"Maybe. But not with a sprained wrist, and not with a hundred-sixty pa.s.sengers aboard. And not while under my command."

"Oh, right, I forgot*Liz Kyser"s the big boss here." Rayburn"s voice dripped with sarcasm. "Well, let me just remind you, Your Highness, that I don"t need your permission to leave your flying kingdom.

All it would take is a simple push on the throttle."

Betsy"s anger vanished in a single heartbeat. "Eric, what are you saying?" she asked cautiously.

"Don"t go into your dumb blonde act*you know what I"m talking about. All I have to do is cut power and snap those last two collar supports and you can yell about authority all you want."

"Yes*and you"ll either fall nosedown with the collar still around you or drop it onto someone on the ground." Betsy forced her voice to remain quiet and reasonable. "You can"t risk innocent people"s lives like that, Eric."

"Oh, relax*I"m not going to do anything that crazy unless I absolutely have to. I"m just pointing out that you don"t have absolute veto power over me. Keep that in mind while you figure out how to get John to a hospital."

"Don"t worry. We want him safe as much as you do." Especially now. "We"ll keep you posted."

Reaching over, Betsy turned off the mike.

For a moment she just sat there, her mind spinning like wheels on an icy runway. The flight deck suddenly felt cold, and she noticed with curious detachment that the hands resting on the edge of her control board were trembling slightly. Rayburn"s threat, and the implied state of mind accompanying it, had shocked her clear down to the marrow. He"d always been loyal to the crews he flew with*it had been one of the qualities that had first attracted her to him*but this was bordering on monomania. Bleakly, she wondered if the accident had damaged more than Rayburn"s wrist.

There was a footstep beside her. Whitney, looking sandbagged. "Betsy, is he*uh*?" He ran out of words, and just pointed mutely toward her half-headset."You heard, huh?" She felt a flash of embarra.s.sed annoyance that he, an outsider, had listened in on private Skyport trouble.

Whitney, apparently too shaken to be bothered by his action, nodded. "Is he all right back there? I mean, he sounds... overwrought."

"He does indeed," she acknowledged grimly. "He"s under a lot of pressure*we all are."

"Yeah, but you"re not threatening to do something criminally stupid." He gestured at the intercom. "And why didn"t Captain Young at least back you up?"

"He probably wasn"t listening in*the radio doesn"t feed directly into the intercom." She took another look at his expression and forced a smile she didn"t feel. "Hey, relax. Eric hasn"t gone off the deep end; he was just blowing off some steam."

"Hmm." He seemed unconvinced. "And how about you?"

The question caught her unprepared, and Betsy could feel the blood coloring her face. "I got a little loud there myself, didn"t I?" she admitted. "I guess I"m not used to this kind of protracted crisis. Usual airplane emergencies last only as long as it takes you to find the nearest stretch of flat ground and put down on it."

"I suppose so. Anything I can do?"

"Yes*you can haul yourself back to the computer and finish that program."

Surprisingly, something in her tone seemed to relieve whatever fears he had about her, because the frown lines left his forehead and he even smiled slightly. "Aye, aye, Captain," he said and headed aft again.

Well, that"s him convinced. Now if only she could persuade herself as to Rayburn"s self-control.

Pushing the half-headset mike away almost savagely, she leaned toward the intercom. "Aaron, Paul*what"s holding things up down there?"

The rolled-up end of thin rope smacked against the top of the window as it came in through the opening.

Startled a bit by the sudden noise, Dr. Emerson turned his head*the only part of his body he could conveniently turn in the cramped c.o.c.kpit*in time to see Captain Rayburn field the rope and begin pulling it in. Tied to the other end, its rungs clanking against the side of the shuttle, was a collapsible ladder, of the sort Emerson made his kids keep under their bunk bed at their Grand Prairie condo. He watched as Rayburn set the outsized hooks over the lower edge of the window and then turned back to his patient with a silent sigh of relief. At least the waiting was over. Now all he had to do was worry that Meredith was healthy enough to satisfy Rayburn*and that, he reflected darkly, was definitely a major worry. Rayburn"s last stormy conversation with the Skyport had completely shattered Emerson"s comfortable and long-held stereotype of the unflappable airline pilot and had left him with a good deal of concern. Searching the unconscious copilot"s half-hidden face, Emerson wondered what it was about this man that had caused Rayburn to react so violently. Was he a good friend? Or was it something more subtle*did he remind Rayburn of a deceased brother, for instance? Emerson didn"t know, and so far he hadn"t had the nerve to ask.

