were piled banks of snow; beyond them, darkness. Harris had made his approach as low as he dared; the nearness to the ground revealed their exceptional speed. To both pilots, the mile and three quarters of runway in front had never looked shorter.
Harris flared out, leveling the aircraft, and closed all four throttles. The jet thrum lessened; an urgent, shrieking wind replaced it. As they crossed the runway's edge, Vernon Demerest had a blurred impression of clustered emergency vehicles which would, he knew, follow them down the runway. He thought: We damned well might need them! Hang on, Gwen!
They were still floating, their speed scarcely diminished.
Then the aircraft was down. Heavily. Still traveling fast.
Swiftly, Harris raised wing spoilers and slammed thrust reverse levers upward. With a roar, the jet engines reversed themselves, their force---acting as a brake---now exerted in an opposite direction to the airplane's travel.
They had used three quarters of the runway and were slowing, but not enough.
Harris called, "Right rudder!" The aircraft was veering to the left. With Demerest and Harris shoving together, they maintained direction. But the runway's forward limit---with piled snow and a cavern of darkness beyond---was coming up fast.
Anson Harris was applying toe brakes hard. Metal was straining, rubber screaming. Still the darkness neared. Then they were slowing... gradually... slowing more...
Flight Two came to rest three feet from the runway's end.
PART THREE Chapter Seventeen
BY THE RADAR room clock, Keith Bakersfeld could see that another half hour of his shift remained. He didn't care.
He pushed back his chair from the radar console, unplugged his headset, and stood up. He looked around him, knowing it was for the last time.
"Hey!" Wayne Tevis said. "What gives?"
"Here," Keith told him. "Take this. Somebody else may need it." He thrust the headset at Tevis, and went out.
Keith knew he should have done it years ago.
He felt a strange lightheadedness, almost a sense of relief. In the corridor outside he wondered why.
It was not because he had guided in Flight Two; he had no illusions about that. Keith had performed competently, but anyone else on duty could have done as well, or better. Nor---as he had known in advance---did anything done tonight wipe out, or counterbalance, what had gone before.
It didn't matter, either, that he had overcome his mental block of ten minutes ago. Keith hadn't cared at the time; he simply wanted out. Nothing that had happened since had changed his mind.
Perhaps, he thought, there had been a purging in his own sudden anger of a few minutes ago, in the admission, never faced before even in private thoughts, of how much he hated aviation, and always had. Now, fifteen years late, he wished he had faced the fact long ago.
He entered the controllers' locker room, with its wooden benches and cluttered notice board. Keith opened his locker and put on his outdoor clothes. There were a few personal things on the locker shelves; he ignored them. All he wanted was the color snapshot of Natalie; he peeled it carefully from the inside surface of the metal door... Natalie in a bikini; laughing; her impudent pixyish face, and freckles; her hair streaming... When he looked at it, he wanted to cry. Behind the photograph was her note he had treasured:
I'm glad we had our ration With love and passion.
Keith pocketed both. Someone else could clear the other things out. There was nothing he wanted to remind him of this place---ever.
He stopped.
He stood there, realizing that without intending to, he had come to a new decision. He wasn't sure of everything the decision involved, or how it might seem tomorrow, or even if he could live with it beyond then. If he couldn't live with it, there was still an escape clause; a way out---the drugstore pillbox in his pocket.
For tonight, the main thing was: he was not going to the O'Hagan Inn. He was going home.
But there was one thing he knew: If there was to be a future, it must be removed from aviation. As others who had quit air traffic control before him had discovered, that could prove the hardest thing of all.
And even if that much could be overcome---face it now, Keith told himself---there would be times when he would be reminded of the past. Reminded of Lincoln International; of Leesburg; of what had happened at both places. Whatever else you escaped, if you had a whole mind, there was no escaping memory. The memory of the Redfern family who had died... of little Valerie Redfern... would