The Year's Top Hard Science Fiction Stories 3

by Allan Kaster

  This last remark was addressed to Cora, who looked back coolly. “I’ll be fine.”

  It was the first time she had spoken to him directly. He looked back without lowering his eyes. “You know where to find me. I’d like to be in the air by eight, so we can get back before dark.”

  “Then I’d better be on my way.” Russell appeared to hesitate, as if hoping that Cora would decide to come along after all, but she only picked up her bag and walked toward the cabin. He hefted his own pack onto his back, balancing the tripod on one shoulder, and began to hike down the beach. After a minute, he rounded the bend in the shore and was gone.

  Lawson saw that Cora had already entered the cabin and closed the door behind her. He headed off, whistling tunelessly, and made his way to the warehouse that stood nearby.

  For the next few hours, he explored the farm at his leisure, pausing in the late afternoon for a sandwich and another bite of mintcake. He had hoped to find some tools or equipment to use or resell, but it had all been picked clean. The warehouse was bare except for two chairs, a chopping block, and a vat that had once been used to cook salmon heads into feed for the foxes.

  He stuck his head into the nearest trap house. It was nailed together out of unfinished lumber, four feet to a side, with a ramp leading up to an entrance on the second level. Food had been set out twice a week. When it was time to harvest the pelts, a cleat holding up the floor was removed, allowing it to tilt down under the fox’s weight, depositing it into the trap on the lowest level. Then a counterweight would return the floor to its original position, ready for its next victim.

  As he was picturing this, Lawson felt the walls of the shack vibrate around him. Stepping outside, he saw that the wind had picked up, and the birds on the beach had vanished. He turned to the south. At some point over the last hour, the clouds on the horizon had grown darker and more threatening.

  Lawson sized them up. Then he went up to the cabin and rapped on the door. After a pause, Cora spoke from inside. “Come in.”

  He entered the cabin, which was a cramped, dim space with bare beams crossing the ceiling. Cora had hung her coat from one of the pole racks, and as she rose from the table by the window, where she had been writing something in longhand, he saw that she was wearing a white collared shirt under a wool sweater and a tight pair of trousers. “What is it?”

  Lawson stuck his thumb toward the sound of the wind. “You’d better go up the beach to look for your husband. If you see him, tell him to hustle. Don’t go too far. If he doesn’t show up soon, we’ll be here overnight.”

  Without waiting for a reply, he left the cabin and headed toward the dock. The wind was sending up a noticeable chop, and the plane was beginning to bob up and down on its lines.

  Lawson set to work at once, winding a cable around the float struts and the forward spreader bar and securing it to the pilings. He tied additional ropes to both wings, and then he used the bilge pump to fill the pontoons with water. Finally, he got out his overnight gear. In the back of the Stinson, there was a bundle of egg crate slats that he kept for makeshift repairs. He stuck them under his arm, sealed up the plane, and headed back to the fox farm.

  A light rain was falling. Checking the log cabin and the warehouse, he saw that both seemed reasonably sturdy. After a moment’s thought, he went into the cabin and set down his equipment. Using a mintcake wrapper for kindling and a few of the wood slats, he started a fire in the barrel stove. Then he pulled up a chair, lit a cigarette, and settled in to wait.

  Cora returned fifteen minutes later, her hair plastered against her head from the rain. “He’s not back?”

  Lawson motioned toward the second chair. “You should rest. No point in taking off in weather like this. We’re spending the night, no matter what happens.” He anticipated her next question. “I’ll sleep in the warehouse. There are two more bags. If we’re lucky, your husband will make it back before dark.”

  He offered her a smoke, which she took. Sitting close to the fire, she looked toward the shuttered window. Outside, the rain was lashing down in sheets. Lawson ground out his cigarette. “If he’s smart, he’ll find somewhere to wait out the storm. He should do fine under the trees, as long as he’s got wool socks and underwear. It shouldn’t get much below forty. Once this blows over, he can follow the shoreline back. Not much of a chance he’ll get lost.”

