Runway Zero-Eight Read online

  “No good, I’m afraid. There’s fog right down to the grass everywhere east of the Rockies as far as Manitoba. They’ll have to come through.”

  A clerk called across from his phone, “Passenger agent wants to know when we’ll be resuming east-bound traffic. Says should he keep the passengers downtown or bring ’em out here?”

  Burdick shook a worried head. “Where’s the last position report?” he demanded. A clipboard was passed to him and he scanned it anxiously.

  The controller called back to the clerk, “Tell him to keep them downtown. We don’t want a mob out here. We’ll give him lots of warning when we’re ready.”

  “You say you’ve got medical help coming?” asked Burdick.

  “Yes,” replied the controller. “The city police are working on that. They’ll alert the hospitals and see to the arrangements when we get the plane here.”

  Burdick clicked a fat finger. “Hey! That message now. They say the first officer is down, so presumably the captain passed the message. Is he affected at all? Better ask, Controller. And while you’re about it, I should check whether there’s a doctor on board. You never know. Tell them we’re getting medical advice here in case they need it.”

  The controller nodded and picked up the stand microphone from the radio desk. Before he could begin Burdick called, “Say, suppose the captain does take sick, Controller? Who’s going to—”

  He left the sentence unfinished as the level gaze of the man opposite met his.

  “I’m not supposing anything” said the controller. “I’m praying, that’s all. Let’s hope those poor devils up there are praying too.”

  Exhaling noisily, Burdick dug in his pockets for cigarettes. “Joe,” he said to the switchboard operator, “get me Dr. Davidson, will you? You’ll find his number on the emergency list.”

  FOUR

  0220—0245

  NEARLY FOUR MILES above the earth, the aircraft held her course.

  In every direction, as far as the eye could see, stretched the undulating carpet of cloud, passing beneath the great machine so slowly as to make it appear almost stationary. It was a cold, empty, utterly lonely world, a world in which the heart-beating throb of the aircraft’s engines came rumbling back from the silver-tinted wastes.

  Far below, that same powerful pulse of engines, in normal weather, would have reverberated through the desolate valleys of the Rocky Mountains. Tonight, muffled by the ground fog, the sound of her passing was not enough to disturb the scattered communities as they slept in their remote farmsteads. Had someone there chanced to hear the aircraft, he may have disregarded it as an event too commonplace to be worthy of thought. Or he may have wished himself up there, flying to some faraway place and enjoying the solicitous attentions of a crew whose primary concern was his safety and comfort. He could not have dreamed that practically everyone in the aircraft would have gladly and gratefully changed places with him.

  Like a monstrous weed, fear was taking root in the minds of most of the passengers. There were some who probably still failed to realize exactly what was going on. But most of them, especially those who could hear the groans and retching of the ones who were ill, felt the presence of a terrible crisis. The doctor’s words over the public address system, once they had sunk in, had provided plenty to think about. The hubbub of dismay and conjecture following them had soon died away, to be replaced by whispers and uneasy snatches of conversation.

  Baird had given Janet two pills. “Take them to the captain,” he told her in a low voice. “Tell him to drink as much water as he can. If the poison is in his system the water will help dilute it. Then he’s to take the pills. They’ll make him sick — that’s what they’re for.”

  When Janet entered the flight deck Dun was completing a radio transmission. He signed off and gave her a strained grin. Neither of them was deluded by it.

  “Hullo, Jan,” he said. His hand was shaking slightly. “This is becoming quite a trip. Vancouver has just been asking for more details. I thought this lot would shake them up a bit. How are things back there?”

  “So far, so good,” said Janet as lightly as she could. She held out the pills. “Doctor says you’re to drink as much as you can, then take these. They’ll make you feel a bit green.”

  “What a prospect.” He reached down into the deep seat pocket at his side and took out a water bottle. “Well, down the hatch.” After a long draught, he swallowed the pills, pulling a wry face. “Never could take those things — and they tasted awful.”

