"Looks like we're in for a rough day, y'all," said Don Yardley. The few rookies in the room, those who hadn't been around the flight port for very long, groaned. Laura Kern felt like groaning, but only because she'd heard that line, along with all its variations, almost every day for the six years Yardley had been there. She reached behind her ear to scratch around the computer interface imbedded in her skin, patiently waiting for him to get through his daily ritual of how much he needed everyone to give one hundred percent today. All she cared about was what to expect on her shift.
"We had an emergency landing on runway two-zero left a little over an hour ago," he went on. "We had to use foam, and I understand there weren't any injuries. However, the impact severely damaged the surface, so until we hear otherwise, we can expect it to be closed. That leaves us with nine active strips, and only two of them long enough to handle space cargo carriers.
"At the moment, the inbound flight stack out over Pamlico Sound is just about as full as it can get, so we'll probably start a new stack with mainly space traffic off to the north, over the Outer Banks and Bodie Island later this morning."
Now, even the veterans groaned. Backups of this size didn't happen very often, and they made for the worst nightmare flight traffic controllers could face. If things got really bad, they would end up with two stacks of flying hardware towering up to two miles high. That always made everyone in Terminal Radar Control not only earn their pay, but also lose a couple of pounds' worth of sweat in the process.
Yardley raised his voice a little to be heard over the grumbling. "In addition to our usual Monday reservation schedule, we're going to see some heavy extra traffic coming in. At 09:30, we're going to start receiving a stream of space planes, carrying materials from the latest star survey, headed in for the Research Triangle Park. Let's be damn sure to leave the lanes for those two runways clear of other traffic as much as we can. We want to make sure we keep those big boys in the stack for as short a time as possible.
"The forecast says we should have a calm day, wind-wise, so we won't be limited on the directions we can send traffic through. And the high is going to be the standard 96 stinking hot degrees. They say we shouldn't have any rain this afternoon, and I believe them on that almost as much as y'all do. I'll keep everyone updated if there are any changes.
"Well, those are the highlights. Any questions?"
Even the rookies knew better than to waste the floor manager's time right before the start of a shift. Yardley nodded. "Great. Let's have a safe day" He closed every pre-shift briefing with those same words. Laura wondered why he even bothered saying it anymore.
Yardley left, going through the door that led into the control room. The ready room remained almost completely silent as the controllers started going through their private preparations for the stresses of the coming shift. Laura absently looked over the notices posted haphazardly over the room's bulletin board, trying to calm her mind, relishing the silence that surrounded her.
"Boy, I hate the first shift of the week," someone behind her said. Laura turned around to see Tim Roberts standing there. He was the latest addition to the team, having transferred into the Research Triangle Park Flightport from Kennedy Spaceport only a month ago. In a very short time, he had built a strong reputation for himself. Everyone agreed that it was impossible to figure him out.
"Oh...hi, Tim," she said. She tried to move away and get back to her thoughts. Tim followed right behind her.
"Boy, this sure is a different world from what we had down at the space port. I just love handling those corporate jets. They're so tiny." He was forever telling people all about Kennedy, not even realizing that no one much cared.
"Yeah...thanks." What else could she say?
"Do you like those little things?"
She finally decided to give in and accept her fate for this morning. Maybe he'd have a chat with some other victim tomorrow morning. "They're okay, I suppose. You get used to a variety of air and space traffic at any flightport, you know."
"Hey, that's great," he said, turning away. "See you later..."
Laura wanted to sit and think about Tim, even if it were only for a minute or so. But the first chime sounded, signalling the start of the shift turn-over period. All the controllers in the ready room got up and began filing into the control room. Laura looked in her expansive handbag to make sure her flask of caffeine-rich iced tea was on top where she could grab it for sips during the shift, then she also headed for the room.
She had often thought about how different flight ports were from the "old times," just fifteen years ago, before stellar flight and colonization had forced the latest revolution in technology and economics. Back in those days, the old Raleigh-Durham International Airport had just been upgraded to handle traffic from orbit by adding a five-mile strip just outside the Research Triangle, where many space-tech companies had their facilities. Once interstellar survey missions began, the area began a boom that far exceeded the wildest dreams of the state bureaucrats that had lured those businesses to the area simply as a way to improve the state's image.
