‘There’s more trouble with Cronacia,’ the Professor said, lowering his newspaper. ‘An exchange of shots took place yesterday on the southern frontier. A few of our Geriatric battalions are already fighting it out. According to the news reports they are courageously pressing forward their attacks, which means they are suffering heavy losses. I suppose there are worse ways of dying.’
Richard hoped that his colleague Adam had come safely through this troubled zone, reasoning that he must have been there during the fighting. ‘I’d rather die in bed when I get old,’ he said. ‘Or even if I die young.’
‘Nobody dies in bed in Nihilon,’ said the professor, ‘unless they are young and fit, and get stabbed by a jealous husband, or shot by a frantic wife, or picked off by an enemy who can only be sure of finding them in bed. Otherwise the old are sent into a convenient frontier clash, while the fatally sick are despatched to a remote part of the country and allowed to die peacefully in the open air. It is considered bad for anyone to pass on in bed, but when our party comes to power we’ll issue a law giving every person the right to do so. That will be a great blow against nihilism. Bed and Peace will be our slogan, at first.’
The plane was losing height, fixed on its long slide towards Nihilon airport, when a sudden upsurge caused the professor’s newspaper to wrap itself over his knees. Richard’s camera fell to the floor, and his seat was pushed with such force that he thought he was going to be squashed into the ceiling like a fly. Then the plane righted itself with a splintering roar of its engines, so that his heart felt like an inflated paper-bag about to explode between two hands. It banked steeply, and kept turning as if to fly in a circle forever, while he stared vertically down at the earth. Rows of people were gripping their seats in fear, and an air-hostess, standing against the wall of the arch leading to the galley, had her otherwise ample breasts so pressed in by gravity that she seemed almost flat-chested.
The plane straighened, and Richard wondered why the primitive idea of providing parachutes had never been thought of by modern airlines. He assumed that his face was as white from fear as was the professor’s. The wings of the plane fluttered, and out of the window he saw three small red planes, exhaust smoke curling from their engines as they climbed towards the sun. ‘Cronacian jets,’ explained the professor. ‘Fighter-training planes. I expect they were buzzing us. They often do.’
‘You’d better get your old men up in their fighter planes to protect us, then,’ Richard joked.
‘That may not be necessary,’ said the professor, trying to reassure his new-found friend. ‘All Nihilon airliners are armed.’
‘Armed?’
‘Yes. With guns.’
The jets were spinning like red coins towards them. The airliner was closer to Nihilon earth than when the attack started, though the main airport was nowhere in sight. The land was grey and ribbed, bone dry and barren, an unknown area that caused him to lift his camera for another topopicture.
He was pushed back into his seat by a burly man who removed the cover from the box near his knees, revealing the mechanism at the back end of a machine gun. Another man was stacking boxes of belt-ammunition in the gangway. When the plane dipped, the machine-gunman shook to his own lethal noise, and Richard looked out of the window, as if to enjoy the spectacle and so calm his fear. One Cronacian plane lurched into the air, and vanished above the back of the jet, with smoke spewing from its red wings. The professor clapped, and shook the machine-gunner’s hand. ‘Bravo!’ he cried and, turning to Richard: ‘We might get one or two more before landing.’
‘Does this often happen?’ Richard asked, his arms and legs shaking with apprehension. Several more machine-gunners were positioned along both sides of the jet, waiting intently for the next brush of the Cronacians.
‘Usually,’ said the professor calmly.
‘It’s the first time I’ve heard of it.’
‘We try not to mention it. The Nihilon government, ever mindful of its peaceful image in the world, doesn’t want to make an international incident out of these high-spirited attacks by Cronacian pilots, though we’ve never actually fired back at them before.’
A blazing line of gunfire broke from every aperture. The bare-chested gunner nearest Richard gripped a huge cigar in his teeth. Many seats were empty, suggesting that the gunners had been travelling as ordinary passengers under the auspices of the Nihilon government. Air-hostesses walked from the galley with trays of hot coffee and sandwiches, handing them out to each sweating gunner. Richard, watching the sky, saw another red button of a fighter-trainer growing bigger, and it only stopped after it had turned into a shocking black circle of disintegration, scattering in bits and pieces to the earth. The gunner, a man of more than fifty, half-bald but with a halo of grizzled hair, gave a belly-laugh and reached behind for a cup of coffee.
‘But they weren’t shooting at us,’ said Richard.
The professor giggled with embarrassment. ‘So you’ve noticed, dear boy? Of course not. They never do. But we’ve decided it’s time they were taught a lesson, in case they should ever decide to turn serious.’
‘That’s insane,’ said Richard. ‘They were buzzing us, that’s all.’ He took a cup of coffee from a passsing tray, but the hostess snatched it back, her breasts quivering with indignation: ‘That’s only for our brave gunners!’
He apologized, and turned to the professor: ‘The Cronacians will send up armed fighters, and then they’ll blow us out of the sky.’
‘Perhaps,’ said the professor. ‘Those pirates are evil enough for any atrocity.’
‘I suppose this incident will end all civilian flights to Nihilon for a while?’
‘I doubt it,’ the professor replied. ‘We’d lose too much foreign currency.’
‘What about the safety of the passengers?’
‘They’ll have a fighter escort, in and out.’ He helped himself to coffee and sandwiches, and the hostess smiled at him, for he put a heavy coin on to her tray. ‘My dear boy, when has air travel not been perilous?’
The Cronacian pilots did not wait long for revenge. They must have radioed for help at their first casualty, for suitably armed planes had now been sent up by way of reply. In fact the passenger plane in its manoeuvres had gone dangerously close to the Cronacian frontier, and four Pug 107 fighters were now streaming down from the mountain peaks. Richard, seeing them at the same moment as did the machine-gunner, felt terror and helplessness, for there was nowhere to run for shelter. He did not know for sure that they were armed, but a deep unease told him that all was not well. The machine-gunner grinned, as he prepared his savage mechanisms for brushing them out of the sky as soon as they got close enough. This irrational urge for safety might even have communicated itself to the pilot (and one of the air-hostesses, who began to scream), for the plane climbed and banked in a sickening corkscrew motion, so that hats, umbrellas, and briefcases were thrown all over the fuselage.
The Cronacian Pugs spat fire from nose and wing, but the Nihilon pilot’s manoeuvre was so deft that bullets merely ripped into the bottom of the plane, though a few had penetrated the windows before the Pugs sheered off. At this unexpected retaliation the machine-gunner near Richard ran whimpering to the middle of the gangway. The professor was so disgusted that he put out a foot and tripped him, causing him to lose his cigar as he stumbled. A gunner across the plane was killed when the Pugs came back, but the cowardly gunner from Richard’s side recovered his wits under the stern eye of an air-hostess and took his place, ready and silent, biting his lower lip.