lit cocoon of the plane, there was no awareness of all the deadly hostility of the air honing the alloy panels of the outer skin. The cabin air pumped under pressure from twin compressors in the nose of the plane had a friendly social smell of cigars and whisky.
Animated conversation flowed and passengers looked out at the darkness secure and protected from the raging gale outside, by the sealed plastic panels on each window.
On the flight deck, the crew had finished their coffee – the cups were stacked on a side shelf ready for collection.
Kramer paused for a moment to steady the table in front of him as the aircraft gave a slight lurch. His hand touched the edge of the table. Finally he got up and walked forward up the centre aisle to the lavatory.
In the galley a stewardess was separating out the disposable plastic cups. She picked one off its tray and noted with slight distaste that its outside surface was sticky. She looked at her fingers, they were covered with a thin grey-white film. She sniffed her fingers, grimaced and put the cup back on the table.
On the flight deck, the engineer saw a main current indicator dip suddenly and then recover. He reached up, undid two handscrews and slid out an electronic unit labelled ‘Voltage stabilizer chokes’. He attached test wires from another unit labelled ‘check prods’. He made notes on his log sheet.
Captain Howard set the on-board weather radar sweep going and studied the orange screen as the light bar swept to and fro marking out concentrations of high density air ahead. Then he turned and dialled up Shannon beacon station and waited until the morse identification sign bleeped on the overhead loudspeaker. Finally, he stretched back in his seat putting his hands behind his neck.
P2, the second pilot, moved the control column wheel and set course on the Shannon readings then set the controls to autopilot. As he took his hands away from the control column, he paused for a moment, then looked down in silent amazement.
On the palm of one hand there was a black sticky patch. On the control column where his hand had been, the black cylindrical cover of the wheel was wet and shiny. There were depressions where his fingers had been.
‘What the hell’s going on?’
The Captain looked over: ‘I’ll be damned …’
‘On the column, look,’ he pointed.
‘Some guy probably spilt some thinners, wrap it with some paper or something.’
‘Thinners hell, get a load of that.’ He pushed his hand across towards the Captain who wrinkled his face and sniffed.
‘Smells like crap. Benny, make a note about this, will you?’
The flight engineer grinned: ‘Like what do I say – we’re driving a shit-bucket?’
‘There’s another smell as well – what is it? – yeah ammonia.’ The co-pilot was sniffing.
‘Leave it eh.’ The Captain was firm, ‘Just bind up the column and get the stuff off your fingers.’
Kramer finished his notes, packed away his report, pocketed his pen and settled down to sleep.
Outside, the clouds flickered with blue light from an electrical storm far below.
In the galley the stewardess wiped the stickiness off her fingers, looked down at the table, her eyes widened with disbelief.
The cup was very slowly beginning to alter in shape. A small patch on one side was buckling and flowing down onto the table. Then almost as if it was in a hot oven the remainder followed suit and began to collapse in a viscid pool. She stared at it for a few seconds and then went out into the corridor and silently beckoned the chief steward, who was still serving drinks from the trolley. He looked up then seeing her expression went quickly down to the galley.
‘It just went,’ she said nervously. ‘I watched it. I didn’t do anything, look!’
The chief steward thought for a moment looking at the sticky pool on the table.
‘You haven’t been using nail varnish remover – anything like that?’
‘No. I told you, it just happened, it just melted.’
The chief steward touched the pool on the table. ‘Any more gone like it?’
‘No, I don’t think so …’
‘Well chuck it away – forget it.’
On the flight deck, the engineer replaced the stabilizer and finished writing out the log entry describing the fault. Inside the unit, variant fifty-nine found food.
A woman returned to her seat from the lavatory and reached down for her handbag feeling for the handle. As she tried to pull it out from under the seat the handle gradually stretched like a sluggish elastic band, snapped and came away in her hand. She swore briefly and reached down again for the bag and rang for the steward. He leant over to her: ‘Yes, Madam.’
