A valise and a duffelbag were set off, and Lanny entered the big transport. It was like no plane interior that he had seen before. All the comfortable seats and other appurtenances of luxury had been removed, if they had ever been there. The space was packed pretty nearly solid with crates and bundles covered with heavy canvas and bound tightly in position to rings in the floor and the struts. There were ropes enough to make a regular spider’s web. Barely enough room had been left for the six passengers; Lanny wondered where they had expected to put Mr. Aglund. You could sit on a camp chair, or you could fold it up and lie on your back, with your feet stretched out if you didn’t mind having them walked over. For anyone who objected, the answer was becoming more familiar every day: “Don’t you know there’s a war on?”
There would be no heat in this transport, so everybody had to put on a soft flying suit, like overalls, and over that a waterproof and windproof sort of jumper, and over that a life jacket, called a “Mae West.” There were parachutes, also, but what good would they do in the middle of the North Atlantic? Nobody put them on.
Lanny, the last man to enter, had barely space enough to sit in. Crates were on one side of him and on the other a man whose name had been read off as Carlton; he must have been six-foot-four and broad in proportion, by his dress a lumberjack or some sort of outdoor man, perhaps a horse breeder going over to take charge of army mules. One by one the passengers were fastened to the wall by heavy leather belts, and while this ceremony was going on Lanny remarked: “I hope these crates don’t roll over on us.” Seeing the grin on the other’s face, he added: “Don’t you roll over on me!” The man said: “I’ll try to keep underneath,” and that was all there was to the conversation, for at that moment the four engines started full speed. There were no soundproof walls to the plane, so nobody tried to talk unless he had something important to say. Carlton smiled at Harrison and Harrison returned the smile. Looking back upon this afterwards, Lanny wondered if it had been those friendly words and looks which had been the cause of his life being saved.
The wide curved door was shut and fastened and the plane was in motion. It rocked and bounced on the runway, and then suddenly these motions ceased and you knew it was airborne. By-and-by one of the crew came and made signs indicating that the passengers were free to unstrap themselves, and they did so, and made themselves as comfortable as possible on a floor of aluminum alloy. Four of them elected to play cards, with their feet tucked under them Buddha fashion. Lanny elected to stretch out and close his eyes and recite atomic formulas until he fell asleep.
IV
The flight was to Iceland, which lay to the northeast, a matter of sixteen hundred miles. It would take somewhat less than eight hours, though you couldn’t be sure, because of this new method of “pressure patterns.” Since all the flying would be by instruments, day and night were the same; “blind flying,” it was called, and every pilot had had to learn to trust the instruments and not try to use his eyes. Presently they were in a storm, and the plane began to buck and dip; somebody became airsick and had to use his can, which was unpleasant in these crowded quarters. Lanny wondered: had the pilot failed to find the right pressure area, or was this part of the program? Nobody had told him anything at the outset and nobody told him now. In civilian flights, for which you paid your good money, there was a charming stewardess to murmur assurances into your ear; but now that the government paid, you were just one more package to be delivered to a certain destination. Six boxes containing supper were handed out, but only two were opened, and Mr. Harrison’s box was not among them.
Lanny dozed, he didn’t know for how long. Then he was startled into wakefulness by a terrific lurch of the plane which slid him along and pressed him against the crates; it slid Mr. Carlton on top of him, in spite of all promises. And hardly had the man wriggled off before there was another yaw and they were sliding in the opposite direction. The freight creaked and groaned and the ropes that bound it appeared to stretch and strain. The thought came to Lanny: what would happen if those ropes should work loose or break? Human bodies might be pounded to pieces by that heavy stuff. He recalled a scene in one of Victor Hugo’s novels, about a cannon breaking loose on a frigate in a storm, and racing here and there like a live thing gone mad.
The passengers stared at one another, and shouted their doubts and fears. Lanny, who had never encountered anything like this, wondered if it was a consequence of letting a storm carry you, or something extra and unforeseen. Was it possible for pressure areas to sneak in and escape the vigilance of weather observers? He knew that there were sudden local tornadoes in Alaskan waters; they were called “williwaws.” Did they have these on the way to Iceland, and keep them secret on account of “military security”?
