WEBB SQUINTED his gray eyes as the sun appeared suddenly, metallic white and furnace hot. He moved his tongue across his salt-caked lips. He was hungry and thirsty, and wished he could forget it. He looked at the girl and hoped she would sleep. The longer she slept, the better she’d stand the heat and the thirst.
On the other side of Webb, Alfred Krayer sat up and stretched his thin arms and yawned. Krayer had been sleeping for what Webb supposed was the last four hours. It seemed twenty hours. The loneliness and silence of a drifting raft made time move slowly. Krayer had come awake suddenly, as though a mental alarm clock had gone off in his head.
“All right, Millar.” Krayer’s voice was sharp and clipped in the morning stillness. “You can get some sleep now.” Krayer’s voice woke his wife. Webb watched her stir. She fretting and licking at her lips with her tongue. Her fair skin was fiery, showing the severe sunburn she’d picked up yesterday. He breathed deeply, glancing at the white sun-streak on the water. It was going to be worse today.
She didn’t sit up. She only raised her head a little, pushing her dark blonde hair out of her face. You look like you belong in an Italian movie, Webb thought.
She let her brown eyes pause, resting on Webb a moment. She tried to smile but her eyes were slightly feverish.
“You got a peach of a sunburn yesterday,” she said, her voice tired.
“You look like a broiled lobster yourself.”
“How can you speak of food?” The faint smile touched at her lips.
Webb could guess at the thoughts behind her meaningless words, the fear and the terror and the hopelessness. They floated in a circular raft a million miles from anything she’d ever known. She might have been hysterical or stunned or agonized — all the things he himself was inside. But she tried to smile at him, even though she couldn’t quite make it.
He shaded his eyes from the glare of the sun and looked at her. No, he’d never known anyone remotely like her. He remembered the miracle that had put them together in this raft, even if the same ironic joker had tossed in her husband. Two people looking for freedom. She thought she could find hers in Sydney, and he sought his on a coral island somewhere.
Webb was convinced fate or some god had meant for them to come together. It had to be. Thinking back over the plane crash, he couldn’t add it up any other way. It would have been too easy to have missed altogether, back there on the plane.
She’d been out of his mind in the few minutes before the crash. He remembered the way that girl’s high-pitched laugh hung in the silent chamber of the plane.
The stewardess moved through the aisle. People spoke to her, snagged at her arm as she passed, but they missed and she didn’t seem to hear them. Her cap sat rakish on her curls, the fine muscles undulated in her hips, but she moved fast and nobody could stop her.
She reached the doorway to the pilot’s compartment, touched the handle and turned it. Webb watched her shoulders straighten, her head go up. She turned, smiling with her gray face, and swallowed before she spoke.
“I’m sure everything is all right. If everyone will please keep his seat. We’ve hit a little rough weather and I’m sure we’ll ride out of it in a moment.”
Alfred Krayer stood up, holding the top of the seat ahead. “Young woman, I — ”
The stewardess looked right at Krayer and didn’t see him. She turned her back, opened the door, stepped through and closed it behind her.
The plane shook and lurched. Krayer staggered and fell hard against Webb. Webb caught him in the small of the back, supporting him until he gained his balance and the plane leveled.
“Beg your pardon.”
“It’s all right,” Webb said.
“Rough weather.”
“Engine trouble.”
“Oh?” Krayer tilted a blond brow at Webb and looked him over. “Are you sure?”
His tone angered Webb. “Yes, I’m sure. It started ten minutes ago. I was sure then.”
The plane dipped again: a bird with a broken wing. Webb watched Alfred clutch at the seats. “You better sit down.”
“I’m quite able to take care of myself, thank you.”
Webb turned away and Krayer sat down. He leaned across the aisle and tapped Webb’s arm. “Beg your pardon, but unless you’re an expert, you shouldn’t venture an opinion — especially where it might create panic.”
His wife had caught his arm. “Alfred, stop.”
Webb shrugged, pulling his gaze from the closed door of the pilot’s compartment. “It’s all right.” He spoke beyond Alfred to her harried brown eyes. “If he says it’s rough weather, it’s rough. Really rough.” He moved his gaze across Alfred’s face thinking, you won’t make me waste my energy hating you, brother.
The pilot’s signal flared red, blinked off, flared again: Fasten safety belts.
The compartment door opened. The stewardess came out first. She looked more composed; she’d spent a minute powdering her nose. Behind her came the navigator, smiling but not looking up. The co-pilot followed, tall slender man with cap back on his tawny hair.
“If you people will fasten your safety belts, please. Little engine trouble. Under your seats in envelopes, you’ll find safety vests. Please get them out.”
Webb fastened his safety belt, found the packaged life vest, heard the other passengers stirring.
The stewardess, navigator and co-pilot raked kapok life vests from a compartment. A babble of chatter broke out, then died.
The co-pilot held up one of the life vests. He said loudly to the stewardess: “Seems a sin to wrap you up in one of these things.” While he had the passenger’s attention, he said, “There are fifty-five of these vests aboard, nothing to worry about. There are three twenty-man life rafts that may be ejected from the top of the plane in case of a crash, another raft there in the forward coat compartment, and a utility raft in the pilot’s compartment. For the moment, we have only the vests to think about. Lace them on carefully. If you need help, call any of the three of us. When you get them on, please stay in your seat. This is simply precaution, nothing else.”
Webb slipped his arms through the supports and began to clamp the vest closed over his chest.
A woman said loudly, “What time do you think we’ll be in Sydney, pilot?”
“I don’t know, m’am. Get your life jacket on, quick as possible, will you?”
“Well, I just want to know what time we’ll get in Sydney. After all, my son is meeting me. At the airport. He’ll have to know what time we’re going to arrive.”
“Yes, m’am.”
“How’s he going to know if you don’t know.”
“He can find out from the dispatcher, m’am. Right there in Sydney.”
“Well, why don’t you know?”
The warning light blinked steadily now. After the first few moments, Webb felt no more panic, felt nothing but fatigue laced with bitterness.
He’d tried so damned hard to be free. He glanced at the girl who was looking forward to Sydney.
The plane faltered, dipped harder than ever to the right. The pilot tried to level it out but it was too late. The tip of the right wing struck something on the leading edge. Something. The shudder shook the whole plane. Webb knew they’d struck a wave. He hoped to God it was the top of a wave. From the way the plane staggered under the impact, he didn’t hope for much.
They were in the water — not on it but crashing through it, like a crashboat thrusting into the swells. But the water was solid and the plane was fragile. A rising swell caught the tilted right wing and shoved the whole plane around.
The jolting hammering crash-landing rolled the plane, ripping the fabric, splintering the supports and twisting the metal. The sound was overwhelming, roaring tearing noises mixed with the rending of metal and the thunder of impact.
The lights flickered, went out. The darkness was the black of a cave belly. There were no comforting, reassuring sounds of four engines now. There was only the pound of the waves and the wail of the wind. It was an empty sound, the sort of sound you’d expect to hear when you stood at the brink of the earth just before you stepped out into eternity.