  Janet looked anxiously down at him as he sat before the nickering panel of gauges and dials, the two control columns moving spasmodically backwards and forwards in the eerie grip of the automatic pilot. She touched his shoulder.

  “How do you feel?” she asked. His pallor, the beads of perspiration on his forehead, did not escape her. She prayed to herself that it was just the strain he was undergoing.

  “Me?” His tone was unnaturally hearty. “I’m fine. What about you? Had your pills yet?”

  “I don’t need any. I had chops for dinner.”

  “You were wise. From now on I think I’ll be a vegetarian — it’s safer that way.” He turned in his seat and looked over at the first officer, now prone on the floor, his head on a pillow. “Poor old Pete,” he murmured. “I sure hope he’s going to be all right.”

  “That’s up to you, isn’t it. Captain?” said Janet urgently. “The faster you can push this thing into Vancouver, the quicker we’ll get him and the others into hospital.” She stepped over to Pete and bent down to adjust a blanket round him, hiding the sudden tremble of tears that threatened to break through her reserve. Dun was troubled as he regarded her.

  “You think a lot of him, Jan, don’t you?” he said.

  Her golden head moved a little. “I — I suppose so,” she replied. “I’ve got to like him during the past few months since he joined the crew and this — this horrible business has made me…” She checked herself and jumped up. “I’ve a lot to do. Have to hold a few noses while the doctor pours water down their gullets. Not very popular, I imagine, with some of those hard-drinking types.”

  She smiled quickly at him and opened the door to the passenger deck. Baird was halfway along the starboard side, talking to a middle-aged couple who stared at him nervously.

  “Doctor,” the woman was saying intently, “that young girl, the stewardess — I’ve seen her keep going up to the pilots’ cabin. Are they well? I mean, supposing they’re taken ill too — what will happen to us?” She clutched at her husband. “Hector, I’m frightened. I wish we hadn’t come—”

  “Now, now, dear, take it easy,” said her husband with an assurance he obviously didn’t feel. “There’s no danger, I’m sure, and nothing has happened so far.” He turned baggy, horn-rimmed eyes on the doctor. “Did the pilots have fish?”

  “Not all the fish was necessarily infected,” answered Baird evasively. “Anyway, we don’t know for certain that the fish was to blame. You’ve nothing to worry about — we’ll take great care of the crew. Now, sir, did you have fish or meat?”

  The man’s bulbous eyes seemed about to depart from their sockets. “Fish,” he exclaimed. “We both ate fish.” Indignation welled up in him. “I think it’s disgraceful that such a thing can happen. There ought to be an inquiry.”

  “I can assure you there will be, whatever the cause.” Baird handed them each a pill, which they accepted as gingerly as if it were high explosive. “Now, you’ll be brought a jug of water. Drink three glasses each — four, if you can manage them. Then take the pill. It’ll make you sick, but that’s what it’s for. Don’t worry about it. There are paper bags in the seat pockets.”

  He left the couple staring hypnotically at their pills and in a few minutes, progressing along the rows, had reached his own empty seat with Spencer sitting alongside it.

  “Meat,” said Spencer promptly, before Baird could put the question.

  “Good for you,” said the doctor. “That’s one less to
worry about.”

  “You’re having a heavy time of it, Doc, aren’t you?” Spencer commented. “Can you do with any help?”

  “I can do with all the help in the world,” growled Baird. “But there’s not much you can do, unless you’d like to give Miss Benson and the other fellow a hand with the water.”

  “Sure I will.” Spencer lowered his voice. “Someone back there sounds in a bad way.”

  “They are in a bad way. The devil of it is,” said Baird bitterly, “I’ve got nothing I can give them that’s of any real use. You make a trip to a ball game — you don’t think to pack your bag in case a dozen people get taken sick with food poisoning on the way. I’ve a hypodermic and morphia — never travel without those — but here they may do more harm than good. God knows why I threw in a bottle of emetic pills, but it’s a good thing I did. Some dramamine would be mighty useful now.”

  “What does that do?”

