Hitch said laconically, “Now climb as if you mean it. I’m bored of the scenery.”
I put on nearly a thousand feet per minute and flicked the trim switches on the yoke. Looking down for a second or two I watched the village of Colnbrook carousel beneath at an oblique angle. After that there were networked fields and crazy-paving cracks in them and these were the lanes. I checked the turn-and-bank indicator and corrected a small amount of slip, then flicked the stabilizer trim as Hitch took off the remaining flap.
“We’re staying off Airways, Roger. Heading: One five zero out of the left hand turn. That takes us quickly out to sea, roughly via Hastings.” He talked to Air Traffic Control, changed frequency and talked some more. Then to me he said, “Climb to Flight Level Two — four-zero on your new heading.” He leaned across and adjusted my own altimeter to standard pressure for Flight Levels.
— But said nothing about going to computer control. This puzzled me because it’s quite unnecessary to fly the 747 by the seat of your pants; and I’d done enough practice in the simulator to get used to the feel of the aircraft itself. Astonishingly, it was indistinguishable from the impression I’d got from the ‘mock-flying’ I’d done on the ground.
Hitch said, “The three and a half million bucks those things cost would buy you a very handsome executive jet of your own.”
I said, “I’m wrapping it up and taking it home.”
Hitch said, “Wait till Christmas.”
*
“That smell, Hitch.”
“What smell?”
— I’d have known it anywhere. Terror seized me but I had somehow to check it. And the fact that Hitch couldn’t smell it could mean only one thing … Now, it seemed to be filling the flight deck, filtering through the air-conditioning vents and clinging to my clothes and hair. Against my will I had been lured into a deathtrap that simply glared. I’d trusted Hitch. Why? I watched his face. There seemed to be something hostile in his expression, though not in his voice or manner as he said, “What you can smell is Boeing’s expensive upholstery. We only took delivery of this aircraft two months ago.”
I said, “You still haven’t told me what’s wrong with it.”
“There’s nothing wrong with it.”
“But you said —”
“— I did refer,” he snapped, “to the rumours you’ve been circulating. Right. We’re at our cleared altitude.” His lips tautened. “We now fly on auto.” He engaged the auto pilot and we flew on, just beneath a sumptuous formation of tinted cirrus.
But the atmosphere on the flight deck was unrecognizably different. There was hate in there, not companionship; and a chilling notion, already formed in my inner mind, got a hold of my bladder and I almost urinated in one frantic spasm.
— Whatever was wrong with the aircraft’s electronics — as if I didn’t know — was also wrong with its captain. They were as one … linked into an integrated unit, just as the Kissing Machine had been interlocked with the System at Orscombe.
But how could I possibly have allowed myself to get myself into this unholy trap a third time? Scared almost beyond endurance in the Manchester computer suite and nearly burned to death there, I was now offering myself as victim when right in front of my eyes the print out had specifically mentioned LIA.
Only one explanation was feasible. Whenever it felt like it, the mosaics could override my willpower — just as, in normal circumstances, a human being can override any computer.
For a few minutes all seemed normal. We were still on our cleared heading out to sea. And either my nostrils were saturated or that frightful stink had disseminated.
Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps I was imagining things. You don’t forget an experience like the one in Manchester. Not in a hurry, you don’t. This was some kind of emotional hangover. The smell Wasn’t There. Hitch was Senior Training Captain of an excellent airline. He was human. I was neurotic. I badly needed a talking to from Nesta.
Not for long could I reassure myself with such euphoric balm. A voice in my headphones, so nearly human it could have fooled almost anyone who hadn’t experienced what I’d already been through, cut into the therapy of my idiot optimism.
The voice was very loud. There was no ‘mush’ you get from radio. There was no call sign and no request for acknowledgement. It said, “Your new heading is three-three-zero. Descend to Flight Level two-two-zero and report over Gatwick VOR.”
My eyes shot over to try and catch Hitch’s reaction. I couldn’t believe he’d accept an unidentified command to depart from a signed-up flight plan without at least challenging it.
Yet he at once leaned forward and snapped the switches for VOR. And as we were flying on auto the aircraft began the turn which would swing us right around so as to head for the appropriate radial of the omni. Simultaneously we began the descent. It was crazy, but it was so.
I said through a throat constricted by premonition of horror, “We don’t know where that message came from.” I noted that I’d said this calmly. I felt anything but calm.
Hitch said drily, “Hardly the man in the moon.”
“Shouldn’t we check it with Airways?”
“No.”
“Hitch, there’ll be a lot of traffic —”
“— Do you want to swap seats, Mr. Kepter?”
The seascape was by then exchanged with landscape as we banked around to the right. And I could see we were going to be flying into cloud.
An aircraft flying unseen and off course and at the wrong altitude presents the ultimate menace.
I chanced it and attempted to knock out the auto pilot.
Hitch said acidly, “A comment on the extent of your flying training so far is the fact that you do not know it is extremely ill-advised for a co-pilot to question the captain’s decisions. This is a 747 — not a Tiger Moth. So kindly stay in your league.”
We completed the turn and continued the descent. What happened next was predictable.