"Okay, Doc, here they come." Rayburn, who"d been leaning his head partly out the window, began unsnapping his safety harness. "Let"s get out of here and give them room to come in."

Emerson rose from his crouch, grimacing as his legs registered their complaint. Trying to look alldirections at once, he backed carefully out of the tiny s.p.a.ce, and made it out the c.o.c.kpit door without collecting any new bruises. Rayburn was out of his seat already, standing in the spot Emerson had just vacated, shouting instructions toward the window. "Okay*easy*just keep it away from the instruments*okay, I"ve got it." Two small gas tanks, wrapped together by metal bands and festooned with hoses, appeared in his hands and were immediately tucked under his right arm. The second package was, for Emerson, far more recognizable: the big red cross on the suitcase-sized box was hard to miss. A moment later he had to take a long step toward the shuttle"s exit door as Rayburn backed out of the c.o.c.kpit. "Watch the controls!" he shouted once more as he set down his burden and reached back with a helping hand.

It took only a few minutes for them to all come aboard. There were three: two mechanic-types who set to work immediately turning the gas tank apparatus into an acetylene torch; and an older man who caught Emerson"s eye through the small crowd and headed back toward the pa.s.senger section. Emerson took the cue and followed.

"I"m Dr. Forrest Campbell," the newcomer introduced himself when the two men reached the pocket of relative quiet at the forward end of the pa.s.senger compartment.

"Larry Emerson. Glad to have you here. You work for the airline?"

"Temporarily co-opted only*and as the man said, if it weren"t for the honor I"d rather walk." He nodded down the rows of ski lift seats. "First things first. Are the pa.s.sengers in need of anything?"

"Nothing immediate. There are some bruises and one or two possible sprains. Mostly, everyone"s just scared and cold."

"I can believe that," Campbell agreed, shivering. "I"m told the Skyport"s come down to eight thousand feet, but it still feels like winter in here. I hope the next shuttle up thinks to bring some blankets. All right, now let"s hear the bad news. How"s the copilot?"

"Not good." Emerson gave all the facts he had on Meredith"s condition, plus a few tentative conclusions he hadn"t wanted to mention in Rayburn"s earshot. "We"ll have to wait for a more thorough examination, of course, but I"m pretty sure we"re not going to be able to risk lowering him out that window at the end of a rope."

"Yes... and I doubt that a stretcher would really fit. Well, if we can get him stable enough he can stay here until the shuttle can be landed again."

"I guess he"ll have to." A sharp pop came from the c.o.c.kpit, and looking past Campbell he saw the room aglow with blue light. "I hope they"re not going to fry him just getting him out," he muttered uneasily.

"They"ll have attached a Vahldiek conductor cable between the part of the chair stem they"re cutting and the fuselage, to drain off the heat," Campbell a.s.sured him. "Let"s go back in; this shouldn"t take long."

It didn"t. They had barely reentered the exit door area*now noticeably warmer*and opened the big medical kit when the torch"s hiss cut off. Rayburn stepped back from the doorway, muttering cautionary instructions as the unconscious copilot, still strapped into his seat, was carried carefully out of the c.o.c.kpit.

"For now, just leave him in the chair," Campbell said as they set down the seat and disconnected the thin high-conduction line. Stethoscope at the ready, he knelt down and got to work.

Emerson stepped over to Rayburn. "Shouldn"t you be getting back to the c.o.c.kpit, Captain?" hesuggested quietly.

Rayburn took a deep breath. "Yeah. Take care of him, Doc, and tell me as soon as you know anything."

"We will."

