'Press harder! Seal it! Seal the wound!' Laurel now understood what people meant when they talked about coming completely unstrung, because she felt on the verge of it herself. 'I can't! I'll break her ribs if ' 'Fuck her ribs! You have to make a seal!' Laurel rocked forward on her knees and brought her entire weight down on her hands. Now she could feel liquid seeping slowly between her fingers, although she had folded the tablecloth thick. The Englishman tossed the knife aside and leaned forward until his face was almost touching Dinah's. Her eyes were closed. He rolled one of the lids. 'I think she's finally out,' he said. 'Can't tell for sure because her eyes are so odd, but I hope to heaven she is.' Hair had fallen over his brow. He tossed it back impatiently with a jerk of his head and looked at Laurel. 'You're doing well. Stay with it, all right? I'm rolling her now. Keep the pressure on as I do.' 'There's so much blood,' Laurel groaned. 'Will she drown?' 'I don't know. Keep the pressure on. Ready, Mr Warwick?' 'Oh Christ I guess so,' Rudy Warwick croaked. 'Right. Here we go.' Nick slipped his hands beneath Dinah's right shoulderblade and grimaced. 'It's worse than I thought,' he muttered. 'Far worse. She's soaked.' He began to pull Dinah slowly upward against the pressure Laurel was putting on. Dinah uttered a thick, croaking moan. A gout of halfcongealed blood flew from her mouth and spattered across the floor. And now Laurel could hear a rain of blood pattering down on the carpet from beneath the girl. Suddenly the world began to swim away from her. 'Keep that pressure on!' Nick cried. 'Don't let up!' But she was fainting. It was her understanding of what Nick Hopewell would think of her if she did faint which caused her to do what she did next. Laurel stuck her tongue out between her teeth like a child making a face and bit down on it as hard as she could. The pain was bright and exquisite, the salty taste of her own blood immediately filled her mouth ... but that sensation that the world was swimming away from her like a big lazy fish in an aquarium passed. She was here again. Downstairs, there was a sudden shriek of pain and surprise. It was followed by a hoarse shout. On the heels of the shout came a loud, drilling scream. Rudy and Laurel both turned in that direction. 'The boy!' Rudy said. 'Him and Gaffney! They ' 'They've found Mr Toomy after all,' Nick said. His face was a complicated mask of effort. The tendons on his neck stood out like steel pulleys. 'We'll just have to hope ' There was a thud from downstairs, followed by a terrible howl of agony. Then a whole series of muffled thumps. that they're on top of the situation. We can't do anything about it now. If we stop in the middle of what we're doing, this little girl is going to die for sure.' 'But that sounded like the kid!' 'Can't be helped, can it? Slide the pad under her, Warwick. Do it right now, or I'll kick your bloody arse square.' 6 Don led the way down the escalator, then stopped briefly at the bottom to fumble in his pocket. He brought out a square object that gleamed faintly in the dark. 'It's my Zippo,' he said. 'Do you think it'll still work?' 'I don't know,' Albert said. 'It might ... for awhile. You better not try it until you have to. I sure hope it does. We won't be able to see a thing without it.' 'Where's this Airport Services place?' Albert pointed to the door Craig Toomy had gone through less than five minutes before. 'Right over there.' 'Do you think it's unlocked?' 'Well,' Albert said, 'there's only one way to find out.' They crossed the terminal, Don still leading the way with his lighter in his right hand. 7 Craig heard them coming  more servants of the langoliers, no doubt. But he wasn't worried. He had taken care of the thing which had been masquerading as a little girl, and he would take care of these other things as well. He curled his hand around the letteropener, got up, and sidled back around the desk. 'Do you think it's unlocked?' 'Well, there's only one way to find out.' You're going to find out something, anyway, Craig thought. He reached the wall beside the door. It was lined with paperstacked shelves. He reached out and felt doorhinges. Good. The opening door would block him off from them ... not that they were likely to see him, anyway. It was as black as an elephant's asshole in here. He raised the letteropener to shoulder height. 'The knob doesn't move.' Craig relaxed ... but only for a moment. 'Try pushing it.' That was the smartass kid. The door began to open. 8 Don stepped in, blinking at the gloom. He thumbed the cover of his lighter back, held it up, and flicked the wheel. There was a spark and the wick caught at once, producing a low flame. They saw what was apparently a combined office and storeroom. There was an untidy stack of luggage in one corner and a Xerox machine in another. The back wall was lined with shelves and the shelves were stacked with what looked like forms of various kinds. Don stepped further into the office, lifting his lighter like a spelunker holding up a guttering candle in a dark cave. He pointed to the right wall. 'Hey, kid! Ace! Look!' A poster mounted there showed a tipsy guy in a business suit staggering out of a bar and looking at his watch. WORK IS THE CURSE OF THE DRINKING CLASS, the poster advised. Mounted on the wall beside it was a white plastic box with a large red cross on it. And leaning below it was a folded stretcher ... the kind with wheels. Albert wasn't looking at the poster or the firstaid kit or the stretcher, however. His eyes were fixed on the desk in the center of the room. On it he saw a heaped tangle of paper strips. 'Look out!' he shouted. 'Look out, he's in h ' Craig Toomy stepped out from behind the door and struck. 9 'Belt,' Nick said. Rudy didn't move or reply. His head was turned toward the door of the restaurant. The sounds from downstairs had ceased. There was only the rattling noise and the steady, throbbing rumble of the jet engine in the dark outside. Nick kicked backward like a mule, connecting with Rudy's shin. 'Ow!' 'Belt! Now!' Rudy dropped clumsily to his knees and moved next to Nick, who was holding Dinah up with one hand and pressing a second tablecloth pad against her back with the other. 'Slip it under the pad,' Nick said. He was panting, and sweat was running down his face in wide streams. 'Quick! I can't hold her up forever!' Rudy slid the belt under the pad. Nick lowered Dinah, reached across the girl's small body, and lifted her left shoulder long enough to pull the belt out the other side. Then he looped it over her chest and cinched it tight. He put the belt's free end in Laurel's hand. 'Keep the pressure on,' he said, standing up. 'You can't use the buckle  she's much too small.' 'Are you going downstairs?' Laurel asked. 'Yes. That seems indicated.' 'Be careful. Please be careful.' He grinned at her, and all those white teeth suddenly shining out in the gloom were startling ... but not frightening, she discovered. Quite the opposite. 'Of course. It's how I get along.' He reached down and squeezed her shoulder. His hand was warm, and at his touch a little shiver chased through her. 'You did very well, Laurel. Thank you.' He began to turn away, and then a small hand groped out and caught the cuff of his bluejeans. He looked down and saw that Dinah's blind eyes were open again. 'Don't . she began, and then a choked sneezing fit shook her. Blood flew from her nose in a spray of fine droplets. 'Dinah, you mustn't ' 'Don't ... you ... kill him!' she said, and even in the dark Laurel could sense the fantastic effort she was making to speak at all. Nick looked down at her thoughtfully. 'The bugger stabbed you, you know. Why are you so insistent on keeping him whole?' Her narrow chest strained against the belt. The bloodstained tablecloth pad heaved. She struggled and managed to say one thing more. They all heard it; Dinah was at great pains to speak clearly. 'All . . . I know ... is that we need him,' she whispered, and then her eyes closed again. 10 Craig buried the letteropener fistdeep in the nape of Don Gaffney's neck. Don screamed and dropped the lighter. It struck the floor and lay there, guttering sickishly. Albert shouted in surprise as he saw Craig step toward Don, who was now staggering in the direction of the desk and clawing weakly behind him for the protruding object. Craig grabbed the opener with one hand and planted his other against Don's back. As he simultaneously pushed and pulled, Albert heard the sound of a hungry man pulling a drumstick off a welldone turkey. Don screamed again, louder this time, and went sprawling over the desk. His arms flew out ahead of him, knocking an INOUT box and the stack of lostluggage forms Craig had been ripping. Craig turned toward Albert, flicking a spray of blooddroplets from the blade of the letteropener as he did so. 'You're one of them, too,' he breathed. 'Well, fuck you. I'm going to Boston and you can't stop me. None of you can stop me.' Then the lighter on the floor went out and they were in darkness Albert took a step backward and felt a warm swoop of air in his face as Craig swung the blade through the spot where he had been only a second before. He flailed behind him with his free hand, terrified of backing into a corner where Craig could use the knife (in the Zippo's pallid, fading light, that was what he had thought it was) on him at will and his own weapon would be useless as well as stupid. His fingers found only empty space, and he backed through the door into the lobby. He did not feel cool; he did not feel like the fastest Hebrew on any side of the Mississippi; he did not feel faster than blue blazes. He felt like a scared kid who had foolishly chosen a childhood playtoy instead of a real weapon because he had been unable to believe  really, really believe  that it could come to this in spite of what the lunatic asshole had done to the little girl upstairs. He could smell himself. Even in the dead air he could smell himself. It was the rancid monkeypiss aroma of fear. Craig came gliding out through the door with the letteropener raised. He moved like a dancing shadow in the dark. 'I see you, sonny,' he breathed. 'I see you just like a cat.' He began to slide forward. Albert backed away from him. At the same time he began to pendulum the toaster back and forth, reminding himself that he would have only one good shot before Toomy moved in and planted the blade in his throat or chest. And if the toaster goes flying out of the goddam pocket before it hits him, I'm a goner. Craig closed in, weaving the top half of his body from side to side like a snake coming out of a basket. An absent little smile touched the corners of his lips and made small dimples there. That's right, Craig's father said grimly from his undying stronghold inside Craig's head. If you have to pick them off one by one, you can do that. EPO, Craig. remember? EPO. Effort Pays Off. That's right, Craiggyweggy, his mother chimed in. You can do it, and you have to do it. 'I'm sorry,' Craig murmured to the whitefaced boy through his smile. 'I'm really, really sorry, but I have to do it. If you could see things from my perspective, you'd understand.' He closed in on Albert, raising the letteropener to his eyes. 12 Albert shot a quick glance behind him and saw he was backing toward the United Airlines ticket desk. If he retreated much further, the backward are of his swing would be restricted. It had to be soon. He began to pendulum the toaster more rapidly, his sweaty hand clutching the twist of tablecloth. Craig caught the movement in the dark, but couldn't tell what it was the kid was swinging. It didn't matter. He couldn't let it matter. He gathered himself, then sprang forward. 'I'M GOING TO BOSTON!' he shrieked. 