Chapter 1 – Descent

She was cold. No, more than cold, freezing. Bitterly, bitterly cold. She had balled herself up into the smallest possible shape, tucking in all extremities and trying to reduce surface area. She'd sat, first of all with arms folded tightly over her knees hugging them to her chest but now she moved them behind her knees and slid them across her front, wiggling her fingers into her armpits, where there was some heat from her core. That was the secret, keeping limbs in as close contact to the body's warm core wherever possible, she'd learned that much as a child, in winter, working the farm.

She knew the heavy lined aviators poncho was keeping her alive, keeping in the valuable heat, but even so, her toes were like ice, stuck out furthest from her core and covered only by thin shoes, she wondered if they had already fallen off, she'd stopped feeling them long ago. She could shift position and tuck her legs under herself but that would mean shifting her weight and that would affect him, and his piloting. Where she was now, her back was kept away from the metal bulkhead behind her, if she tucked her legs under she'd naturally lean back and she didn't want to think about how cold that steel would be at this altitude.

She hugged her fingers tighter into her armpits and pressed her chin harder to her knees.

To try and forget the cold she watched him. Apart from the metal cockpit walls rising to above her head, the red-pink awning of the cloth wing, the blue of the sky and the occasional cloud, he was the only other thing she could see.

He wore only his canvas workmen's trousers, a shirt, waistcoat and a jacket he'd found stashed in one of the tool lockers. Too big for him, no doubt belonging to one of the pirates, it served it's purpose, to keep out the wind. He must be frozen, standing as he was, legs and arms apart, braced against the control column facing into the slipstream. The only warm things he wore were the thick gauntlets, the leather flying hat and his goggles. Even his feet were bare. Yet he seemed to relish this, to revel in it. She watched him moving. For a while he would put his weight on one leg placing the machine's centre of gravity to starboard and holding the control column hard up to the rear quadrant, tucked into his gut, working against forces she could only imagine. Then, suddenly, responding entirely to things she couldn't see, he would shift his weight to his other leg, letting the machine's centre of gravity roll to port and she'd feel the nose dip down and they would slide faster across the sky, trading altitude for range. After a shorter time in this attitude he'd once again haul up on the column, move his legs again and swing his hips to the right. She watched this dance for a long time, wondering when he would collapse in a heap from sheer cold and exhaustion and the machine would stand on its nose and tip them into the sea.

But he didn't. And it didn't. The hours, like the frozen air, slid by them and the sky began to take on a warmer hue, the few clouds that flurried past her field of view were pink and lilac now and a rim of sunlight on the edge of the cockpit by her head changed colour as she watched, from yellow to gold to salmon and finally to the red of evening. Night was coming, surely he didn't intend to pilot at night?

"Where are we?" she asked
"Are you cold?"
"No, I'm fine. Are we going to land?"
"Not on water we're not."
"Are we still over the sea?"
"We are but there's land ahead, thirty minutes I think."
"Where?"

She unfolded her aching body and with a groan raised herself to peer over the cockpit side. She was struck by two things, first how incredibly cold it was up here, her upper body, even wrapped in the poncho, exposed to the biting wind, at once felt its keen edge. It was summer and hot at the middle latitudes but here, high up, it was cold, and at speed the wind made it colder. Even in the furnace of the equatorial summer, this high up it was always cold. The other thing that made her gasp in surprise was the light. Whilst flying with Dola she had experienced high altitude sunsets and sunrises and not once did they fail to move her. The sky was almost cloudless, but far behind them a bank of rain clouds, riding a pressure front was stacked up in a low wall out to sea. The setting sun washed these orange, pink, peach and crimson. Nearer to hand below them small apologies of wispy white and grey scudded past, each wearing a gentle veil of lilac and pink. But it was ahead of them, to the west that her eye was drawn. Land. Precious beautiful land, green and stretching for ever across the horizon. Low lying, it seemed to comprise a wide river delta and marshlands and flood plain. Beyond there was a hint of rising ground, a low range of hills lining the coast a little way inland. There were green fields and dark woodland and the smoky presence of towns. Never had she thought the smoke from factory chimneys could be so beautiful. But above the land was the setting sun, a pregnant burning orb staining the land below it, painting it with golden warm light and fingers of mysterious shadow. If she wasn't so concerned about their chances of living to see the night she'd have wallowed in the beauty of the world.