Stepping carefully around the figures on the floor, Rayburn went forward, and Emerson breathed a sigh of relief. At least the shuttle had a pilot again, should something go wrong with what was left of the docking collar. Now if only that pilot could be persuaded not to do anything hasty... He shivered, wondering if Rayburn would really rip the shuttle from its unstable perch... wondering if the Skyport"s holding pattern was taking them over Grand Prairie and his family.

Pushing such thoughts back into the corners of his mind, he squatted down next to Dr. Campbell and prepared to a.s.sist.

"All right, let it out again*real easy," the gravelly voice of Al Carson said in Greenburg"s ear.

Mentally crossing his fingers, Greenburg kept his full attention on the clamp arm as, up on the flight deck, Henson gave it the command to extend.

But neither Greenburg"s wishes nor Carson"s quarter-hour of work had made any appreciable change in the arm"s behavior. As near as Greenburg could tell from his viewpoint by the access panel, the arm followed exactly the same path he"d seen it take earlier. It certainly came up just as short.

Carson swore under his breath. Once again he took the sheaf of blueprints from his a.s.sistant, and once again Greenburg gritted his teeth in frustration. Neither Carson nor the rest of his crew were experts on Skyport equipment*such experts were currently located only on the east and west coasts*but even so they"d identified the basic problem in short order: one of the four telescoping segments of the arm apparently was not working. That much Carson had learned almost immediately from the blueprints (and Greenburg still felt a hot chagrin that he hadn"t caught it himself); but all the lubricating, hammering, and other mechanical cajolery since then had failed to unfreeze it. And they were running low on time.

"Hey, you*Greenburg." Carson gestured up at him. "C"mere and give us a hand, will you?"

"Sure." Gripping the line coming from his safety harness*a real safety harness; the ground crew had brought along some spares*he stepped up on the box they"d placed beneath the opening and wriggled his way through. He was most of the way into the bay before he remembered to check the s.p.a.ce above him for falling debris, but Lady Luck was kind: none of the rest of the crew was working directly overhead. He gave their operation a quick once-over as the motorized safety line lowered him smoothly down the bay wall, and was impressed in spite of himself. The Skyport tunnel had been run out as far to the side as possible and locked in place pointing toward the open c.o.c.kpit window, and already the first part of the ski lift framework had been welded between the tunnel and shuttle fuselage. A second brace was being set in place; two more, and the track itself could be laid down. It wouldn"t take long; six men*fully half the group that had come up*were working on that part of the project alone. In Greenburg"s own opinion more emphasis should have been placed on getting the clamp attached, but he knew it would be futile to argue the point. The crew took their orders from the airline, and the airline clearly had its own priorities.

He reached bottom and, squeezing the manual release to generate some slack in his line, ducked under the shuttle and headed over to where Carson and his a.s.sistant waited. "All right," the boss said, indicating a place on the clamp arm. "Greenburg, you and Frank are going to pull here this time. Henson? Back itup about halfway."

The arm slid back. Greenburg and Frank gripped the metal and braced themselves as Carson armed himself with a large screwdriver and hammer. On his signal Henson started the arm out again, and as the other two pulled, Carson set the tip of the screwdriver at the edge of the segment and rapped it smartly with the hammer.

It didn"t work. "d.a.m.n," Carson growled. "Well, okay, if it was the catch that was sticking that should have been taken care of it. The electrical connections seem okay*the control lines aren"t shorted.

That leaves the hydraulics," He picked up the blueprints and started leafing through them. "Okay. We got separate lines for each segment, but they all run off the same reservoir. So it"s gotta be in the line. You got any pressure indicators on these things up there?"

"We"re supposed to," Henson replied. "But we seem to have lost them when the emergency collar went*"

"Wait a second," Greenburg cut in as his brain suddenly made a connection. "The hydraulic lines for the arm run by the emergency collar?"

"Yeah, I think so," Carson said. "Why?"

Lewis, listening from outside the bay, swore abruptly. "The broken hydraulic lines!"

"Broken lines?" Carson asked sharply. "Where?"

