Дик Фрэнсис - Rat Race

Airsick-making weather. I looked round to see if an issue of waterproof bags was going to be required. Needn’t have bothered. Colin was still asleep and the other three had too much on their minds to worry about a few lurches. I told Annie Villars where the bags were to be found if wanted, and she seemed to think I had insulted her.

Although by four thousand feet the worst of the bumps were below us, the flight was a bit like a bending race as I tracked left and right to avoid the dark towering cloud masses. Mostly we stayed in the sunshine: occasionally raced through the small veiling clouds which were dotted among the big ones. I wanted to avoid even the medium sized harmless ones, as these sometimes hid a dangerous whopper just behind, and at a hundred and fifty miles an hour there was little chance to dodge. Inside every well grown cumulo-nimbus there were vertical rushing air currents which could lift and drop even an airliner like a yoyo. Also one could meet hailstones and freezing rain. Nobody’s idea of a jolly playground. So it was a good idea to avoid the black churning brutes, but it was a rougher ride than one should aim for with passengers.

Everyone knows the horrible skin-prickling heart-thudding feeling when the normal suddenly goes wrong. Fear, it’s called. The best place to feel it is not with a jerk at four thousand feet in a battlefield of cu-nims.

I was used to far worse weather; to bad, beastly, even lethal weather. It wasn’t the state of the sky which distracted me, which set the fierce little adrenalin-packed alarm bell ringing like crazy.

There was something wrong with the aeroplane .

Nothing much. I couldn’t even tell what it was. But something. Something...

My instinct for safety was highly developed. Over-developed, many had said, when it had got me into trouble. Bloody coward, was how they’d put it.

You couldn’t ignore it, though. When the instinct switched to danger you couldn’t risk ignoring it, not with passengers on board. What you could do when you were alone was a different matter, but civil commercial pilots seldom got a chance to fly alone.

Nothing wrong with the instruments. Nothing wrong with the engine.

Something wrong with the flying controls.

When I swerved gently to avoid yet another lurking cu-nim the nose of the aircraft dropped and I had a shade of difficulty pulling it up again. Once level nothing seemed wrong. All the gauges seemed right. Only the instinct remained. Instinct and the memory of a slightly sluggish response.

The next time I made a turn, the same thing happened. The nose wanted to drop, and it needed more pressure than it should have done to hold it level. At the third turn, it was worse.

I looked down at the map on my knees. We were twenty minutes out of Haydock... south of Matlock... approaching Nottingham. Another eighty nautical miles to Newmarket.

It was the hinged part of the tailplane which raised or lowered the aircraft’s nose. The elevators, they were called. They were linked by wires to the control column in such a way that when you pushed the control column forward the tail went up and tipped the nose down. And vice versa.

The wires ran through rings and over pulleys, between the cabin floor and the outer skin of the fuselage. There wasn’t supposed to be any friction.

Friction was what I could feel.

I thought perhaps one of the wires had somehow come off one of the pulleys during the bumpy ride. I’d never heard of it happening before, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t. Or perhaps a whole pulley had come adrift, or had broken in half... If something was rolling around loose it could affect the controls fairly seriously.

I turned to the cheerful company.

‘I’m very sorry, but there will be a short delay on the journey. We’re going to land for a while at the East Midlands Airport, near Nottingham, while I get a quick precautionary check done on the aircraft.’

I met opposition.

Goldenberg said belligerently, ‘I can’t see anything wrong.’ His eyes swept over the gauges, noticing all the needles pointing to the green safety segments on all the engine instruments. ‘It all looks the same as it always does.’

‘Are you sure it’s necessary?’ Annie Villars said. ‘I particularly want to get back to see my horses at evening stables.’

The Major said ‘Damn it all!’ fiercely and frowned heavily and looked more tense than ever.

They woke up Colin Ross.

‘The pilot wants to land here and make what he calls a precautionary check. We want to go straight on. We don’t want to waste time. There isn’t anything wrong with the plane, as far as we can see...’

Colin Ross’s voice came across, clear and decisive. ‘If he says we’re going down, we’re going down. He’s the boss.’

I looked round at them. Except for Colin they were all more moody and gloomy than ever. Colin unexpectedly gave me a flicker of a wink. I grinned as much to myself as to him, called up East Midlands on the radio, announced our intention to land, and asked them to arrange for a mechanic to be available for a check.

On the way down I regretted it. The friction seemed no worse: if anything it was better. Even in the turbulent air near the ground I had no great trouble in moving the elevators. I’d made a fool of myself and the passengers would be furious and Derrydowns would be scathing about the unnecessary expense, and at any time at all I would be looking for my seventh job.

It was a normal landing. I parked where directed on the apron and suggested everyone got out and went into the airport for a drink, as the check would take half an hour, and maybe more.

They were by then increasingly annoyed. Up in the air they must have had a lingering doubt that I was right about landing. Safe on the ground, they were becoming sure it was unnecessary.

I walked some of the way across the tarmac with them towards the airport passengers’ doors, then peeled off to go to the control office for the routine report after landing, and to ask for the mechanic to come for a look-see as soon as possible. I would fetch them from the bar, I said, once the check was done.

‘Hurry it up’ Goldenberg said rudely.

‘Most annoying. Most annoying indeed.’ The Major.

‘I was away last night... particularly wanted to get back this evening. Might as well go by road, no point in paying for speed if you don’t get it...’ Annie Villar’s irritation overcoming the velvet glove.

Colin Ross said, ‘If your horse coughs, don’t race it.’

The others looked at him sharply. I said, ‘Thanks’ gratefully, and bore off at a tangent to the left. I saw them out of the side of my vision, looking briefly back towards the aircraft and then walking unenthusiastically towards the big glass doors.

There was a crack behind me like a snapping branch, and a monstrous boom, and a roaring gust of air.

I’d heard that sequence before. I spun round, appalled.

Where there had stood a smart little blue and white Cherokee there was an exploding ball of fire.

The bomb had taken a fraction of a second to detonate. The public impact lasted three days. The investigations dragged on for weeks.

Predictably, the Dailies went to town on ‘Colin Ross Escapes Death by One Minute’ and ‘Champion Jockey wins Race against Time’. Annie Villars, looking particularly sweet and frail, said in a television news interview that we had all been fantastically lucky. Major Tyderman was quoted as saying ‘Fortunately there was something wrong with the plane, and we landed for a check. Otherwise...’ And Colin Ross had apparently finished his sentence for him; ‘Otherwise we would all have been raining down on Nottingham in little bits.’