by Adam Hall
Very little was visible in my immediate environs: vague dark shapes, the gleam of a highlight on metal, nothing more. Below me the rubber-streaked surface of the runway was slipping past mesmerically, the streaks becoming a blur in the faint glow from the exhaust flames.
Estimated ground-speed seventy.
The roaring was infinite, quelling the senses: the ears being deafened, vision seemed impaired, and I believed it was growing darker. Perhaps it was. During this phase I could do nothing except wait and hope to survive.
Estimated ground-speed a hundred and twenty plus.
Errant and abstract thought: a noise like this could bring the sky down. Thunder must sound like this in the instant of its inception.
The runway was now blurred to the point of looking perfectly smooth, and the last chance of changing my mind had gone: if I dropped to the ground now the spinning tonnage of the twin wheels would leave a sudden red smudge along the concrete.
I hadn't told Ferris what I was going to do. There hadn't been time.
My right foot was slipping again and I pulled upwards, feeling the electrical conduit flex critically under the strain. The problem was to keep my body arched against the curved top of the wheelbay, giving me a chance of escaping the Wheels when they slammed home and locked. This was the only place where I could hope to survive: right at the top and right at the back, lodged against the transverse flight-control cables and their rack of pulleys. The engine-control cables ran fore and aft above my head and I had to remember they were there and keep clear of them. I had also to remember that if I lost purchase and grabbed for any handhold available, the flight-control cables were within dangerously easy reach and my weight on them could disturb the aircraft's trim to the point of crashing it.
The vibration was easing.
Easing.
Lift-off.
The nick-flick-flick of the runway lights, falling away.
It was going to happen now and I was suddenly exposed to the last-second thought that I'd got it wrong: there wasn't enough room in here. The landing lock was going to fold on the fulcrum and the oleo strut was going to swing up and bring the wheels with it, their huge tyres spinning and their weight forced into the bay by the hydraulics, slamming home as the doors came together below.
There hadn't been time to measure anything, even crudely. There'd only been time to look upwards and assess the chances and I'd done that and I'd thought the chances were good but at that time I'd been on the ground and in no immediate danger and now I was jammed into a death-trap and when the wheels came up they were going to crush me against the bulkhead and the only think I knew for certain was that it was going to be quick.
Lights falling away.
Then darkness below. The jungle.
There hadn't been time to tell Ferris what I was going to do because I hadn't known I was going to do it till a few minutes before take-off. This flight and the night-mail service were the only traffic movements between dusk and dawn and there was a skeleton staff at Manaus and I'd had the choice of a dozen pairs of mechanic's overalls in the ground crew locker room, together with the ear-mufflers. The baggage-trolley had gone out past the emergency bay and I took a lift at the rear end where the driver couldn't see me.
The electrician had been busy with his gear and the checker was talking to the navigator through the flight deck window when I'd looked into the wheelbay and made the decision. To vanish into the wheelbay of a DC-6 takes approximately three seconds and kids do it in Cuba and some of them survive.
It's easier when you don't think too much.
You have to believe there's going to be enough room when the wheels come up and you have to believe you can go on holding on like this with the open doors leaving you poised above the surface of the earth at a lethal height if you lose your grip and drop and go on dropping. You have to -
Mechanical movement beginning.
I couldn't see the wheels: they were well aft of the bay. All I could see in the light of the exhaust flames were the hydraulic cylinder and the two long coil springs and they were moving now, working in unison.
Darkness began rising.
Keep yourself braced.
The jungle below had the faint sheen of moonlight on its leaves and the rising darkness was the black rubber of the tyres as they came swinging forward and upward, blotting out the ground. They were immense and I dragged a breath in and arched my spine and felt the sharp heads of the hose-clip screws digging into my shoulder as I pulled upward against the conduits and waited, hearing the faint scream of the wind-rush in the roaring background. The wheels were still spinning and I could feel the sting of stone fragments as they were flicked away from the ribbed treads by centrifugal force.
Keep braced and don't weaken.
Then there was sudden and total darkness as the strut locked home and the doors of the bay came together, shutting me in. I hadn't imagined that this degree of sound could increase but the three-thousand-horsepower radial engine was immediately forward of the wheelbay and the closing doors had trapped its sound, confining it, until its volume swelled to a vibration inside the skull.
Into this constant thunder came a higher note that alerted me to unconsidered hazards but for a moment I couldn't identify its source. Conceivably it was an alarm buzzer sounding somewhere above my head but it would be heard from the flight deck and I discounted it. My right foot was trembling and heating up and the faint whine was diminishing gradually and I took a better grip on the conduit and raised my foot an inch and the sound stopped at once: the heel of my shoe bad been in contact with one of the tyres and they were still spinning and I was warned.
Don't drop.
If I dropped I wouldn't live: the wheels would flick me against the forward bulkhead and jam my body there with their momentum.
But I was tiring now.
Noise fatigues the organism. So does fear.
I was afraid.
