Stephen King - The Langoliers

Bob was looking thoughtfully at Nick. “What about you?” he asked.

“What do you mean, what about me?”

“I think you’re a soldier... but I don’t think you’re an ordinary one. Might you be SAS, perhaps?”

Nick’s face tightened. “And if I was that or something like it, mate?”

“Maybe you could put us to sleep,” Bob said. “Don’t they teach you Special Forces men tricks like that?”

Brian’s mind flashed back to Nick’s first confrontation with Craig Toomy. Have you ever watched Star Trek? he had asked Craig. Marvellous American program... And if you don’t shut your gob at once, you bloody idiot, I’ll be happy to demonstrate Mr Spock’s famous Vulcan sleeper-hold for you.

“What about it, Nick?” he said softly. “If we ever needed the famous Vulcan sleeper-hold, it’s now.”

Nick looked unbelievingly from Bob to Brian and then back to Bob again. “Please don’t make me laugh, gents — it makes my arm hurt worse.”

“What does that mean?” Bob asked.

“I’ve got my sedatives all wrong, have I? Well, let me tell you both that you’ve got it all wrong about me. I am not James Bond. There never was a James Bond in the real world. I suppose I might be able to kill you with a neck-chop, Bob, but I’d more likely just leave you paralyzed for life. Might not even knock you out. And then there’s this.” Nick held up his rapidly swelling right arm with a little wince. “My smart hand happens to be attached to my recently re-broken arm. I could perhaps defend myself with my left hand — against an unschooled opponent — but the kind of thing you’re talking about? No. No way.”

“You’re all forgetting the most important thing of all,” a new voice said.

They turned. Laurel Stevenson, white and haggard, was standing in the cockpit door. She had folded her arms across her breasts as if she was cold and was cupping her elbows in her hands.

“If we’re all knocked out, who is going to fly the plane?” she asked. “Who is going to fly the plane into LA?”

The three men gaped at her wordlessly. Behind them, unnoticed, the large semi-precious stone that was the time-rip glided into view again.

“We’re fucked,” Nick said quietly. “Do you know that? We are absolutely dead-out fucked.” He laughed a little, then winced as his stomach jogged his broken arm.

“Maybe not,” Albert said. He and Bethany had appeared behind Laurel; Albert had his arm around the girl’s waist. His hair was plastered against his forehead in sweaty ringlets, but his dark eyes were clear and intent. They were focussed on Brian. “I think you can put us to sleep,” he said, “and I think you can land us.”

“What are you talking about?” Brian asked roughly.

Albert replied: “Pressure. I’m talking about pressure.”

Brian’s dream recurred to him then, recurred with such terrible force that he might have been reliving it: Anne with her hand plastered over the crack in the body of the plane, the crack with the words SHOOTING STARS ONLY printed over it in red.

Pressure.

See, darling? It’s all taken care of.

“What does he mean, Brian?” Nick asked. “I can see he’s got something — your face says so. What is it?”

Brian ignored him. He looked steadily at the seventeen-year-old music student who might just have thought of a way out of the box they were in.

“What about after?” he asked. “What about after we come through? How do I wake up again so I can land the plane?”

“Will somebody please explain this?” Laurel pleaded. She had gone to Nick, who put his good arm around her waist.

“Albert is suggesting that I use this” — Brian tapped a rheostat on the control board, a rheostat marked CABIN PRESSURE — “to knock us all out cold.”

“Can you do that, mate? Can you really do that?”

“Yes,” Brian said. “I’ve known pilots — charter pilots — who have done it, when passengers who’ve had too much to drink started cutting up and endangering either themselves or the crew. Knocking out a drunk by lowering the air pressure isn’t that difficult. To knock out everyone, all I have to do is lower it some more... to half sea-level pressure, say. It’s like ascending to a height of two miles without an oxygen mask. Boom! You’re out cold.”

“If you can really do that, why hasn’t it been used on terrorists?” Bob asked.

“Because there are oxygen masks, right?” Albert asked.

“Yes,” Brian said. “The cabin crew demonstrates them at the start of every commercial jet-flight — put the gold cup over your mouth and nose and breathe normally, right? They drop automatically when cabin pressure falls below twelve psi. If a hostage pilot tried to knock out a terrorist by lowering the air pressure, all the terrorist would have to do is grab a mask, put it on, and start shooting. On smaller jets, like the Lear, that isn’t the case. If the cabin loses pressure, the passenger has to open the overhead compartment himself.”

Nick looked at the chronometer. Their window was now only fourteen minutes wide.

“I think we better stop talking about it and just do it,” he said. “Time is getting very short.”

“Not yet,” Brian said, and looked at Albert again. “I can bring us back in line with the rip, Albert, and start decreasing pressure as we head toward it. I can control the cabin pressure pretty accurately, and I’m pretty sure I can put us all out before we go through. But that leaves Laurel’s question: who flies the airplane if we’re all knocked out?”

Albert opened his mouth; closed it again and shook his head.

Bob Jenkins spoke up then. His voice was dry and toneless, the voice of a judge pronouncing doom. “I think you can fly us home, Brian. But someone else will have to die in order for you to do it.”

“Explain,” Nick said crisply.

Bob did so. It didn’t take long. By the time he finished, Rudy Warwick had joined the little group standing in the cockpit door.

“Would it work, Brian?” Nick asked.

“Yes,” Brian said absently. “No reason why not.” He looked at the chronometer again. Eleven minutes now. Eleven minutes to get across to the other side of the rip. It would take almost that long to line the plane up, program the autopilot, and move them along the forty-mile approach. “But who’s going to do it? Do the rest of you draw straws, or what?”

“No need for that,” Nick said. He spoke lightly, almost casually. “I’ll do it.”

“No!” Laurel said. Her eyes were very wide and very dark. “Why you? Why does it have to be you?”

“Shut up!” Bethany hissed at her. “If he wants to, let him!”

Albert glanced unhappily at Bethany, at Laurel, and then back at Nick. A voice — not a very strong one — was whispering that he should have volunteered, that this was a job for a tough Alamo survivor like The Arizona Jew. But most of him was only aware that he loved life very much... and did not want it to end just yet. So he opened his mouth and then closed it again without speaking.

“Why you?” Laurel asked again, urgently. “Why shouldn’t we draw straws? Why not Bob? Or Rudy? Why not me?”

Nick took her arm. “Come with me a moment,” he said.

“Nick, there’s not much time,” Brian said. He tried to keep his tone of voice even, but he could hear desperation — perhaps even panic — bleeding through.

“I know. Start doing the things you have to do.”

Nick drew Laurel through the door.

She resisted for a moment, then came along. He stopped in the small galley alcove and faced her. In that moment, with his face less than four inches from hers, she realized a dismal truth — he was the man she had been hoping to find in Boston. He had been on the plane all the time. There was nothing at all romantic about this discovery; it was horrible.