  Cora didn’t respond. After a minute, he handed her one of the sandwiches, which she took, and offered her a swig from his flask, which she declined. As the wind howled against the cabin like a living creature, Lawson tried to get her mind off of it. “How long have you been married?”

  For a second, Cora looked as if she hadn’t understood the question. “Six months.”

  He wanted to ask how she had ended up with this man, but he bit it back. “I guess this wasn’t the honeymoon you wanted.”

  For the first time, she smiled at him. “Actually, it’s exactly what I had in mind.”

  Lawson wasn’t sure what to say in response. On the table, Cora had spread out a few pages of handwritten notes, along with the photo of the silent city. He indicated it. “You really believe in all this?”

  Cora followed his eyes, then looked back. “Are you married, Mr. Lawson?”

  Lawson grinned. “Not exactly. Not a lot of eligible girls where I’m from.”

  “If you were married, you’d know that it doesn’t matter what I believe.” She paused. “Sam and I have more in common than you might think. We’re both stubborn. It’s hard to get an idea out of his head, even if he has to go halfway across the world to prove it. I’m the same way.”

  “What does he do for a living?” Lawson asked. “He wasn’t too clear on the subject.”

  “He’s a writer,” Cora said. “You might say that he’s kind of journalist. For a while, he was working for Scripps Howard. I think you have a mutual friend there. A columnist named Ernie Pyle?”

  Lawson recognized the name. In better times, reporters had come up to Juneau once every couple of months to get fresh copy, and he had taken a few of them on glory hops into the interior. “Are you a writer, too?”

  “You might say that. Sam and I are working on a book. This will be one of the chapters. Assuming—”

  She broke off. For the first time, he saw the strain in her face. “Are you worried?”

  “No.” Cora glanced at the shutters, which were shaking against the frame. “Sam can handle himself. He doesn’t take anything for granted. And maybe this will even teach him a lesson.”

  She stood abruptly. “I’m very tired. If we’re staying here, I’d like to go to bed.”

  “Of course.” Lawson picked up his bag. “There’s firewood in the corner. You can come get me if you need anything.”

  Cora held his gaze. “Thank you. I’m sure I’ll be fine. Good night, Mr. Lawson.”

  “Good night.” Lawson left the cabin, shutting the door, and heard her slide the bolt home. Then he crossed the short distance to the warehouse, his shoulders hunched against the rain.

  Once he was inside, he hung his coat from the rafters to dry. There was a stove in the corner, but instead of lighting a fire, he rolled out his sleeping bag and climbed in, listening to the wind whistling overhead.

  Lawson closed his eyes. He had not expected to fall asleep at once, but he did.

  A few hours later, he sat up in the darkness. It took him a moment to remember what had pulled him out of sleep. He had been dreaming of the foxes. They had stood in a ring around the warehouse, their golden eyes shining in the darkness, and when he had gone out to meet them, he had seen a woman in their midst, her body white, her red hair tumbling down her back.

  She had beckoned him. He had followed, his desire stirring, and his steps had carried him to a trap house on the shore. A voice in his head had screamed at him to stop, but he had continued on, walking up the ramp toward the black hole of the door. He had entered, the smell of blood strong in his nose, and it was only when the floor fell out from under
his feet that he knew—

  Lawson shook his head, coming fully conscious, and only then did he realize what had awakened him. He had heard a noise from outside. A second later, it came again, faintly audible over the wind rattling the building. It was the sound of wood splintering and breaking.

  He climbed out of his bag, stuffed his feet into his boots, and yanked his coat from the rack. Stumbling out of the warehouse, he ran down the slope of the beach to the water. The wind had risen to a full gale, and the rain was pouring down hard, but when his eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw that two of his lines had come loose, and the plane was standing on its nose in the water.

  Lawson sprinted forward. Before he had covered ten paces, there was a crack, and the plane was borne up by the wind. It did a loop and a snap roll, as if controlled by unseen hands, and then it plummeted and crashed with a shudder into the gravel bar at the end of the island.