'I'M GOING TO' Albert's eyes were adjusting to the dark, and he saw Craig make his move. The toaster was on the rearward half of its are. Instead of snapping his wrist forward to reverse its direction, Albert let his arm go with the weight of the toaster, swinging it up and over his head in an exaggerated pitching gesture. At the same time he stepped to the left. The lump at the end of the tablecloth made a short, hard circlet in the air, held firmly in its pocket by centripetal force. Craig cooperated by stepping forward into the toaster's descending arc. It met his forehead and the bridge of his nose with a hard, toneless crunch. Craig wailed with agony and dropped the letteropener. His hands went to his face and he staggered backwards. Blood from his broken nose poured between his fingers like water from a busted hydrant. Albert was terrified of what he had done but even more terrified of letting up now that Toomy was hurt. Albert took another step to the left and swung the tablecloth sidearm. It whipped through the air and smashed into the center of Craig's chest with a hard thump. Craig fell over backward, still howling. For Albert 'Ace' Kaussner, only one thought remained; all else was a tumbling, fragmented swirl of color, image, and emotion. I have to make him stop moving or he'll get up and kill me. I have to make him stop moving or he'll get up and kill me. At least Toomy had dropped his weapon; it lay glinting on the lobby carpet. Albert planted one of his loafers on it and unloaded with the toaster again. As it came down. Albert bowed from the waist like an oldfashioned butler greeting a member of the royal family. The lump at the end of the tablecloth smashed into Craig Toomy's gasping mouth. There was a sound like glass being crushed inside of a handkerchief. Oh God, Albert thought. That was his teeth. Craig flopped and squirmed on the floor. It was terrible to watch him, perhaps more terrible because of the poor light. There was something monstrous and unkillable and insectile about his horrible vitality. His hand closed upon Albert's loafer. Albert stepped away from the letteropener with a little cry of revulsion, and Craig tried to grasp it when he did. Between his eyes, his nose was a burst bulb of flesh. He could hardly see Albert at all; his vision was eaten up by a vast white corona of light. A steady high keening note rang in his head, the sound of a TV testpattern turned up to full volume. He was beyond doing any more damage, but Albert didn't know it. In a panic, he brought the toaster down on Craig's head again. There was a metallic crunchrattle as the heating elements inside it broke free. Craig stopped moving. Albert stood over him, sobbing for breath, the weighted tablecloth dangling from one hand. Then he took two long, shambling steps toward the escalator bowed deeply again, and vomited on the floor. 13 Brian crossed himself as he thumped back the black plastic shield which covered the screen of the 767's INS videodisplay terminal, halfexpecting it to be smooth and blank. He looked at it closely ... and let out a deep sigh of relief. LAST PROGRAM COMPLETE, it informed him in cool bluegreen letters, and below that NEW PROGRAM? Y N Brian typed Y, then REVERSE AP29LAXLOGAN The screen went dark for a moment. Then INCLUDE DIVERSION IN AP 29? Y N Brian typed Y. REVERSE the screen informed him, and, less than five seconds later PROGRAM COMPLETE 'Captain Engle?' He turned around. Bethany was standing in the cockpit doorway. She looked pale and haggard in the cabin lights. 'I'm a little busy right now, Bethany.' 'Why aren't they back?' 'I can't say.' 'I asked Bob  Mr Jenkins  if he could see anyone moving around inside the terminal, and he said he couldn't. What if they're all dead?' 'I'm sure they're not. If it will make you feel better, why don't you join him at the bottom of the ladder? I've got some more work to do here.' At least I hope I do. 'Are you scared?' she asked. 'Yes. I sure am.' She smiled a little. 'I'm sort of glad. It's bad to be scared all by yourself  totally bogus. I'll leave you alone now.' 'Thanks. I'm sure they'll be out soon.' She left. Brian turned back to the INS monitor and typed ARE THERE PROBLEMS WITH THIS PROGRAM? He hit EXECUTE. NO PROBLEMS. THANK YOU FOR FLYING AMERICAN PRIDE. 'You're welcome, I'm sure,' Brian murmured. and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. Now, he thought, if only the fuel will burn. 14 Bob heard footsteps on the ladder and turned quickly. It was only Bethany, descending slowly and carefully, but he still felt jumpy. The sound coming out of the cast was gradually growing louder. Closer. 'Hi, Bethany. May I borrow another of your cigarettes?' She offered the depleted pack to him, then took one herself. She had tucked Albert's book of experimental matches into the cellophane covering the pack, and when she tried one it lit easily. 'Any sign of them?' 'Well, it all depends on what you mean by "any sign," I guess,' Bob said cautiously. 'I think I heard some shouting just before you came down.' What he had heard actually sounded like screaming  shrieking, not to put too fine a point on it  but he saw no reason to tell the girl that. She looked as frightened as Bob felt, and he had an idea she'd taken a liking to Albert. 'I hope Dinah's going to be all right,' she said, 'but I don't know. He cut her really bad.' 'Did you see the captain?' Bethany nodded. 'He sort of kicked me out. I guess he's programming his instruments, or something.' Bob Jenkins nodded soberly. 'I hope so.' Conversation lapsed. They both looked east. A new and even more ominous sound now underlay the crunching, chewing noise a high, inanimate screaming. It was a strangely mechanical sound, one that made Bob think of an automatic transmission low on fluid. 'It's a lot closer now, isn't it?' Bob nodded reluctantly. He drew on his cigarette and the glowing ember momentarily illuminated a pair of tired, terrified eyes. 'What do you suppose it is, Mr Jenkins?' He shook his head slowly. 'Dear girl, I hope we never have to find out.' 15 Halfway down the escalator, Nick saw a bentover figure standing in front of the useless bank of pay telephones. It was impossible to tell if it was Albert or Craig Toomy. The Englishman reached into his right front pocket, holding his left hand against it to prevent any jingling, and by touch selected a pair of quarters from his change. He closed his right hand into a fist and slipped the quarters between his fingers, creating a makeshift set of brass knuckles. Then he continued down to the lobby. The figure by the telephones looked up as Nick appeared. It was Albert. 'Don't step in the puke,' he said dully. Nick dropped the quarters back into his pocket and hurried to where the boy was standing with his hands propped above his knees like an old man who has badly overestimated his capacity for exercise. He could smell the high, sour stench of vomit. That and the sweaty stink of fear coming off the boy were smells with which he was all too familiar. He knew them from the Falklands, and even more intimately from Northern Ireland. He put his left arm around the boy's shoulders and Albert straightened very slowly. 'Where are they, Ace?' Nick asked quietly. 'Gaffney and Toomy  where are they?' 'Mr Toomy's there.' He pointed toward a crumpled shape on the floor. 'Mr Gaffney's in the Airport Services office. I think they're both dead. Mr Toomy was in the Airport Services office. Behind the door, I guess. He killed Mr Gaffney because Mr Gaffney walked in first. If I'd walked in first, he would have killed me instead.' Albert swallowed hard. 'Then I killed Mr Toomy. I had to. He came after me, see? He found another knife someplace and he came after me.' He spoke in a tone which could have been mistaken for indifference, but Nick knew better. And it was not indifference he saw on the white blur of Albert's face. 'Can you get hold of yourself, Ace?' Nick asked. 'I don't know. I never kkkilled anyone before, and ' Albert uttered a strangled, miserable sob. 'I know,' Nick said. 'It's a horrible thing, but it can be gotten over. I know. And you must get over it, Ace. We have miles to go before we sleep, and there's no time for therapy. The sound is louder.' He left Albert and went over to the crumpled form on the floor. Craig Toomy was lying on his side with one upraised arm partially obscuring his face. Nick rolled him onto his back, looked, whistled softly. Toomy was still alive  he could hear the harsh rasp of his breath  but Nick would have bet his bank account that the man was not shamming this time. His nose hadn't just been broken; it looked vaporized. His mouth was a bloody socket ringed with the shattered remains of his teeth. And the deep, troubled dent in the center of Toomy's forehead suggested that Albert had done some creative retooling of the man's skullplate. 'He did all this with a toaster?' Nick muttered. 'Jesus and Mary, Tom, Dick and Harry.' He got up and raised his voice. 'He's not dead, Ace.' Albert had bent over again when Nick left him. Now he straightened slowly and took a step toward him. 'He's not?' 'Listen for yourself. Out for the count, but still in the game.' Not for long, though; not by the sound of him. 'Let's check on Mr Gaffney  maybe he got off lucky, too. And what about the stretcher?' 'Huh?' Albert looked at Nick as though he had spoken in a foreign language. 'The stretcher,' Nick repeated patiently as they walked toward the open Airport Services door. 'We found it,' Albert said. 'Did you? Super!' Albert stopped just inside the door. 'Wait a minute,' he muttered, then squatted and felt around for Don's lighter. He found it after a moment or two. It was still warm. He stood up again. 'Mr Gaffney's on the other side of the desk, I think.' They walked around, stepping over the tumbled stacks of paper and the INOUT basket. Albert held the lighter and flicked the wheel. On the fifth try the wick caught and burned feebly for three or four seconds. It was enough. Nick had actually seen enough in the sparkflashes the lighter's wheel had struck, but he hadn't liked to say so to Albert. Don Gaffney lay sprawled on his back, eyes open, a look of terrible surprise still fixed on his face. He hadn't gotten off lucky after all. 'How was it that Toomy didn't get you as well?' Nick asked after a moment. 'I knew he was in here,' Albert said. 'Even before he struck Mr Gaffney, I knew.' His voice was still dry and shaky, but he felt a little better. Now that he had actually faced poor Mr Gaffney  looked him in the eye, so to speak  he felt a little better. 'Did you hear him?' 'No  I saw those. On the desk.' Albert pointed to the little heap of torn strips . 'Lucky you did.' Nick put his hand on Albert's shoulder in the dark. 'You deserve to be alive, mate. You earned the privilege. All right?' 'I'll try,' Albert said. 'You do that, old son. It saves a lot of nightmares. You're looking at a man who knows.' Albert nodded. 'Keep it together, Ace. That's all there is to it  just keep things together and you'll be fine.' 'Mr Hopewell?' 'Yes?' 'Would you mind not calling me that? I ' His voice clogged, and Albert cleared his throat violently. 'I don't think I like it anymore.' 16 They emerged from the dark cave which was Airport Services thirty seconds later, Nick carrying the folded stretcher by the handle. When they reached the bank of phones, Nick handed the stretcher to Albert, who accepted it wordlessly. The tablecloth lay on the floor about five feet away from Toomy, who was snoring now in great rhythmless snatches of air. Time was short, time was very fucking short, but Nick had to see this. He had to. He picked up the tablecloth and pulled the toaster out. One of the heating elements caught in a bread slot; the other tumbled out onto the floor. The timerdial and the handle you used to push the bread down fell off. One corner of the toaster was crumpled inward. The left side was bashed into a deep circular dent. That's the part that collided with Friend Toomy's sniffer, Nick thought. Amazing. He shook the toaster and listened to the loose rattle of broken parts inside. 