Now, the Research Triangle Park Flightport was one of twelve major hubs of air and space traffic in the world. Its proximity to many major East Coast cities made it a good place to handle business. Also, the presence of three top universities and other research facilities made it a logical place to send materials from the survey missions for study.
In the flightport's traffic control room, many changes had taken place to help in handling the huge stream of traffic. It was true that the room stayed dark to help the controllers with their concentration. Also, each controller worked at a computer console, and they still used radar to tell them what was happening in the skies above the many sub-complexes that made up the port, all the way out to the North Carolina coast.
The glowing radar screens from the old days were no longer to be seen, with controllers bent over them, issuing orders over a variety of radio frequencies. They were gone, as were all the sounds of the voice communications. The controllers who had been unable to make the switch to the new technology, which was over ninety percent of them, adamantly insisted the loads now routinely handled by the flight controllers at the larger ports were up to three times higher than a human being could keep track of, from their experience. Despite the protests, which most people had seen as pretty narrow-minded, the system was working around the world, and the number of accidents per thousand flights was far lower than back in the old days.
Laura went to her usual station, sitting next to the controller she was going to relieve. She liked seeing him first thing in the morning because he was one of the few people she had ever seen who could work a complete set of two three-hour shifts without being completely drained by the stress. The bastard actually had a serene look on his face this morning - almost as if he were listening to music instead of guiding up to sixty flights in and out of the flightport's Terminal Control Area. She cleared her throat.
"Morning, Jack," she said.
He opened his eyes a little to glance at her, then settled back. "Oh...hi, Laura," he murmured.
She didn't say anything else, but began looking over the situation display on the station's board. Suddenly, a familiar voice spoke from behind her. "Well, it looks like we're going to be neighbors today," said Tim. She looked up, slightly annoyed that he was back, and wondering where the girl who normally sat beside her was. Yardley was standing behind Tim, looming over him like a dark cloud.
"Don't worry, Laura," he said. "Now that Tim has had a chance to see how we work around here, I'm going to start moving him around a little, so he can get used to the different models of equipment we have here. It'll only be for a few days." He didn't wait for her to say anything, just turned away, getting back to other things.
Shaking her head, she turned back to the console to get back into her interrupted turnover procedure. She noted that Jack was handling thirty-seven incoming flights and fifteen outgoing. She felt a little ticked off that he could handle loads like this and seem to enjoy it. The guy was inhuman.
"Sorry I have to break up your party," she said. "Don won't allow you to do a double shift, you know."
Jack chuckled. "There's not much chance I'd ask, you know. I've got better things to do with my day."
Laura picked up her computer cable. This was the worst part of the day - when she physically plugged the cable into the interface imbedded in her neck, connecting her brain directly into the Air/Space Traffic Control computer system. There were times, especially on days right after a close call, when she would start to shake when she picked up her cable. Even on the best of days, she got a little sick thinking about plugging in.
She reached up and pulled her unstylishly long hair off her neck, away from the interface, noticing that it really needed a shampoo. Then, she closed her eyes and plugged in the cable. Instantly, she could "see" the pattern of air and space flights stacked up out over the ocean. Years before, when she had been involved in preliminary training tests at Duke Medical Center, she had tried to explain to her family what she sensed when she was plugged into the computers, but she had failed miserably. It was a new and separate sense, not quite like sight. She felt like she could feel and see the data as small, sharply defined images that the scientists called "analogs." She always imagined that they floated just behind her eyes, and the sensation had been pleasantly strange. That, at least, had remained unchanged during the ten years that she had been working in traffic control. The unpleasant part of the job came from realizing what those pretty sparks in her head represented .
Her mind was filled with a shining, slowly-revolving whirlpool made of tiny points of light, each of which represented a flight - either a turbojet or a space plane waiting to land or to be handed over to Space Traffic or Air Traffic Control. She had five minutes to become completely familiar with all the flights that Jack was handling so that she could take over when the second chime sounded. Then, she would begin issuing the commands that would guide those flights safely and keep them from colliding with any other of the flights in the stack.