‘Have you some sort of heater under here?’ She showed him the broken handle.
‘Pardon, madam?’
‘Look – see for yourself.’ She gave him the broken handle. ‘I put my bag under the seat and now look at it, it’s all burned up.’
‘Sorry madam, but there aren’t any heaters in the cabin, it must have been old; plastic isn’t so good as leather.’
‘It was not old, my daughter gave me this bag just a few weeks back!’
‘Tell you what I’ll do Madam, I’ll arrange for the airline to present you with one of their own bags when we reach Kennedy.’ He smiled professionally.
Mollified, the woman settled back in her seat. Taking the handle, the steward said: ‘I’ll get rid of it for you, Madam,’ and went thoughtfully back to the galley.
On the flight deck, the engineer was watching two dial indicators labelled ‘input power distribution’, reading off the levels, he sat back and picked up a thumbed paperback. Above his head, the variant was already feeding in the maze of coloured wires in the stabilizer, gathering strength, dividing.
A wire was bared to the core, current flashed, one hundred amps drove through wires designed for two.
There was a sudden explosion and a flood of acrid smoke. The engineer jerked up off his seat and cannoned into the back of the co-pilot who lurched forward over the control column.
Immediately, the aircraft began to dive, the passengers all reacting to the nauseous sensation of the floor dropping down away from them.
The co-pilot recovering quickly, pulled the column back and the nose of the aircraft thrust upwards against their feet. The captain reached for a small hatch labelled ‘smoke goggles’ and took out the transparent eye protectors.
Smoke was pouring from the damaged unit and the co-pilot opened the cabin air exhaust to full to clear the choking air. Howard pulled down the passenger compartment tannoy mike and spoke, carefully pitching his voice level.
‘This is Captain Howard speaking, we’re now flying at a height of thirty-one thousand feet and running into headwinds which will delay our arrival by about thirty-five minutes. There is also a little turbulence ahead, so will you please fasten your seat belts and remain seated – thank you.’ His voice clicked off and the red seat belt sign glowed.
Kramer, woken by the sudden dive, moved around in his seat to find a new comfortable position, his knees jamming the table hanging down fr
om the seat in front of him. As he leant forward to fold it away he saw the edge of the table. The rim had softened and melted in a wet sticky stream dripping down onto his trouser leg leaving an opalescent grey patch just above his knee. Looking carefully to see whether the passenger beside him was watching, he bent forward and sniffed. Very slowly he moved back in his seat and reached up with his right hand for the push button to call the steward. He then withdrew his hand and put it on the arm of the seat, palm uppermost. He searched carefully around and then, with his left hand, picked up a pencil and used it to press the overhead button, then sat back waiting, absolutely motionless.
The steward bent down, carefully studying Kramer’s awkward position: ‘Yes, sir, can I get you something?’
‘I want to speak to the Captain.’
‘Can you tell me what about, sir?’
‘Not right now – no – there’s a …’ Kramer checked that the passenger beside him was still asleep. He kept his voice low, ‘… Something’s happened which may be of some danger to this aircraft, I wish to talk to the Captain. Will you please get him – now!’
The steward was warily studying Kramer and wondering whether he was crazy or drunk.
‘Would you like to come forward into the first class section, sir. I’ll get a member of the flight crew to …’
‘Listen and listen very carefully. You’re not going to find this very easy to understand, but I can’t leave my seat, I must stay exactly where I am!’
Oh God, thought the steward, we’ve got a nutter, probably a bomber. He spoke reassuringly: ‘All right sir, yes I understand, now you stay right where you are and I’ll go up front and talk to the Captain.’ He walked off, Kramer glaring after him at the condescension in his voice.
As the steward walked through the forward bulkhead he had to make his way past a queue of passengers waiting for the lavatory.
On the flight deck he spoke quietly to Captain Howard:
‘… he looks odd – sits there all cramped up, it’s almost like he doesn’t want to touch anything.’