Her Last Flight(47)

She banked the airplane and began the first side of the square.



Before flying, Irene hadn’t given the moon much thought. She knew it guided the tides, of course, which were of some importance in surfing, but she didn’t pay attention to the how and why, to the actual progress of the rock in question. Her prior ignorance now stunned her. How could she not have noticed, for example, that a full moon rose exactly at sunset, and set exactly at sunrise? That a new moon—if she could actually see it—did exactly the opposite? The moon was her companion. It shed light on the black ocean. It occupied a predictable place in the sky, a landmark, a beacon. As she swept above the water, searching for some scrap of an island, the moon lit her way. If she found Baker, she would find it by the reflection of moonlight on a patch of sand.

Or else Sam would. He had taken off the radio headset and lifted a pair of binoculars to his eyes. The temperature was getting a little warmer, because they were so close to earth, or possibly because of the anxiety packed tight inside the airplane, and he had stripped off his thick, sheepskin-lined leather jacket and stood now in his flight suit, not moving, fixed on the landscape outside the window. A landscape on which no interruption appeared. Nothing. Water and more water, all the way to the horizon. The minutes ticked by. Ten, fifteen. The needle in the gauge of the main fuel tank hovered just above empty.

Irene scrawled, Switch to aux tank soon.

The note took ten or twelve seconds to write. While she was writing it, she was seized with certainty that when she looked back up, when she strained her gaze through the cockpit window, she would see Baker Island. She would see some silver ridge amid all those delicate white threads and curlicues that constituted the moonlit Pacific Ocean, and it would grow larger and more prominent and it would be Baker Island. She knew this like she knew the shape of her own hand, the rhythm of her own breath. She chucked the pencil stub in its can and clipped the note, one-handed, to the clothesline, and turned to the window in triumph.

Nothing.

The Centauri wobbled. Maybe it was the air, maybe it was her hand on the stick. She glanced at the fuel gauge and the clock. They had traveled nearly forty miles now in the first side of the square. Nearly time to bank and turn. Behind her, Sam was moving. Switching the fuel lines. The auxiliary tank held another sixty gallons. If Irene flew the Centauri with perfect efficiency, she could squeeze another hundred and twenty miles from those sixty gallons.

She made the turn. Started down the next side of the imaginary square.

Surely Baker Island would turn up any second.



Two more sides.

Eighty miles.

No island.



With six gallons of fuel remaining in the auxiliary tank, a note appeared on the clothesline. Descend to 200 ft. Prepare water landing.

She scribbled on the same square of paper: YOU.

He didn’t answer. The left engine droned on, oblivious to its imminent death.

Irene started to descend. Her pulse punched against her throat, closing off her breath. Her hands shook on the stick. A hand came down on her shoulder. A finger appeared in her field of vision, jabbing at the window. Irene raised herself an inch or two and followed the line it drew across the water, right toward a tiny patch of white at the extreme southern end of the horizon.

THERE IT IS, Sam yelled in her ear.

Not a panicked yell, no fear at all, just loud and confident so that she could hear him above the noise of the engine.



But the island, as it grew in size and came into focus, was not shaped like a potato chip. More like a dill pickle, or a banana.

Irene couldn’t send any notes now. She had to fly, she had to look at this scrap of land by the light of the moon and figure out what it was made of, how to land on it, could she land on it. And all the while her heart was beating so hard and so fast, she thought her ribs would break. She couldn’t breathe. This white mist seemed to be filling her brain. All those times she had practiced landing in an emergency, landing on the sand in the desert, landing without an engine, but she hadn’t practiced this. Landing on some unknown piece of land in the middle of the ocean. The shape of it grew and grew. She couldn’t see, she couldn’t tell if those dark patches were grass or scrub or trees or what have you.

She couldn’t do it.

She flung out an arm behind her and grabbed hold of some part of Sam, his shoulder. She turned and looked at him, and the panic must have burst right into the open, because he took her hand off his shoulder and shouted in her ear, You can do it!

I CAN’T! she yelled back, and this time she rose from the seat and let go of the stick.

The Centauri pitched and dove.

Sam slammed her down on the seat, grabbed her hand, and set it on the stick.

LAND THE GODDAMN AIRPLANE, he said in her ear. I’M RIGHT HERE.

She was shaking, she was dizzy. Sam’s hand covered hers on the stick. The airplane jerked and rattled as they brought it back under control. She thought, why? Why had he subjected her to this? He was the senior pilot, the better pilot, the stunt pilot who had performed a thousand improbable aeronautical feats, who had cheated death over and over. Why hadn’t he taken control the instant the engine stopped? Why make Irene do this impossible thing and kill them both?

But his arms were right there. His face stood firm next to hers. STEADY, he shouted, so she could hear him, so she could smell his hair, his familiar skin. His confidence poured from his palm and into the back of her hand.