I hadn't told Ferris what I was going to do. There hadn't been time.
My right foot was slipping again and I pulled upwards, feeling the electrical conduit flex critically under the strain. The problem was to keep my body arched against the curved top of the wheelbay, giving me a chance of escaping the Wheels when they slammed home and locked. This was the only place where I could hope to survive: right at the top and right at the back, lodged against the transverse flight-control cables and their rack of pulleys. The engine-control cables ran fore and aft above my head and I had to remember they were there and keep clear of them. I had also to remember that if I lost purchase and grabbed for any handhold available, the flight-control cables were within dangerously easy reach and my weight on them could disturb the aircraft's trim to the point of crashing it.
The vibration was easing.
Easing.
Lift-off.
The nick-flick-flick of the runway lights, falling away.
It was going to happen now and I was suddenly exposed to the last-second thought that I'd got it wrong: there wasn't enough room in here. The landing lock was going to fold on the fulcrum and the oleo strut was going to swing up and bring the wheels with it, their huge tyres spinning and their weight forced into the bay by the hydraulics, slamming home as the doors came together below.
There hadn't been time to measure anything, even crudely. There'd only been time to look upwards and assess the chances and I'd done that and I'd thought the chances were good but at that time I'd been on the ground and in no immediate danger and now I was jammed into a death-trap and when the wheels came up they were going to crush me against the bulkhead and the only think I knew for certain was that it was going to be quick.
Lights falling away.
Then darkness below. The jungle.
There hadn't been time to tell Ferris what I was going to do because I hadn't known I was going to do it till a few minutes before take-off. This flight and the night-mail service were the only traffic movements between dusk and dawn and there was a skeleton staff at Manaus and I'd had the choice of a dozen pairs of mechanic's overalls in the ground crew locker room, together with the ear-mufflers. The baggage-trolley had gone out past the emergency bay and I took a lift at the rear end where the driver couldn't see me.
The electrician had been busy with his gear and the checker was talking to the navigator through the flight deck window when I'd looked into the wheelbay and made the decision. To vanish into the wheelbay of a DC-6 takes approximately three seconds and kids do it in Cuba and some of them survive.
It's easier when you don't think too much.
You have to believe there's going to be enough room when the wheels come up and you have to believe you can go on holding on like this with the open doors leaving you poised above the surface of the earth at a lethal height if you lose your grip and drop and go on dropping. You have to -
Mechanical movement beginning.
I couldn't see the wheels: they were well aft of the bay. All I could see in the light of the exhaust flames were the hydraulic cylinder and the two long coil springs and they were moving now, working in unison.
Darkness began rising.
Keep yourself braced.
The jungle below had the faint sheen of moonlight on its leaves and the rising darkness was the black rubber of the tyres as they came swinging forward and upward, blotting out the ground. They were immense and I dragged a breath in and arched my spine and felt the sharp heads of the hose-clip screws digging into my shoulder as I pulled upward against the conduits and waited, hearing the faint scream of the wind-rush in the roaring background. The wheels were still spinning and I could feel the sting of stone fragments as they were flicked away from the ribbed treads by centrifugal force.
Keep braced and don't weaken.
Then there was sudden and total darkness as the strut locked home and the doors of the bay came together, shutting me in. I hadn't imagined that this degree of sound could increase but the three-thousand-horsepower radial engine was immediately forward of the wheelbay and the closing doors had trapped its sound, confining it, until its volume swelled to a vibration inside the skull.
Into this constant thunder came a higher note that alerted me to unconsidered hazards but for a moment I couldn't identify its source. Conceivably it was an alarm buzzer sounding somewhere above my head but it would be heard from the flight deck and I discounted it. My right foot was trembling and heating up and the faint whine was diminishing gradually and I took a better grip on the conduit and raised my foot an inch and the sound stopped at once: the heel of my shoe bad been in contact with one of the tyres and they were still spinning and I was warned.
Don't drop.
If I dropped I wouldn't live: the wheels would flick me against the forward bulkhead and jam my body there with their momentum.
But I was tiring now.
Noise fatigues the organism. So does fear.
I was afraid.
There was no action to take. I had to do nothing, in order to live, except hold on and try not to think. The wheels would lose their rotary inertia within minutes but I didn't know how long I could force the muscles in my hands to remain contracted with the fingers hooked over the conduit or how long it would be before the conduit broke away from its clips and sent me down. Once the wheels had stopped spinning I could drop across them and rest but if I did it too soon it would be fatal. It was a matter of time.
Euphoria.
A sense of twilight.
The noise roared far away, in the caverns of Nirvana.
Watch it.
A sense of floating, of life adrift in weightlessness, of deep and eternal peace.
Three great swans flew across the aching dome of infinity, and were caught in its vortex, spinning. The sky cracked like an egg.
Get out of this. Pull yourself out.
Consciousness flickering, like a loose light bulb.
Colours swirled, ebbing and flowing to the theta rhythms of hypnagogic sleep. The sun burst, and the birds turned black and struck horror in the psyche.
Pull up and pull out. Move.
My hands floating in the-
Move for Christ's sake or you'll -
Adrift in the streaming depths of Lethe, where-
Move your hands, hit something. Feet, kick something. Pull out.
Heart thudding.
Darkness, the real thing, and the engine roaring.
I kicked and floated back the other way, nearly losing the sense of reality as the clouds drew down and blinded — watch it, pull out! Kicked again and floated to the right, and I knew now what was happening: I was lying prone across the enormous tyres and when I kicked at the bulkhead the force was turning the wheels and they were swinging me across in an arc against the firewall.
Consciousness was painfuclass="underline" the organism was being born again into the deafening storms of reality and in the confusion the forebrain was trying to function, desperate to get its messages through to the motor nerves.
Please note that you are lying on the wheels and when the undercarriage goes down you will automatically drop into space.
I didn't register the significance of this because the euphoria was still fogging my head; but I realized that I was in the conscious state, with the beat rhythms taking over. There had been oxygen deprivation and this was the hangover and it was unpleasant: headache, nausea, shivering.
Tried to stand up but of course no room so I grabbed at things to steady myself, physical orientation necessary, but watch it! Cables, don't grab at the cables or you'll crash the whole bloody bazaar.