Inevitably Airways came up on the air. No doubt we had been under special radar surveillance and this time the screens weren’t lying to anyone. An anxious voice said, “London Airways to LIA flight four-four. We have you on radar turning uncleared onto a north-westerly heading. According to your transponder return we have you losing altitude at fifteen hundred feet per minute. Have you any problems?”
Hitch switched to transmit and said tetchily, “This manoeuvre was agreed at the briefing.”
“Negative. Understood you would be flying an easterly course along the English Channel. Request you resume flight plan and climb back to Flight Level two-four-zero.”
Hitch said, “Sorry. No can do.”
“LIA flight four-four. You are infringing controlled airspace and traffic in the Gatwick Zone is stacked in the holding pattern due bad visibility. We do not understand on what basis you are heading inland.”
Hitch leaned forward, snapped several switches on the panel, then reached over his head and killed some electrical circuits on the ceiling.
I was sweating. I said, “What did you do?”
“I’m not squawking my altitude to those people.”
“You’ve switched off the transponder?”
“Yes. This mission is a special one and I don’t need interference from the ground.”
I said, “We’re flying straight into cloud. We could be risking a mid-air collision and several hundred lives.”
“I know what I’m doing, Kepter. I didn’t think you were the panicky type or I wouldn’t have brought you along for the ride.”
Before I could reply, Airways came up again on radio. “LIA four-four. We are receiving no transponder return. Squawk your proper code and altitude now.”
Hitch sat absolutely still, mute.
I decided to transmit and he instantly reached across and snatched the cable from my headset so that it sprang out of its socket.
He disconnected his own phones and signalled for me to remove mine. “We can hear each other easily enough in here without intercom
, Kepter.”
I said, “What the hell are you doing?” He’d switched on the cloud/collision radar and on its screen appeared the clear echo of another aircraft slightly below us and to our left. I couldn’t see the other aeroplane physically as we were now buried in thick cloud.
What paralysed me was how Hitchcock reacted to what he saw on the screen. Instead of taking action which would keep us well out of its way, he banked left and increased the rate of descent.
The other aircraft was flying more or less the same course as us and was evidently making for the Gatwick holding pattern, where it would join the stack at the top and await its turn to land.
And now we were inexorably closing on it.
I could well imaging the consternation developing down at Air Traffic Control. We ourselves were now cut off from the radio because Hitchcock had yanked out the headset plugs. For all they knew we were in difficulties and totally out of control. Heading, as we were, for the Gatwick stack, they could not hope to clear all traffic from all threatened altitudes. Some of the aircraft awaiting their turn for touchdown would be too short of fuel by now to divert; and even if they were plump enough with fuel to break pattern and head for Heathrow or Paris or Prestwick they would still be vulnerable to the crazed obsession, on the part of Captain and aircraft in lunatic symbiosis, to go through with a suicide mission calculated to take hundreds of other lives.
A quick glance at the radar showed that our prey had altered course and was now weaving about like a bomber trying to evade enemy action. But this was no bomber; from the size of the echo on the screen it was clearly a large commercial flight with innocent people strapped to their seats, listening — no doubt — to some soothing words of reassurance from a captain who must have himself been halfway out of his mind from an agonized sense of horror. Clearly, the controllers had radioed him and explained that some malignant maverick was intent upon an appalling mid-air collision.
Captain Hitchcock’s response to viewing this on radar was to alter course as well. Our quarry was pinned; the range was now only seven miles and closing.
Before glancing around the flight deck for some desperate means of aborting this insane pact between computers contaminated by Electronic Cancer and a pilot in the same unremitting grip, I caught Hitch’s eyes for a split second. They were both tortured and evil at the same time. Part of him knew his personality had been engulfed by something he didn’t understand; but this was swamped by a form of brain control which human will could not conquor. I’d never seen such an expression; and the sensation of hatred in aspic filled the cockpit. I had to do something or sit back and join the mass of impacted tissue and metal in the terrible pyrotechnic of a midair crash. From my grandstand seat I would have one second or less to appreciate the manner of my own death, only to share it as a limbless torso, lifeless in an incandescent plunge to the ground, with hundreds of others.
My eyes caught the fire extinguisher. This was a small carbon tetra chloride device intended for putting out minor electrical fires that might develop in the cockpit. I calculated that I would be able to reach it and direct the jet of chemical straight in Hitch’s face. He would be taken by surprise, even though CTC — mere ‘Thorpit’ — is quite harmless. But in the three or four seconds it would take him to react I thought I might be able to thump his skull with his heavy briefcase and knock him out. There was nothing else to hand.
But what then? Untrained except for two hours in the simulator, was I then to risk a non-automatic landing on London, with all computers knocked out and yet with no knowledge of which of the thousands of other electronic circuits were affected? Could I hope to get away with it in this enormous thing?