The heavy caffeine dose she'd taken with her breakfast was just getting up to its full force now, but even with the extra boost, she had a hard time with the traffic pattern. The stack was organized according to the standard rules, of course. Otherwise, metal would be showering down all across the North Carolina countryside and into the ocean. Even so, she was having trouble picking up the details of the pattern and following them the way she would have to for the next three hours. One flight would be guided into its final approach and handed over to the West Tower. Then two more would be handed to Jack, one from the East Tower, heading into orbit, the other coming in from Air Traffic Control from the south to be added into the stack - somewhere.
Just as she was beginning to get a grip on the flights Jack was handling, the second chime sounded, signalling the final shift turnover. Control was shifted over to her, and she was nowhere near to feeling really ready to take on the load. Frantically, her mind began framing the order sequences that the computer would recognize, interpret, and transmit to the appropriate flight, where the orders would be displayed on flight deck screens and followed by the pilots immediately. She handed two flights over to the North Tower, accepted a flight that had just taken off, assigning it a climbing program in the process, and issued several turn instructions, all at almost the same moment.
From behind her, she heard Jack getting up and stretching. "I'm ready for some sleep," he said. She was glad he was considerate enough not to talk to her any more than that.
The demands of flight traffic control were heavy. Laura was forced to think so quickly that her mind raced at almost a panic level. The sustained mental activity caused her body to react by pumping adrenaline into her system, speeding up her heart and helping her to concentrate, but also giving her the feeling of having just had an awful fright and wanting to escape. Being forced to sit mostly motionless during a three-hour stretch in that state normally left her drenched with sweat and feeling almost completely washed-out.
She struggled hard to handle her load, but she had been used to that for years now. It was hard to remember a time when she had taken over a shift feeling that she was truly on top of the situation. These days, she took over just hoping to avoid causing a collision until her own relief showed up.
After a little while, she felt the familiar first drop of sweat trickling down the side of her face. She glanced at the time display on her console. 08:30. She picked up her iced tea from the floor next to her feet and took a long drink. The only thought she had time for was a half-formed image of how soggy her hair was going to be by the end of the day.
She was just beginning to get a good handle on her load when Space Traffic Control handed the first cargo carrier to her. Having that ungainly thing show up meant that she would have to step up her effort soon to handle the extra traffic. Dimly, she wondered wether she had what she would need to cope with it.
After fifteen minutes, all the other controllers had at least one cargo carrier in their loads. The carriers seemed amost to fill the top level of the stack, swirling around faster and in more complex patterns than flights on the other levels.
Just as Laura was saddled with her third carrier, her nerves were almost completely ravaged by a scream in her right ear. Her eyes snapped open and she looked over at Tim. She only had time to see the little man, drenched in sweat and beating on the sides of his head. He was still screaming, trying to yank the computer cable, interface plug and all, out of his neck. Quickly, she closed her eyes again, trying in spite of the racket to concentrate on controlling her flights. Whenever a controller snapped while on duty, things got worse very quickly.
At every level of the stack, flights began veering off at random, responding as quickly as they could to the wild orders Tim was sending through the computer. Everyone on duty had to work hard to avoid steering a flight into a collision with the errant flights. People were running hard through the control room now, coming to rescue Tim from ripping the cord from his neck and possibly killing himself in the process.
Finally, someone took Tim off-line. The flights that had been under his control stopped their turning and went off in straight lines. The disruption to the overall pattern was still there, but the worst danger was over, since the unattended flights were at least predictable. Laura continued working hard to keep her concentration in spite of Tim's continued screams. Any minute now, Yardley would begin assigning the unattended flights around to the rest of the controllers.
Some medic must have given Tim a shot of something powerful, because he quieted down very suddenly. Laura braced herself, knowing that any second, her load would be increased, now that the worst part of the disturbance was over. She gasped when five of the most errant flights landed in her lap instead of the two or maybe three she should have gotten. Ideally, she knew a disabled controller's load should have been passed out evenly among the rest of the controllers on duty, until a standby controller could be brought in and warmed up. She decided to have a talk with Yardley during her three hours off. That was, if she managed to last till the end of the shift.
The extra load was hard to handle. If she had been in better shape to take it on, or if the five extras hadn't been so far out of the pattern, she possibly could have integrated them into her work more easily. The problem was that she was now taking care of sixty-five flights, the maximum load a controller was allowed to handle at once. Giving the five new flights the attention they required was almost impossible, especially since she now had six of the cargo carriers to nursemaid around. If she'd had the time or the strength to spare, she would have heartily cursed Tim.
