Джон Болл: Phase Three Alert

“I can’t see why not,” Ferguson answered.

The discovery of the B-17 made the return to Sondrestrom a minor event. Although he kept it from showing, or thought that he did, Lieutenant Ferguson had the fiery hope that it was, indeed, a new find. He had his own private reasons for that and they had nothing to do with a desire to put his name on file as the discoverer.

Together with Jenkins, his navigator, he went to Operations, and through the communications available there reported to the Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Service the location of the downed bomber and the tail number by which it could be identified — if any records were still available after thirty years. One of the functions of the ARRS was to keep careful track of every known aircraft wreck anywhere in the free world.

The Operations NCOIC was interested. “How well were you able to see it?” he asked. “How close did you get?”

“We landed,” Jenkins answered. “The area was ideal for it and we wanted to determine if there were any bodies on board that should be returned to the States for proper burial.”

“What did you find?”

“Nothing except the old bird itself. We were able to check inside and there was no evidence of the crew.”

The sergeant behind the counter nodded. “That may save some headaches later on. Thanks a lot, Lieutenant.”

“No sweat.”

The NCOIC checked the board behind him. “You know that you’re scheduled out to Thule at ten hundred hours tomorrow.”

“Yes,” Ferguson answered, “but we still don’t know why.”

“They’ll tell you, sir — eventually.”

“I’m sure they will. Call us a taxi, will you?”

The sergeant nodded and picked up a phone.

Lieutenant Ferguson’s mind was churning as he lined up the runway, five minutes early, and ran through the last few pre-takeoff checks. Behind him he had a six-pallet load that had been checked and secured by Sergeant Stovers. Up near the front of the cargo hold the crew’s personal gear had been stowed and strapped down. The four turbine engines were howling their song of power; the rugged airframe was closed up and ready.

As soon as the tower gave the word, Corbin eased the power forward and the engines surged. The wheels began to roll down the snow-covered runway at exactly 0957. As he always did, Ferguson enjoyed, the gathering speed of the Hercules; with a little more than 4,000 feet of runway behind him he rotated and the big airlifter came smoothly off the ground. When the wheels and flaps were up, and he had sufficient altitude, he turned her north toward Thule — the furthest outpost of the United States Air Force and perhaps the most extraordinary military base in the world.

Sondrestrom was well north of the Arctic Circle, but Thule was hundreds of miles beyond that. Its desperate isolation and extreme latitude had justly earned for it the ancient name Ultima Thule — the end of the earth.

Below the wings of the aluminum bird there was nothing but snow, a vast eternity of it, and occasional rocks that broke through like the lost souls in Dante’s frozen sea. In the left-hand seat, Ferguson looked out at the fantastic panorama and almost shuddered because of the thoughts that were tumbling through his mind. Each time that he flew this route he remembered again his great ambition to be an astronaut and the defeat that had been forced upon him simply because he was too tall. There had been no measurement of his abilities or of his determination, only the bare fact that he was too far over the height limit and therefore, by accident of birth, cut off from the great adventure into space. Instead of an exotic spacecraft traveling to the far reaches of the solar system, instead of the red deserts of Mars or the shrouding cloud cover of Venus, or even the totally hostile — yet attained — moon, he had to settle for a chunky freighter, a flying truck condemned by its special equipment to remain forever in the limited areas of the Arctic. Free bird that it was, it could not even roam its own planet as it had been built to do.

He had been sentenced to earth because of three inches nature had added to his frame. The C-130 had been sentenced to the Arctic because Lockheed had fastened a set of cumbersome skis to its underbelly — more than three tons of added weight it must always carry, three awkward objects perpetually out in the slipstream to add punishing drag and cut down the streamlining of the clean wing and the otherwise trim fuselage.

He took hold of the control yoke and touched the red button that disconnected the autopilot. Flying then by hand he breathed his understanding to the aircraft that was his partner in flight. So far and no further they could go together. The destiny of man always seemed to rest with a privileged few who somehow managed to be standing in just the right place at the right time, with the right degrees, the right attitudes, the right aptitudes, the right ages, the right reactions, the right rank — and the right dimensions.

Ferguson wanted to wrench the transport around in a barrel roll, to work off his emotions by soaring high, topping out, and then plunging downward, by pulling up onto his back in a half loop and rolling out in a stomach-wrenching Cuban 8. But you can’t do that in a loaded C-130; a fine bird she is, but built to fly straight and level. Her job is to plod on down the highway of the sky and deliver so many tons of freight at the other end — mission accomplished.

Probably the pilot of the old B-17 had had some of the same feelings, because he had been a flyer too. He had had no aspirations toward becoming an astronaut, they had been all but undreamed of in those days, but he had known the wonderful freedom of the skies and had experienced the subtle patterns of ever-changing clouds that only the airman can witness. Perhaps he had been green and inexperienced, and therefore had wrecked the beautiful new bird they had given him to fly because he hadn’t known where in hell he was going. But he had put the wheels down, proof that he had hoped to fly it out again, one way or another. That was the mark of a man willing to take an added risk to try and save his airplane, and Ferguson mentally reached across the span of years that had passed since then and saluted him for it.

Corbin tapped him on the shoulder and broke his reverie. With a gesture of his hand his copilot indicated that it was time to descend. For a second Ferguson was disoriented; he had been flying mechanically with his mind preoccupied. Swiftly he pulled himself back to reality. He checked the heading, read the DME, and saw that he was fast approaching Thule; the C-130 was already within 900 miles of the North Pole. As Corbin reported in, Ferguson set up a standard rate descent. His daydreams were gone now — he was fully occupied in bringing in his aircraft despite the fact that the traffic that close to the top of the world was negligible; he was given number one to land while he was still above 10,000 feet.

The business of the checklist began as the Hercules continued to unwind its altimeters, coming steadily closer to the frozen world that lay below. Presently the distinctive round shape of the Arctic mesa known as Mount Dundas lay directly ahead and Thule was within visual range.

He banked the C-130 the allowable amount, put it on the glide path, brought it down the track, and greased it on without giving a thought to allowing Corbin to test his skill. Ferguson was not in a mood to relinquish anything.

When he checked in at Operations, there was a message for him. He was to call General Pritchard in the Pentagon immediately upon his arrival.

The sickening thought hit him that he was to be chewed out from on high for having landed without authority on the ice cap. In a way, despite the careful precautions he had taken, it could be argued that he had unnecessarily risked his aircraft and his crew. Normally his orders came from Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, the headquarters of the Military Airlift Command. If the Pentagon wanted him, then something out of the ordinary was definitely afoot.