  II.

  Every year, between June 21 and July 10, a “phantom city” appears in the sky, over a glacier in Alaska. . . . Features of it had been recognized as buildings in the city of Bristol, England, so that the “mirage” was supposed to be a mirage of Bristol. . . . It is said that, except for slight changes, from year to year, the scene was always the same.

  —Charles Fort, New Lands

  Cora found him early the next morning. Lawson had managed to get the plane partway up the slope of the beach, and he was laying out his equipment on the shore when she approached, wrapped up in her coat and scarf. “Sam didn’t come back last night. Have you—”

  She broke off as soon as she saw the extent of the damage. “Can it still fly?”

  Lawson straightened up. He was aching all over, and this wasn’t a conversation that he particularly wanted to be having. “Not like this. A chunk came off the tip of the propeller. One of the wing struts is buckled, the ribs are broken, and there’s a big crack in the windshield. We’re stuck. For now.”

  Cora appeared to consider this, the wind carrying strands of hair away from her face. “Have you radioed for help?”

  Lawson didn’t bother saying that he had spent the last few hours trying not to lose the plane altogether. Instead, he gestured at the radio that he had started to unpack. “Give me a hand.”

  Cora listened to his instructions, her lips pressed tightly together. Lawson had already cut a pole from timber on the beach, and he told her how to unwind and string up the antenna. As Cora held the pole upright, he fiddled with the receiver unit. It was a used Lear set that he had bought last year, after the Civil Aviation Authority had mandated that two-way radios be installed on all planes. Until then, he had relied, like most bush pilots, on his telegraph keys, and he still had doubts about the new system, which had proven distinctly unreliable.

  The receiver was silent. Not even static. He gestured for Cora to move the pole to another spot on the beach as he switched to the transmitter unit. Checking the dials, he saw nothing. He fiddled with it for a few minutes, then stood up. Either there was a faulty component, which would mean taking it all apart and testing each piece, or the entire set was out of commission. In either case, it meant that they weren’t likely to get any help from that direction.

  Cora set down the pole. “Someone will look for us if we don’t come back, right?”

  “Normally, sure.” Lawson rose. “If a plane doesn’t turn up on time, they’ll wait one day, maybe two, before starting a search. But not here. You heard what I told your husband. It’s illegal to land in a national park. I didn’t put our destination on the flight plan. As far as anybody else knows, we went on a scenic circle tour over the glaciers. No one will be looking for us on Willoughby Island.”

  Lawson fished out his cigarettes, which he had kept safe in an inside pocket. He saw that he had seven left. When she refused his offer of one, he lit it for himself and shook out the match. “We have two options. Either we wait and hope that somebody stumbles across us by accident, which doesn’t seem too likely. Or we fly out of here on our own wings.”

  Cora studied the wreck of the Stinson on the shore. “You can fix it yourself?”

  “Sure,” Lawson said. “I’ve seen worse. But I don’t know how long it will take. It sure won’t be today. We’ve got enough food to last for a while. So you might even say we’re lucky.”

  Her face hardened into a look of resolve. “I’m going after Sam. Are you coming?”

  “You go ahead. I’ve got to stay with the plane.” Lawson stooped to pick up a five-gallon can. “Take this to the cabin. Our emergency rations. Rice, hardtack, bouillon cubes, milk powder. There are matches and flares, too. When you go out, bring some matches. If you need help, light a fire on the beach. Use spruce boughs. They should give you plenty of smoke. I’ll come for you.”

  “Thanks.” Cora took the can into her arms and headed for the cabin, picking her way up the sand. Lawson looked after her, waving away the mosquitos, until she was out of sight. Then he glanced up at the sky again. The gulls were back, and the air was calm, but he knew how quickly that could change.

  He turned to the plane, trying to get his thoughts in order. Most of the repairs were fairly routine, but the propeller presented a trickier problem. Six inches had broken off one of the laminated wood blades. If he tried to take off with an unbalanced propeller, the forces could rip the engine right out of the plane, and if he couldn’t get it working again, nothing else would matter.

