by Kit Pedler
‘Think he’s going to do anything?’ Captain Howard asked.
‘Can’t tell – no threats, not yet anyway.’
‘I’ll come back and have a look.’
Kramer waited impatiently. The Captain spoke smoothly: ‘Good evening, sir, the steward tells me you’ve got a problem.’
Kramer pointed to the sleeping passenger beside him: ‘Get him out …’ He stopped, collected himself. ‘Right, now, first of all I’m not mad, I’m not going to hijack you and you’re going to find what I’m going to say extremely hard to believe.’
‘Yes?’
‘My name is Kramer, Doctor Kramer, and I’m a scientist.’ The captain and the steward listened, motionless. ‘In some way I don’t exactly understand, I’ve brought an organism with me on board this aircraft and it’s dangerous.’
‘Organism, what do you mean?’
‘Captain, you know about the events in Central London.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well I am part of a Government group investigating its cause and I’m on my way to New York with an urgent report for NASA concerning its nature.’
‘Can you give me some sort of identification, sir.’
‘What! Oh yes, I can.’ Kramer reached for his bag, hesitated for a moment and then said: ‘Captain I’ll produce the papers and show them to you, but I must ask you just to read them as I hold them up – don’t actually touch them.’
The steward and the captain exchanged glances as Kramer took the NASA report and letters of identification out of his bag and held them forward. The sleeping passenger stirred and turned in his seat. They peered at the documents and nodded. Kramer went on:
‘Captain, we now have good evidence to show that the breakdown in London is caused by a unique micro-organism – a germ.’
Captain Howard remembered his training, remembered the psychiatrist who had lectured on the early symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia so that potentially dangerous passengers could be spotted.
‘This germ, Mr Kramer, what do you say it does?’
Kramer stared at them both then said flatly: ‘It eats plastic.’
The captain’s manner hardened.
‘Mr Kramer, everything said to me about possible dangers to the aircraft I’m obviously bound to take seriously, but I think you’re wasting my time. I must ask you please not to cause any more disturbances and …’
‘What about this!’ Kramer pointed at the rim of the table and the patch on his knee. The Captain bent down to examine the table.
‘Don’t touch it! Smell it – do you smell anything?’
‘Mr Kramer, you could have done that with almost anything. You could have poured a solvent on it, you could have heated it with a lighter …’
‘No charring – anyway will you accept a visual proof?’
‘Captain Howard, sir,’ the steward spoke nervously. ‘Can I have a word with you. I’d like to show you something.’ He beckoned the captain down the aisle towards the galley.
The sticky patch where the cup had been was now foaming into a small localized hemisphere of undulating bubbles.
‘Then there was this woman’s bag, look, I’ve got the handle here.’ He reached down for the trash shute. As he opened the hatch, they both stood transfixed. From the open hatch pouted a greyish mass of glutinous foam, bulging out of the square aperture and dropping silently down onto the floor. Where it touched the vinyl floor covering it seemed to creep almost immediately into the shining blue surface like oil seeping into the surface of rust.
‘Right! The passenger next to that man, what’s his name? Kramer.’ Howard’s voice was firm: ‘Get him to another seat.’
On the flight deck, Howard sniffed the taped-up column handle, he turned to the engineer:
‘Done anything about the voltage stabilizer?’
‘Yeah, I strapped out the lines, we’re running without it.’
‘Did you have it out to see where the fault was?’
‘No point, can’t do anything about it up here. They’ll change it when we hit Kennedy. It’s kaput.’
‘Benny, I’d like you to have a look.’
‘It’s a stabilizer. We can run without it. OK there’s a small risk of a voltage surge from the generators but …’
‘Take it out, Benny.’ Seeing the gravity of his expression, the engineer reached silently and unscrewed the stabilizer panel. He pulled it out on slides and stared, motionless: ‘Jesus Christ, what the hell’s going on?’
