The Running Man - By Stephen King Page 0,80

eye.

He snapped awake, full awake and bolt upright, with his mouth propped wide in a blabbering scream. The force expelled from his lungs was great enough to make his tongue flap like a sail. Everything, everything in the first-class compartment was suddenly clear and plangently real, overpowering, awful. It had the grainy reality of a scare tabloid newsie clip. Laughlin being dragged out of that shed in Topeka, for instance. Everything, everything was very real and in Technicolor.

Amelia screamed affrightedly in unison, cringing back in her seat with eyes as huge as cracked porcelain doorknobs, trying to cram a whole fist in her mouth.

Donahue came charging through the galley, his gun out. His eyes were small enthusiastic black beads. "What is it? What's wrong? McCone?"

"No," Richards said, feeling his heart slow just enough to keep his words from sounding squeezed and desperate. "Bad dream. My little girl."

"Oh." Donahue's eyes softened in counterfeit sympathy. He didn't know how to do it very well. Perhaps he would be a goon all his life. Perhaps he would learn. He turned to go.

"Donahue?"

Donahue turned back warily.

"Had you pretty scared, didn't I?"

"No." Donahue turned away on that short word. His neck was bunched. His buttocks in his tight blue uniform were as pretty as a girl's.

"I can scare you worse," Richards remarked. "I could threaten to take away your nose filter."

Exeunt Donahue.

Richards closed his eyes tiredly. The glossy eight-by-ten came back. Opened them. Closed them. No glossy eight-by-ten. He waited, and when he was sure it was not going to come back (right away), he opened his eyes and thumbed on the Free-Vee.

It popped on and there was Killian.

MINUS 011 AND COUNTING

"Richards." Killian leaned forward, making no effort to conceal his tension.

"I've decided to accept," Richards said.

Killian leaned back and nothing smiled but his eyes. "I'm very glad," he said.

MINUS 010 AND COUNTING

"Jesus," Richards said. He was standing in the doorway to the pilot's country.

Holloway turned around. "Hi." He had been speaking to something called Detroit VOR. Duninger was drinking coffee.

The twin control consoles were untended. Yet they swerved, tipped, and fumed as if in response to ghost hands and feet. Dials swung. Lights flashed. There seemed to be a huge and constant input and output going on... to no one at all.

"Who's driving the bus?" Richards asked, fascinated.

"Otto," Duninger said.

"Otto?"

"Otto the automatic pilot. Get it? Shitty pun." Duninger suddenly smiled. "Glad to have you on the team, fella. You may not believe this, but some of us guys were rooting for you pretty hard."

Richards nodded noncommittally.

Holloway stepped into the slightly awkward breach by saying: "Otto freaks me out, too. Even after twenty years of this. But he's dead safe. Sophisticated as hell. It would make one of the old ones look like a... well, like an orange crate beside a Chippendale bureau."

"Is that right?" Richards was staring out into the darkness.

"Yes. You lock on P.O.D.-point of destination-and Otto takes over, aided by Voice-Radar all the way. Makes the pilot pretty superfluous, except for takeoffs and landings. And in case of trouble."

"Is there much you can do if there's trouble?" Richards asked.

"We can pray," Holloway said. Perhaps it was meant to sound jocular, but it came out with a strange sincerity that hung in the cabin.

"Do those wheels actually steer the plane?" Richards asked.

"Only up and down," Duninger said. "The pedals control sideside motion.

"Sounds like a kid's soapbox racer."

"A little more complicated." Holloway said. "Let's just say there are a few more buttons to push."

"What happens if Otto goes off his chump?"

"Never happens," Duninger said with a grin. "If it did, you'd just override him. But the computer is never wrong, pal."

Richards wanted to leave, but the sight of the turning wheels, the minute, mindless adjustments of the pedals and switches, held him. Holloway and Duninger went back to their business-obscure numbers and communications filled with static.

Holloway looked back once, seemed surprised to see him still there. He grinned and pointed into the darkness. "You'll see Harding coming up there soon."

"How long?"

"You'll be able to see the horizon glow in five to six minutes."

When Holloway turned around next, Richards was gone. He said to Duninger: "I'll be glad when we set that guy down. He's a spook"

Duninger looked down morosely, his face bathed in the green, luminescent glow of the controls. "He didn't like Otto. You know that?"

"I know it," Holloway said.

MINUS 009 AND COUNTING

Richards walked back down the narrow, hip-wide corridor. Friedman, the communications man, didn't look up. Neither did Donahue. Richards stepped through