"Back there, by the emergency collar." Even as he said it Greenburg remembered that the ground crew had been brought into the cargo deck further forward, that they hadn"t seen the pool of hydraulic fluid that he and Lewis had had to step over earlier. "There"s leakage on both sides of the bay. Most of it"s from the collar itself, we think, but some of it could be from the line that handles this segment. Couldn"t it?"

"Sure could." Carson didn"t look very happy as he found the schematic he wanted and glared silently at it for a moment. "Yeah. All the arm segment lines run separately all the way to the reservoir, it looks like, so that if one gives you"ve still got all the rest. They all run along the starboard side of the bay, right where the shuttle hit. Ten"ll get you a hundred that"s the trouble."

"Rick? How about it?" Greenburg called.

"Probably." Henson sounded disgusted. "I think the sensors are located in that same general area. You could probably track the line back visually and confirm it"s broken."

"For the moment don"t bother; its not worth the effort," Betsy"s voice came in for the first time in many minutes. "Mr. Carson, can it be fixed or will we have to replace the whole arm?"

"I don"t know. Frankly, I"m not sure either one can be done outside a hangar. Leastwise, not by me."

"I see." There was a pause*an ominously long pause, to Greenburg"s way of thinking. "I"d like you to look at the arm, anyway, if you would, and see how much work replacing it would take. Aaron, would you come to the flight deck, please? We need to have a consultation."

"Sure, Bets." He made the words sound as casual as possible, even as his stomach curled into a little knot inside him. Whatever she wanted to discuss, it was something she didn"t want the whole intercom net to hear... and that could only be bad news.Moving as quickly as he dared, he headed back under the access panel and, kicking in his harness"s motor, began to climb the wall.

It was, to the best of Betsy"s knowledge, the first time the closed intercom system had ever been used aboard a Skyport, and she found her finger hesitating slightly as it pressed the b.u.t.ton that would cut Seven"s flight deck off from everyone except Carl Young on Four. But she both understood and agreed with the Skyport captain"s insistence that this discussion be held privately. "All set here, Carl," she said into the grille.

"All right," the other"s voice came back. "I"m sure I don"t have to remind either of you what time it"s getting to be."

"No, sir." The instrument panel clock directly in front of her read 10:02:35 EST, with the seconds ticking off like footsteps toward an unavoidable crossroads. "At just about fourteen twenty-five the shuttle runs out of fuel. If we"re going to reach Mirage Lake before that happens, we"re got to leave Dallas right now."

"Or in twenty minutes, if we wind up running right to the wire," Greenburg muttered from the copilot"s chair. A shiver ran visibly through his body; but whether it was an aftereffect of the cold air down below or a reaction to the same horrible image that was intruding in Betsy"s own mind"s eye, she had no way of knowing.

"True; but we don"t dare cut things that fine," Young said. "We don"t know how long those two collar supports will hold under a full strain. How is the forward clamp?"

"It"s shot," Greenburg said succinctly. "One of the segments has a broken hydraulic line, we think."

"Replaceable?"

Greenburg hesitated. "I don"t know. The ground crew boss doesn"t think so."

"What about the escape system for getting the pa.s.sengers out?"

"Proceeding pretty well. If no new problems crop up I"d say they"ll be ready with the thing in half an hour or so."

"Well, that"s something, anyway. Betsy, what"s the latest on Meredith"s condition?"

Betsy took a deep breath. "It"s not good, I"m afraid. The doctors say he"s got at least a couple of broken ribs, a possible mild concussion, and slow but definite internal bleeding. They"ve got him laid out on cushions in the shuttle"s aisle and have asked for some whole blood to be sent up. I"ve already radioed the ground; it"ll be brought by the next shuttle up."

Greenburg gave a low whistle. "That doesn"t sound good at all."

"It"s not," she admitted. "There"s also evidence that some of the blood may be getting into one of his lungs. Even if it"s not, putting new blood into him"s a temporary solution at best."

"How long before he has to get to a hospital?" Greenburg asked bluntly, his eyes boring into Betsy"s.