From the under surface of the unit, there was hanging a multi-coloured blob of slowly moving sludge. As they sat, transfixed, the blob stretched, thinned out and dropped wetly to the floor. The engineer moved to touch the sticky material.
‘Don’t touch it,’ Howard cried out.
‘Why not, what’s the matter?’
‘Put it back, just don’t touch it.’
The steward put his head round the door:
‘OK, he’s moved.’
‘Good, now will you ask Dr Kramer to come forward here please?’
‘Yes sir.’
‘And then go back to the galley, tell the girls – little as necessary – and don’t leave, right?’
‘Yes.’
Both co-pilots and the engineer began talking at once:
‘Now look, what is this, skipper?’
‘Would somebody mind …’
‘Who’s Kramer? …’
Howard looked hard at each one of them before he replied:
‘I want you to hear this man’s story for yourselves.’
Kramer came in.
‘Take a seat.’ Howard pointed towards the empty trainee’s seat behind him.
‘Could you tell these gentlemen what you told me back in there?’ He pointed towards the passenger compartment. Kramer was sitting awkwardly still trying not to touch anything with his hands. The patch on his trouser leg had soaked into the cloth leaving a dark patch.
He began rapidly: ‘A little earlier on I told the Captain that I am part of a British Government inquiry group working on the Central London disaster …’
Quickly and concisely he outlined the story.
The internal surface of a jetline passenger compartment is designed with just three major requirements. First, lightness, secondly, easy maintenance and thirdly, resistance to ageing or corrosion. In practice this has produced a design which is almost eighty per cent plastic. The ceiling, wall and seat trim is vinyl cloth. The overhead shelves are extruded polystyrene. The service binnacles over each seat are vacuum-formed polypropylene and the edge seals for the windows are a special high-grade PVC. Food for a million generations of the fifty-ninth variant.
Gradually, almost unseen in many places, the variant was taking hold of the ship. In the lavatory a notice labelled ‘used towels only’, was beginning to soften, the letters elongating as the backing sagged.
Next to a passenger who had visited the lavatory a window seal began to expand and distort. The plastic sole of a man’s shoe flattened slightly under the weight of his leg.
On the flight deck, Kramer had finished his account. The crew sat in silence, only the first co-pilot appeared uninterested as he flew the plane and monitored the maze of instruments in front of him. Howard tapped the back of his thumbs against his teeth:
‘If I can keep everyone where they are – nobody moves – we can put down at Kennedy …’
‘Not Kennedy,’ Kramer frowned. ‘We can’t put down there – don’t you see we’re like an infected community …’
‘We’ve got to be isolated?’ The co-pilot spoke with the tremor of scarcely concealed fright.
‘That’s it – we’ll have to go through a complete decontamination …’
Howard cut in: ‘We can maybe use Taor creek.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s an emergency strip about forty miles south of Boston on the coast.’
‘We’ll need the complete treatment.’ Kramer was ticking off the items in his hand. ‘Each passenger will hav
e to strip, shower and hand in his clothes for sterilization. The plane will have to be cordoned off …’
‘Who the hell do we get to do all this?’ Howard was thinking aloud. ‘The airport medical authorities don’t carry that kind of gear.’
‘You’ve got Dugway.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Dugway proving ground. A germ warfare test place, they can put some people down at Taor creek by chopper – protective suits, the lot.’ He smiled grimly: ‘Give them something positive to do!’
The window seal next to the woman dripped away down onto the surrounding trim panel, but there was no explosion, no sound.
The windows on a jet are a concession to passengers by the designer who would very much rather do without them altogether, since they raise the cost and weaken the structure of the hull.
Each one has either three or four layers of transparent plastic, each one separately sealed into the surrounding structure of the hull. Between the inner layers, air is kept circulating by the two cabin compressors situated under the flight deck. This is to avoid condensation and the air is pumped at the same pressure as the interior of the plane. Between the outer two layers, air is circulated at the same pressure and temperature as the outside air.
