Mayday (10 page)

Six miles. Christ
, he thought.
How could it still be that far?
Matos looked out the windshield. He sped up again, and the distance shortened. The black dot was apparently not a drone.
It was too big. That was what had thrown off his speed adjustment and perception. His mind’s eye had expected a ten-foot object,
and he had played off his airspeed accordingly.

As the space between them narrowed, the size of the target grew rapidly. It was huge. The first distinguishing mark was a
horizontal line across the middle of the structure. A wing line. Then the tail section sprouted from the indistinctness. Matos
sat stunned. It was an aircraft. A large jet. “My God!”

A commercial transport! There was no doubt in his mind that this was the target he had hit. The craft appeared ghostly, like
a ship abandoned on the high seas. Dead in the water. He closed the remaining distance without any additional thoughts or
feelings.

Matos pulled alongside. The Trans-United logo seemed incongruous. Vibrant colors—green, blue, and yellow. Living colors on
a dead ship.

The Straton 797 looked eerie, as if the aircraft itself knew what had happened to it and who had done it. It flew with its
nose canted slightly upward. Its four jet engines produced a continuous flow of exhaust gases. It was holding steady at 11,000
feet and was making an airspeed of 340 knots. Matos guessed that it was being flown by its computer.

Matos maneuvered his fighter closer. He scanned the port side of the wide-bodied fuselage and saw what he was looking for.
The hole. A black spot on the silver body, like an ominous spot on an X-ray. He took his craft around to the starboard side.
The exit hole, like an exit wound of a bullet, was much larger. Huge, jagged, ugly. His hands, then his knees, began to shake.
He threw his head back and looked up out of his bubble into the sky. “Oh, Jesus. Oh, God.”

He did not look at the Straton for a long time. Finally he forced himself to study it again. There were no people visible
at any of the windows. No eyes looked back as he flew parallel with the rows of Plexiglas, only thirty feet from where the
people should have been. He had flown intercepts on transports before, and he knew he should be seeing the people. Matos nudged
the throttles and flew forward to get beside the cockpit. No heads in the cockpit, either. There were no people anywhere.
No passengers, no crew. No survivors.

“Three-four-seven!” the radio shouted, and Matos jumped. Sloan’s sudden transmission had startled him. “Are you there? What
the hell’s happening?”

“I . . . Homeplate . . .” Matos’s thumb stayed locked to the microphone button. As he allowed his F-18 to drift aft and fly
a looser formation, the shadow from the transport’s upper fuselage crossed his canopy. From below, the 797 appeared incredibly
immense. Matos’s F-18 seemed an insignificant speck. He was piloting a toy compared to the mammoth machine he hovered beneath.

Yet the unimaginable had happened. Matos’s toy had destroyed a great airliner. Beyond all doubts and all talk lay the reality
of what was in front of him. His face was covered with sweat, and his eyes welled up with tears. “Homeplate. We have hit a
transport. A Straton 797. Trans-United.”

There was no reply from the
Nimitz
.

J
ohn Berry lay unconscious in one of the first-class lavatories of the Straton 797. His breathing, which earlier had been forced,
had relaxed to its normal rate again. He was motionless except for the involuntary trembling of his left hand. His mind wrestled
through layers of troubled dreams triggered by his unnatural sleep. Slowly, like the imperceptible lifting of an early-morning
fog, John Berry awoke.

He opened his weighted eyes. He turned his head slowly and looked around the small room without comprehending where he was.
At first he could recall nothing beyond his own identity.

John Berry attempted to raise himself from his slumped and uncomfortable position on the floor, but his muscles would not
respond.
No strength
, he said to himself. That had been his first rational thought. Lying on the floor while he gathered the energy to get up,
he spotted a shiny object near him. His wristwatch. He picked it up. 11:18. It jarred his memory, and all the missing pieces
fell into place. Gradually, he remembered where he was, and then why. He realized that he had been unconscious for fourteen
minutes.
Decompression,
he thought.
An opened door. A blown-out window.
He could figure out that much. He had read articles about it in aviation magazines.

