Runway Zero-Eight

Baird grimaced, tapping his finger nail with the tiny flashlight. “How soon do you expect to land?”

“About five a.m., Pacific Time.” Dun saw the doctor glance involuntarily at his wrist watch, and added, “We’re due to land in three and a half hours from now. These charter aircraft aren’t the fastest in the world.”

Baird made up his mind. “Then I’ll have to do what I can for these people until we arrive at Vancouver. I’ll need my bag. Do you think it can be reached? I checked it at Toronto.”

“We can try,” said the captain. “I hope it’s near the top. Let me have your tags, Doctor.”

Baird’s long fingers probed into his hip pocket and came out with his wallet. From this he took two baggage tickets and handed them to Dun.

“There are two bags, Captain,” he said. “It’s the smaller one I want. There isn’t much equipment in it — just a few things I always carry around. But they’ll help.”

He had barely finished speaking before the aircraft gave a violent lurch. It sent the two men sprawling to the far wall. There was a loud, persistent buzzing. The captain was on his feet first and sprang to the intercom telephone.

“Captain here,” he rapped out. “What’s wrong, Pete?”

The voice of the first officer was struggling and painful. “I’m… sick… come quickly.”

“You’d better come with me,” said Dun to the doctor and they left the galley rapidly. “Sorry about the bump,” Dun remarked affably to the upturned faces as they walked along the aisle. “Just a little turbulence.”

As they burst into the flight deck, it was only too apparent that the first officer was very sick; his face a mask of perspiration, he was slumped in his seat, clutching the control column with what was obviously all his strength.

“Get him out of there,” directed the captain urgently. Baird and Janet, who had followed the men in, seized the copilot and lifted him out and away from the controls, while Dun slipped into his own seat and took the column in his hands.

“There’s a seat at the back of the flight deck, for when we carry a radio operator,” he told them. “Put him there.”

With an agonizing retch, Pete spewed on to the deck as they helped him to the vacant seat and propped him against the wall. Baird loosened the first officer’s collar and tie and tried to make him as comfortable as the conditions would allow. Every few seconds Pete would jackknife in another croaking, straining retch.

“Doctor,” called the captain, his voice tense, “what is it? What’s happening?”

“I’m not sure,” said Baird grimly. “But there’s a common denominator to these attacks. There has to be. The most likely thing is food. What was it we had for dinner?”

“The main course was a choice of meat or fish,” said Janet. “You probably remember, Doctor — you had—”

“Meat!” cut in Baird. “About — what? — two, three hours ago. What did he have?” He indicated the first officer.

Janet’s face began to register alarm. “Fish,” she almost whispered.

“Do you remember what the other two passengers had?”

“No — I don’t think so—”

“Go back quickly and find out, will you, please?”

The stewardess hurried out, her face pale. Baird knelt beside the first officer who sat swaying with the motion of the aircraft, his eyes closed. “Try to relax,” he said quietly. “I’ll give you something in a few minutes that’ll help the pain. Here.” He reached up and pulled down a blanket from a rack. “You’ll feel better if you stay warm.”

Pete opened his eyes a little and ran his tongue over dry lips. “Are you a doctor?” he asked. Baird nodded. Pete said with a sheepish attempt to smile, “I’m sorry about all this mess. I thought I was going to pass out.”

“Don’t talk,” said Baird. “Try to rest.”

“Tell the captain he’s sure right about my ham-handed—”

“I said don’t talk. Rest and you’ll feel better.”

Janet returned. “Doctor,” she spoke rapidly, hardly able to get the words out quickly enough. “I’ve checked both those passengers. They both had salmon. There are three others complaining of pains now. Can you come?”

“Of course. But I’ll need that bag of mine.”

Dun called over his shoulder, “Look, I can’t leave here now, Doctor, but I’ll see that you get it immediately. Janet, take these tags. Get one of the passengers to help you and dig out the smaller of the doctor’s two bags, will you?” Janet took the tags from him and turned to the doctor to speak again, but Dun continued, “I’m going to radio Vancouver and report what’s happening. Is there anything you want me to add?”

“Yes,” said Baird. “Say we have three serious cases of suspected food poisoning and that there seem to be others developing. You can say we’re not sure but we suspect that the poisoning could have been caused by fish served on board. Better ask them to put a ban on all food originating from the same source as ours — at least until we’ve established the cause of the poisoning for certain.”

“I remember now,” exclaimed Dun. “That food didn’t come from the caterers who usually supply the airlines. Our people had to get it from some other outfit because we were so late getting into Winnipeg.”

“Tell them that, Captain,” said Baird. “That’s what they’ll need to know.”

“Doctor, please,” Janet implored him. “I do wish you’d come and see Mrs. Childer. She seems to have collapsed altogether.”

Baird stepped to the door. The lines in his face had deepened, but his eyes as he held Janet’s with them were steady as a rock.