After a couple of minutes, she heard Tim's chair being rolled around. Yardley said, "Three minutes, okay?"
A nervous voice said, "I'll try."
That was all they needed right now, thought Laura. An uncertain standby controller. Giving the girl only three minutes to warm up was next to insanity, but at this point, she hardly felt like arguing about it. She glanced at her time display. Just under one hour left in the shift. Maybe it would work out.
The pressure didn't let up at all during those three minutes. Luckily, she managed to cut her load down to sixty-two flights during that time, and she got all her extra flights back into their proper places; now she had seven cargo carrier flights swooping around, all in the top three levels. The strain was making her eyes ache, and she began to wonder wether she was about to collapse, too. Finally, she heard Yardley's voice say, "Now."
The extra flights were switched away from her, but being suddenly below the normal daytime load was only a slight relief. There were still over fifty flights to handle, and there was no end to those damned cargo carriers.
For the next fifty minutes, Laura fought to get back into the rhythm that had been so completely shattered. By the time her relief came in and sat beside her, she was starting to feel sick. "You look like hell," he chuckled. She wanted to tell the jerk exactly what he could do with his smartass remarks, but it would have taken energy she had long ago burned up.
Five minutes later, it was over. The turnover chime sounded, and control was handed over to the lunch shift. Laura pushed herself away from the console and slumped down in her seat, too tired to even reach up and unplug the computer cable. For a short while, she just sat there, "watching" the stack. She felt numb, and didn't much want to get back into the real world.
When she caught her breath, she slowly reached up and disconnected, making the computer image in her mind wink out. She tried to get up, but wasn't very surprised to find that she couldn't quite stand yet. After a few more minutes, she forced herself to get out of the chair and walk, with a few small wobbles, out into the painfully bright ready room. Will Andrews, the controller who had been working next to Tim on the other side, was lying stretched out on a couch, with one arm draped over his eyes. He'd loosened his tie and unbuttoned his sweat-drenched shirt. At first glance, he looked like a dead body that had starved for weeks before giving up the ghost. Only his heavy breathing and the nervous movements his feet made proved there was life there. When she walked in, he peeked from under his elbow. "So you finally made it out," he said.
"Yeah," she said. "I couldn't tear myself away from all that fun."
Andrews grunted. "Sure. And we're both just itchin' to totter on back in there as soon as they'll let us."
She left Andrews there on the couch, staring into his arm. She expected she'd feel better after she got some lunch. She hoped Will would, also.
Laura went to see Yardley in his office after she finished picking over her cafeteria lunch. Executive Territory, where his office was hidden, was as plush and serene as any corporate headquarters building could hope to be. Soft, thick carpeting was everywhere; thickly padded couches and chairs surrounded ornately carved coffee tables here and there where port directors could take a break and chat a while whenever they felt like it. Pastel, abstract art works adorned the walls, and a variety of potted plants, all carefully chosen and placed, added to the atmosphere.
The offices used by the various control room floor managers were off at one end of this area. Just outside Yardley's office was a large 3-D display, showing the current stack of flights in the flightport's air space. The flights were simply colored points of light, floating in space making two slowly revolving whirlpools of light. She had to admit that it was very pretty, with the random colors added and the technical data and responsibility missing. The various duplicates of the display scattered throughout the various passenger terminals always impressed everyone who saw them. She wondered what would happen with the displays if there was a collision - most likely they shut it off, or replaced the display with some message like "TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES - PLEASE STAND BY." Maybe she'd ask, some day.
Since Yardley's door was open a crack, she walked right in and sat in front of his desk.
"That's right, Mike," Yardley was saying into his phone. "I need you to come in to work for me tomorrow on shifts one and three...Yeah, I know you're on leave right now - you don't have to go over that again." He looked up at Laura and held up a finger. She seriously doubted he'd be finishing his call in one minute, so she settled back into the chair, ready to wait a while.
"Look, Mike. I saw the other day that your semi-annual review is coming up soon. It'd be a shame to see a note on the form that you refused to help when things got a little rough. You know how hard it is to come up with merit raises with that sort of item on the record..." He jerked the phone away from his ear, looking annoyed. Without looking back at Laura, he marked a name off on a printout on the desk. He muttered, "He'll be out of here before too much longer," as if he'd forgotten he wasn't alone. He immediately started to dial the next number.