  Keeping that fact tucked in the back of his mind, Lawson set to work. He drilled holes on either side of the break in the windshield and laced them together with wire, patching up the makeshift suture with tape. Earlier that morning, he had found an old gas can in the warehouse. After flattening it out, he nailed it to the top of the wing spar, then folded it over the leading edge and fastened it to the bottom. The result was a kind of truss that he hoped would keep the wing together long enough for him to cover the fifty miles to Juneau.

  Lawson took a step back to assess the battered Stinson, which had consumed so much of his life for the last decade. He had come to Alaska at twenty, a restless kid drawn to the blank page of the north, and had learned to fly planes on his own time while working at a reindeer slaughtering plant. Finally, he had gone into business for himself, buying a wrecked plane for a dollar and raising the money to fix it up from local store owners and dentists, all of whom believed that Juneau was bound to benefit from its position on the map.

  They had been half right. Lawson had been at an age when he believed that he was bound to do well if he worked hard enough, but the Depression had made nonsense of his intentions. For a while, he had flown fish trap patrol for the canneries, and when that had dried up, he had turned to less reputable charters. Reporters didn’t come on glory hops these days, so he ferried men out to the mines instead, sometimes serving as a kind of unofficial recruiter, going to beer parlors and cigar stores and asking the owners to point out customers whose pockets were empty.

  Then there were the really bad jobs. Once he had flown three prostitutes to a shack on floats that was towed from one mine to another. The youngest had been no more than sixteen. Another profitable charter, if it was available, was flying a dead body home, which was guaranteed to pay both ways. One time he had retrieved a fisherman who had been decapitated when his scarf was caught in a turning shaft. He had carried the head back in a hatbox.

  Lawson blinked away the memory. He still had to fix the cabane strut that held the wing to the fuselage. With some difficulty, he managed to straighten it out, using an old axe handle as a splint, which he bound securely with more wire. When he was done, he removed the propeller and wrapped it up, along with the broken tip. All the while, he kept a mental tally of the cost of the repairs, which would more than swallow up whatever he had hoped to earn from the Russells.

  He ate half of his fudge bar and smoked a cigarette before heading back for the cabin, the propeller tucked under one arm. In his other hand, he carried his combination gun, which he had retrieved from under his seat in the coc
kpit. It was what the locals called a game getter, with both rifled and shotgun barrels, and holding it made him feel marginally less helpless.

  Lawson knew that there was no way that his partners would cover the cost of fixing the plane. He hadn’t taken a salary in years. Instead, they paid him with stock in the company, which was effectively worthless. To survive, he dug clams and occasionally lived off his emergency rations. He had always accepted that he was on his own, but he didn’t know how much longer he would last. There always came a time when the world was done feeding you, and then you were ready for the trap house, the floor falling from beneath your feet when you least expected it.

  A stiff wind was blowing, making it hard for sound to travel. There was no sign of Cora or her husband. Lawson went into the warehouse, where he set his gun on the chopping block and unwrapped the propeller. It would be best, he saw, to make a pattern of the broken tip, which would allow him to figure out where to cut down the other blade. He didn’t have a pencil or paper, but then he remembered the notes that Cora had spread across the table in the next building.

  He left the warehouse and entered the cabin, which was empty. There were a few unused sheets of notepaper and a pencil by the window, along with a pile of other documents. Lawson was picking up a blank page when his eye was caught by a newspaper clipping at the top. It was an article from the Washington Daily News, dated earlier that year, and it carried Sam Russell’s byline.

  Lawson looked at it for a long moment. He knew that he needed Russell and his wife more than they needed him. If he got them out of here in one piece, he might be able to make one last try for their business. And the best way to win them over was to figure out what they really wanted.

  Going to the door, he bolted it. Then he sat down at the table and began to look at the papers more carefully, hoping that they would tell him something more about the couple he had flown to the middle of nowhere.