It seemed as though the great plane had been seized by a giant hand and was being hurled this way and that; sideways, and then up and down. Suddenly it seemed as though you were being pressed hard against the floor, and then as though the floor were disappearing beneath you—the strange feeling you get when an elevator in a tall office building suddenly starts down. A man’s insides became displaced and his diaphragm refused to work. The lights wavered, and the six passengers caught hold of one another in the effort to keep themselves steady. Lanny locked hands with the big outdoor man and was impressed by the warmth and firmness of his clasp. It was reassuring, in conflict with the blind forces of nature, so powerful, so utterly irrational. A high wind is a lunatic turned loose upon the surface of the sea. An earthquake, a volcano, is a madhouse turned loose beneath the earth’s surface. What a pitiful thing is a man—and what a tragedy that he should destroy himself in war, instead of turning his efforts against these cosmic energies!
This couldn’t go on very long; no construction made by man could stand it. There was a cracking sound, and suddenly the lights went out. The plane tipped crazily, and one of the crew rushed into the compartment, shouting into their ears: “Put on your lifebelts! We are going down!”
Lanny had read that a drowning man reviews all the incidents of his life. Now, told that he was facing a horrible death, nothing of the sort happened to him. His thoughts were few and simple. The first was: “This can’t happen to me! Out there in that storm, that blackness and waste of icy waters!” The he thought: “My job! My message! All the work I did, the lessons I learned! No, I must get to Germany!”
It was not true that his thoughts came any faster. He had no track of time, but he thought of those formulas, all that study, and for nothing! They would have to get somebody else, and three months would be lost! A maddening waste of life! And could it be sabotage? Had something been done to the plane? Had it been sent off on false information? And then thoughts of the warnings he had received! The psychic researchers had been right after all! There were such things as premonitions! And after studying the subject for so long, he had refused to heed the warnings! If only he had gone off with Aglund—for a day, two days—until the omens were right. “Absit omen!” the ancients had said; but Lanny, super-sophisticate, hadn’t paid even that slight tribute to the fates and the furies!
V
Buffeted this way and that, members of the crew dragged in a rubber life raft; it had a device which would inflate it automatically in a few seconds, and the passengers had been told how to work it. Lanny, who had read and heard much about planes, knew that everything depended upon how this transport hit the water; if it came down at a steep angel they would all be crushed, but if the pilot still had control and could level off at the surface, the plane might stay afloat for several minutes and they would have a chance to get out. Lanny threw himself onto the floor, face down, with his feet toward the front of the plane and braced against the cargo. That was the way to break the shock and save one’s head and neck.
He was just in time. There was a terrific shock, and it seemed to him that his body collapsed like an accordion; an agonizing pain, and screams—he didn’t know whether they were his own or other persons’. Everything was dim from that mom
ent; he was dimly aware of blows, seeming to come from many directions; it was the plane, hitting wave after wave before it slowed. Men were thrown this way and that, and on top of one another. Lanny heard them shouting, trying to get the door open. Apparently they succeeded, for there was a rush of wind and water. He tried to drag himself; his legs were helpless, but with his arms he got near to the door; then he became aware of a pair of strong hands seizing him and a voice saying: “Come on, now!”
He must have fainted; the blackness of the night and the blackness of his soul became one. Afterwards he thought he could recall a few moments of consciousness; of lying in the darkness with icy cold water being hurled over him, and forces tossing him this way and that; his pain was so great that he didn’t want to know about it, and perhaps that was why he sought refuge in unconsciousness again.