"The doctors don"t know. At the moment he"s relatively stable. But if the bleeding increases*"

She left the sentence unfinished."Four hours to L.A. at this speed. That"s a long time between hospital facilities," Young mused, and Betsy felt a stab of envy at the control in his voice. Ultimately, it was really Carl, not her, who was supposed to be responsible for the safety of the Skyport and its pa.s.sengers. What right did he have to be so calm when she was sweating buckets over this thing?

"Wait a second," Greenburg spoke up suddenly. "It doesn"t have to be an all-or-nothing proposition. We could dock a shuttle in, say, Six and carry it with us to L.A. Then if Meredith got worse we could land him at any of the airports along the way."

"You"re missing the point," Betsy snapped. The sharpness of her tone startled her almost as much as it did Greenburg, judging from his expression, and she felt a rush of shame at lashing out at him. "The problem," she said in a more subdued voice, "is that stuffing Meredith out that c.o.c.kpit window and into a ski lift chair could kill him before we could get him down and to a hospital. The doctors didn"t actually come out and say that they wouldn"t allow it, but that was the impression I got. Given Rayburn"s state of mind, I didn"t want to press the point with him on the circuit."

"So what you"re saying is that Meredith is stuck on the shuttle until it can be landed," Young said.

"Yeah, I guess that"s basically what it boils down to," Betsy admitted. "Unless he takes a turn for the worse, in which case we"ll probably have to go ahead and take the chance."

"Uh-huh." Young was silent for a moment. "All right, here"s how things look from where I sit. I"ve been in contact with United, and they have absolutely insisted that getting the pa.s.sengers out of the shuttle be our top priority*higher even than Meredith"s life, if it should come to that. A second crew will be coming up with that shuttle you mentioned to help with the off-loading. The airline chiefs say they want*and I quote*"everyone safely aboard the Skyport with complimentary c.o.c.ktails in their fists within an hour." " For the first time, Young"s voice strayed from the purely professional as a note of bitterness edged in. Somehow, it made Betsy feel a little better. "What happens to Meredith and the shuttle is apparently our problem until then, when presumably they"ll be willing to lend more of a hand."

"So what do we do?" Greenburg asked after a short pause. "Get everything aboard that we"ll need for the ski lift track and hightail it for L.A.?"

"We also need to fasten the shuttle more securely before we go," Betsy said. "Rayburn wants Meredith in a hospital immediately if not sooner, and if we try telling him he"s going to have to wait another four hours he may try taking Meredith"s safety into his own hands."

Greenburg frowned at her. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, that"s right*you didn"t hear that little gem of a conversation." In a half-dozen sentences Betsy summarized Rayburn"s earlier outburst. Greenburg"s eyes were wide with shocked disbelief by the time she finished. "Carl, we"ve got to get him out of that c.o.c.kpit before he flips completely," he said, his left hand tracing restless patterns on the armrest.

"On what grounds? He hasn"t actually tried to do anything dangerous. He could claim he was just blowing off steam."

"But*"

"No buts." The Skyport captain was firm. "We can"t justify it*and besides, how do you think he"d react to an order like that?"

Greenburg clamped his lips together, and Betsy thought she saw some of the color go out of his face."That"s a little unfair," she said. "We don"t know that he"d react irrationally." It felt strange to be defending Rayburn; quickly, she changed the subject. "Anyway, we"re getting off the point. The immediate issue here is whether or not we head west in the next fifteen minutes. Carl, I guess this is your basic command decision."

Young"s sigh was clearly audible. "I"m afraid I don"t see any real alternative. We"re just going to have to gamble with Mr. Meredith"s life. All of the ski lift track and auxiliary equipment we"re using only exists at fields that handle Skyport shuttles. If the crew putting the escape system together runs short of anything halfway to L.A. they"ll have no way to get extra material quickly. We have to stay here at least until all of that"s completed."

Betsy nodded; she"d more or less expected that would be the way the decision would break. The airline was clearly going to keep up the pressure, and the ski lift track system was the only way to get that many pa.s.sengers off with anything like the speed and safety United would be demanding.

"And after they"re off?" Greenburg asked quietly.

"We"ll head toward L.A. and hope we"ve either secured the shuttle by then or that the last two collar supports are stronger than they look."