Laura decided it was time to jump in. "Don, we need to talk."
Yardley looked up, then put the phone down, forcing a smile. "Okay, miss Laura. What can I do you for?" He stretched his arms and locked his big, muscular hands together behind his head, all neighborly, ready for a friendly little chat.
"It's about this morning, sort of. First of all, I wanted to know why you gave me five of Tim's flights?"
"I had to make a decision quickly. You had one of the smallest loads." He shrugged. "Besides, you're one of my best, most experienced controllers. I knew I could depend on you better than anyone else on the shift. The whole team needed you."
"I had sixty flights, Don! You put me right up to the limit, with that...with Tim constantly screaming in my ear!" She was sitting at the edge of her seat, on the verge of yelling at him. "I might be experienced and all that, but you need to know that I came this close, okay? I can't take on that kind of extra load, 'specially not like that."
Yardley nodded. "Of course. I can't promise you anything, but I'll try to keep it in mind next time. Now, if you'll excuse me, I..."
"I'm not finished," she interrupted, halting his hand on its way back to the phone. "Look. I've been working in flight traffic control for almost ten years. I've worked hard - I'm a pioneer in modern traffic control technology, for God's sake. I'm just worried that I'm about to burn out, okay? What I'm interested in is wether there's any chance I could be considered for a floor manager spot?"
Yardley sighed. "Laura, I've got a ton of things to worry with right now. I'm a man short on the first and third shift crew, and you can see the trouble I'm having getting someone to come in, even as a standby. How do you think things would be if I had two out on the same shift?"
"I didn't mean I wanted to move up this afternoon. I'm just asking you to tell me that I'm not going to be stuck here forever. I know there's no slots coming open here any time soon. I wouldn't mind transferring, if that's what it takes. I'm just feeling a little desperate, okay? I'm feeling more afraid every day that I'm going to, you know... end up like Tim."
There was a pleading tone in her voice that she hadn't wanted to use, not with Yardley. He looked at her silently for a moment, then seemed to make a decision. "Okay, Laura," he said. He spread his hands out on the desk. "Let's look at this realistically. Have you ever looked at the floor manager's job description?"
She knew immediately what he meant. "Yeah. It says that a college degree is required, or equivalent experience. I think a decade working with the system would qualify me, don't you?"
"All right, I think you've got a point with that. You know your way around the control room better than anyone. When you rotate around to ground control, we never have a hitch, and you're our top flight info coordinator. If it was up to me, I'd say 'you're hired.' But you know I don't make those decisions.
"Sure, the regulations say 'equivalent experience,' but to every operations director in the system, that means 'management experience,' not time logged in as a controller. Maybe that's wrong. I don't know. The way things stand now, you wouldn't even be considered."
"Couldn't you recommend me to someone?" she asked, her voice sounding a little unsteady as she fought back feelings of disappointment.
"I'm sorry, Laura, I really am. But you know that when the system was just being started up, the Administration needed your talents so badly that a couple of official requirements were deferred to sign you up. If you were trying to get into the system now, your application would be filed away forever.
"I really don't like having to tell you this. You know, you really have an enviable position here. After all, you are one of the highest-paid high school grads in North Carolina."
There wasn't much she could say to that. Yardley slowly picked up the phone and began dialing the next number on his list. She got up and left, trying not to think about her next three-hour shift.
When Laura finally made it home that evening, she put a frozen dinner in her microwave, plopped down on her sofa, and turned on a channel showing old re-runs. Her dinner was still cooking when there was a knock on her door. She groaned. The last thing she wanted was to have one of those "girl-talk" sessions with the woman from across the hall.
"You look like hell," said Mary Blengini when Laura opened the door. Mary had been living in the apartment across the way when she'd moved in eight years ago. She was one of those ladies who knew almost everything about every neighbor in the apartment complex, and many went to her for the low down when curious things happened in the area.
"I feel like it, too,"she said. She started to mumble an apology and close the door, but Mary walked right in past her, obviously ready for at least three hours' worth of chatting and giving advice.
"Well," she began, "your day might have been as bad as mine - but I doubt it."