Questions queued up in my mind with horrifying acceleration and no logical priority: how could I know that my voice on radio would get through without the words being changed? — Already there’d been one command, perfectly audible in my headphones, that could only have originated in an integrated crystal mosaic. Could I rely on hearing normal voices as they really were? Could I rely on the Flight Director? — a simple enough instrument to read but one nonetheless integrated with the other electronics in the System? Would it mislead me, jumble the information from ILS and other sources, guide me like a drunken idiot into the houses around Hounslow or Isleworth or Hayes? Would Air Traffic Control even allow such a risk? They might try talking me down with radar; but this required far more skill from the pilot than the direct information supplied by a simple instrument not much more complicated to read than a gunsight.
Suddenly we broke cloud and I saw the other aircraft. Less than a mile away by now it was a sitting target for deliberated catastrophe. And because it was weaving about it had lost a lot of speed. We gained on it every second and when I tried pulling back on my controls Hitch simply fought me from his. He was immensely strong and he had the automatic flight system on his side.
I identified the threatened aircraft. It was a DC-10. It could have been carrying anything up to four hundred passengers. As I watched, petrified, I saw it thrown into a last-ditch left-hand turn. Our own aircraft now set up to intercept the turn on a basis of prediction, like a missile fitted with interception equipment.
With sweat pouring down the inside of my clothes I reached across and grabbed the fire extinguisher and directed it full in Hitchcock’s face.
He was shocked into immobility.
I unsnapped my harness and slugged him as hard as I could with his briefcase.
His hands sagged from the controls and he was out cold. For how long? I would have to be ready to do it again. That meant I couldn’t even afford to strap myself in for the landing.
The 747 had lurched into a steep left-hand spiral dive. I grabbed my own controls and throttled back. A glance at the ASI showed that I was already approaching the 747’s Mach Limit. Worse, I was still heading for the DC-l0’s computed position for intercept.
Thanking God for the session in the simulator, I remembered how to disengage the autopilot so at least I wouldn’t have to fight the massive force it had been applying to yoke and rudder alike. But my airspeed had shot up. An aeroplane is not a lot of use if you seriously damage the wings or rip them off altogether. Already — even from the flight deck — I could hear the rising howl of slipstream … a soprano whine I certainly wouldn’t care for if it rose much higher.
I eased back on the column and prayed the wings would stay on. At this speed it wasn’t safe to use more than a hint of elevator but I had no choice. The 747 couldn’t have been more than a hundred metres from the DC-10 and I could clearly see the terrorized faces of passengers at the windows.
I banked right, very gently — forgetting that my port wingtip would then rise to threaten the starboard wingtip of the DC-10.
I shut my eyes and waited for the final crunch.
Opening them, I discovered the wings had missed each other by a matter of feet.
We were clear and on divergent courses.
I now had to get the 747 into a sensible attitude. A quick glance at the ASI showed I’d just kept within limits — the needle quivering right on the do-not-exceed mark. Stiffened ‘feel’ on the column provided a stern warning not to push my luck.
The law of Gravity is not the sort that you can break as long as the police don’t catch you. If the downward force produced by three hundred tons of very expensive metal becomes embarrassing it’s no good phoning your lawyer.
You are hurtling earthwards in an enormous hulk of aeroplane with more seats in it than some movie theatres. Structurally speaking it is an excellent aeroplane but the manufacturers have made some rules about flying it. One of them is called the Mach Limit. This is clearly marked on the instrument before you, and you obey it if you wish the wings to stay on.
Another concerns leverage. The distance between the tail and the nose is a surprisingly long walk. To crank the nose up by levering it from the rear, as you do by pulling back on the stick, you impose Stress. The manufacturers have made rules about that, too. Aerodyn
amically speaking, it is an unsound proposition to shear off the elevators in so doing. You cannot shift three hundred tons of aeroplane through an abrupt angle because of a nasty thing called Inertia; another rule which no law enforcement body has found it necessary to impose. And the faster you are going the greater the force becomes.
You sit and you sweat and you think.
For at least a second.
Then you realize that not one soul occupies a single passenger seat in the whole of the aeroplane; that the fuel tanks do not contain the enormous tonnage necessary for crossing the Atlantic with a full load of passengers and freight.
So with your terrified hands sticky with sweat, you ease back on the column farther than you ought to — for the mass of the aircraft is less than it normally would be.
And your eyes are rivetted on the Air Speed Indicator because if that needle goes up any higher you are unlikely to need it ever again.
And to your amazement it starts dropping back.
Moreover the aeroplane is evidently still in one piece, because everything on the instrument panel assures you that this is so.
You are flying; and this is what aeroplanes are for.
But you’ll never be quite the same person again, because you’ve never flown a 747 before in your life, and you had no right to survive.
And the gods — in their wisdom or otherwise — have blessed you …
*
No time to sit back and praise my Maker for my good fortune. I fumbled frantically with the plug of the headset, hardly able to grip it for the sweat on my hands, and found the socket.
I located the VHF channel selector, checked that I had the correct digits for the emergency frequency, and sent out my lonely cry into the strato-wilderness.
“LIA four four. MAYDAY. MAYDAY. Over.”
Instantly: “LIA four-four. Go ahead.”
I stammered, “Have you got me on radar?”
“State First if you have your aircraft under control.”
The Thinktank That Leaked Page 16