Still flying.
His senses told him that the Straton airliner was being held straight and level, and he could feel the reassuring pulses
of engine power through the airframe. The knowledge that the crew still had the ship under control was comforting.

Berry grabbed at the rim of the washbasin and pulled himself up. His legs were still wobbly, and he was light-headed. He vaguely
recalled having vomited, and he saw the evidence of it in the corner. But he had already begun to feel better. He looked at
his reflection in the mirror. He looked all right. No cuts or bruises, although he had dark circles around his eyes. The eyes
themselves were red and watery.

Berry took a few deep breaths and shook his head to clear it. He felt as though he had a giant hangover, except that the symptoms
were disappearing rapidly. He would be all right, he assured himself. Decompression was a temporary thing. No permanent damage.
It was like passing out from too many martinis. Too many martinis was probably worse. He already felt nearly normal.

Berry reached for the door handle. He pulled on it tentatively, remembering that he could not open it earlier. But the Straton’s
pressurization system had automatically shut down once Flight 52 had reached a life-supporting altitude, and there was no
longer any airflow coming from the vents behind him. To Berry’s surprise, the door yielded easily. He opened it and stepped
into the passenger compartment.

John Berry had no preconceived notion of what to expect in the cabin. He had not let his mind get that far ahead, yet subconsciously,
he certainly expected nothing too far from the ordinary. As his eyes took in the scene, what he witnessed caused him to step
backward against the fiberglass wall. The appalling sight filled his brain, and a primeval scream rose from the depths of
his soul. Yet he made no outward cry.

Utter devastation. The worst of the damage was in the forward section of the tourist cabin, only twenty feet from where he
stood. That was where his eyes were instantly drawn and his attention riveted. The curtain that had separated the first-class
from the tourist sections had been torn away, exposing the entire length of the Straton’s huge cabin.

Through the ragged hole in the left side of the 797, Berry could see the wing, and below that, the blue waters of the Pacific
Ocean. Spread out from the hole for a distance of ten feet lay an unrecognizable heap of debris. As he focused on the mound,
he began to separate the component parts: chair rails, seats, and hand luggage.

While his eyes darted around the boundaries of the rubble, he tried to understand what he was seeing. There were two holes
in the aircraft’s fuselage. The hole in the right sidewall was considerably larger and more irregular than the hole in the
left. On both sides there were sheets of metal that vibrated continuously in the slipstream. They added a strange undertone
to the noises of the howling wind. There was no evidence of there having been a fire. But John Berry did not connect what
he saw to any probable cause. His inexperienced eye could not separate the pieces of the puzzle into suitable clues.

Berry slowly realized that the puddle beneath the mass was actually blood. He was suddenly covered with cold sweat. From the
pile of debris he recognized what seemed to be chunks of flesh, sections of arms and legs. A mutilated torso rested against
the edge of the hole in the fuselage.

A movement from beneath the debris caught Berry’s eye. A woman. She was pinned beneath the wreckage. Berry took a step toward
her. As he did, the wind that blew through the gaping hole shifted the wreckage.

Berry froze. The woman’s face, which appeared unmarked and unhurt, turned. Beneath the falls of her blonde hair was the bloody
stump of her neck.

Berry turned his eyes away. His throat constricted and he began to gag. His heart pounded. For a moment, he thought that he
might pass out. He closed his eyes and steadied himself against the bulkhead.

John Berry looked to the front of the airliner. At first glance it seemed normal enough, except that oxygen masks dangled
from the overhead compartments above each seat. Briefcases and pieces of clothing were jammed in the corners. But what caught
his attention was the thing that was glaringly absent: life. The passengers sat motionless in their seats, like a display
of mannequins strapped into the mock-up of an airplane.

Berry walked to where his seat had been. In the row ahead was a man Berry had exchanged friendly words with. Pete Brandt,
from Denver, he recalled. Berry reached for the man’s wrist and felt for a pulse. Nothing. He put his hand up to Brandt’s
mouth. He felt no breathing.

