John Nance - Lockout

“Tell me.”

“This guy tells me he’s an amateur astronomer… he owns a small telescope and belongs to some amateur organizations… and he’s telling me this because he’s in a window seat and he swears the stars are all wrong.”

Carol arched an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“No, listen… I don’t think he’s a kook. He’s on the left side and says he should be looking at something very different than the Big Dipper and the North Star, which is what he’s seeing, on the left. That would make sense, right? The North Star should be on our right?”

“I suppose. What’s the point, Kate? Passengers get mixed up all the time?”

“It’s on our left.”

“What’s on our left?”

“The North Star.”

Carol frowned. A call chime rang, and she needed to check it out.

“See, if we’re flying west toward New York like we’re supposed to be, the North Star would be on our right. So would the Big Dipper. I leaned down to see what he was talking about, and the man is right. The Dipper is on our left, the North Star is on our left, and the only planets visible are on our right. Mars, for instance.”

“He could be wrong. You could be wrong.”

“I’m not an idiot, Carol. I’m a Wisconsin farm girl… I know the night sky, too.”

“What’s the bottom line here? The world is upside down?”

“Seriously?” Kate said, cocking her head before taking a deep breath, unsure whether that response was going to get her in trouble.

“I’m not trying to make fun of you, Kate. But what are you trying to say? Spit it out, girl.”

“We’re flying the wrong way.”

“We’re over the Atlantic, almost midway I would think.”

“Maybe… but we’re headed back to Europe then, because we’re flying east. The guy even pulled out a little compass, and it said the same thing.”

Carol smiled. “You know how much this jet costs, with all those sophisticated instruments up front, not to mention two pilots who probably know how to read a compass?”

“Carol, please listen! I don’t care how sophisticated the airplane is, the stars are saying it all: We’re flying the wrong way. Has something happened they’re not telling us about?”

That hit a trigger.

Carol stood in thought for a few seconds, wondering if the pilots had made the serious error of keeping their lead flight attendant out of the loop on something important. She’d had it happen before, and it was an infuriating insult, not to mention a breach of the way the pilots were trained to treat the cabin crew as part of their team.

“Wait a second,” Carol said, her expression hardening as she scooped up the interphone and punched the buttons for the cockpit.

“Yes?”

“Is this the captain?”

“Nope. It’s the copilot. Carol? That you? Dan here.”

“Dan, is there anything you gentlemen want to tell me that you haven’t?”

Silence on the other end for a few seconds before a hesitant answer.

“Ah… what did you have in mind, Carol?”

“I need to come up.”

Carol turned to Kate and gestured for her to follow as the cockpit door interlocks were turned off and the door opened from within. The two women quickly moved inside and secured the door behind them.

“That is technically a breach of protocol, having two of you…” Jerry Tollefson began, stopping when he glanced at the flint-hard expression on Carol’s face and the ashen look on Kate’s.

“Okay, what’s wrong up here? Are we returning to Europe or the UK?”

“Returning? No! We’ve got a radio problem, but everything else is normal.”

“You mean, the passenger satellite system?”

“Yes,” Jerry began, glancing at the copilot. “That… and… several more radios. Basically, we had a real strange loss of all our panel and instruments and computer screens for several minutes a while ago, but everything came back on… except the radios. We’ve lost all normal communication with air traffic control and the company, but they know where we are, and we’re squawking a radio failure code, and…”

“Why are you asking, Carol?” Dan interjected, earning an irritated glance from Jerry.

The lead flight attendant had leaned forward and was reading the compass rose on the horizontal situation indicator. She nodded and glanced at Kate, who she’d forgotten to introduce.

“You should tell me about things like that. I’m supposed to be an integral part of your crew.”

“I apologize, Carol,” Jerry said. “We were still actively trying to work on the problem. I was going to tell you folks as soon as possible.”

Carol gestured to her companion. “This is Kate, who’s been working steerage. She’s got an astronomer back there who claims that we’re flying east.”

“ Excuse me?” Dan said, the words propelled by something between a snort and a chuckle.

Carol shot him an icy stare as Kate answered.

“Ah… he’s not an astronomer… I mean, an amateur one, maybe, but…” She repeated the exchange in full, and Jerry Tollefson turned around completely in his seat facing forward to squint out the window. “Dan, turn the overhead lights down.”

“Got it.”

Jerry straightened up suddenly and looked forward at the forward panel, then at Dan’s panel, then back at the two women—puzzlement showing in his face.

“You’re right about the Big Dipper, and… I’m not sure about Polaris… and yes, they should be on Dan’s side, but…”

His attention was diverted by Dan who had suddenly scrambled to follow suit and leaned forward and was now squinting at the whiskey compass, a small pocket flashlight beam now illuminating the instrument.

“Holy shit!” Dan muttered.

“What?” Jerry demanded.

“Good God! I saw this a half hour ago and misread it. I can’t believe it, but I fucking misread it! It’s reading one-zero-three, for God’s sake, with our HSI’s steady on the opposite course. I must have flipped it by a 180 degrees to 280 something, but it’s… it’s east, basically.”

The alarm on Jerry Tollefson’s face was palpable. “What do you mean, you reversed it?”

“I flipped it 180 degrees.”

“How the hell could you do that ?”

“I don’t know , Jerry,” Dan shot back, trying unsuccessfully to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “I guess I just assumed we were flying west!”

“Well… what the hell heading are we flying?”

“Apparently 103 degrees, Jerry!”

The two pilots glared at each other for a heartbeat, distrust and disbelief chiseled into their expressions..

“So, we are flying east?” Kate asked, breaking the silence.

“God, I hope not!” Jerry said through clenched teeth as he turned to yank his company iPad out of his flight bag. He flipped the cover open and toggled it on, selecting a map program and watched in frustration as a small target in the middle crawled across a blank screen with no map references.

“Dammit! I forgot it has to have an Internet signal for the map.”

“Wait, Jerry… I have a little thing on my… personal droid… that gives a good magnetic compass heading…” Dan lunged for his flight bag, fumbling loudly for the small smartphone he kept stored during international trips. “Give me a minute… the damned thing has to spin up!”

An interphone call chime rang, and both pilots ignored it at first.

“It’s coming online… hold on… if I remember right, the app is purely magnetic with no external connections needed—”

The call chime rang again, and this time the captain looked up at the overhead panel, irritated to be interrupted.

“Would you like me to get that, Captain?” Carol asked softly, well aware both men were highly agitated. She could feel Kate’s wide-eyed fright without glancing at her.