Laura closed the door, wondering just why she had even stayed on speaking terms with Mary as long as she had. "Mary," she said,"I just don't feel much like talking, tonight, okay?"
"Oh, nonsense," Mary replied, pulling the dinner out of the microwave and setting it down on the kitchen table. "Talking will make you feel better. Now, why don't you sit down and tell me all about it while you have dinner?"
Laura sighed and sat where she was told. Mary opened the refrigerator, pulled out a pair of canned colas, and set them out on the table. "Well,"said Laura, "if you must know, I got told today that I've gone as far as I can go out at the port. According to my boss, I'm stuck there forever."
"Did he tell you why?" Mary asked as she ponderously settled into the seat across the table.
"I had to drag it out of him. He said I needed a college degree. After all those years I've spent..."
"Don't cry! Heavens!" She reached across the table to stroke Laura's hair a moment. "I didn't know. I've always assumed you'd been through college, since you were working at the port."
"Well, I was lucky, I guess. I got started when I was seventeen and nowhere near ready for college."
"How did you manage that?"
"Well, there was this video game competition, a nation-wide tournament. I was the winner, big time. None of the boys even came close. Right after that, some folks from Duke called up and asked if I'd be interested in some special experiments they were doing for the U.N. Space Council. They really made a big deal about my video game talents, and how much they thought I might be able to help out with their unified space program."
"You had to get your parents' approval for that sort of thing, didn't you?"
"Oh, I was pretty much on my own back then. All Mom ever cared about was that I would get a regular check from the Medical Center, and I'd be out of her way while she was trying to court a new husband, not to mention the free operation to put in the circuits." Her voice turned a little bitter. "They asked if they could re-wire her daughter's brain, and all she said was, 'where do I sign?'
"I wasn't worried, though. They told me that the interface technology was all pretty well ironed out by then, and they were trying to see what sort of things could be done by a person hooked directly up to a computer. When I worked out so well on the air traffic simulation, they offered me a conditional contract on the new system. All I had to do was finish high school. I wasn't much interested in going to college, seeing how hard high school was, and the money was great. What would you have done?"
"Don't look at me, girl," Mary said, waving her hands in a sweeping negative. "You know I married Eddie when he got me pregnant in high school. That sort of chance never came my way. I've just spent all these years being grateful he turned out to be a good provider."
"Well, anyway. I signed up and moved out of the house. I was put in on the first line tests over in Greensboro, and I moved right in here at R.T.P. when they switched on the new system.
"Things were pretty good around here for a while. You know - the money was better than average and the traffic we handled was practically nothing compared to what it is now. I just wish now I'd had enough sense to save some of that money while I had plenty."
"Amen to that. I sometimes wonder what I'd have had if we'd saved just a little out of all the money we've gone through over the years."
"Well, I haven't been spending much the last couple of years. Haven't had the energy to go out and party like I did back then. I've got about fifty thousand saved up."
"Hmm. That might cover a couple of years out at RTP Tech. Maybe you could get some sort of certificate there."
"Oh, I've been thinking about going back to school for years, Mary. But if I feel like this after spending my nine hours out at the port, what sort of grades would I get? Fifty thousand might not be much money these days, but I sure as hell can't afford to pay it to Tech for the opportunity to sleep in their classes. I just don't know what to do."
"It sounds pretty bad, Laurie. It's a cryin' shame that you traffic controllers aren't allowed to have a union, like they had years ago. You could at least complain to them and see if they could get something worked out for you."
"Yeah. The good old days, from what I've heard. Now, though, if we have a complaint about anything, we're told to use the Authority's 'Open Door Policy.' If we have a problem, we're supposed to take it to our manager, and if we're not happy with the answer we get, we go up to the next level in the team and complain there."
"Ah...So you're going to see your boss's boss?"
"Not a chance," Laura said, bowing her head. "The open door policy sounds good - just like it sounds good for the government to say that a person's innocent until he's proven guilty. In the real world, there's cops that deal with criminals so much that everyone is guilty. Where I work, managers are famous for treating people who complain like lazy whiners who never have a valid beef."
Laura decided to change the subject to men. She'd heard all about the unions years ago before, and didn't feel like discussing subversive politics this evening. As usual, Mary was only too happy to share her expertise on men, and would have carried on all night on them, if allowed to. It took a couple of hours, but she finally ran out of steam and went back to her apartment full of kids.