An instinct made her glance behind and look up but there was nothing there. She had lost sight of it hours ago. When they had first said their good byes to Dola and her sons, Sheeta had kept looking back, watching that green dot grow smaller and smaller as it lifted higher. At one point all she could see was a spark of blue as the sunlight touched and reflected off the crystal. And then nothing. Gone, too far for her to see or reach. She had strained her eyes for a long time, searching for the speck she knew was there. At times she thought she could see it but her eyes were playing tricks. With her feelings a muddle of relief that it was over and sadness that it was lost, she had sat down and tried to stay warm.

"Keep still."

He shifted his weight and the nose of the glider came about and pitched up and the far coastline tilted and slid over to their left hand as he brought the machine about and gained some height where a favourable air current allowed. Behind and above her the pink-red cloth wing rattled and fluttered, the air spoiling against its trailing edge, the flapping cracking sound reminding her of a ships sail as it tacked through the wind and the air rattled inefficiently against the loose expanses of canvas.

"Damn."

He cursed and shifted his weight a little to the left. The machine's nose slid over a fraction to port and the world's horizon tilted with it. The rattling sail of the wing was stilled and the air flowed smoothly again. Glancing up over his shoulder he moved his weight back a little and bought them a few tens of feet more altitude on this tack.

"Just keep still, right where you are."
"Yes."
"The winds are weaker down here, I'm losing altitude faster than I'd like. I probably gained only about three hundred on that last tack. Each time…uh," he grunted in effort as the wind pulled at the clumsy bucket of the craft, "I let her swing to port and gain some airspeed I'm losing too much height for the next tack to gain me much back."
"Will we make it to land?"

He glanced down at the sea, then up at the land at two places, getting a bearing, down at the sea again. Even she noticed the pause.

"Sure, lots to spare. We might even get inland to a town."
"Where are we?"
"No idea. There's a port down there at the river mouth but I don't want to land among buildings – too dangerous. And the flat land outside the town could be wet - salt marsh or paddies. I'm aiming to get us to that rising ground. Keep still."

He shifted his weight again and the glider bucked and dipped and accelerated round to port in a gentle diving curve. The horizon swung from it's drunken left-tilt to near horizontal and the land seemed to leap closer. But so did the sea.

She couldn't help but watch him working, watch how he used his whole weight as a controlling part of the glider, joined with the machine. She realised her weight placement was critical to the craft's trim, her simply standing up and leaning on the cockpit wall must have had an effect on his ability to fly yet he'd said nothing. Even though the metal bulkhead of the cockpit burned ice cold against her leg, she kept still.

"How high are we?"

Again he checked his horizon and the sea surface below him, he gave no answer without considering their position. He gave no answer that wasn't careful and, she hoped, truthful.

"No more than 6000 feet now. And in case you were thinking that shoreline is about seven miles off."

She watched him chew his lip.

"So yeah, we'll make it"
"I know we will. You're piloting."

Pazu carefully calculated their situation, seven miles was about 40,000 feet and they were less than 6,000 feet up. The estimate of their altitude he'd given Sheeta had been optimistic. Not a lie, no, he'd never lie to her but likewise there was no point in causing undue worry either. That meant he had to average a 12 per cent glide slope, about eight feet of ground covered for every foot of altitude he lost. By tacking up from time to time as he was, he was preserving a lot of height but that sent them crabwise against the coast and the distance covered was further. No such thing as a free lunch he thought as he banked the cumbersome steel machine around again.

And he was getting tired now. And when the sun went down it would get even colder. And visibility was dropping. If he didn't get them over a suitable landing site soon he'd have to put them down in darkness which wasn't something he wanted at all, it would be hard enough to judge ground conditions as it was, but in the dark he could see their chances of a safe landing diminishing steeply.

Half the problem was this old bucket of a glider. It was never designed for the task he was asking of it. Built as a flying observation platform to be towed by wire hawser from the dorsal platform of the Tiger Moth, it was built strongly to resist the buffeting of repeated dockings and the strains of being run in and out on the ships power winch. Its speed would come from the mother ship, it wasn't built to actually fly, all it was designed for was remaining aloft on the end of a wire. The tough rolled steel bucket of the hull was perfect for its intended job, but as a proper flying machine... well, lets just say he'd flown better. Much better.

He braced himself for another tack.

He hadn't reacted to her comment, he'd allow himself the luxury of her congratulations when they were down. And alive.

"Coming about, nose up. Hold on."

The machine swung, tilted and flew, the sky around them flushed red and purple and ahead the land began to darken as the suns disc touched and then bit into the land, and the shadows in the lower lying extremities grew and flooded up the fields like ink.

Night was coming. He was running out of time.

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2 March 2007

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