'A toaster,' he marvelled. 'I have friends, Albert  professional friends  who wouldn't believe it. I hardly believe it myself. I mean ... a toaster.' Albert had turned his head. 'Throw it away,' he said hoarsely. 'I don't want to look at it.' Nick did as the boy asked, then clapped him on the shoulder. 'Take the stretcher upstairs. I'll join you directly.' 'What are you going to do?' 'I want to see if there's anything else we can use in that office.' Albert looked at him for a moment, but he couldn't make out Nick's features in the dark. At last he said, 'I don't believe you.' 'Nor do you have to,' Nick said in an oddly gentle voice. 'Go on, Ace . Albert, I mean. I'll join you soon. And don't look back.' Albert stared at him a moment longer, then began to trudge up the frozen escalator, his head down, the stretcher dangling like a suitcase from his right hand. He didn't look back. 17 Nick waited until the boy had disappeared into the gloom. Then he walked back over to where Craig Toomy lay and squatted beside him. Toomy was still out, but his breathing seemed a little more regular. Nick supposed it was not impossible, given a week or two of constantcare treatment in hospital, that Toomy might recover. He had proved at least one thing he had an awesomely hard head. Shame the brains underneath are so soft, mate, Nick thought. He reached out, meaning to put one hand over Toomy's mouth and the other over his nose  or what remained of it. It would take less than a minute, and they would not have to worry about Mr Craig Toomy anymore. The others would have recoiled in horror at the act  would have called it coldblooded murder  but Nick saw it as an insurance policy, no more and no less. Toomy had arisen once from what appeared to be total unconsciousness and now one of their number was dead and another was badly, perhaps mortally, wounded. There was no sense taking the same chance again. And there was something else. If he left Toomy alive, what, exactly, would he be leaving him alive for? A short, haunted existence in a dead world? A chance to breathe dying air under a moveless sky in which all weather patterns appeared to have ceased? An opportunity to meet whatever was approaching from the east ... approaching with a sound like that of a colony of giant, marauding ants? No. Best to see him out of it. It would be painless, and that would have to be good enough. 'Better than the bastard deserves,' Nick said, but still he hesitated. He remembered the little girl looking up at him with her dark, unseeing eyes. Don't you kill him! Not a plea; that had been a command. She had summoned up a little strength from some hidden last reserve in order to give him that command. All I know is that we need him. Why is she so bloody protective of him? He squatted a moment longer, looking into Craig Toomy's ruined face. And when Rudy Warwick spoke from the head of the escalator, he jumped as if it had been the devil himself. 'Mr Hopewell? Nick? Are you coming?' 'In a jiffy!' he called back over his shoulder. He reached toward Toomy's face again and stopped again, remembering her dark eyes. We need him. Abruptly he stood up, leaving Craig Toomy to his tortured struggle for breath. 'Coming now,' he called, and ran lightly up the escalator. CHAPTER 8 Refuelling. Dawn's Early Light. The Approach of the Langoliers. Angel of the Morning. The TimeKeepers of Eternity. Takeoff. 1 Bethany had cast away her almost tasteless cigarette and was halfway up the ladder again when Bob Jenkins shouted 'I think they're coming out!' She turned and ran back down the stairs. A series of dark blobs was emerging from the luggage bay and crawling along the conveyor belt. Bob and Bethany ran to meet them. Dinah was strapped to the stretcher. Rudy had one end, Nick the other. They were walking on their knees, and Bethany could hear the bald man breathing in harsh, outofbreath gasps. 'Let me help,' she told him, and Rudy gave up his end of the stretcher willingly. 'Try not to jiggle her,' Nick said, swinging his legs off the conveyor belt. 'Albert, get on Bethany's end and help us take her up the stairs. We want this thing to stay as level as possible.' 'How bad is she?' Bethany asked Albert. 'Not good,' he said grimly. 'Unconscious but still alive. That's all I know.' 'Where are Gaffney and Toomy?' Bob asked as they crossed to the plane. He had to raise his voice slightly to be heard; the crunching sound was louder now, and that shrieking woundedtransmission undertone was becoming a dominant, maddening note. 'Gaffney's dead and Toomy might as well be,' Nick said. 'Right now there's no time.' He halted at the foot of the stairs. 'Mind you keep your end up, you two.' They moved the stretcher slowly and carefully up the stairs, Nick walking backward and bent over the forward end, Albert and Bethany holding the stretcher up at forehead level and jostling hips on the narrow stairway at the rear. Bob, Rudy, and Laurel followed behind. Laurel had spoken only once since Albert and Nick had returned, to ask if Toomy was dead. When Nick told her he wasn't, she had looked at him closely and then nodded her head with relief. Brian was standing at the cockpit door when Nick reached the top of the ladder and eased his end of the stretcher inside. 'I want to put her in first class,' Nick said, 'with this end of the stretcher raised so her head is up. Can I do that?' 'No problem. Secure the stretcher by looping a couple of seatbelts through the headframe. Do you see where?' 'Yes.' And to Albert and Bethany 'Come on up. You're doing fine.' In the cabin lights, the blood smeared on Dinah's cheeks and chin stood out starkly against her yellowwhite skin. Her eyes were closed; her lids were a delicate shade of lavender. Under the belt (in which Nick had punched a new hole, high above the others), the makeshift compress was dark red. Brian could hear her breathing. It sounded like a straw dragging wind at the bottom of an almost empty glass. 'It's bad, isn't it?' Brian asked in a low voice. 'Well, it's her lung and not her heart, and she's not filling up anywhere near as fast as I was afraid she might ... but it's bad, yes.' 'Will she live until we get back?' 'How in hell should I know?' Nick shouted at him suddenly. 'I'm a soldier, not a bloody sawbones!' The others froze, looking at him with cautious eyes. Laurel felt her skin prickle again. 'I'm sorry,' Nick muttered. 'Time travel plays the very devil with one's nerves, doesn't it? I'm very sorry.' 'No need to apologize,' Laurel said, and touched his arm. 'We're all under strain.' He gave her a tired smile and touched her hair. 'You're a sweetheart, Laurel, and no mistake. Come on  let's strap her in and see what we can do about getting the hell out of here.' 2 Five minutes later Dinah's stretcher had been secured in an inclined position to a pair of firstclass seats, her head up, her feet down. The rest of the passengers were gathered in a tight little knot around Brian in the firstclass serving area. 'We need to refuel the plane,' Brian said. 'I'm going to start the other engine now and pull over as close as I can to that 727400 at the jetway.' He pointed to the Delta plane, which was just a gray lump in the dark. 'Because our aircraft sits higher, I'll be able to lay our right wing right over the Delta's left wing. While I do that, four of you are going to bring over a hose cart  there's one sitting by the other jetway. I saw it before it got dark.' 'Maybe we better wake Sleeping Beauty at the back of the plane and get him to lend a hand,' Bob said. Brian thought it over briefly and then shook his head. 'The last thing we need right now is another scared, disoriented passenger on our hands  and one with a killer hangover to boot. And we won't need him  two strong men can push a hose cart in a pinch. I've seen it done. Just check the transmission lever to make sure it's in neutral. It wants to end up directly beneath the overlapping wings.


Got it?' They all nodded. Brian looked them over and decided that Rudy and Bethany were still too blown from wrestling the stretcher to be of much help. 'Nick, Bob, and Albert. You push. Laurel, you steer. Okay?' They nodded. 'Go on and do it, then. Bethany? Mr Warwick? Go down with them. Pull the ladder away from the plane, and when I've got the plane repositioned, place it next to the overlapping wings. The wings, not the door. Got it?' They nodded. Looking around at them, Brian saw that their eyes looked clear and bright for the first time since they had landed. Of course, he thought. They have something to do now. And so do I, thank God. 3 As they approached the hose cart sitting off to the left of the unoccupied jetway, Laurel realized she could actually see it. 'My God,' she said. 'It's coming daylight again already. How long has it been since it got dark?' 'Less than forty minutes, by my watch,' Bob said, 'but I have a feeling that my watch doesn't keep very accurate time when we're outside the plane. I've also got a feeling time doesn't matter much here, anyway.' 'What's going to happen to Mr Toomy?' Laurel asked. They had reached the cart. It was a small vehicle with a tank on the back, an openair cab, and thick black hoses coiled on either side. Nick put an arm around her waist and turned her toward him. For a moment she had the crazy idea that he meant to kiss her, and she felt her heart speed up. 'I don't know what's going to happen to him,' he said. 'All I know is that when the chips were down, I chose to do what Dinah wanted. I left him lying unconscious on the floor. All right?' 'No,' she said in a slightly unsteady voice, 'but I guess it will have to do.' He smiled a little, nodded, and gave her waist a brief squeeze. 'Would you like to go to dinner with me when and if we make it back to LA?' 'Yes,' she said at once. 'That would be something to look forward to.' He nodded again. 'For me, too. But unless we can get this airplane refuelled, we're not going anywhere.' He looked at the open cab of the hose cart. 'Can you find neutral, do you think?' Laurel eyed the stickshift jutting up from the floor of the cab. 'I'm afraid I only drive an automatic.' 'I'll do it.' Albert jumped into the cab, depressed the clutch, then peered at the diagram on the knob of the shift lever. Behind him, the 767's second engine whined into life and both engines began to throb harder as Brian powered up. The noise was very loud, but Laurel found she didn't mind at all. It blotted out that other sound, at least temporarily. And she kept wanting to look at Nick. Had he actually invited her out to dinner? Already it seemed hard to believe. Albert changed gears, then waggled the shift lever. 'Got it,' he said, and jumped down  'Up you go, Laurel. Once we get it rolling, you'll have to hang a hard right and bring it around in a circle.' 'All right.' She looked back nervously as the three men lined themselves up along the rear of the hose cart with Nick in the middle. 'Ready, you lot?' he asked. Albert and Bob nodded. 'Right, then  all together.' Bob had been braced to push as hard as he could, and damn the low back pain which had plagued him for the last ten years, but the hose cart rolled with absurd case. Laurel hauled the stiff, balky steering wheel around with all her might. The yellow cart described a small circle on the gray tarmac and began to roll back toward the 767, which was trundling slowly into position on the righthand side of the parked Delta jet. 'The difference between the two aircraft is incredible,' Bob said. 'Yes,' Nick agreed. 'You were right, Albert. We may have wandered away from the present, but in some strange way, that airplane is still a part of it.' ' So are we,' Albert said. 