There was no action to take. I had to do nothing, in order to live, except hold on and try not to think. The wheels would lose their rotary inertia within minutes but I didn't know how long I could force the muscles in my hands to remain contracted with the fingers hooked over the conduit or how long it would be before the conduit broke away from its clips and sent me down. Once the wheels had stopped spinning I could drop across them and rest but if I did it too soon it would be fatal. It was a matter of time.
Euphoria.
A sense of twilight.
The noise roared far away, in the caverns of Nirvana.
Watch it.
A sense of floating, of life adrift in weightlessness, of deep and eternal peace.
Three great swans flew across the aching dome of infinity, and were caught in its vortex, spinning. The sky cracked like an egg.
Get out of this. Pull yourself out.
Consciousness flickering, like a loose light bulb.
Colours swirled, ebbing and flowing to the theta rhythms of hypnagogic sleep. The sun burst, and the birds turned black and struck horror in the psyche.
Pull up and pull out. Move.
My hands floating in the-
Move for Christ's sake or you'll -
Adrift in the streaming depths of Lethe, where-
Move your hands, hit something. Feet, kick something. Pull out.
Heart thudding.
Darkness, the real thing, and the engine roaring.
I kicked and floated back the other way, nearly losing the sense of reality as the clouds drew down and blinded — watch it, pull out! Kicked again and floated to the right, and I knew now what was happening: I was lying prone across the enormous tyres and when I kicked at the bulkhead the force was turning the wheels and they were swinging me across in an arc against the firewall.
Consciousness was painful: the organism was being born again into the deafening storms of reality and in the confusion the forebrain was trying to function, desperate to get its messages through to the motor nerves.
Please note that you are
lying on the wheels and when the undercarriage goes down you will automatically drop into space.
I didn't register the significance of this because the euphoria was still fogging my head; but I realized that I was in the conscious state, with the beat rhythms taking over. There had been oxygen deprivation and this was the hangover and it was unpleasant: headache, nausea, shivering.
Tried to stand up but of course no room so I grabbed at things to steady myself, physical orientation necessary, but watch it! Cables, don't grab at the cables or you'll crash the whole bloody bazaar.
Something was trying to get through. Some kind of information.
My head lolled and brushed the conduit and the ear-muffler went askew and the roaring came through my skull like a freight train and I pulled the thing back over my ears. My weight had shifted and I swung back on the wheels, hitting the firewall. The noise was worse here because the engine was on the other side, so I swung back to the rear end of the wheel-bay and bruised my arm and felt the pain pushing consciousness into the open, as if I were coming out of a tunnel.
Information: we were probably going down, and the oxygen was increasing; hence my return to consciousness. I couldn't think why we were going down but I hoped we meant to do it and we weren't doing it because I'd been hanging on to those flight-control cables.
Discount unreasonable fears: it felt as though we were in stable flight conditions, inclined nose-down by ten or fifteen degrees. But something urgent was still trying to get through and I didn't like the way my head was still fogging. My hands were cold but there was no icing anywhere: the metal conduits were perfectly dry. The air temperature at ten thousand feet above the Amazon in spring would be somewhere about 45 degrees and the heat of the radial engine would raise that considerably. After an hour's night, the conditions-
Time.
Check the time.
07:20.
This was the warning that had been trying to get through. It was a three-hour flight from Manaus to Belem near the Atlantic coast and we'd been flying for that period of time and the distinct nose-down attitude of the aircraft plus the return of oxygen availability meant that we were probably approaching Belem Airport.
The final piece of information was very urgent indeed but I didn't have time to look at it because something gave a metallic click below me and a rush of air screamed through the wheelbay doors as they started to open and the tyres began dropping away and I grabbed for the conduit, my fingers clawing and not finding it, clawing again and touching the skein of control cables — don't — as the mass of rubber began rolling forward and the air howled into the bay.
I felt the conduit and pulled upwards, kicking my weight off the wheels as they went down. Daylight was flooding in and I caught a glimpse of water shining below as I found some kind of a purchase for the heels of my shoes, pulling hard on the conduit and feeling it buckle but hold. With the dazzling light after the hours of total darkness there came the heat of low altitude, and the faint brackish smell of the ocean as we swung in a wide circle, settling lower with the engines idling and the landing-gear down and locked.
I looked for new handholds in case the buckled conduit tore the clips out of the panels under my weight: the wheels wouldn't be coming up again into the bay and I didn't have to mould my body into its roof. As the DC lowered from the sky there would be no abrupt shifts of mass but when the wheels hit the runway my weight would increase critically for a few seconds and I felt for handholds strong enough to take the strain. Then I looked down at the network of city streets and the estuary's bright water, five or six hundred feet below.
Pain was beginning in the ears and I pinched my nose and blew back. The heat was increasing and the sweat started coming to the skin. Onset of thirst.
Final approach.
I couldn't see the runway because the forward bulkhead concealed it from sight; but the first of the approach lamps were sliding below, unlit but glinting in the morning sun. I was now straddled across the bay with one foot on each doorstay and my hands on the two lower conduits. The slip-stream spilled inwards, tugging at my overalls.