Looking back on it afterwards, he decided that for all practical purposes he died that night; the experience taught him that he need never be afraid of death. There could be pain before it, but there was no pain after it; when you were dead you were dead. You didn’t find yourself transported to glory, no angel handed you a golden harp and invited you to play or sing; you didn’t meet the spirits of your ancestors—Great-Uncle Eli Budd talking New England transcendentalism, Grandfather Samuel Budd laying down the law from the ancient Hebrew Scriptures. There came no Tecumseh, grumbling at “that old telepathy,” no Otto Kahn, making sophisticated fun of himself, no Zaharoff, “that old man with guns going off all round him.” Maybe your subconscious mind went back to join these other subconscious minds, but your conscious mind didn’t know anything about it, or about anything else. Such, at any rate, was the conclusion the amateur philosopher drew from the experience of that night. “A sleep and a forgetting”!
VI
The faint beginnings of new consciousness were among the strangest experiences of this philosopher’s life. They came and went, and appeared to be a bewildered effort to catch hold of themselves, to make sure if they were there and what they were. Voices, dim and wavering, seemed as though they were floating in air and had no connection with anything else in the universe. That was the way it might have been in the spirit world, and Lanny’s thoughts began to shape themselves around that idea; he was dead, and was coming slowly to consciousness in a new world. Would he meet people he knew there, and would he know them? Was he himself, or was he some other person, or several persons? He felt pain, and why was that? What had happened to him? Slowly it came back to him: oh, yes, a plane, a wreck! And a mission to Germany! He had failed, and he shrank from the thought—he lost consciousness again, because he could not dare to face the terrible fact of his failure.
But the voices continued, floating in infinite vastness. He couldn’t make out the words, but some of the tones were familiar; somebody in the spirit world whom he had known well. It was like groping his way in darkness, and there would come tiny gleams of light. He decided that the tones were Robbie’s; undoubtedly, a man would know his own father’s voice anywhere. But then, Robbie wasn’t in the spirit world, so it couldn’t be so. Lanny found the mental effort too great and gave up; the little spark of consciousness faded out. Perhaps he fell asleep, perhaps he swooned, perhaps he died again—who could say?
The spark came back, however, and Lanny remembered that it had lived before, and what he had thought—that his father had joined him in the spirit world. Now he could make out the words and unquestionably it was Robbie saying: “You are all right, Lanny. This is your father. This is Robbie.” Then it came to him—a truly startling idea—that maybe he wasn’t dead, and that his father was with him, somehow, somewhere. The idea was too confusing and the spark failed again—for a minute, an hour, a day—Lanny had no means of judging the intervals.
As the awakening continued, little by little Lanny came to realize that the voice was really his father’s, and it was his father’s hand touching him. He opened his eyes, and it was his father looking at him and smiling. The effort was too much, and he had to close his eyes, and again there was a period of oblivion. He still had so much pain that he didn’t want to face it, and not even the pleasure of seeing Robbie could compensate for it. He became aware that people were feeding him things through a tube, and that was unpleasant, too; however, Robbie kept assuring him that everything was all right, and that he was going to get well. Lanny would think of the mission to England and to Germany, and all the formulas, and how urgent it was; he would start shuddering with anxiety and grief, and again he would fall back into oblivion.
VII
What had happened Lanny found out later, a hint here and a hint there. He had been dragged out of the plane and onto the life raft, along with two other passengers and two members of the crew who had survived the crash. Apparently the fury of the tornado had been higher in the air; the sea was not too rough, and somebody had lain to leeward of him and kept him from being washed away. The crew had had time to radio their position before the crash, and search planes had come even before daylight, looking for flares. In the morning the survivors had released a dye which colored the water about them—that was one of the devices which were strapped to the raft. About noon a “Dumbo” had found them and taken them aboard and flown them to a hospital in Halifax.
Lanny was suffering from both shock and exposure, and in addition he had both leg bones, the tibias, broken below the knees. The hospital authorities considered it a miracle that he survived; they attributed it to a sound constitution and a temperate life, plus modern remedies which are so close to miracles. When this battered body had been carried in they had searched the clothing, and found a passport in the coat pocket and another sewed up in the lining. Manifestly, this meant some sort of secret war work, and since he didn’t look like a Nazi, they guessed that he was an American agent. They sent two telegrams, one addressed to the next of kin of Richard Thurston Harrison at the New York address in the passport; since it was a fictitious address, this telegram was reported undeliverable.