“See that the passengers are not alarmed,” he instructed. “We shall be depending on you a great deal. Now if you’ll be good enough to find my bag and bring it to me, I’ll be attending to Mrs. Childer.” He pushed back the door for her, then stopped her as something occurred to him. “By the way, what did you eat for dinner?”

“I had meat,” the young stewardess answered him.

“Thank heavens for that, then.” Janet smiled and made to go on again, but he gripped her suddenly, very hard, by the arm. “I suppose the captain had meat, too?” He shot the question at her.

She looked up at him, as if at the same time trying both to remember and to grasp the implications of what he had asked.

Then, suddenly, shock and realization flooded into her. She almost fell against him, her eyes dilated with an immense and overpowering fear.

THREE

0745—0220

BRUNO BAIRD regarded the stewardess thoughtfully. Behind the calm reassurance of his blue-gray eyes his mind rapidly assessed the situation, weighing with the habit of years one possibility against another. He released the girl’s arm.

“Well, we won’t jump to conclusions,” he said, almost to himself. Then, more briskly, “You find my bag — just as quickly as you can. Before I see Mrs. Childer I’ll have another word with the captain.”

He retraced his steps forward. They were now in level flight above the turbulence. Over the pilot’s shoulder he could see the cold white brilliance of the moon, converting the solid carpet of cloud below them into a seemingly limitless landscape of snow with here and there what looked for all the world like a pinnacle of ice thrusting its craggy outcrop through the surrounding billows. The effect was dreamlike.

“Captain,” he said, leaning over the empty copilot’s seat. Dun looked round, his face drawn and colorless in the moon glare. “Captain, this has to be fast. There are people very sick back there and they need attention.”

Dun nodded quickly. “Yes, Doctor. What is it?”

“I presume you ate after the other officer did?”

“Yes, that’s so.”

“How long after?”

Dun’s eyes narrowed. “About half an hour, I’d say. Maybe a little more, but not much.” The point of the doctor’s question suddenly hit him. He sat upright with a jerk and slapped the top of the control column with the flat of his hand. “Holy smoke, that’s right. I had fish too.”

“D’you feel all right?”

The captain nodded. “Yes. Yes, I feel okay.”

“Good.” Relief showed in Baird’s voice. “As soon as I’ve got my bag I’ll give you an emetic.”

“Will that get rid of it?”

“Depends. You can’t have digested it all yet. Anyway, it doesn’t follow that everyone who ate fish will be affected — logic doesn’t enter into these things. You could be the one to avoid trouble.”

“I’d better be,” muttered Dun, staring now into the moonglow ahead.

“Now listen,” said Baird. “Is there any way of locking the controls of this airplane?”

“Why yes,” said Dun. “There’s the automatic pilot. But that wouldn’t get us down—”

“I suggest you switch it on, or whatever you do, just in case. If you do happen to feel ill, yell for me immediately. I don’t know that I can do much, but if you do get any symptoms they’ll come on fast.”

The knuckles of Dun’s hands gleamed white as he gripped the control column. “Okay,” he said quietly. “What about Miss Benson, the stewardess?”

“She’s all right. She had meat.”

“Well, that’s something. Look, for heaven’s sake hurry with that emetic. I can’t take any chances, flying this ship.”

“Benson is hurrying. Unless I’m mistaken there are at least two people back there in a state of deep shock. One more thing,” Baird said, looking straight at the captain. “Are you absolutely certain that we’ve no other course but to go on?”

“Certain,” answered Dun instantly. “I’ve checked and double-checked. Thick cloud and ground fog until the other side of the mountains. Calgary, Edmonton, Lethbridge — all closed to traffic. That’s routine, when ground visibility is zero. In the normal way, it wouldn’t worry us.”

“Well, it worries us now.”

The doctor stepped back to leave, but Dun shot at him, “Just a minute.” As the doctor paused, he went on, “I’m in charge of this flight and I must know the facts. Lay it on the line. What are the chances that I’ll be all right?”

Baird shook his head angrily, his composure momentarily deserting him. “I wouldn’t know,” he said savagely. “You just can’t apply any rules to a thing like this.”

He was halted again before he could leave the flight deck.

“Oh, Doctor.”

“Yes?”

“Glad you’re aboard.”

Baird left without another word. Dun took a deep breath, thinking over what had been said and searching in his mind for a possible course of action. Not for the first time in his flying career, he felt himself in the grip of an acute sense of apprehension, only this time his awareness of his responsibility for the safety of a huge, complex aircraft and nearly sixty lives was tinged with a sudden icy premonition of disaster. Was this, then, what it felt like? Older pilots, those who had been in combat in the war, always maintained that if you kept at the game long enough you’d buy it in the end. How was it that in the space of half an hour a normal, everyday, routine flight, carrying a crowd of happy football fans, could change into a nightmare nearly four miles above the earth, something that would shriek across the front pages of a hundred newspapers?