'At least, so far.' The 767's turbines died, leaving only the steady low rumble of the APUs Brian was now running all four of them. They were not loud enough to cover the sound in the east. Before, that sound had had a kind of massive uniformity, but as it neared it was fragmenting; there seemed to be sounds within sounds, and the sum total began to seem horribly familiar. Animals at feeding time, Laurel thought, and shivered. That's what it sounds like  the sound of feeding animals, sent through an amplifier and blown up to grotesque proportions. She shivered violently and felt panic begin to nibble at her thoughts, an elemental force she could control no more than she could control whatever was making that sound. 'Maybe if we could see it, we could deal with it,' Bob said as they began to push the fuel cart again. Albert glanced at him briefly and said, 'I don't think so.' 4 Brian appeared in the forward door of the 767 and motioned Bethany and Rudy to roll the ladder over to him. When they did, he stepped onto the platform at the top and pointed to the overlapping wings. As they rolled him in that direction, he listened to the approaching noise and found himself remembering a movie he had seen on the late show a long time ago. In it, Charlton Heston had owned a big plantation in South America. The plantation had been attacked by a vast moving carpet of soldier ants, ants which ate everything in their path  trees, grass, buildings, cows, men. What had that movie been called? Brian couldn't remember. He only remembered that Charlton had kept trying increasingly desperate tricks to stop the ants, or at least delay them. Had he beaten them in the end? Brian couldn't remember, but a fragment of his dream suddenly recurred, disturbing in its lack of association to anything an ominous red sign which read SHOOTING STARS ONLY. 'Hold it!' he shouted down to Rudy and Bethany. They ceased pushing, and Brian carefully climbed down the ladder until his head was on a level with the underside of the Delta jet's wing. Both the 767 and 727 were equipped with singlepoint fuelling ports in the left wing. He was now looking at a small square hatch with the words FUEL TANK ACCESS and CHECK SHUTOFF VALVE BEFORE REFUELLING stencilled across it. And some wit had pasted a round yellow happyface sticker to the fuel hatch. It was the final surreal touch. Albert, Bob, and Nick had pushed the hose cart into position below him and were now looking up, their faces dirty gray circles in the brightening gloom. Brian leaned over and shouted down to Nick. 'There are two hoses, one on each side of the cart! I want the short one!' Nick pulled it free and handed it up. Holding both the ladder and the nozzle of the hose with one hand, Brian leaned under the wing and opened the refuelling hatch. Inside was a male connector with a steel prong poking out like a finger. Brian leaned further out ... and slipped. He grabbed the railing of the ladder. 'Hold on, mate,' Nick said, mounting the ladder. 'Help is on the way.' He stopped three rungs below Brian and seized his belt. 'Do me a favor, all right?' 'What's that?' 'Don't fart.' 'I'll try, but no promises.' He leaned out again and looked down at the others. Rudy and Bethany had joined Bob and Albert below the wing. 'Move away, unless you want a jetfuel shower!' he called. 'I can't control the Delta's shutoff valve, and it may leak!' As he waited for them to back away he thought, Of course, it may not. For all I know, the tanks on this thing are as dry as a goddam bone. He leaned out again, using both hands now that Nick had him firmly anchored, and slammed the nozzle into the fuel port. There was a brief, spattering shower of jetfuel  a very welcome shower, under the circumstances  and then a hard metallic click. Brian twisted the nozzle a quarterturn to the right, locking it into place, and listened with satisfaction as jetfuel ran down the hose to the cart, where a closed valve would dam its flow. 'Okay,' he sighed, pulling himself back to the ladder. 'So far. so good.' 'What now, mate? How do we make that cart run? Do we jumpstart it from the plane, or what?' 'I doubt if we could do that even if someone had remembered to bring the Jumper cables,' Brian said. 'Luckily, it doesn't have to run. Essentially, the cart is just a gadget to filter and transfer fuel. I'm going to use the auxiliary power units on our plane to suck the fuel out of the 727 the way you'd use a straw to suck lemonade out of a glass.' 'How long is it going to take?' 'Under optimum conditions  which would mean pumping with ground power we could load 2,000 pounds of fuel a minute. Doing it like this makes it harder to figure. I've never had to use the APUs to pump fuel before. At least an hour. Maybe two.' Nick gazed anxiously eastward for a moment, and when he spoke again his voice was low. 'Do me a favor, mate  don't tell the others that.' 'Why not?' 'Because I don't think we have two hours. We may not even have one.' 5 Alone in first class, Dinah Catherine Bellman opened her eyes. And saw. 'Craig,' she whispered. 6 Craig. But he didn't want to hear his name. He only wanted to be left alone; he never wanted to hear his name again. When people called his name, something bad always happened. Always. Craig! Get up, Craig! No. He wouldn't get up. His head had become a vast chambered hive; pain roared and raved in each irregular room and crooked corridor. Bees had come. The bees had thought he was dead. They had invaded his head and turned his skull into a honeycomb. And now ... now ... They sense my thoughts and are trying to sting them to death, he thought, and uttered a thick, agonized groan. His bloodstreaked hands opened and closed slowly on the industrial carpet which covered the lowerlobby floor. Let me die, oh please just let me die. Craig, you have to get up! Now! It was his father's voice, the one voice he had never been able to refuse or shut out. But he would refuse it now. He would shut it out now. 'Go away,' he croaked. 'I hate you. Go away.' Pain blared through his head in a golden shriek of trumpets. Clouds of bees, furious and stinging, flew from the bells as they blew. Oh let me die, he thought. Oh let me die. This is hell. I am in a hell of bees and bigband horns. Get up, Craiggyweggy. It's your birthday, and guess what? As soon as you get up, someone's going to hand you a beer and hit you over the head ... because THIS thud's for you! 'No,' he said. 'No more hitting.' His hands shuffled on the carpet. He made an effort to open his eyes, but a glue of drying blood had stuck them shut. 'You're dead. Both of you are dead. You can't hit me, and you can't make me do things. Both of you are dead, and I want to be dead, too.' But he wasn't dead. Somewhere beyond these phantom voices he could hear the whine of )et engines ... and that other sound. The sound of the langoliers on the march. On the run. Craig. get up. You have to get up. He realized that it wasn't the voice of his father, or of his mother, either. That had only been his poor, wounded mind trying to fool itself. This was a voice from ... from (above?) some other place, some high bright place where pain was a myth and pressure was a dream. Craig, they've come to you  all the people you wanted to see. They left Boston and came here. That's how important you are to them. You can still do it, Craig. You can still pull the pin. There's still time to hand in your papers and fall out of your father's army ... if you're man enough to do it, that is. If you're man enough to do it. 'Man enough?' he croaked. 'Man enough? Whoever you are, you've got to be shitting me.' He tried again to open his eyes. The tacky blood holding them shut gave a little but would not let go. He managed to work one hand up to his face. It brushed the remains of his nose and he gave voice to a low, tired scream of pain. Inside his head the trumpets blared and the bees swarmed. He waited until the worst of the pain had subsided, then poked out two fingers and used them to pull his own eyelids up. That corona of light was still there. It made a vaguely evocative shape in the gloom. Slowly, a little at a time, Craig raised his head. And saw her. She stood within the corona of light. It was the little girl, but her dark glasses were gone and she was looking at him, and her eyes were kind. Come on, Craig. Get up. I know it's hard, but you have to get up you have to. Because they are all here, they are all waiting ... but they won't wait forever. The langoliers will see to that. She was not standing on the floor, he saw. Her shoes appeared to float an inch or two above it, and the bright light was all around her. She was outlined in spectral radiance. Come, Craig. Get up. He started struggling to his feet. It was very hard. His sense of balance was almost gone, and it was hard to hold his head up  because, of course, it was full of angry honeybees. Twice he fell back, but each time he began again, mesmerized and entranced by the glowing girl with her kind eyes and her promise of ultimate release. They are all waiting, Craig. For you. They are waiting for you. 7 Dinah lay on the stretcher, watching with her blind eyes as Craig Toomy got to one knee, fell over on his side, then began trying to rise once more. Her heart was suffused with a terrible stern pity for this hurt and broken man, this murdering fish that only wanted to explode. On his ruined, bloody face she saw a terrible mixture of emotions fear, hope, and a kind of merciless determination. I'm sorry, Mr Toomy, she thought. In spite of what you did, I'm sorry. But we need you. Then called to him again, called with her own dying consciousness Get up, Craig! Hurry! It's almost too late! And she sensed that it was. 8 Once the longer of the two hoses was looped under the belly of the 767 and attached to its fuel port, Brian returned to the cockpit, cycled up the APUs' and went to work sucking the 727400's fuel tanks dry. As he watched the LED readout on his right tank slowly climb toward 24,000 pounds, he waited tensely for the APUs to start chugging and lugging, trying to eat fuel which would not burn. The right tank had reached the 8,000pound mark when he heard the note of the small jet engines at the rear of the plane change  they grew rough and labored. 'What's happening, mate?' Nick asked. He was sitting in the copilot's chair again. His hair was disarrayed, and there were wide streaks of grease and blood across his formerly natty buttondown shirt. 'The APU engines are getting a taste of the 727's fuel and they don't like it,' Brian said. 'I hope Albert's magic works, Nick, but I don't know.' Just before the LED reached 9,000 pounds in the right tank, the first APU cut out. A red ENGINE SHUTDOWN light appeared on Brian's board. He flicked the APU off. 'What can you do about it?' Nick asked, getting up and coming to look over Brian's shoulder. 'Use the other three APUs to keep the pumps running and hope,' Brian said. The second APU cut out thirty seconds later, and while Brian was moving his hand to shut it down, the third went. The cockpit lights went with it; now there was only the irregular chug of the hydraulic pumps and the lights on Brian's board, which were flickering. The last APU was roaring choppily, cycling up and down, shaking the plane. 'I'm shutting down completely,' Brian said. He sounded harsh and strained to himself, a man who was way out of his depth and tiring fast in the undertow. 'We'll have to wait for the Delta's fuel to join our plane's timestream, or timeframe, or whatever the fuck it is. We can't go on like this. A strong powersurge before the last APU cuts out could wipe the INS clean. Maybe even fry it.' But as Brian reached for the switch, the engine's choppy note suddenly began to smooth out. He turned and stared at Nick unbelievingly. Nick looked back, and a big, slow grin lit his face. 'We might have lucked out, mate.' Brian raised his hands, crossed both sets of fingers, and shook them in the air. 'I hope so,' he said, and swung back to the boards. He flicked the switches marked APU 1, 3, and 4. They kicked in smoothly. The cockpit lights flashed back on. The cabin bells binged. Nick whooped and clapped Brian on the back. Bethany appeared in the doorway behind them. 