A thin layer of the fifty-ninth variant soaked in mindless determination across the one-inch gap between the innermost layer and the next. Cells released enzymes which dissolved the intricacies of man-made molecules.
The girl in the PVC coat lay back fast asleep and, as a passenger passed in the aisle, he touched her shoulder. She woke up and tried to move her head. As if in some waking nightmare she pulled the side of her face away from the seat back.
Slowly, like an old piece of candy in its wrapper, her head moved away. Between the side of her face the collar of her coat and the seat, there was a soft dripping patch pulling out into long wet strips as she moved. She turned in panic and saw the shoulder of her coat collapsed like a scuba suit around the contours of her shoulder. For a long moment she stayed absolutely still, her face immobile. She screamed. A stewardess came running.
In the first class compartment the large florid man still snored the flight away. Oblivious to everything around him and breathing brandy fumes, he failed entirely to see the shape of his spectacles begin to alter.
First, the brown plastic bridge across his nose softened, allowing the weight of the lenses to pull the shape down over his face like a caricature. Then one glass popped out of its sagging frame and rolled down into his lap. Like a stream of chocolate, a brown rivulet began to make its way down the lines of his face towards his open mouth. His face twitched unconsciously as it moved.
The girl in the PVC coat was calming down and the stewardess was trying to prevent her getting up to go and wash. The captain’s voice came over the tannoy:
‘This is Captain Howard speaking. Because of a small electrical fault, we shall not be landing at Kennedy airport, New York. Instead we shall make our way to an airfield just south of Boston. Because of the – fault – I must ask you please to remain in your seats with seat belts fastened. I am sorry for this inconvenience. The cabin crew will make you as comfortable as possible, but I must ask you all not to smoke please.’
On the flight deck, Howard switched the microphone off.
‘Surely you must tell them before we land,’ Kramer asked.
‘Of course,’ Howard replied, ‘but if I give it to them all at once we’ll get panic. I’ll do it bit by bit.’ He turned to the second pilot: ‘Any luck?’
‘Yes, they’re raising Taor now.’
‘Right.’ He turned to Kramer. ‘Now, Doctor…’
Behind them the door suddenly opened and then shut again. There were sounds of a scuffle. It opened again revealing the brown streaked face of the man from the first class lounge. His eyes were blazing, he was shouting:
‘You the Captain? What do you think you’re goddam well doing?’ He lunged forward. Benny, the flight engineer, whipped round in his seat and grabbed him just before he could get his hands on Howard.
‘Get back to your seat.’
‘Look I got shares in your lousy airline. I know your directors – I’m going to make good and sure …’
The flight engineer leapt to his feet and slammed the man against the door, he towered over him. All his anxiety reacted in violence:
‘Now listen and shut up! This aircraft is in danger, by coming in here you’ve added to that danger. You heard the Captain’s instructions, now get back in there, sit down, strap in and shut up! If I get one more peep out of you, I’ll come in there and kick your head in, you got that?’
The man glared silently, his face working in a mixture of fear and anger.
‘Go on, get out!’
Slowly his anger gave way to shaking then to complete collapse, he leant back against the door, his mouth slack with fear.
‘What are you doing?’ He wiped his face smearing the brown stains on his cheeks. ‘Wha – what’s going on? I wanna know – we going to crash?’
The engineer reached silently round behind him and opened the door, he guided the man back to his seat and strapped him in.
The bacteria now had the aircraft almost completely in their grip. At hundreds of different points, plastic trim cloth, overhead shelves and the floor covering silently began to change in shape, first buckling then turning wet and glistening, finally giving rise to small bubbles of foul smelling foam. Over one passenger the air conditioning binnacle began to sag slowly down towards the top of his head, almost as if the bacteria inside it were turning it into a limb.
