"Routine landing," Brian said. "Nothing to it." Then he let out a long, shuddery breath and brought the plane to a full stop still four hundred yards from the nearest taxiway. His slim body was suddenly twisted by a flock of shivers. When he raised his hand to his face, it wiped away a great warm handful of sweat. He looked at it and uttered a weak laugh.
A hand fell on his shoulder. "You all right, Brian?"
"Yes," he said, and picked up the intercom mike again. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "welcome to Bangor."
From behind him Brian heard a chorus of cheers and he laughed again.
Nick Hopewell was not laughing. He was leaning over Brian's seat and peering out through the cockpit window. Nothing moved on the gridwork of runways; nothing moved on the taxiways. No trucks or security vehicles buzzed back and forth on the tarmac. He could see a few vehicles, he could see an Army transport plane - a C-12 - parked on an outer taxiway and a Delta 727 parked at one of the jetways, but they were as still as statues.
"Thank you for the welcome, my friend," Nick said softly. "My deep appreciation stems from the fact that it appears you are the only one who is going to extend one. This place is utterly deserted."
5
In spite of the continued radio silence, Brian was reluctant to accept Nick's judgment... but by the time he had taxied to a point between two of the passenger terminal's jetways, he found it impossible to believe anything else. It was not just the absence of people; not just the lack of a single security car rushing out to see what was up with this unexpected 767; it was an air of utter lifelessness, as if Bangor International Airport had been deserted for a thousand years, or a hundred thousand. A jeep-driven baggage train with a few scattered pieces of luggage on its flatties was parked beneath one wing of the Delta jet. It was to this that Brian's eyes kept returning as he brought Flight 29 as close to the terminal as he dared and parked it. The dozen or so bags looked as ancient as artifacts exhumed from the site of some fabulous ancient city. I wonder if the guy who discovered King Tut's tomb felt the way I do now, he thought.
He let the engines die and just sat there for a moment. Now there was no sound but the faint whisper of an auxiliary power unit - one of four - at the rear of the plane. Brian's hand moved toward a switch marked INTERNAL POWER and actually touched it before drawing his hand back. Suddenly he didn't want to shut down completely. There was no reason not to, but the voice of instinct was very strong.
Besides, he thought, I don't think there's anyone around to bitch about wasting fuel... what little there is left to waste.
Then he unbuckled his safety harness and got up.
"Now what, Brian?" Nick asked. He had also risen, and Brian noticed for the first time that Nick was a good four inches taller than he was. He thought: I have been in charge. Ever since this weird thing happened - ever since we discovered it had happened, to be more accurate - I have been in charge. But I think that's going to change very shortly.
He discovered he didn't care. Flying the 767 into the clouds had taken every ounce of courage he possessed, but he didn't expect any thanks for keeping his head and doing his job; courage was one of the things he got paid for. He remembered a pilot telling him once, "They pay us a hundred thousand dollars or more a year, Brian, and they really do it for just one reason. They know that in almost every pilot's career, there are thirty or forty seconds when he might actually make a difference. They pay us not to freeze when those seconds finally come."
It was all very well for your brain to tell you that you had to go down, clouds or no clouds, that there was simply no choice; your nerve-endings just went on screaming their old warning, telegraphing the old high-voltage terror of the unknown. Even Nick, whatever he was and whatever he did on the ground, had wanted to back away from