'What's happening? Is everything all right?' 'I think,' Brian said without turning, 'that we might just have a shot at this thing.' 9 Craig finally managed to stand upright. The glowing girl now stood with her feet just above the luggage conveyor belt. She looked at him with a supernatural sweetness and something else ... something he had longed for his whole life. What was it? He groped for it, and at last it came to him. It was compassion. Compassion and understanding. He looked around and saw that the darkness was draining away. That meant he had been out all night, didn't it? He didn't know. And it didn't matter. All that mattered was that the glowing girl had brought them to him the investment bankers, the bond specialists, the commissionbrokers, and the stockrollers. They were here, they would want an explanation of just what young Mr CraiggyWeggy ToomyWoomy had been up to, and here was the ecstatic truth monkeybusiness! That was what he had been up to  yards and yards of monkeybusiness  miles of monkeybusiness. And when he told them that ... 'They'll have to let me go ... won't they?' Yes, she said. But you have to hurry, Craig. You have to hurry before they decide you're not coming and leave. Craig began to make his slow way forward. The girl's feet did not move, but as he approached her she floated backward like a mirage, toward the rubber strips which hung between the luggageretrieval area and the loading dock outside. And . . . oh, glorious she was smiling. 10 They were all back on the plane now, all except Bob and Albert, who were sitting on the stairs and listening to the sound roll toward them in a slow, broken wave. Laurel Stevenson was standing at the open forward door and looking at the terminal, still wondering what they were going to do about Mr Toomy, when Bethany tugged at the back of her blouse. 'Dinah is talking in her sleep, or something. I think she might be delirious. Can you come?' Laurel came. Rudy Warwick was sitting across from Dinah, holding one of her hands and looking at her anxiously. 'I dunno,' he said worriedly. 'I dunno, but I think she might be going.' Laurel felt the girl's forehead. It was dry and very hot. The bleeding had either slowed down or stopped entirely, but the girl's respiration came in a series of pitiful whistling sounds. Blood was crusted around her mouth like strawberry sauce. Laurel began, 'I think 'and then Dinah said, quite clearly, 'You have to hurry before they all decide you're not coming and leave.' Laurel and Bethany exchanged puzzled, frightened glances. 'I think she's dreaming about that guy Toomy,' Rudy told Laurel. 'She said his name once.' 'Yes,' Dinah said. Her eyes were closed, but her head moved slightly and she appeared to listen. 'Yes I will be,' she said. 'If you want me to, I will. But hurry. I know it hurts, but you have to hurry.' 'She is delirious, isn't she?' Bethany whispered. 'No,' Laurel said. 'I don't think so. I think she might be ... dreaming.' But that was not what she thought at all. What she really thought was that Dinah might be (seeing) doing something else. She didn't think she wanted to know what that something might be, although an idea whirled and danced far back in her mind. Laurel knew she could summon that idea if she wanted to, but she didn't. Because something creepy was going on here, extremely creepy, and she could not escape the idea that it did have something to do with (don't kill him ... we need him) Mr Toomy. 'Leave her alone,' she said in a dry, abrupt tone of voice. 'Leave her alone and let her (do what she has to do to him) sleep.' 'God, I hope we take off soon,' Bethany said miserably, and Rudy put a comforting arm around her shoulders. 11 Craig reached the conveyor belt and fell onto it. A white sheet of agony ripped through his head, his neck, his chest. He tried to remember what had happened to him and couldn't. He had run down the stalled escalator, he had hidden in a little room, he had sat tearing strips of paper in the dark ... and that was where memory stopped. He raised his head, hair hanging in his eyes, and looked at the glowing girl, who now sat crosslegged in front of the rubber strips, an inch off the conveyor belt. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life; how could he ever have thought she was one of them? 'Are you an angel?' he croaked. Yes, the glowing girl replied, and Craig felt his pain overwhelmed with joy. His vision blurred and then tears  the first ones he had ever cried as an adult  began to run slowly down his cheeks. Suddenly he found himself remembering his mother's sweet, droning, drunken voice as she sang that old song. 'Are you an angel of the morning? Will you be my angel of the morning?' Yes  I will be. If you want me to, I will. But hurry. I know it hurts, Mr Toomy, but you have to hurry. 'Yes,' Craig sobbed, and began to crawl eagerly along the luggage conveyor belt toward her. Every movement sent fresh pain jigjagging through him on irregular courses; blood dripped from his smashed nose and shattered mouth. Yet he still hurried as much as he could. Ahead of him, the little girl faded back through the hanging rubber strips, somehow not disturbing them at all as she went. 'Just touch my cheek before you leave me, baby,' Craig said. He hawked up a spongy mat of blood, spat it on the wall where it clung like a huge dead spider, and tried to crawl faster. 12 To the east of the airport, a large cracking, rending sound filled the freakish morning. Bob and Albert got to their feet, faces pallid and filled with dreadful questions. 'What was that?' Albert asked. 'I think it was a tree,' Bob replied, and licked his lips. 'But there's no wind!' 'No,' Bob agreed. 'There's no wind.' The noise had now become a moving barricade of splintered sound. Parts of it would seem to come into focus ... and then drop back again just before identification was possible. At one moment Albert could swear he heard something barking, and then the barks ... or yaps ... or whatever they were ... would be swallowed up by a brief sour humming sound like evil electricity. The only constants were the crunching and the steady drilling whine. 'What's happening?' Bethany called shrilly from behind them. 'Noth 'Albert began, and then Bob seized his shoulder and pointed. 'Look!' he shouted. 'Look over there!' Far to the east of them, on the horizon, a series of power pylons marched north and south across a high wooded ridge. As Albert looked, one of the pylons tottered like a toy and then fell over, pulling a snarl of power cables after it. A moment later another pylon went, and another, and another. 'That's not all, either,' Albert said numbly. 'Look at the trees. The trees over there are shaking like shrubs.' But they were not just shaking. As Albert and the others looked, the trees began to fall over, to disappear. Crunch, smack, crunch, thud, BARK! Crunch, smack, BARK! thump, crunch. 'We have to get out of here,' Bob said. He gripped Albert with both hands His eyes were huge, avid with a kind of idiotic terror. The expression stood in sick, jagged contrast to his narrow, intelligent face. 'I believe we have to get out of here right now.' On the horizon, perhaps ten miles distant, the tall gantry of a radio tower trembled, rolled outward, and crashed down to disappear into the quaking trees. Now they could feel the very earth beginning to vibrate; it ran up the ladder and shook their feet in their shoes. 'Make it stop!' Bethany suddenly screamed from the doorway above them. She clapped her hands to her ears. 'Oh please make it STOP!' But the soundwave rolled on toward them  the crunching, smacking, eating sound of the langoliers. 13 'I don't like to tease, Brian, but how much longer?' Nick's voice was taut. 'There's a river about four miles east of here  I saw it when we were coming down  and I reckon whatever's coming is just now on the other side of it.' Brian glanced at his fuel readouts. 24,000 pounds in the right wing; 16,000 pounds in the left. It was going faster now that he didn't have to pump the Delta's fuel overwing to the other side. 'Fifteen minutes,' he said. He could feel sweat standing out on his brow in big drops. 'We've got to have more fuel, Nick, or we'll come down dead in the Mojave Desert. Another ten minutes to unhook, button up, and taxi out.' 'You can't cut that? You're sure you can't cut that?' Brian shook his head and turned back to his gauges. 14 Craig crawled slowly through the rubber strips, feeling them slide down his back like limp fingers. He emerged in the white, dead light of a new  and vastly shortened  day. The sound was terrible, overwhelming, the sound of an invading cannibal army. Even the sky seemed to shake with it, and for a moment fear froze him in place. Look, his angel of the morning said, and pointed. Craig looked ... and forgot his fear. Beyond the American Pride 767, in a triangle of dead grass bounded by two taxiways and a runway, there was a long mahogany boardroom table. It gleamed brightly in the listless light. At each place was a yellow legal pad, a pitcher of ice water, and a Waterford glass. Sitting around the table were two dozen men in sober bankers' suits, and now they were all turning to look at him. Suddenly they began to clap their hands. They stood and faced him applauding his arrival. Craig felt a huge, grateful grin begin to stretch his face. 15 Dinah had been left alone in first class. Her breathing had become very labored now, and her voice was a strangled choke. 'Run to them, Craig! Quick! Quick!' 16 Craig tumbled off the conveyor, struck the concrete with a bonerattling thump, and flailed to his feet. The pain no longer mattered. The angel had brought them! Of course she had brought them! Angels were like the ghosts in the story about Mr Scrooge  they could do anything they wanted! The corona around her had begun to dim and she was fading out, but it didn't matter. She had brought his salvation a net in which he was finally, blessedly caught. Run to them, Craig! Run around the plane! Run away from the plane! Run to them now! Craig began to run  a shambling stride that quickly became a crippled sprint. As he ran his head nodded up and down like a sunflower on a broken stalk. He ran toward humorless, unforgiving men who were his salvation, men who might have been fisherfolk standing in a boat beyond an unsuspected silver sky, retrieving their net to see what fabulous things they had caught. 17 The LED readout for the left tank began to slow down when it reached 21,000 pounds, and by the time it topped 22,000 it had almost stopped. Brian understood what was happening and quickly flicked two switches, shutting down the hydraulic pumps. The 727400 had given them what she had to give a little over 46,000 pounds of jetfuel. It would have to be enough. 'All right,' he said, standing up. 'All right what?' Nick asked, also standing. 'We're uncoupling and getting the fuck out of here.' The approaching noise had reached deafening levels. Mixed into the crunching smacking sound and the transmission squeal were falling trees and the dull crump of collapsing buildings. just before shutting the pumps down he had heard a number of crackling thuds followed by a series of deep splashes. A bridge falling into the river Nick had seen, he imagined. 'Mr Toomy!' Bethany screamed suddenly. 'It's Mr Toomy!' Nick beat Brian out the door and into first class, but they were both in time to see Craig go shambling and lurching across the taxiway. He ignored the plane completely. His destination appeared to be an empty triangle of grass bounded by a pair of crisscrossing taxiways. 'What's he doing?' Rudy breathed. 'Never mind him,' Brian said. 'We're all out of time. Nick? Go down the ladder ahead of me. Hold me while I uncouple the hose.' Brian felt like a man standing naked on a beach as a tidal wave humps up on the horizon and rushes toward the shore. Nick followed him down and laid hold of Brian's belt again as Brian leaned out and twisted the nozzle of the hose, unlocking it. A moment later he yanked the hose free and dropped it to the cement, where the nozzlering clanged dully. Brian slammed the fuelport door shut. 'Come on,' he said after Nick had pulled him back. His face was dirty gray. 'Let's get out of here.' But Nick did not move. He was frozen in place, staring to the east. His skin had gone the color of paper. On his face was an expression of dreamlike horror. His upper lip trembled, and in that moment he looked like a dog that is too frightened to snarl. Brian turned his head slowly in that direction, hearing the tendons in his neck creak like a rusty spring on an old screen door as he did so. He turned his head and watched as the langoliers finally entered stage left. 18 'So you see,' Craig said, approaching the empty chair at the head of the table and standing before the men seated around it, 'the brokers with whom I did business were not only unscrupulous; many of them were actually CIA plants whose job it was to contact and fake out just such bankers as myself  men looking to fill up skinny portfolios in a hurry. As far as they are concerned, the end  keeping communism out of South America  justifies any available means.' 'What procedures did you follow to check these fellows out?' a fat man in an expensive blue suit asked. 'Did you use a bondinsurance company, or does your bank retain a specific investigation firm in such cases?' Blue Suit's round, jowly face was perfectly shaved; his cheeks glowed either with good health or forty years of Scotch and sodas; his eyes were merciless chips of blue ice. They were wonderful eyes; they were fathereyes. Somewhere, far away from this boardroom two floors below the top of the Prudential Center, Craig could hear a hell of a racket going on. Road construction, he supposed. There was always road construction going on in Boston, and he suspected that most of it was unnecessary, that in most cases it was just the old, old story  the unscrupulous taking cheerful advantage of the unwary. It had nothing to do with him. Nothing whatever. His job was to deal with the man in the blue suit, and he couldn't wait to get started. 'We're waiting, Craig,' the president of his own banking institution said. Craig felt momentary surprise  Mr Parker hadn't been scheduled to attend this meeting  and then the feeling was overwhelmed by happiness. 'No procedures at all!' he screamed joyfully into their shocked faces. 'I just bought and bought and bought! I followed No ... PROCEDURES ... AT ALL!' He was about to go on, to elaborate on this theme, to really expound on it, when a sound stopped him. This sound was not miles away; this sound was close, very close, perhaps in the boardroom itself. A whickering chopping sound, like dry hungry teeth. Suddenly Craig felt a deep need to tear some paper  any paper would do. He reached for the legal pad in front of his place at the table, but the pad was gone. So was the table. So were the bankers. So was Boston. 'Where am I?' he asked in a small, perplexed voice, and looked around. Suddenly he realized ... and suddenly he saw them. The langoliers had come. They had come for him. Craig Toomy began to scream. 19 Brian could see them, but could not understand what it was he was seeing. In some strange way they seemed to defy seeing, and he sensed his frantic, overstressed mind trying to change the incoming information, to make the shapes which had begun to appear at the east end of Runway 21 into something it could understand. At first there were only two shapes, one black, one a dark tomato red. Are they balls? his mind asked doubtfully. Could they be balls? Something actually seemed to click in the center of his head and they were balls, sort of like beachballs, but balls which rippled and contracted and then expanded again, as if he was seeing them through a heathaze.


They came bowling out of the high dead grass at the end of Runway 21, leaving cut swaths of blackness behind them. They were somehow cutting the grass No, his mind reluctantly denied. They are not just cutting the grass, and you know it. They are cutting a lot more than the grass. What they left behind were narrow lines of perfect blackness. And now, as they raced playfully down the white concrete at the end of the runway, they were still leaving narrow dark tracks behind. They glistened like tar. No. his mind reluctantly denied. Not tar. You know what that blackness is. It's nothing. Nothing at all. They are eating a lot more than the surface of the runway. There was something malignantly joyful about their behavior. They crisscrossed each other's paths, leaving a wavery black X on the outer taxiway. They bounced high in the air, did an exuberant, crisscrossing maneuver, and then raced straight for the plane. As they did, Brian screamed and Nick screamed beside him. Faces lurked below the surfaces of the racing balls  monstrous, alien faces. They shimmered and twitched and wavered like faces made of glowing swampgas. The eyes were only rudimentary indentations, but the mouths were huge semicircular caves lined with gnashing, blurring teeth. They ate as they came, rolling up narrow strips of the world. A Texaco fuel truck was parked on the outer taxiway. The langoliers pounced upon it, highspeed teeth whirring and crunching and bulging out of their blurred bodies. They went through it without pause. One of them burrowed a path directly through the rear tires, and for a moment, before the tires collapsed, Brian could see the shape it had cut  a shape like a cartoon mousehole in a cartoon baseboard. The other leaped high, disappeared for a moment behind the Texaco truck's boxy tank, and then blasted straight through, leaving a metalringed hole from which avgas sprayed in a dull amber flood. They struck the ground, bounced as if on springs, crisscrossed again, and raced on toward the airplane. Reality peeled away in narrow strips beneath them, peeled away wherever and whatever they touched, and as they neared, Brian realized that they were unzipping more than the world  they were opening all the depths of forever. They reached the edge of the tarmac and paused. They jittered uncertainly in place for a moment, looking like the bouncing balls that hopped over the words in old moviehouse singalongs. Then they turned and zipped off in a new direction. Zipped off in the direction of Craig Toomy who stood watching them and screaming into the white day. With a huge effort, Brian snapped the paralysis which held him. He elbowed Nick, who was still frozen below him. 'Come on!' Nick didn't move and Brian drove his elbow back harder this time, connecting solidly with Nick's forehead. 'Come on, I said! Move your ass! We're getting out of here!' Now more black and red balls were appearing at the edge of the airport. They bounced, danced, circled ... and then raced toward them. 20 You can't get away from them, his father had said, because of their legs. Their fast little legs. Craig tried, nevertheless. He turned and ran for the terminal, casting horrified grimacing looks behind him as he did. His shoes rattled on the pavement. He ignored the American Pride 767, which was now cycling up again, and ran for the luggage area instead. No, Craig, his father said. You may THINK you're running, but you're not. You know what you're really doing  you're SCAMPERING! Behind him the two ballshapes sped up, closing the gap with effortless, happy speed. They crisscrossed twice, just a pair of daffy showoffs in a dead world, leaving spiky lines of blackness behind them. They rolled after Craig about seven inches apart, creating what looked like negative skitracks behind their weird, shimmering bodies. They caught him twenty feet from the luggage conveyor belt and chewed off his feet in a millisecond. At one moment his briskly scampering feet were there. At the next, Craig was three inches shorter; his feet, along with his expensive Bally loafers, had simply ceased to exist. There was no blood; the wounds were cauterized instantly in the langoliers' scorching passage. Craig didn't know his feet had ceased to exist. He scampered on the stumps of his ankles, and as the first pain began to sizzle up his legs, the langoliers banked in a tight turn and came back, rolling up the pavement side by side. Their trails crossed twice this time, creating a crescent of cement bordered in black, like a depiction of the moon in a child's coloring book. Only this crescent began to sink, not into the earth  for there appeared to be no earth beneath the surface  but into nowhere at all. This time the langoliers bounced upward in perfect tandem and clipped Craig off at the knees. He came down, still trying to run, and then fell sprawling, waving his stumps. His scampering days were over. 'No!' he screamed. 'No, Daddy! No! I'll be good! Please make them go away! I'll be good, I SWEAR ILL BE GOOD FROM NOW ON IF YOU JUST MAKE THEM GO AW ' Then they rushed at him again, gibbering yammering buzzing whining, and he saw the frozen machine blur of their gnashing teeth and felt the hot bellows of their frantic, blind vitality in the halfinstant before they began to cut him apart in random chunks. His last thought was How can their little legs be fast? They have no le 21 Scores of the black things had now appeared, and Laurel understood that soon there would be hundreds, thousands, millions, billions. Even with the jet engines screaming through the open forward door as Brian pulled the 767 away from the ladder and the wing of the Delta jet, she could hear their yammering, inhuman cry. Great looping coils of blackness crisscrossed the end of Runway 21 and then the tracks arrowed toward the terminal, converging as the balls making them rushed toward Craig Toomy. I guess they don't get live meat very often, she thought, and suddenly felt like vomiting. Nick Hopewell slammed the forward door after one final, unbelieving glance and dogged it shut. He began to stagger back down the aisle, swaying from side to side like a drunk as he came. His eyes seemed to fill his whole face. Blood streamed down his chin; he had bitten his lower lips deeply. He put his arms around Laurel and buried his burning face in the hollow where her neck met her shoulder. She put her arms around him and held him tight. 22 In the cockpit, Brian powered up as fast as he dared, and sent the 767 charging along the taxiway at a suicidal rate of speed. The eastern edge of the airport was now black with the invading balls; the end of Runway 21 had completely disappeared and the world beyond it was going. In that direction the white, unmoving sky now arched down over a world of scrawled black lines and fallen trees. As the plane neared the end of the taxiway, Brian grabbed the microphone and shouted 'Belt in! Belt in! If you're not belted in, hold on!' He slowed marginally, then slewed the 767 onto Runway 33. As he did so he saw something which made his mind cringe and wail huge sections of the world which lay to the east of the runway, huge irregular pieces of reality itself, were falling into the ground like freight elevators, leaving big senseless chunks of emptiness behind. They are eating the world, he thought. My God, my dear God, they are eating the world. Then the entire airfield was turning in front of him and Flight 29 was pointed west again, with Runway 33 lying open and long and deserted before it. 23 Overhead compartments burst open when the 767 swerved onto the runway, spraying carryon luggage across the main cabin in a deadly hail. Bethany, who hadn't had time to fasten her seatbelt, was hurled into Albert Kaussner's lap. Albert noticed neither his lapful of warm girl nor the attache case that caromed off the curved wall three feet in front of his nose. He saw only the dark, speeding shapes rushing across Runway 21 to the left of them, and the glistening dark tracks they left behind. These tracks converged in a giant well of blackness where the luggageunloading area had been. They are being drawn to Mr Toomy, he thought, or to where Mr Toomy was. If he hadn't come out of the terminal, they would have chosen the airplane instead. They would have eaten it  and us inside it  from the wheels up. Behind him, Bob Jenkins spoke in a trembling, awed voice. 'Now we know, don't we?' 'What?' Laurel screamed in an odd, breathless voice she did not recognize as her own. A duffelbag landed in her lap; Nick raised his head, let go of her, and batted it absently into the aisle. 'What do we know?' 'Why, what happens to today when it becomes yesterday, what happens to the present when it becomes the past. It waits  dead and empty and deserted. It waits for them. It waits for the timekeepers of eternity, always running along behind, cleaning up the mess in the most efficient way possible ... by eating it.' 'Mr Toomy knew about them,' Dinah said in a clear, dreaming voice. 'Mr Toomy says they are the langoliers.' Then the jet engines cycled up to full power and the plane charged down Runway 33. 24 Brian saw two of the balls zip across the runway ahead of him, peeling back the surface of reality in a pair of parallel tracks which gleamed like polished ebony. It was too late to stop. The 767 shuddered like a dog with a chill as it raced over the empty places, but he was able to hold it on the runway. He shoved his throttles forward, burying them, and watched his groundspeed indicator rise toward the commit point. Even now he could hear those manic chewing, gobbling sounds ... although he did not know if they were in his ears or only his reeling mind. And did not care. 25 Leaning over Laurel to look out the window, Nick saw the Bangor International terminal sliced, diced, chopped, and channelled. It tottered in its various jigsaw pieces and then began to tumble into loony chasms of darkness. Bethany Simms screamed. A black track was speeding along next to the 767, chewing up the edge of the runway. Suddenly it jagged to the right and disappeared underneath the plane. There was another terrific bump. 'Did it get us?' Nick shouted. 'Did it get us?' No one answered him. Their pale, terrified faces stared out the windows and no one answered him. Trees rushed by in a graygreen blur. In the cockpit, Brian sat tensely forward in his seat, waiting for one of those balls to bounce up in front of the cockpit window and bullet through. None did. On his board, the last red lights turned green. Brian hauled back on the yoke and the 767 was airborne again. 26 In the main cabin, a blackbearded man with bloodshot eyes staggered forward, blinking owlishly at his fellow travellers. 'Are we almost in Boston yet?' he inquired at large. 'I hope so, because I want to go back to bed. I've got one bastard of a headache.' 1 CHAPTER 9 Goodbye to Bangor. Heading West Through Days and Nights. Seeing Through the Eyes of Others. The Endless Gulf. The Rip. The Warning. Brian's Decision. The Landing. Shooting Stars Only. The plane banked heavily east, throwing the man with the black beard into a row of empty seats threequarters of the way up the main cabin. He looked around at all the other empty seats with a wide, frightened gaze, and squeezed his eyes shut. 'Jesus,' he muttered. 'DTs. Fucking DTs. This is the worst they've ever been.' He looked around fearfully. 'The bugs come next ... where's the motherfuckin bugs?' No bugs, Albert thought, but watt till you see the balls. You're going to love those. 'Buckle yourself in, mate,' Nick said, 'and shut U' He broke off, staring down incredulously at the airport ... or where the airport had been. The main buildings were gone, and the National Guard base at the west end was going. Flight 29 overflew a growing abyss of darkness, an eternal cistern that seemed to have no end. 'Oh dear Jesus, Nick,' Laurel said unsteadily, and suddenly put her hands over her eyes. As they overflew Runway 33 at 1,500 feet, Nick saw sixty or a hundred parallel lines racing up the concrete, cutting the runway into long strips that sank into emptiness. The strips reminded him of Craig Toomy Riiip. On the other side of the aisle, Bethany pulled down the windowshade beside Albert's seat with a bang. 'Don't you dare open that!' she told him in a scolding, hysterical voice. 'Don't worry,' Albert said, and suddenly remembered that he had left his violin down there. Well ... it was undoubtedly gone now. He abruptly put his hands over his own face. 2 Before Brian began to turn west again, he saw what lay east of Bangor. It was nothing. Nothing at all. A titantic river of blackness lay in a still sweep from horizon to horizon under the white dome of the sky. The trees were gone. the city was gone, the earth itself was gone. This is what it must be like to fly in outer space, he thought, and he felt his rationality slip a cog, as it had on the trip east. He held onto himself desperately and made himself concentrate on flying the plane. He brought them up quickly, wanting to be in the clouds, wanting that hellish vision to be blotted out. Then Flight 29 was pointed west again. In the moments before they entered the clouds, he saw the hills and woods and lakes which stretched to the west of the city, saw them being cut ruthlessly apart by thousands of black spiderweb lines. He saw huge swatches of reality go sliding soundlessly into the growing mouth of the abyss, and Brian did something he had never done before while in the cockpit of an airplane. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again they were in the clouds. 3 There was almost no turbulence this time; as Bob Jenkins had suggested, the weather patterns appeared to be running down like an old clock. Ten minutes after entering the clouds, Flight 29 emerged into the brightblue world which began at 18,000 feet. The remaining passengers looked around at each other nervously, then at the speakers as Brian came on the intercom. 'We're up,' he said simply. 'You all know what happens now we go back exactly the way we came, and hope that whatever doorway we came through is still there. If it is, we'll try going through.' He paused for a moment, then resumed. 'Our return flight is going to take somewhere between four and a half and six hours. I'd like to be more exact, but I can't. Under ordinary circumstances, the flight west usually takes longer than the flight east, because of prevailing wind conditions, but so far as I can tell from my cockpit instruments, there is no wind.' Brian paused for a moment and then added, 'There's nothing moving up here but us.' For a moment the intercom stayed on, as if Brian meant to add something else, and then it clicked off. 4 'What in God's name is going on here?' the man with the black beard asked shakily. Albert looked at him for a moment and then said, 'I don't think you want to know.' 'Am I in the hospital again?' The man with the black beard blinked at Albert fearfully, and Albert felt sudden sympathy for the man. 'Well, why don't you believe you are, if it will help?' The man with the black beard continued to stare at him for a moment in dreadful fascination and then announced, 'I'm going back to sleep. Right now.' He reclined his seat and closed his eyes. In less than a minute his chest was moving up and down with deep regularity and he was snoring under his breath. Albert envied him. 5 Nick gave Laurel a brief hug, then unbuckled his seatbelt and stood up. 'I'm going forward,' he said. 'Want to come?' Laurel shook her head and pointed across the aisle at Dinah. 'I'll stay with her.' 'There's nothing you can do, you know,' Nick said. 'It's in God's hands now, I'm afraid.' 'I do know that,' she said, 'but I want to stay.' 'All right, Laurel.' He brushed at her hair gently with the palm of his hand. 'It's such a pretty name. You deserve it.' She glanced up at him and smiled. 'Thank you.' 'We have a dinner date  you haven't forgotten, have you?' 'No,' she said, still smiling. 'I haven't and I won't.' He bent down and brushed a kiss lightly across her mouth. 'Good,' he said. 'Neither will I.' He went forward and she pressed her fingers lightly against her mouth, as if to hold his kiss there, where it belonged. Dinner with Nick Hopewell  a dark, mysterious stranger. Maybe with candles and a good bottle of wine. More kisses afterward  real kisses. It all seemed like something which might happen in one of the Harlequin romances she sometimes read. So what? They were pleasant stories, full of sweet and harmless dreams. It didn't hurt to dream a little, did it? Of course not. But why did she feel the dream was so unlikely to come true? She unbuckled her own seatbelt, crossed the aisle, and put her hand on the girl's forehead. The hectic heat she had felt before was gone; Dinah's skin was now waxycool. I think she's going, Rudy had said shortly before they started their headlong takeoff charge. Now the words recurred to Laurel and rang in her head with sickening validity. Dinah was taking air in shallow sips, her chest barely rising and falling beneath the strap which cinched the tablecloth pad tight over her wound. Laurel brushed the girl's hair off her forehead with infinite tenderness and thought of that strange moment in the restaurant, when Dinah had reached out and grasped the cuff of Nick's jeans. Don't you kill him ... we need him. Did you save us, Dinah? Did you do something to Mr Toomy that saved us? Did you make him somehow trade his life for ours? She thought that perhaps something like that had happened ... and reflected that, if it was true, this little girl, blind and badly wounded, had made a dreadful decision inside her darkness. She leaned forward and kissed each of Dinah's cool, closed lids. 'Hold on,' she whispered. 'Please hold on, Dinah.' 6 Bethany turned to Albert, grasped both of his hands in hers, and asked 'What happens if the fuel goes bad?' Albert looked at her seriously and kindly. 'You know the answer to that, Bethany.' 'You can call me Beth, if you want.' 'Okay.' She fumbled out her cigarettes, looked up at the NO SMOKING light, and put them away again. 'Yeah,' she said. 'I know. We crash. End of story. And do you know what?' He shook his head, smiling a little. 'If we can't find that hole again, I hope Captain Engle won't even try to land the plane. I hope he just picks out a nice high mountain and crashes us into the top of it. Did you see what happened to that crazy guy? I don't want that to happen to me.' She shuddered, and Albert put an arm around her. She looked up at him frankly. 'Would you like to kiss me?' 'Yes,' Albert said. 'Well, you better go ahead, then. The later it gets, the later it gets.' Albert went ahead. It was only the third time in his life that the fastest Hebrew west of the Mississippi had kissed a girl, and it was great. He could spend the whole trip back in a liplock with this girl and never worry about a thing. 'Thank you,' she said, and put her head on his shoulder. 'I needed that.' 'Well, if you need it again, just ask,' Albert said. She looked up at him, amused. 'Do you need me to ask, Albert?' 'I reckon not,' drawled The Arizona Jew, and went back to work. 7 Nick had stopped on his way to the cockpit to speak to Bob Jenkins  an extremely nasty idea had occurred to him, and he wanted to ask the writer about it. 'Do you think there could be any of those things up here?' Bob thought it over for a moment. 'Judging from what we saw back at Bangor, I would think not. But it's hard to tell, isn't it? In a thing like this, all bets are off.' 'Yes. I suppose so. All bets are off.' Nick thought this over for a moment. 'What about this timerip of yours? Would you like to give odds on us finding it again?' Bob Jenkins slowly shook his head. Rudy Warwick spoke up from behind them, startling them both. 'You didn't ask me, but I'll give you my opinion just the same. I put them at one in a thousand.' Nick thought this over. After a moment a rare, radiant smile burst across his face. 'Not bad odds at all,' he said. 'Not when you consider the alternative.' 8 Less than forty minutes later, the blue sky through which Flight 29 moved began to deepen in color. It cycled slowly to indigo, and then to deep purple. Sitting in the cockpit, monitoring his instruments and wishing for a cup of coffee, Brian thought of an old song When the deep purple falls ... over sleepy garden walls ... No garden walls up here, but he could see the first icechip stars gleaming in the firmament. There was something reassuring and calming about the old constellations appearing, one by one, in their old places. He did not know how they could be the same when so many other things were so badly out of joint, but he was very glad they were. 'It's going faster, isn't it?' Nick said from behind him. Brian turned in his seat to face him. 'Yes. It is. After awhile the "days" and "nights" will be passing as fast as a camera shutter can click, I think.' Nick sighed. 'And now we do the hardest thing of all, don't we? We wait to see what happens. And pray a little bit, I suppose.' 'It couldn't hurt.' Brian took a long, measuring look at Nick Hopewell. 'I was on my way to Boston because my exwife died in a stupid fire. Dinah was going because a bunch of doctors promised her a new pair of eyes. Bob was going to a convention, Albert to music school, Laurel on vacation. Why were you going to Boston, Nick? 'Fess up. The hour groweth late.' Nick looked at him thoughtfully for a long time and then laughed. 'Well why not?' he asked, but Brian was not so foolish as to believe this question was directed at him. 'What does a Most Secret classification mean when you've just seen a bunch of killer fuzzballs rolling up the world like an old rug?' He laughed again. 'The United States hasn't exactly cornered the market on dirty tricks and covert operations,' he told Brian. 'We Limeys have forgotten more nasty mischief than you johnnies ever knew. We've cut capers in India, South Africa, China, and the part of Palestine which became Israel. We certainly got into a pissing contest with the wrong fellows that time, didn't we? Nevertheless, we British are great believers in cloak and dagger, and the fabled MI5 isn't where it ends but only where it begins. I spent eighteen years in the armed services, Brian  the last five of them in Special Operations. Since then I've done various odd jobs, some innocuous, some fabulously nasty.' It was full dark outside now, and stars gleaming like spangles on a woman's formal evening gown. 'I was in Los Angeles  on vacation, actually  when I was contacted and told to fly to Boston. Extremely short notice, this was, and after four days spent backpacking in the San Gabriels, I was fallingdown tired. That's why I happened to be sound asleep when Mr Jenkins's Event happened. 'There's a man in Boston, you see ... or was ... or will be (timetravel plays hell on the old verb tenses, doesn't it?) ... who is a politician of some note. The sort of fellow who moves and shakes with great vigor behind the scenes. This man  I'll call him Mr O'Banion, for the sake of conversation  is very rich, Brian, and he is an enthusiastic supporter of the Irish Republican Army. He has channelled millions of dollars into what some like to call Boston's favorite charity, and there is a good deal of blood on his hands. Not just British soldiers but children in schoolyards, women in laundromats, and babies blown out of their prams in pieces. He is an idealist of the most dangerous sort one who never has to view the carnage at first hand, one who has never had to look at a severed leg lying in the gutter and been forced to reconsider his actions in light of that experience.' 'You were supposed to kill this man O'Banion?' 'Not unless I had to,' Nick said calmly. 'He's very wealthy, but that's not the only problem. He's the total politician, you see, and he's got more fingers than the one he uses to stir the pot in Ireland. He has a great many powerful American friends, and some of his friends are our friends . . . that's the nature of politics; a cat's cradle woven by men who for the most part belong in rooms with rubber walls. Killing Mr O'Banion would be a great political risk. But he keeps a little bit of fluff on the side. She was the one I was supposed to kill.' 'As a warning,' Brian said in a low, fascinated voice. 'Yes. As a warning.' Almost a full minute passed as the two men sat in the cockpit, looking at each other. The only sound was the sleepy drone of the jet engines. Brian's eyes were shocked and somehow very young. Nick only looked weary. 'If we get out of this,' Brian said at last, 'if we get back, will you carry through with it?' Nick shook his head. He did this slowly, but with great finality. 'I believe I've had what the Adventist blokes like to call a soul conversion, old mate of mine. No more midnight creeps or extremeprejudice jobs for Mrs Hopewell's boy Nicholas. If we get out of this  a proposition I find rather shaky just now  I believe I'll retire.' 'And do what?' Nick looked at him thoughtfully for a moment or two and then said, 'Well ... I suppose I could take flying lessons.' Brian burst out laughing. After a moment, Mrs Hopewell's boy Nicholas joined him. 9 Thirtyfive minutes later, daylight began to seep back into the main cabin of Flight 29. Three minutes later it might have been midmorning; fifteen minutes after that it might have been noon. Laurel looked around and saw that Dinah's sightless eyes were open. Yet were they entirely sightless? There was something in them, something just beyond definition, which made Laurel wonder. She felt a sense of unknown awe creep into her, a feeling which almost touched upon fear. She reached out and gently grasped one of Dinah's hands. 'Don't try to talk,' she said quietly. 'If you're awake, Dinah, don't try to talk  just listen. We're in the air. We're going back, and you're going to be all right  I promise you that.' Dinah's hand tightened on hers, and after a moment Laurel realized the little girl was tugging her forward. She leaned over the secured stretcher. Dinah spoke in a tiny voice that seemed to Laurel a perfect scale model of her former voice. 'Don't worry about me, Laurel. I got . . . what I wanted.' 'Dinah, you shouldn't ' The unseeing brown eyes moved toward the sound of Laurel's voice. A little smile touched Dinah's bloody mouth. 'I saw,' that tiny voice, frail as a glass reed, told her. 'I saw through Mr Toomy's eyes. At the beginning, and then again at the end. It was better at the end. At the start, everything looked mean and nasty to him. It was better at the end.' Laurel looked at her with helpless wonder. The girl's hand let go of Laurel's and rose waveringly to touch her cheek. 'He wasn't such a bad guy, you know.' She coughed. Small flecks of blood flew from her mouth. 'Please, Dinah,' Laurel said. She had a sudden sensation that she could almost see through the little blind girl, and this brought a feeling of stifling. directionless panic. 'Please don't try to talk anymore.' Dinah smiled. 'I saw you.' she said. 'You are beautiful, Laurel. Everything was beautiful ... even the things that were dead. It was so wonderful to ... you know ... just to see.' She drew in one of her tiny sips of air, let it out, and simply didn't take the next one. Her sightless eyes now seemed to be looking far beyond Laurel Stevenson. 'Please breathe, Dinah,' Laurel said. She took the girl's hands in hers and began to kiss them repeatedly, as if she could kiss life back into that which was now beyond it. It was not fair for Dinah to die after she had saved them all; no God could demand such a sacrifice, not even for people who had somehow stepped outside of time itself. 'Please breathe, please, please, please breathe.' But Dinah did not breathe. After a long time, Laurel returned the girl's hands to her lap and looked fixedly into her pale, still face. Laurel waited for her own eyes to fill up with tears, but no tears came. Yet her heart ached with fierce sorrow and her mind beat with its own deep and outraged protest Oh, no! Oh, not fair! This is not fair! Take it back, God! Take It back, damn you, take it back, you just take it BACK! But God did not take it back. The jet engines throbbed steadily, the sun shone on the bloody sleeve of Dinah's good travelling dress in a bright oblong, and God did not take it back. Laurel looked across the aisle and saw Albert and Bethany kissing. Albert was touching one of the girl's breasts through her teeshirt, lightly, delicately. almost religiously. They seemed to make a ritual shape, a symbolic representation of life and that stubborn. intangible spark which carries life on in the face of the most dreadful reversals and ludicrous turns of fate. Laurel looked hopefully from them to Dinah ... and God had not taken it back. God had not taken it back. Laurel kissed the still slope of Dinah's cheek and then raised her hand to the little girl's face. Her fingers stopped only an inch from her eyelids. I saw through Mr Toomy's eyes. Everything was beautiful ... even the things that were dead. It was so wonderful to see. 'Yes,' Laurel said. 'I can live with that.' She left Dinah's eyes open. 10 American Pride 29 flew west through the days and nights, going from light to darkness and light to darkness as if flying through a great, lazily shifting parade of fat clouds. Each cycle came slightly faster than the one before. A little over three hours into the flight, the clouds below them ceased, and over exactly the same spot where they had begun on the flight east. Brian was willing to bet the front had not moved so much as a single foot. The Great Plains lay below them in a silent roancolored expanse of land. 'No sign of them over here,' Rudy Warwick said. He did not have to specify what he was talking about. 'No,' Bob Jenkins agreed. 'We seem to have outrun them, either in space or in time.' 'Or in both,' Albert put in. 'Yes  or both.' But they had not. As Flight 29 crossed the Rockies, they began to see the black lines below them again, thin as threads from this height. They shot up and down the rough, slabbed slopes and drew notquitemeaningless patterns in the bluegray carpet of trees. Nick stood at the forward door, looking out of the bullet porthole set into it. This porthole had a queer magnifying effect, and he soon discovered he could see better than he really wanted to. As he watched, two of the black lines split, raced round a jagged, snowtipped peak, met on the far side, crossed, and raced down the other slope in diverging directions. Behind them the entire top of the mountain fell into itself, leaving something which looked like a volcano with a vast dead caldera at its truncated top. 'Jumping Jiminy Jesus,' Nick muttered, and passed a quivering hand over his brow. As they crossed the Western Slope toward Utah, the dark began to come down again. The setting sun threw an orangered glare over a fragmented hellscape that none of them could look at for long; one by one, they followed Bethany's example and pulled their windowshades. Nick went back to his seat on unsteady legs and dropped his forehead into one cold, clutching hand. After a moment or two he turned toward Laurel and she took him wordlessly in her arms. Brian was forced to look at it. There were no shades in the cockpit. Western Colorado and eastern Utah fell into the pit of eternity piece by jagged piece below him and ahead of him. Mountains, buttes, mesas, and cols one by one ceased to exist as the crisscrossing langoliers cut them adrift from the rotting fabric of this dead past, cut them loose and sent them tumbling into sunless endless gulfs of forever. There was no sound up here, and somehow that was the most horrible thing of all. The land below them disappeared as silently as dustmotes.