Berry looked around and then realized that Brandt, and all those seated within five rows of him, had no oxygen masks. For
some reason the masks had failed to drop from the compartment above each seat in that section. Berry looked down at the seat
he had been in. No mask.
I’d be dead
, he thought.

He turned around and looked across the cabin. Most of the passengers on that side had their oxygen masks strapped on. Berry
went directly toward the row where a balding, elderly man was seated. They had nodded politely to each other when they had
boarded the fight.

Even before Berry laid his hand against the man’s chest, he knew. The white clamminess of his flesh and his frozen facial
expression told Berry he was dead. Fear and agony were etched into his face. Yet he wore an oxygen mask, and Berry could feel
the trickle of life-sustaining air still being pumped through its plastic tube. Then why had he died?

Berry looked to the next man. It was Isaac Shelbourne, traveling with his wife. Berry knew the famous pianist by sight and
had recognized him while they waited to board. He had hoped to strike up a conversation with him during the flight.

Berry laid his hand on Shelbourne’s shoulder. The man stirred.
Alive
, Berry thought, and his heart filled with hope. He could hear Shelbourne mumble incoherently beneath his oxygen mask, and
Berry slipped the mask off the man’s face.

He grabbed Shelbourne’s shoulders with both his hands and shook him. “Wake up,” he said in a loud voice. He shook him again,
more violently. Shelbourne’s eyes were open, but his gaze was blank. The pianist’s eyes teared and blinked involuntarily.
Saliva ran out from one corner of his mouth. Sounds emanated from the depths of his throat, but they were no more than unintelligible
noises.

“Shelbourne!” Berry screamed, his own voice taking on an ominous sound as it cracked. In a sickening moment, Berry understood
how totally and irrevocably impaired Isaac Shelbourne was.

Berry looked around the cabin. Others had awakened, and they too exhibited the same signs that Shelbourne had: dysfunctional
speech, spastic muscular action, and no apparent capacity for rational thought.
Brain damage!
The hideousness of that notion hit Berry full force. He released his grip on the man he had attempted to revive.

John Berry took a few steps away from where he stood. He was now both afraid and revolted. The people in the cabin were apparently
all brain damaged. He understood that a sustained lack of oxygen could do that. Having an oxygen mask on was evidently not
enough protection. Vaguely, he recalled an article about pressure versus the percentage of oxygen. Above a certain altitude,
even pure oxygen wasn’t enough.
No pressure, no flow,
was the line he remembered. He wondered if it applied to the Straton’s cruise altitude. Sixty-two thousand feet. Yes, that
was it. Of course. They had been traveling in subspace.

He knew for certain that everyone he had seen without an oxygen mask was dead, and those who had worn them had lived—only
to become brain damaged. Yet he was alive, and capable of rational thought—and he had not worn an oxygen mask. Why had he
not been affected? The idea that the brain damage might be progressive jarred him. His mind might still begin to fade, as
the results of oxygen deprivation began to have its affect.

Nine times seven is sixty-three,
he said to himself.
Newton’s first law concerns bodies at rest.
He
was
rational. That was no illusion. He had the impression that brain damage caused by oxygen deprivation was not progressive.
He was sure of that. At least he felt that he was sure of it.

Some of the passengers had gotten up from their seats. Berry saw that those who moved around were disabled to varying degrees.
Some had difficulty walking, while others seemed to move normally. But up close, he could see that even those who retained
normal muscular control had been affected; he could see it in their eyes.

Berry stepped aside to allow a college-age boy to move down the aisle. The boy stumbled a few times. Several feet past Berry
he suddenly stood rigidly upright, then fell to the floor. His body writhed in convulsions. An epileptic seizure. Berry remembered
that he should do something to prevent the boy from swallowing his tongue. But he could not bring himself to step toward him.
He turned away feeling disgusted and helpless.

A young girl, hardly more than eleven or twelve, moved slowly down the aisle. She had come from somewhere in the rear of the
airplane. Her face showed that she was afraid, and that she understood the horror. She turned to Berry.

“Mister. Can you hear me? Do you understand me?” Her voice was tenuous and her face was covered with tears.