“Wow!” Bethany said. She was still giggling a little, and blushing brightly. “Strange dude!”
Albert looked at Flight 29 and saw what Brian had noticed a few minutes earlier: it was clean and smooth and almost impossibly white. It seemed to vibrate in the dull stillness outside.
Suddenly the idea came up for him. It seemed to burst behind his eyes like a firework. The central concept was a bright, burning ball; implications radiated out from it like fiery spangles and for a moment he quite literally forgot to breathe.
“Albert?” Bob asked. “Albert, what’s wro—”
“Captain Engle!” Albert screamed. In the restaurant, Laurel sat bolt upright and Dinah clasped her arm with hands like talons. Craig Toomy craned his neck to look. “Captain Engle, come here!”
4
Outside, the sound was louder.
To Brian it was the sound of radio static. Nick Hopewell thought it sounded like a strong wind rattling dry tropical grasses. Albert, who had worked at McDonald’s the summer before, was reminded of the sound of french fries in a deep-fat fryer, and to Bob Jenkins it was the sound of paper being crumpled in a distant room.
The four of them crawled through the hanging rubber strips and then stepped down into the luggage-unloading area, listening to the sound of what Craig Toomy called the langoliers.
“How much closer is it?” Brian asked Nick.
“Can’t tell. It sounds closer, but of course we were inside before.”
“Come on,” Albert said impatiently. “How do we get back aboard? Climb the slide?”
“Won’t be necessary,” Brian said, and pointed. A rolling stairway stood on the far side of Gate 2. They walked toward it, their shoes clopping listlessly on the concrete.
“You know what a long shot this is, don’t you, Albert?” Brian asked as they walked.
“Yes, but—”
“Long shots are better than no shots at all,” Nick finished for him.
“I just don’t want him to be too disappointed if it doesn’t pan out.”
“Don’t worry,” Bob said softly. “I will be disappointed enough for all of us. The lad’s idea makes good logical sense. It should prove out... although, Albert, you do realize there may be factors here which we haven’t discovered, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
They reached the rolling ladder, and Brian kicked up the foot-brakes on the wheels. Nick took a position on the grip which jutted from the left railing, and Brian laid hold of the one on the right.
“I hope it still rolls,” Brian said.
“It should,” Bob Jenkins answered. “Some — perhaps even most — of the ordinary physical and chemical components of life seem to remain in operation; our bodies are able to process the air, doors open and close.”
“Don’t forget gravity,” Albert put in. “The earth still sucks.”
“Let’s quit talking about it and just try it,” Nick said.
The stairway rolled easily. The two men trundled it across the tarmac toward the 767 with Albert and Bob walking behind them. One of the wheels squeaked rhythmically. The only other sound was that low, constant crunch-rattle-crunch from somewhere over the eastern horizon.
“Look at it,” Albert said as they neared the 767. “Just look at it. Can’t you see? Can’t you see how much more there it is than anything else?”
There was no need to answer, and no one did. They could all see it. And reluctantly, almost against his will, Brian began to think the kid might have something.
They set the stairway at an angle between the escape slide and the fuselage of the plane, with the top step only a long stride away from the open door. “I’ll go first,” Brian said. “After I pull the slide in, Nick, you and Albert roll the stairs into better position.”
“Aye-aye, Captain,” Nick said, and clipped off a smart little salute, the knuckles of his first and second fingers touching his forehead.
Brian snorted. “Junior attache,” he said, and then ran fleetly up the stairs. A few moments later he had used the escape slide’s lanyard to pull it back inside. Then he leaned out to watch as Nick and Albert carefully maneuvered the rolling staircase into position with its top step just below the 767’s forward entrance.
5
Rudy Warwick and Don Gaffney were now babysitting Craig. Bethany, Dinah, and Laurel were lined up at the waiting-room windows, looking out. “What are they doing?” Dinah asked.
“They’ve taken away the slide and put a stairway by the door,” Laurel said. “Now they’re going up.” She looked at Bethany. “You’re sure you don’t know what they’re up to?”
Bethany shook her head. “All I know is that Ace — Albert, I mean — almost went nuts. I’d like to think it was this mad sexual attraction, but I don’t think it was.” She paused, smiled, and added: “At least, not yet. He said something about the plane being more there. And my perfume being less there, which probably wouldn’t please Coco Chanel or whatever her name is. And two-way traffic. I didn’t get it. He was really jabbering.”
“I bet I know,” Dinah said.
“What’s your guess, hon?”
Dinah only shook her head. “I just hope they hurry up. Because poor Mr Toomy is right. The langoliers are coming.”
“Dinah, that’s just something his father made up.”
“Maybe once it was make-believe,” Dinah said, turning her sightless eyes back to the windows, “but not anymore.”
6
“All right, Ace,” Nick said. “On with the show.”
Albert’s heart was thudding and his hands shook as he set the four elements of his experiment out on the shelf in first class, where, a thousand years ago and on the other side of the continent, a woman named Melanie Trevor had supervised a carton of orange juice and two bottles of champagne.
Brian watched closely as Albert put down a book of matches, a bottle of Budweiser, a can of Pepsi, and a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich from the restaurant cold-case. The sandwich had been scaled in plastic wrap.
“Okay,” Albert said, and took a deep breath. “Let’s see what we got here.”
7
Don left the restaurant and walked over to the windows. “What’s happening?”
“We don’t know,” Bethany said. She had managed to coax a flame from another of her matches and was smoking again. When she removed the cigarette from her mouth, Laurel saw she had torn off the filter. “They went inside the plane; they’re still inside the plane; end of story.”
Don gazed out for several seconds. “It looks different outside. I can’t say just why, but it does.”
“The light’s going,” Dinah said. “That’s what’s different.” Her voice was calm enough, but her small face was an imprint of loneliness and fear. “I can feel it going.”
“She’s right,” Laurel agreed. “It’s only been daylight for two or three hours, but it’s already getting dark again.”
“I keep thinking this is a dream, you know,” Don said. “I keep thinking it’s the worst nightmare I ever had but I’ll wake up soon.”
Laurel nodded. “How is Mr Toomy?”
Don laughed without much humor. “You won’t believe it.”
“Won’t believe what?” Bethany asked.
“He’s gone to sleep.”
8
Craig Toomy, of course, was not sleeping. People who fell asleep at critical moments, like that fellow who was supposed to have been keeping an eye out while Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, were most definitely not part of THE BIG PICTURE.
He had watched the two men carefully through eyes which were riot quite shut and willed one or both of them to go away. Eventually the one in the red shirt did go away. Warwick, the bald man with the big false teeth, walked over to Craig and bent down. Craig let his eyes close all the way.