Laura slumped down on her couch, looking at the dishes she hadn't picked up from supper. She finally decided that she'd try and catch them in the morning - there was no way she could do them tonight.
She knew she'd have trouble getting to sleep, as she always did after a day filled with caffeine pills, iced tea and colas, so she went into the bathroom to retrieve her trusty bottle of sleep aid pills. She took her usual dose of three and went straight to bed. She'd be up again in three or four hours, unable to sleep for the rest of the night, most likely feeling worse than she was now. But at least she would have had some sleep - that was the most important thing.
When it came time to file into the control room the next morning, Laura got a good look at Will Andrews when he filed in right ahead of her. It had been a long time since she had seen anyone looking as bad as he was. She realized that he was still wearing the same clothes he'd had on yesterday. He had obviously spent a long night rumpling them up, and from the look on his face, she doubted he'd slept at all.
"You okay, Will?" she whispered to him.
Andrews just looked at her vacantly and grunted.
Her heart sank when she saw that he was going to be stationed next to her today. As he lifted the cable to plug himself in, she noticed that his hand was shaking badly. She looked around the control room until she found Yardley. He was standing a little way off, watching Andrews closely. When he met her anxious look, he just shook his head and shrugged as if to say, "It's the best I could do." She closed her eyes and plugged herself into the system.
Fortunately, the morning schedule looked light. Only a few of the cargo flights from the survey mission were left to come in, and a small group of corporate jets were coming in at around ten. All the rest of the time would be taken up with handling the normal traffic for a summer morning. The afternoon shift was heavily booked, but Laura preferred not to think that far ahead this early in the morning. She started looking over the traffic pattern in her mind. The console showed that there were only fifty-three flights on its list at the moment.
When the shift chime sounded, the system handed her a load of fifty-five flights. She felt the usual moment of panic as she took up the load, but she knew how to deal with it. Right beside her, though, she heard a high-pitched moan, almost like a dog whining. Startled, she stole a glance over at Andrews. The night controller he had just relieved was standing behind him, looking surprised, too.
"Will, are you sure you can handle this?" she asked.
Andrews was looking pale, and his eyes were wide open, staring straight ahead. He gasped a little, but nodded. Laura closed her eyes again and tried to concentrate on her load. She had no time to worry over Will's condition.
The traffic load grew heavier quickly, as tourism flights began flowing in. Normally, Laura could get up to speed and into the flow of the work after about ten or fifteen minutes. But, this morning it was almost impossible to concentrate because of Andrews. Every few minutes, he would gasp, as if he expected a collision any second, though she could see nothing more alarming than usual in the stack. Sometimes, he would repeat that awful, grating moan he had let out at the beginning of the shift. Most of the time, she managed to keep most of her attention on her work, but she occaisionally felt compelled to at least sneak a peek at him.
Every glance made her a little more worried. He was always staring straight ahead and panting though his half-open mouth. After an hour had passed, she began to wonder if he even blinked. As the morning dragged on, he kept looking paler, more scared and closer to breaking.
With a half-hour left in the shift, Laura became sure that Andrews wasn't going to make it. Just as she peeked at him again, she saw him quickly put his hands on the edge of his console, as if he were going to push himself away and bolt out of the control room. After a second or so, he relaxed a little and put his hands back down at the ends of his chair's armrests. Less than a minute later, he let out that moan again.
Hard pressed as she was with her own problems, Laura decided she had to do something to help Andrews. Almost too low even to hear herself, she started to murmur encouragement for him. "You can make it, Will," she said. "Just a little while longer. Come on. You can make it." She thought that maybe he could hear her, and she desperately hoped that he really could make it.
It seemed to take forever, but the first chime finally sounded. "Just five more minutes, Will," she whispered. Andrews moaned, a little lower than usual. The girl who came in to relieve Andrews sat between them.
A couple of seconds went by, then Laura heard the girl whisper, "Jesus! You're wasted!" She wanted to hit the girl. Andrews needed almost anything but to hear something like that. She kept quiet and tried to concentrate on working with her own relief man.
When the second chime finally sounded, she slumped back in her seat and unplugged herself. She was hardly surprised to notice that her clothes were drenched with sweat. She was starting to wonder how Andrews was doing when there was a heavy thud on the floor next to her.
