Дэймон Найт - Orbit 9

“Would you happen to know when the car rental people will be getting back?”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“I have to get to Punta Gorda,” Murdock said. “I have to get there today.”

“So what would you like me to do?”

“Tell me how.”

The young man’s eyes unfocused again. He absently stroked the winged insignia on his breast pocket.

“I’ve never been to Punta Gorda. We don’t fly there, you know.”

“I don’t care. I’ve got to get there.”

“It’s north of here,” the young man offered.

“Is there a bus? A train? An intercity taxi service? Dog sled?”

‘Taxi.” The young man sounded hopeful. “There’s an air taxi service. The Gatorland Flying Service. It’s that hangar over yonder. The one with the orange windsock on it.”

“Thanks.”

“Be sure to tell them Jerry Fisk sent you.”

“I will.”

“Promise?”

“Jesus!” Murdock said.

“Jerry. Jerry Fisk.”

“Jerry Fisk sent me,” Murdock said. The corrugated metal walls of the hangar caught his voice, held it in thin dusty reverberations. “I want to charter a plane to Punta Gorda.”

The woman facing him looked like somebody’s idea of a composite mother-image. In spite of the heat, a pale gray sweater was draped shawllike over her shoulders. Her skirt was calf-length. Her shoes were Red Cross. She peered over the rims of her glasses at him and smiled. She took his arm.

“Come into the office,” she said.

He followed her into a cobwebbed cubicle jammed with two desks, three filing cabinets, an indeterminate number of straight-backed chairs. Papers and charts littered the desks. Some were yellowed with age, curling at the edges. One wall was taken up by a huge framed etching of the Titanic going down.

She pushed him gently into a chair and seated herself on a corner of the nearest desk.

“You’re in luck,” she said, striking a wooden match on the sole of her shoe. She used it to relight a half-smoked cigarillo. “One of our best pilots is free at this very moment.”

“I’d like to leave immediately,” Murdock said.

She clenched the cigarillo in her teeth and brushed papers off the desk as she hunted through them. “It’s here somewhere. Ah, here we go.”

She shoved a printed form at Murdock. He took it. It was printed upside down. No, he was holding it upside down. Upset, he told himself. Too nervous. He turned the form over.

“Would you sign it, please?” she asked.

“What is it?”

“Just a standard waiver-of-liability form. It releases our firm from responsibility for any injuries incurred as a direct result of our unsolicited services to you.”

“Injuries?” He looked up. Behind her head, the rearmost section of the Titanic was under water. Smoke billowed from its upper decks.

“It’s a standard form. Standard form #699. See.” She poked her fingertip at a small line of type at the bottom of the sheet. It read

STANDARD FORM PRINTING, INC.

Handing him a cryptostylus, she told him, “You sign right there, beside the X.”

Murdock stared at the paper. He raised his head and glanced around the office. One panel of a partition was broken. Through it he could see the dimness of the hangar. Chains swung from an overhead hoist. A wing section that looked like balsa wood and canvas was stowed in the rafters.

He frowned. There was something terribly familiar about it all. It should have been in black and white. It was right out of an old Jimmy Cagney movie from the Late Show Antiques Festival. Or was it Cary Grant? Richard Arlen? He wasn’t sure.

The woman tapped her fingertip on the form to get his attention. “Would you?”

He signed. His hand trembled.

“If you’ll just wait one little moment, I’ll call the pilot.” She smiled sweetly. “He’s my son, you know.”

“I want to see the plane,” Murdock said.

“You will, sir,” she assured him. “You will. Hey, Dallas, you lazy shiftless no-count, get your ass in here, we gotta customer!”

The pilot looked like Cary Grant in full flying togs. A battered horsehide jacket, field boots and riding breeches. No leather helmet and goggles, though. No white silk scarf either. For a moment Murdock questioned the man’s competence. How could he fly without a white silk scarf?

“Name’s Dallas,” Cary Grant said. His smile was almost as deep as the cleft in his chin. He offered his hand. Murdock shook it. The grip was firm, dry and confident. Murdock felt better.

“Ready to go?” Dallas asked. He gestured toward a plane in the hangar’s shadow.

At least it wasn’t one of those Ford Tri-motors from the movies, Murdock thought. In fact, it wasn’t any kind of plane he recognized. He said, “What model plane is that anyway?”

“Ain’t a model.” Dallas paused to chuckle at his own joke. “It’s a real ‘un.”

When Murdock failed to join him in his hilarity, he added, “It’s a Piper Yamacraw. Them plane-makers run out’n Indian nations to name ‘em after ‘bout five, six years ago. Now they callin’ the new models after little tribes an’ things. Yamacraws was parta the Creek Nation. None of ‘em left nomore.”

“Killed off by settlers?” Murdock asked.

“Naw. Same thing happened to them as happened to the Hawaiians. They kept intermarryin’ till there wasn’t any fullbloods left. Wiped themselves out the painless way.” Dallas scowled at Murdock ominously. “Same as is gonna happen to us all one of these days. Watch your step gettin’ in.”

The cabin of the small, twin-engined plane was remarkably like the interior of an automobile. The controls looked much the same. That seemed wrong to Murdock. He felt there should have been a lot more dials and meters and things. Panels of them in front of the pilot and above his head. To every side of him. Or maybe nothing but a joystick. He wasn’t sure how it should be set up, but this wasn’t the way.

He settled himself deep into the copilot’s seat and reached automatically around for the ends of the seat belt. He found them and fastened it, pulling it as tight as he could. The buckle snapped into lock.

“You ready?” Dallas asked, climbing in on the other side.

“Yes,” Murdock gasped thinly.

“Wait!” It was the woman from the office. She came running out to the plane waving something. “Idiot,” she hollered fondly. “You’re always forgetting.” She flung the thing around Dallas’s neck. It was a white silk scarf.

Suddenly Murdock felt a lot better. He gave a relieved sigh. The seat belt snapped.

He felt a lot worse.

“Thanks, Mom,” Dallas said.

“And for Christ’s sake,” she told him. “You watch out for them goddamn peripheral crosswinds.”

“Don’t you worry none, Mom.” He gave her a small peck of a kiss in the middle of her tired careworn forehead. She backed away. Dallas turned to Murdock. “You just set back an’ take it easy. We’ll be there in two shakes of a gator’s tail.”

“My seat belt broke,” Murdock said.

The pilot nodded. “That’ll be five dollars extra.”

Murdock mumbled half-remembered prayers all the way to Punta Gorda. He kept himself braced against the control panel and the floorboards, not relaxing until Dallas said, “We’re down.”

They were rolling toward a candy-striped red and white hangar. Rolling too fast, Murdock thought. They’d never be able to stop in time!

But they did.

Dallas jumped out, walked around and opened Murdock’s door. The afternoon sun reflected off the tasseled white silk scarf, giving the pilot’s handsome face a radiant ethereal glow.