least delay them. Had he beaten them in the end? Brian couldn't remember, but a fragment of his dream suddenly recurred, disturbing in its lack of association to anything: an ominous red sign which read SHOOTING STARS ONLY.
"Hold it!" he shouted down to Rudy and Bethany.
They ceased pushing, and Brian carefully climbed down the ladder until his head was on a level with the underside of the Delta jet's wing. Both the 767 and 727 were equipped with single-point fuelling ports in the left wing. He was now looking at a small square hatch with the words FUEL TANK ACCESS and CHECK SHUT-OFF VALVE BEFORE REFUELLING stencilled across it. And some wit had pasted a round yellow happy-face sticker to the fuel hatch. It was the final surreal touch.
Albert, Bob, and Nick had pushed the hose cart into position below him and were now looking up, their faces dirty gray circles in the brightening gloom. Brian leaned over and shouted down to Nick.
"There are two hoses, one on each side of the cart! I want the short one!"
Nick pulled it free and handed it up. Holding both the ladder and the nozzle of the hose with one hand, Brian leaned under the wing and opened the refuelling hatch. Inside was a male connector with a steel prong poking out like a finger. Brian leaned further out... and slipped. He grabbed the railing of the ladder.
"Hold on, mate," Nick said, mounting the ladder. "Help is on the way." He stopped three rungs below Brian and seized his belt. "Do me a favor, all right?"
"What's that?"
"Don't fart."
"I'll try, but no promises."
He leaned out again and looked down at the others. Rudy and Bethany had joined Bob and Albert below the wing. "Move away, unless you want a jet-fuel shower!" he called. "I can't control the Delta's shut-off valve, and it may leak!" As he waited for them to back away he thought, Of course, it may not. For all I know, the tanks on this thing are as dry as a goddam bone.
He leaned out again, using both hands now that Nick had him firmly anchored, and slammed the nozzle into the fuel port. There was a brief, spattering shower of jet-fuel - a very welcome shower, under the circumstances - and then a hard metallic click. Brian twisted the nozzle a quarter-turn to the right, locking it into place, and listened with satisfaction as jet-fuel ran down the hose to the cart, where a closed valve would dam its flow.
"Okay," he sighed, pulling himself back to the ladder. "So far, so good."
"What now, mate? How do we make that cart run? Do we jump-start it from the plane, or what?"
"I doubt if we could do that even if someone had remembered to bring the Jumper cables," Brian said. "Luckily, it doesn't have to run. Essentially, the cart is just a gadget to filter and transfer fuel. I'm going to use the auxiliary power units on our plane to suck the fuel out of the 727 the way you'd use a straw to suck lemonade out of a glass."
"How long is it going to take?"
"Under optimum conditions - which would mean pumping with ground power - we could load 2,000 pounds of fuel a minute. Doing it like this makes it harder to figure. I've never had to use the APUs to pump fuel before. At least an hour. Maybe two."
Nick gazed anxiously eastward for a moment, and when he spoke again his voice was low. "Do me a favor, mate - don't tell the others that."
"Why not?"
"Because I don't think we have two hours. We may not even have one."
5
Alone in first class, Dinah Catherine Bellman opened her eyes. And saw. "Craig," she whispered.
6
Craig.
But he didn't want to hear his name. He only wanted to be left alone; he never wanted to hear his name again. When people called his name, something bad always happened. Always.
Craig! Get up, Craig!
No. He wouldn't get up. His head had become a vast chambered hive; pain roared and raved in each irregular room and crooked corridor. Bees had come. The bees had thought he was dead. They had invaded his head and turned his skull into a honeycomb. And now... now...
They sense my thoughts and are trying to sting them to death, he thought, and uttered a thick, agonized groan. His blood-streaked hands opened and closed slowly on the industrial carpet which covered the lower-lobby