There was the sound of running footsteps behind her. She looked down and saw Andrews lying there, his eyes finally closed. Even in the dim light, she could see a thin trickle of blood coming out of his mouth. Someone grabbed her chair and swung her out of the way. The sudden motion made her sick, and she just sat where she stopped, a little too dazed to move.
After a minute or so, she slowly got up and walked stiffly away, into the ready room. As she stood leaning against the doorway, getting used to the sudden, bright light, she thought she heard a medic back in the control room say, "He's bitten his tongue off!" She wasn't sure she heard right, but she wasn't going to hang around long enough to find out.
During her first hour off, Laura kept telling herself that she ought to be doing something. Eating lunch. Taking a walk. Anything. Instead, she just sat in the ready room, staring into space, letting everything and everyone move around her without really noticing them.
"Laura." Yardley was standing next to her. She could tell that he wasn't simply greeting her as he passed through.
"Yeah, Don?" she whispered.
"I just got some good news about Will. He's being treated in the infirmary right now. The doctor says he'll be ready to go for this afternoon. That's a relief, huh?"
"You bet." She wondered what particular combination of begging and threats he had used to get that verdict out of the doctor.
"I knew you'd be worried about Will, especially after what happened yesterday. I told him to be sure to get plenty of sleep tonight."
"Yeah." If he gets ten minutes into the afternoon shift, he'll be lucky, she thought.
"Hey, are you all right? You look a little down."
"I'll be okay, Don," she said. "I just need a little fresh air, that's all. I was thinking I might walk over to the Delta Airlines terminal and take in their new cafe."
Yardley smiled. "Great. I'll see you in a couple of hours, then. Have a nice lunch." He walked out, headed for Executive Territory.
That afternoon, at 15:37, one of the last freight-carrying space planes from the star survey ship was given a spurious command. It immediately flew into the side of a wide-body passenger jet that had just entered the stack over the Outer Banks. The collision shattered both flights, sending almost five hundred people and over a hundred tons of red-hot metal plummeting down toward the small barrier island town of Kill Devil Hills.
The devastation caused by the impacts was irreparable. A huge chunk of metal, later identified as a personnel shuttle being ferried to Earth for repairs, landed in a large field at the border between Kill Devil Hills and Kitty Hawk, where the Wright Brothers Museum marked the first powered flights. All markers, buildings and artifacts were wiped out in the impact, along with the estimated three hundred fifty people who were normally at the site during a normal day. No intact bodies were ever found in the impact crater - only a myriad of scorched and mangled body parts of varying sizes and shapes.
Hundreds of other people died over a wide swath of the beach and shopping districts on the islands. There were thousands of injuries. The Governor declared a state of emergency when he learned about the crash. The Flightport was immediately closed to traffic, and all flights were re-routed to Washington, Atlanta and Charlotte. The investigation into the event was to begin at once.
Yardley pulled the surviving members of the shift into a conference room and told everyone what they were to say to the investigators when the interviews began. He called it an official "debriefing," but everyone knew what it really was. Everyone also knew that they would blame Will Andrews. After all, it would work so easily. The computer would verify that Andrews had been working with the space plane flight. No one would deny that the order came at the same time that Andrews' fatal stroke occurred. All everyone had to do was to tell the investigators that Will hadn't acted unusual before the problem occurred, and they'd be able to open the port again the next day and get back to their normal routine.
It was ten that evening before Laura finally left the port's parking area. She had answered all the questions as vaguely as she could. They hadn't pressed her much, having gotten the same stories out of everyone else before her. She had done and said everything she needed to get out as quickly as possible. As she pulled onto the I-40 Business loop, she headed in a different direction than normal.
All she could think about was the glazed look on Will's face as they disconnected him from the system. The collision hadn't affected her as much - she'd been too busy turning flights away from the danger zone to think about what had really happened. Just that dead look in the eyes of her neighbor, and the knowledge that he should never have been forced to plug back in. Now, she knew she had only one option left. She would find a reporter before midnight, and make sure the real story was told to the public by morning.
It would get her fired. That was given. Maybe worse things would happen to her after she laid the truth out. At least she knew that whatever they did to her, she'd survive. It was the least she could do for the controllers.