John Varley - Millennium

The trouble started in pretty much the same way. Captain Crain tried to protest Janz's order, since it didn't make any sense to him, but I knew he wouldn't have hesitated long. He had to assume the ground controller looking at his radar display knew a lot more about the situation than he, Crain, flying through a cloud layer with nothing but fog outside his windshield.

The cockpit got quiet and businesslike instantly.

Crain said, "I wonder what he's got in mind?" He started to say something else, and stopped. It got noisy as the planes hit. Apparently the cockpit crew never even got a glimpse of the other plane, or at least they never mentioned seeing it.

Somebody shouted something, then they got down to the business of flying the disabled plane.

We listened to the activity as three of them went to work. It was by the book. Crain was testing to see what he had left, reporting everything he did, and gradually began to sound optimistic. The aircraft was still going down but he was wrestling the nose up and thought he still had enough control to get it level. I agreed with him, from what I knew, but also knew something he didn't, which was that he didn't have any rudder left at all and that there was a mountain down there waiting for him that he couldn't turn away from. Then I heard DeLisle.

"Back it up a minute," I said. "What did he say?"

"Sounded like 'see the passengers,'" somebody suggested. The tape started again, and we heard Gil talking about rudder function. I was leaning forward to catch the next line, which would be DeLisle's, when a voice spoke close to my ear.

"Would you like some coffee, Mr Smith?"

I had missed it again. I turned, furious, ready to shout something about getting this bitch out of here ... and found myself looking into the face of my movie star/stewardess from the hangar. She had a beautiful smile, and it was as guileless and innocent as a saint's. I thought it a little odd for somebody who'd run like a thief the last time I saw her, no more than a few hours ago.

"What are you doing over -- "

"He said 'I'm going to see to the passengers,'" Jerry said at my other side. "Why would he ... Bill? Are you listening?"

Part of me had been, but the rest had been wrapped up in the woman. I was torn two ways. I looked at Jerry, then back to the woman and she was already walking away with her tray of coffee.

"Why do you think he'd say that?" Jerry repeated. "Things must have been pretty grim in there."

"You'd think he'd be afraid to unstrap," somebody else contributed.

My attention was back on the problem.

"There's not much point in asking why he'd leave," I said. "He didn't have any duties in the cockpit, so we can't fault him for it. He was dead weight, but maybe he thought he could help out the flight attendants in the cabin."

"I'm just surprised he thought of it so soon," Craig said.

"I'm not," said Carole. "Think about it. He's a pilot in a cockpit and he's useless.

Everything in his training is telling him to do something, but that's the Captain's job. So he's been trained to save the passengers, so he gets out of the cockpit where he can't do anything to help and goes back into the cabin where maybe he can."

I nodded at her. It made sense. Tom thought so, too.

"That would do it," he said. "But from an Operations standpoint, he's not part of the crew and his impulse should have been to do what the crew told him to do, not take off on his own initiative. He should have waited for orders from Crain."

"Crain was pretty busy to be bothered with suggestions."

It was batted around some more, until I called it off.

"Turn it back on."

This one went on a little longer than the other had. It was worse, in a way. You could tell that Gil really thought he had it. He reported his altimeter readings and they were looking better. His angle of attack was improving. He had his co-pilot calling around, asking about places they might ditch, wondering if they could reach the shallows of the Bay or the Sacramento River or something, they were talking about fields and country roads ... and suddenly his ground avoidance alarm started to shout at him. And there was the mountain.

It would have been hard to miss even with a rudder. He tried everything he had, all his control surfaces, spoilers, ailerons, flaps, elevators, trying to wrestle the big beast into a turn.

The talk in the cockpit became even more rapid, but still ordered, as Grain and his crew worked on it.

He decided to get the nose up, flaps down, pull back on the engines, and try to stall into the ground, pancake it on that hillside and hope it wouldn't slide too far. By then he was out of good options and seemed to be thinking in terms of minimizing the violence.

Then we heard a most surprising sound. Someone was screaming in the cockpit. I was pretty sure it was a man, and he sounded hysterical.

The words were tumbling out almost too fast to be understood. I found myself on the edge of my seat, my eyes squeezed shut, in an effort to hear what the voice was saying. I had by then identified it as DeLisle. He'd come back.

But why? And what was he saying? That's when the tape stopped abruptly and something heavy bumped into my side. I jerked in surprise and opened my eyes and looked down at my lap. There was a Styrofoam coffee cup there, on its side. "Warm brown liquid was soaking into my pants.

"I'm so sorry, oh my goodness, here, let me help you with that. I'm such a klutz, no wonder they didn't want me for a stewardess."

She went on like that for a while, crouching at my side and dabbing my lap with a tiny handkerchief.

For a while there I was at a loss. I had been jerked away from total concentration on those dead guys in the cockpit, and then all this fell, literally, into my lap: She was inches away from me, looking up at my face with a strange expression, and she was stroking my thighs with a wet handkerchief. All I could do was stare at her.

"It's okay," I said, finally. "Accidents will happen."

"But always to me," she said, plaintively.

It had been quite an accident, really.

She had tripped over the power cord on the floor, which is why the tape machine went off. Her tray of coffee cups went one way and she, holding a cup in her hand, had gone the other. She'd ended up on the floor beside me, and the tray had ended up all over the tape machine.

I went over to assess the damage.

"I'll have to get another machine," the operator said. "Goddam stupid bitch. This is a five-

thousand-dollar set-up here, and coffee's not going to -- "

"How about the tape?" I'd had a chilling thought. Once, I played the original CVR tape before sending it on to the Washington lab. I was damn lucky this was only a copy. Nobody at the Board would be too amused if a tape came through a crash and then got ruined by spilled coffee.

"It ought to be okay. I'll put it on a reel and dry it by hand: He glanced at his watch. "Give me half an hour."

I nodded at him and turned to go find the girl, but she was gone.

Testimony of Louise Baltimore

I got a taste of what the Council must lave felt. I had told those nine pitiful geniuses that my mission was vital to the success of the Gate project, and they had fallen over like ninepins.

Now Sherman was doing the same thing to me. I suspected his authority was as spurious as mine had been, but didn't dare say it, and ... he could have been right. I felt the same superstitious dread of disobeying a message from the future.

At that, I had healthy self-interest -- one might call it fear -- pushing me to argue against the proposal. Lawrence and Martin didn't even have that. It was fine with them if, assuming anyone had to go back at all, I lead a commando raid into that fateful hangar on that fateful night. They could sit safely uptime and have the great pleasure of second-guessing me when I came back with another failure.