  “In these cases the serious thing is the loss of body fluids. An injection of dramamine would help to preserve them.”

  “You mean all this sickness gradually dehydrates a person?”

  “Exactly.”

  Spencer rubbed his chin as he digested this information. “Well,” he said, “thank God for lamb chops. I just don’t feel ready for dehydration yet.”

  Baird frowned at him. “Perhaps you see some humor in this situation,” he said sourly. “I don’t. All I can see is complete helplessness while people suffer and steadily get worse.”

  “Don’t ride me, Doc,” Spencer protested. “I meant nothing. I’m only too glad we didn’t get sick on the fish like the other poor devils.”

  “Yes, yes, maybe you’re right.” Baird passed a hand over his eyes. “I’m getting too old for this sort of thing,” he muttered, half to himself.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Never mind, never mind.”

  Spencer got to his feet. “Now, hold on there, Doc,” he said. “You’re doing a fine job. The luckiest thing that ever happened to these people is having you on board.”

  “All right, junior,” Baird retorted sarcastically, “you can spare me the salesman’s pep talk. I’m not proposing to run out on you.”

  The younger man flushed slightly. “Fair enough — I asked for that. Well, tell me what I can do. I’ve been sitting warming my seat while you’ve been hard at it. You’re tired.”

  “Tired nothing.” Baird put his hand on the other man’s arm. “Take no notice of me. I worked off a bit of steam on you. Feel better for it. It’s knowing what ought to be done and not being able to do it. Makes me a little raw.”

  “That’s okay,” Spencer said with a grin. “Glad to be of some use, anyway.”

  “I’ll tell Miss Benson you’re willing to help if she needs you. Once the water is all given out, I think maybe you’d better stay where you are. There’s more than enough traffic in the aisle already.”

  “As you say. Well, I’m here if you want me.” Spencer resumed his seat. “But tell me — just how serious is all this?”

  Baird looked him in the eye. “As serious as you are ever likely to want it,” he said curtly.

  He moved along to the group of football fans who had earlier in the evening imbibed whisky with such liberality. The quartet was now reduced in strength to three, and one of these sat shivering in his shirt sleeves, a blanket drawn across his chest. His color was gray.

  “Keep this man warm,” said Baird. “Has he had anything to drink?”

  “That’s a laugh,” replied a man behind him, shuffling a pack of cards. “He must have downed a couple of pints of rye, if I’m any judge.”

  “Before or after dinner?”

  “Both, I reckon.”

  “That’s right,” agreed another in the group. “And I thought Harry could hold his liquor.”

  “In this case it’s done him no harm,” Baird said. “In fact, it has helped to dilute the poison, I don’t doubt. Have any of you men got any brandy?”

  “Cleared mine up,” said the man with the cards.

  “Wait a minute,” said the other, leaning forward to get at his hip pocket. “I might have some left in the flask. We gave it a good knocking, waiting about at Toronto.”

  “Give him a few sips,” instructed Baird. “Take it gently. Your friend is very ill.”

  “Say, Doctor,” said the man with the cards, “what’s the score? Are we on schedule?”

  “As far as I know, yes.”

  “This puts paid to the ball game for Andy, eh?”

  “It certainly does. We’ll get him to hospital just as soon as we land.”

  “Poor old Andy,” commiserated the man with the hip flask, unscrewing the cap, “he always was an unlucky so-and-so. Hey,” he exclaimed as a thought struck him, “you say he’s pretty bad — he’ll be all right, won’t he?”

  “I hope so. You’d better pay him some attention, as I said, and make sure he doesn’t throw off those blankets.”

  “Fancy this happening to old Andy. What about ’Otpot, that English screwball? You drafted him?”

  “Yes, he’s giving us a hand.” As Baird stepped away the man with the cards flicked them irritably in his hand and demanded of his companion, “How d’you like this for a two-day vacation?”

  Further along the aisle, Baird found Janet anxiously bending over Mrs. Childer. He raised one of the woman’s eyelids. She was unconscious.

  Her husband seized frantically on the doctor’s presence.

  “How is she?” he implored.

  “She’s better off now than when she was conscious and in pain,” said Baird, hoping he sounded convincing. “When the body can’t take any more, nature pulls down the shutter.”

  “Doctor, I’m scared. I’ve never seen her so ill. Just what is this fish poisoning? What caused it? I know it was the fish, but why?”

  Baird hesitated.

  “Well,” he said slowly, “I guess you’ve a right to know. It’s a very serious illness, one that needs treatment at the earliest possible moment. We’re doing all we can right now.”

  “I know you are, Doctor, and I’m grateful. She is going to be okay, isn’t she? I mean—”

  “Of course she is,” said Baird gently. “Try not to worry. There’ll be an ambulance waiting to take her to hospital immediately we land. Then it’s only a question of treatment and time before she’s perfectly well again.”

  “My God,” said Childer, heaving a deep breath, “it’s good to hear you say that.” Yes, thought Baird, but supposing I had the common guts to put it the other way? “But listen,” Childer suggested, “couldn’t we divert — you know, put down at a nearer airport?”

  “We thought of that,” answered Baird, “but there’s a ground fog which would make landing at other fields highly dangerous. Anyway, we’ve now passed them and we’re over the Rockies. No, the quickest way of getting your wife under proper care is to crack on for Vancouver as fast as we can, and that’s what we’re doing.”

  “I see… You still think it was the fish, do you, Doctor?”

  “At present I’ve no means of telling for certain, but I think so. Food poisoning can be caused either by the food just spoiling — the medical name is staphylococcal poisoning — or it’s possible that some toxic substance has accidentally gotten into it during its preparation.”

  “What kind do you think this is, Doctor?” asked a passenger in the next row who had been straining to hear Baird’s words.

  “I can’t be sure, but from the effect that it’s had on the folk here I’d suspect the second cause rather than the first — a toxic substance, that is.”

  “And you don’t know what it is?”

  “I have no idea. We won’t know until we’re able to make proper tests in a laboratory. With modern methods of handling food — and especially the careful way in which airlines prepare food — the chances of this happening are a million to one against. We just happen to be unfortunate. I can tell you, though, that our dinner tonight didn’t come from t
he usual caterers. Something went wrong owing to our late arrival at Winnipeg and another firm supplied us. That may or may not have a bearing on it.”

  Childer nodded, turning the conversation over in his mind. Funny how people seem to find comfort in a medical man’s words, Baird reflected in a sardonic appraisal of himself. Even when what a doctor has to say is bad news, the fact that he has said it seems to be reassuring to them. He’s the doctor; he won’t let it happen. Maybe we haven’t come so far from witchcraft, he thought to himself with a touch of anger; there’s always the doctor with his box of magic, to pull something out of the hat. Most of his life had been spent in nursing, coaxing, bullying, cajoling — reassuring frightened and trusting people that he knew best, and hoping each time that his old skill and sometimes very necessary bluff had not deserted him. Well, this could be the moment of truth, the final, inescapable challenge which he had always known would face him one day.

  He felt Janet standing beside him. He questioned her with his eyes, sensing her to be on the edge of hysteria.

  “Two more passengers have been taken ill, Doctor. At the back there.”

  “Are you sure it isn’t just the pills?”

  “Yes, I’m quite sure.”

  “Right. I’ll get to them straight away. Will you have another look at the first officer, Miss Benson? He might feel like a little water.”

  He had barely reached the two new cases and begun his examination before Janet was back again.

  “Doctor, I’m terribly worried. I think you ought to—”

  The buzz of the galley intercom cut across her words like a knife. She stood transfixed as the buzz continued without a break. Baird was the first to move.

  “Don’t bother with that thing,” he rapped out. “Quick!”

  Moving with an agility quite foreign to him, he raced along the aisle and burst into the flight deck. There he paused momentarily, while his eyes and brain registered what had happened, and in that instant something inside him, something mocking in its tone but menacing too, said: You were right — this is it.