The other was addressed to the next of kin of Lanning Prescott Budd, care Budd-Erling Aircraft Corporation, Newcastle, Connecticut, and that brought a result startling to a hospital superintendent. A voice aver the telephone said: “This is Robert Budd, President of Budd-Erling Aircraft. Lanning Budd is my son. How is he?” When the answer was: “His condition is critical,” the voice said: “I will fly immediately. I should be there in a few hours.” Then, being a businessman, Robbie-added: “I will pay all his bills, and if you save his life I will contribute two thousand dollars to your hospital fund.” That is one way to assist a miracle, if not to cause it!
So Lanny was in a, comfortable bed in a private room, and his father in the room adjoining. That busy man had shown where his heart was; he had dropped everything and come to sit by Lanny’s bedside and whisper to him that everything was all right and that he was going to live. Robbie didn’t know much about the subconscious mind—they hadn’t mentioned it at Yale in his day—but Lanny had done a lot to educate his old man over the years. Robbie had heard it explained that you could give suggestions to the subconscious mind and that they would “take”; it might even be possible to do it without talking, mind to mind. Perhaps that was what made prayers work, for surely they did. Robbie didn’t know whether he believed in God or not, and certainly if He existed He had made a lot of miserable people for no reason that a rational mind could discover; but if sitting there and whispering to Lanny that he would get well would help him to get well, Robbie would try it. The hospital had a chaplain, a Church of England priest, who came and did the same thing, and Robbie found him a very decent fellow; they talked it over, and Robbie raised his bid—he promised the church a stained-glass window if his eldest son lived.
Somebody once asked Voltaire whether it was possible to kill a cow by enchantment, and that cynic replied: “Yes, provided you use strychnine, too.” So the hospital doctors used not merely prayer but the new sulfa drugs, and blood plasma, and other remedies of their materia medica. Lanny was made a
s comfortable as a man could be who has each of his legs enclosed in a heavy plaster cast, from the upper third of the thighs down to the toes. (He had what the surgeons called a “spiral fracture,” and they had performed an “open operation,” putting stainless steel screws through the fractured part of the bone.) Little by little he came back to life and memory; the fever diminished, but still he babbled in his sleep, and it was all about the nucleus of the atom, and its positrons and neutrons and deuterons and what not. When the patient was well enough to be asked about it he whispered: “It is a mission, Robbie, and it is so urgent! I must get well quickly.”
The father could do some guessing, for he had a lot of technical men on his staff and he listened to their conversation. When men are talking about jet propulsion they can hardly fail to mention atomic energy and the possibility that the Germans might get it ahead of anybody else. Robbie said: “Take it easy, son. It’ll be a long time before you can travel again, and somebody else will have to be doing your job.”
The sick’ man insisted: “Write a note to Professor Alston and tell him what has happened.” That wasn’t revealing any secret, for Robbie had long ago come to the idea that “Charlie” was the government authority who had charge of Lanny’s comings and goings. In the old days this would have exasperated the father, but now it was all right. Anything to win this war—even the boondogglers!
When it was certain that Lanny was past the crisis, Robbie returned to his own job, and his place was taken by Cousin Jennie Budd, a member of the clan who was confirmed an old maid and lived in Robbie’s household as a sort of upper housekeeper. She came by train; nobody was ever going to get her into one of those flying contraptions. She took the room next to the patient and read to him, wrote letters for him, smoothed his pillow, and told him stories about their numerous and eccentric New England family. Cousin Jennie didn’t have the least hesitation about praying; she had been brought up to it, and never found fault with God, but told Him plainly what he wanted and overlooked those cases in which He did not see fit to oblige her. She assured the son of Budd-Erling that some day God would let him know why He had allowed that plane to be wrecked. Something that Lanny was doing, or that somebody else was doing, that God didn’t happen to approve! Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven!