Michael Crichton - Airframe

"A what?" Kenny Burne said, shouting from the cockpit of Transpacific 545. "They said it was what!"

"Uncommanded slats deployment," Richman said.

"Aw, blow me," Burne said. He started climbing out of the seat. "What a crock of shit. Hey! Clarence, come in here. See that seat? That's the first officer's seat. Sit down there."

Richman was hesitant.

"Come on, Clarence, get in the damn seat."

Awkwardly, Richman squeezed between the other men in the cockpit, and got into the first officer's chair on the right.

"Okay," Burne said. "You comfy in there, Clarence? You're not a pilot, by any chance?"

"No," Richman said.

"Okay, good. So, here you are, all set to fly the plane. Now, you see straight ahead"-he pointed to the control panel directly in front of Richman, which consisted of three video screens, each four inches square-"you got your three color CRTs showing your primary flight display, navigation display, and on the left, systems display. All those little semicircles represent a different system. All green, meaning everything's fine. Now, on the roof above your head, that's your overhead instrument panel. All the lights are out, which means everything is fine. It's dark unless there's a problem. Now, to your left is what we call the pedestal."

Burne pointed to a boxy structure that protruded between the two seats. There were a half-dozen levers in slots on the pedestal. "Now, from right to left, flaps-slats, two throttles for the engines, spoilers, brakes, thrusters. Slats and flaps are controlled by that lever nearest you, the one with the little metal cover over it. See it?"

"I see it," Richman said.

"Good. Flip up the cover, and engage the slats."

"Engage the…"

"Pull the slats lever down," Burne said.

Richman flicked up the cover, and struggled for a moment to move the lever.

"No, no. Grab it firmly, pull it up, then right, then down," Burne said. "Just like a gearshift on a car."

Richman closed his fingers around the handle. He pulled the lever up, across, and down. There was a distant hum.

"Good," Burne said. "Now, look at your display. See that amber SLATS EXTD indicator? It's telling you the slats are coming out of the leading edge. Okay? Takes twelve seconds to fully extend. Now they're out, and the indicator is white and says SLATS."

"I see," Richman said.

"Okay. Now retract the slats."

Richman reversed his actions, pushing the lever up, sliding it left and down to locked position, then closing the cover over the handle.

"That," Bume said, "is a commanded slats extension."

"Okay," Richman said.

"Now, let's perform an uncommanded slats extension."

"How do I do that?"

"Any way you can, pal. For starters, hit it with the side of 'your hand."

Richman reached across the pedestal, brushing the lever with his left hand. But the cover protected it. Nothing happened.

"Come on, hit that sucker."

Richman swung his hand laterally back and forth, banging against the metal. He hit it harder and harder each time, but nothing happened. The cover protected the handle; the slats lever remained up and locked.

"Maybe you could knock it with your elbow," Burne said. "Or tell you what, try this clipboard here," he said, pulling a clipboard from between the seats, and giving it to Richman. "Go on, give it a good whack. I'm looking for an accident here."

Richman struck the lever with the clipboard. It clanged against the metal. He turned the clipboard and pushed the lever with one edge. Nothing happened.

"You want to keep trying?" Burne said. "Or are you starting to get the point? It can't be done, Clarence. Not with that cover in place."

"Maybe the cover wasn't in place," Richman said.

"Hey," Burne said, "that's good thinking. Maybe you can knock the cover up, by accident. Try that with your clipboard, Clarence."

Richman swung the clipboard at the edge of the cover. But the surface was smoothly curved, and the clipboard just slid off. The cover remained closed.

"No way to do it," Burne said. "Not by accident. So. What's the next thought?"

"Maybe the cover was already up."

"Good idea," Burne said. "They're not supposed to be flying with the cover up, but who the hell knows what they did. Go ahead and lift die cover up."

Richman lifted the cover up on its hinge. The handle was now exposed.

"Okay, Clarence. Go to it."

Richman swung his clipboard at the handle, banging it hard, but with most lateral movements, the raised cover still acted as a protection. The clipboard hit die cover before it struck the handle. Several times on impact, the cover dropped back down again. Richman had to keep stopping to lift the cover up again before he could proceed.

"Maybe if you used your hand," Burne suggested.

Richman tried swiping at the handle with his palm. In a few moments, the side of his hand was red, and the lever remained firmly up and locked.

"Okay," he said, sitting back in the seat. "I get the point."

"It can't be done," Bume said. "It simply can't be done. An uncommanded slats deploy is impossible on this aircraft. Period."

From outside the cockpit, Doherty said, "Are you guys finished screwing around? Because I want to pull the recorders and go home."

As they came out of the cockpit, Burne touched Casey on the shoulder and said, "See you a minute?"

"Sure," she said.

He led her back in the plane, out of earshot of the others. He leaned close to her and said, "What do you know about that kid?"

Casey shrugged. "He's a Norton relative."

"What else?"

"Marder assigned him to me."

"You check him out?"

"No," Casey said. "If Marder sent him, I assume he's fine."

"Well, I talked to my friends in Marketing," Burne said. "They say he's a weasel. They say, don't turn your back on him."

"Kenny…"

"I'm telling you, something's wrong with that kid, Casey. Check him out."

With a metallic whir from the power screwdrivers, the floor panels came away, revealing a maze of cables and boxes under the cockpit.

"Jesus," Richman said, staring.

Ron Smith was directing the operation, running his hand over his bald head nervously. "That's fine," he said. "Now get the panel to the left."

"How many boxes we got on this bird, Ron?" Doherty said.

"A hundred and fifty-two," Smith said. Anybody else, Casey knew, would have to thumb through a thick sheaf of schematics before he answered. But Smith knew the electrical system by heart.

"What're we pulling?" Doherty said.

"Pull the CVR, the DFDR, and the QAR if they got one," Smith said.

"You don't know if there's a QAR?" Doherty said, teasing him.

"Optional," Smith said. "It's a customer install. I don't think they put one in. Usually on the N-22 it's in the tail, but I looked, and didn't find one."

Richman turned to Casey; he was looking puzzled again. "I thought they were getting the black boxes."

"We are," Smith said.

"There's a hundred and fifty-two black boxes?"

"Oh hell," Smith said, "they're all over the aircraft. But we're only after the main ones now-the ten or twelve NVMs that count."

"NVMs," Richman repeated.

"You got it," Smith said, and he turned away, bending over the panels.

It was left to Casey to explain. The public perception of an aircraft was that it was a big mechanical device, with pulleys and levers that moved control surfaces up and down. In the midst of this machinery were two magic black boxes, recording events in the flight. These were the black boxes that were always talked about on news programs. The CVR, the cockpit voice recorder, was essentially a very sturdy tape deck; it recorded the last half hour of cockpit conversation on a continuous loop of magnetic tape. Then there was the DFDR, the digital flight data recorder, which stored details of the behavior of the airplane, so that investigators could discover what had happened after an accident