Departure(28)

“Natural?” I ask.

“It’s conceivable. We’re pretty sure black holes exist—in fact, there may be one at the center of our galaxy. As I mentioned, they distort time, making it flow slower as objects approach. There could be other sorts of gravity depressions throughout the universe, some working in reverse, making time flow faster. We could have just gotten caught in a gravity storm—some natural phenomenon we don’t yet understand. To be honest, we’re still in the dark ages of aerospace science.”

“You said there were two possibilities?”

“The other, which I actually find more likely, is that this wasn’t a natural occurrence. Someone brought us here, with a technology beyond our comprehension—possibly with the help of someone on the plane.”

“Very interesting.” I don’t know why, but my mind flashes to Yul Tan, the quiet man in business class, obsessed with his laptop. There’s something there, I think. I’ll have a long talk with him when we get back.

We sit in silence for a while, Bob coughing, the rain coming harder and faster, the clouds overhead a dark slate gray, far-off thunder rumbling. Mike stretches out on the grass like a college kid on a lazy day.

“What sort of work do you do, Nick?” Bob asks me between coughs.

I tell him, and he seems impressed, asking a lot of questions. He asks Mike the same thing. Mike races sailboats and isn’t all that interested in talking about it. He was on his way to his sister’s wedding outside London, at the family home of his future brother-in-law, who’s “in banking or something.” He expresses no remorse at having missed the wedding.

After a few moments, Bob’s tone turns grandfatherly. “You should never retire,” he advises us. “Retiring ruined me. Worst decision I ever made. Should have kept something to do.”

His second wife recently left him, he says, and he was on his way to London for a job interview, though he quickly adds that he’s under an airtight NDA and can’t talk about it at all. Neither Mike nor I press for details, which seems to mildly disappoint him.

I feel a little sorry for Bob Ward. I understand him now, somewhat, in the way I began to understand my father during our visit to Stonehenge so long ago. Bob still has a lot of fight in him, a lot of life left to live, and he never knew it until he retired. The crash of Flight 305 might be the best thing that’s happened to him for a while. It’s given him a purpose, a way to apply himself. And if I’m to be completely honest with myself, it’s done the same for me. I was in my own rut when Flight 305 took off from JFK, and though I would have rather our flight landed at Heathrow, every single one of those passengers alive, the crash has revealed a side of me that I never knew existed. It’s shown me what I’m made of in a way the world never did until now.

Bob coughs again, violently, and stops, staring at his fist. He quickly wipes it on the inside of his shirt, but I glimpse the blood. Our eyes meet. He looks so much older. His face is lined, his eyes are slightly jaundiced, and even his movements are less coordinated. What’s happening to him?

For a moment the only sound is the relentless tapping of rain on the glass dome above us, the din like static on an untuned TV, filling the cavernous space. It’s dark out now, either from the storm or nightfall.

Through the frosted glass wall, I think I see lightning, but the flash doesn’t subside. It grows, getting wider, raking over the ground. A searchlight, from above, moving toward us.





16





The searchlight sweeps over the tall grass around us, barely missing the structure that surrounds Stonehenge. I jump up, Mike at my heels.

Bob tries to push up, but collapses back to the manicured grass.

“Stay here, Bob!” I yell.

Mike and I rush to the glass wall, to the partition that opened, allowing us in. We stand impatiently as the glass slowly rises from the bottom, the computer voice barely audible above the rain and the engine in the distance. “Thank you for visiting the Stonehenge interactive exhibit . . .”

Outside I spot the searchlight’s source: an airship, or that’s what I would call it. It’s shaped roughly like a helicopter but much larger, and it has no rotors, top, or tail. Yet it hovers somehow, moving slowly forward. I’m not even sure how it hangs in the air.

I step forward, shouting and waving my arms, but it’s already moving past us, back toward the crash site.

I start through the field, still waving. “Stay here,” I call over my shoulder to Mike. “They could circle back.”

Behind me, he begins shouting and waving his arms too.

I run flat-out through the damp green grass, wind-driven rain pelting me. At the top of the ridge, I stop. The airship is almost out of sight, and it’s making good speed. I scan in every direction with the binoculars, but I can’t see another searchlight. The sun has set, and it’s getting darker by the minute.

I jog back to the structure, where Mike’s standing, his short hair and Celtics T-shirt drenched.

We walk back into the glass octagon in silence. Inside, Bob is hunched over, coughing. He looks up at us eagerly, but I shake my head as I try to squeeze some of the water out of my clothes.

“Looked like it was headed for the crash site,” he says.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“You have to leave me,” Bob says. “You promised you would, Nick.”