The captain’s voice on the cabin tannoy had changed. The usual polite concern and confidence trivialities had disappeared and he was giving sharp orders:
‘You must understand that what is happening is of no danger to life – it is only in the plastic parts of the aircraft. As I’ve said, we shall land at an airstrip near Boston and until we do you are all to remain seated. It is very important that you do not move about the aircraft, because if you do you will cause more plastic parts to be affected and endanger our flight.’
The chief steward was trying to restrain a panic stricken man in the corridor. They slipped and fell on the wet glistening floor, the floor colouring staining their clothes.
The woman with the handbag sat transfixed with horror as a writhing bubble of black foam rose obscenely up between her legs.
The stewardesses were backing slowly out of the galley staring with silent horror at the shambles inside. The stacks of trays were collapsing, the cups lay in pools of foaming slime and the neat packets of knives and spoons had coalesced and bent into mad surrealist shapes.
There was now an evil smelling foam running out into the main corridor from dozens of points. The girl in the PVC coat was struggling weakly in an almost spherical covering still retaining an imprint of the patterns in her coat.
Most of the passengers were completely silent, some were praying and others weeping. Every few minutes a steward tried vainly to prevent people getting up. The air grew fouler as the gas level built up.
On the flight deck no one spoke. Kramer sat hunched in his seat. Howard was flying the plane and the two co-pilots and the engineer were studying the banks of instruments with total absorption.
The end came swiftly. Overhead in a roof panel two bared wires touched and the mixture of gases generated by the fifty-ninth variant flashed and ignited.
Far down below in the icy seas to the east of Nantucket, the skipper of a small diesel fishing boat heard the boom and crack of the explosion high overhead. As he looked up, he could just make out small points of fire trailing down through the night sky.
He reached for his shore-radio.
Seventeen
Anne woke to find herself in a hospital bed in a private ward at St Thomas’s hospital.
Sitting patiently beside her was Buchan, sturdily resisting the demands of nurses and doctors to move.
They had just heard of Kramer’s death and B
uchan wanted to be the first to tell her before she heard it on the radio. Gerrard was still asleep in another wing of the hospital, unaware of the news.
Anne turned to Buchan and held out her hand. There was something massively reassuring about the angular Scot with his tightly buttoned tweed coat and shock of grey hair.
Gradually, with his help, she reconstructed the events of the last few hours. An army team had gone down the Portland Place shaft with rescue gear and cut their way through to Slayter and Anne at the base of the old shaft. The whole operation had taken no more than half an hour with the help of experts from British Transport. They had also brought up the station master who had been taken to hospital. Purvis was found dead in the disused tunnel.
She asked about the disaster situation and Buchan gave her the latest information.
Anne began to worry about Kramer. She’d expected him to be there. Why wasn’t he?
Buchan paused before replying: ‘There’s been an accident,’ he said.
‘Accident?’
‘To his plane,’ Buchan continued. ‘He took off yesterday for the States and it’s been reported missing – I’m sorry.’
Anne sat up in bed: ‘I don’t understand.’
Buchan explained slowly. He told her of Kramer’s determination to face the NASA committee in person.
Anne’s face altered slightly and she turned away fighting to keep control. ‘Didn’t he know that I was …’ she didn’t finish the question.
‘He felt there was little he could do,’ said Buchan. ‘He hoped to be back by the time you got out.’
‘But how could he know that I was going to get out? How could he know I wasn’t dead down there?’ She spoke wildly and when Buchan tried to hold her hand she pulled it away furiously. Buchan didn’t answer.
Anne thought for a moment: ‘Surely it wasn’t that important to go to NASA in person!’
‘He thought it was,’ said Buchan. ‘You know him, once he’s made up his mind …’
‘But he knew I was missing,’ she went on.
‘He not only went to defend the Consultancy,’ said Buchan, ‘but he also quite genuinely felt that if these bugs ever got into space – to another planet – then they might be a … what would you call it? A time-bomb for future astronauts.’