The dead weight of the aircraft lowered over the next thirty seconds and then the power came on for the touch-down and I saw concrete immediately below, its scarred sections becoming a blur as the distance closed. For a moment everything seemed held in suspension as the insubstantial air cradled the mass of the machine and supported it; then a shudder came as the main wheels hit the runway and the hydraulics took the shock. The conduit under my left hand buckled and tore away from the two nearest clips and I was swung sideways and hit the bulkhead with my shoulder as one foot lost its hold on the door-stay and I floundered, feeling the vibration as the main wheels bounced and touched down again and rolled, taking the weight of the machine as the nose-wheel made contact, forward of where I was clinging.
I was swung off-balance again and felt the conduit pulling away before I got a new purchase with my feet across the door-stays. The concrete was a blur of colour immediately below me and I could hear the 'heavy tramping of the tyres as their ribbed treads flexed under the weight of the aircraft. Dark ribbons began showing up in the blur as the speed came down, and the tarred expansion joints between the blocks sketched a slowing pattern of lines. Dust and stone fragments blew into the wheelbay, thrown up by the nose-wheel and caught by the turbulence of the propeller.
I heard the rough hiss of the brake-shoes as they clamped into the drums and brought the speed down, sending my weight forward until I hit the bulkhead, burning my arm against the oil-drain pipe before I could steady myself. Under the heavy deceleration I could see the streaks of burnt rubber showing clearly now on the concrete, until the last of the blur was gone. The power came on again and I felt the machine swinging to the left, its weight flexing the oleo struts as it turned and gunned up slightly towards the parking bay.
Ears very painful and I blew again with my nose blocked.
The faint cry of a sea bird.
Wheels rolling.
The sound of the engines dying.
Brakes again, pitching me forward.
Rolling.
Stop.
I leaned there for a minute with my eyes shut. The early sunlight threw the shadow of the propeller across the tarmac beneath my feet, and when I opened my eyes I saw the blades become still. A service vehicle was on the move somewhere, and I could hear voices. I stayed where I was, waiting. In three or four minutes the fuel bowser swung towards the mainplane on my side and I heard the clang of the doors as they were thrown back from the pump unit.
I dropped to the ground.
Nearly fell: question of sea legs.
There was a long screwdriver bolstered in the leg-pocket of the overalls and I pulled it out and checked a loose cowling button. If anyone had seen me drop from the wheelbay they would assume I had climbed into it a few minutes ago.
'Who are you?' Short fat mechanic, head on one side.
'Douglas Aircraft inspector,' I told him.
'Nobody told me.'
'Do they tell you everything?'
I checked the oil-cooler frame and told him there was a buckled electrical conduit inside the wheelbay that needed looking at.
'You'll have to tell Carlos,' he said, and began helping the refuelling crew at the bowser.
I walked away from the aircraft, leaving the sunglasses and the ear-mufflers on my head. The leg muscles had been under strain since I'd regained consciousness and I felt none too steady. On my left, fifty yards or so away from where I walked, the passengers were being led towards the building. I turned my head only once to make sure the Kobra cell was among them, then kept on towards the maintenance sheds.
'Where are you?'
'Belem Airport.'
There'd been a twenty-five-minute delay and it'd got me sweating badly because there wasn't a lot of time left to decide what I had to do.
'How did you get there?' Ferris asked me,
'Wheelbay.'
He paused again.
'What's your condition?'
'Operational.'
He didn't ask me to repeat that If I were half dead he'd expect me to say so.
The phone I was using was at the end of a maintenance hangar, and I was watching the TWA Boeing as, I talked. A few minutes ago another mobile television unit had gone across the tarmac from the main gates, with a cameraman already at work on the roof.
'What's your local time?' Ferris wanted to know.
'08:55.'
It was an hour later here than at Manaus.
'Are you still locked on?'
'Yes,' I said.
The sound of sirens was coming in again from the highway, and I could see the intermittent light of an emergency vehicle. Everyone seemed rather excited, but I would have thought the South American countries were pretty used to this sort of thing.
'All right,' Ferris said.
He meant he wasn't going to put any more specific questions because he'd got the basic data and now he wanted information.
'They've struck some kind of problem,' I told him. 'From what I could put together in Lagofondo, I think they're making for the States, but I shouldn't mink they've got visas and they'll need some pretty authentic medical certificates. The thing is they've seized a TWA Boeing and a couple of minutes ago they ordered two aircrew to go aboard: presumably pilot and navigator.'
I stopped to let Ferris think about it for a while. It would also give me time to work something out if I could. I didn't think there was anything I could work out The whole thing looked terribly shut-ended and I stood here baking in the direct heat of the sun with the sweat running down and a lot of slow-burn angst in my soul, because I'd followed those bastards all the way here and now they were taking off again and I couldn't hope to pull the same trick again because I wouldn't get through the police lines and even if they let me through I couldn't get into a wheelbay unseen and even if I could get into a wheelbay I'd freeze to death at thirty thousand feet.
Ferris was quiet.