The Maze (11 page)

Rick watched the Humvee drive away to the east, toward the Standing Rocks. He went into his tent to get
away. It wasn't easy to accept Lon's helplessness and his own.

He heard the biologist enter his own tent.

Ten minutes later Lon appeared at the door of Rick's. “There's only one way I can deal with this,” the man said. “By flying.”

There was a question in Lon's eyes, and Rick had a good guess what it was.

“Now, you can say no…but do you want to fly tandem with me? A Maverick Memorial Flight?”

“I say yes.”

The glider was rigged and they were done with the rehearsals. They were harnessed, helmeted, hooked in and waiting.

Rick watched the green streamer at the cliff edge. As soon as it blew strong directly toward them, it would be time to go. He was afraid in every nerve but his adrenaline was pumping and he was full of resolve. He knew exactly why he wanted to do this. It might be for Maverick, but it was also for him.

“What do you think, Rick? We can do some ridge soaring along the cliffs here and then head out onto the flats for a landing, or we can stay up awhile longer and do some thermaling. If I find a thermal, that is.”

“What's that going to be like?” Rick asked tentatively.

“It'll feel like you're going up the express elevator.
If we do that, we can really sky out over the desert, but I have to warn you there'll be some rock 'em, sock 'em on the way. There's always some amount of turbulence in a thermal.”

“We'd catch one thermal and then come down?”

“All depends on you. We could fly out of one thermal and glide until we catch another one. But don't worry, I'm not planning on breaking any distance records on your first flight.”

Rick gathered his courage. “This is the Maverick Memorial Flight. Let's go for a thermal.”

“Had a hunch you'd say that. Hope I can find one for you.”

“Promise me none of those clouds are going to suck us up. I don't want to find out what it's like to tuck and tumble.”

“Those aren't monster clouds, and we'll stay away from them. If we don't catch a thermal, we won't even make it to the primary LZ. We'll use that big patch of red dirt you see over there by Chimney Rock, a couple hundred yards from where those guys pitched camp.”

“I see it. Close to the edge of the Maze.”

“If we get into a thermal and you don't like the feeling—if it spooks you bad or you feel like you're getting airsick—just point your thumb at the ground. We'll break out and soar for home. Hey, look at our wind streamer. Changing direction.”

It was time. It was all a matter of faith in Lon Pere
grino, the man at his side who'd named himself after a bird.

I've only known him for seven days, Rick reminded himself.

That doesn't matter. I trust him
.

Rick looked down the gentle ramp of slickrock to the edge of the sky, so close at hand. He breathed deep, tried to calm his heart. Only thirty feet separated him from his leap of faith. Lon had done all his safety checks. Their harnesses were attached to separate locking carabiners suspended from the keel overhead.

“Still waiting,” Lon said, intent on the green strip. “Most of flying is
waiting
to fly.”

Then Lon asked with a grin, “Anything on your mind? Any last questions?”

“That song you sing…I've been thinking a lot about those ‘Buffalo Gals.'”

“You have?”

“I mean, are they girls or are they female buffaloes?”

“Strange…I think about that too. Can't give you the answer, though.”

“Too bad.”

“It's like life—long on questions and short on answers.”

“I guess I do have a question. I don't have a parachute on the pouch over my chest here.”

“Mine would do for us both. Don't worry, I've never deployed one. But you're right, you should know what
would happen. It's not possible to disconnect ourselves from the glider. I'd take the parachute out and throw it clear.”

“The ship would go down with us?”

“That's right. Sounds messy, but it works. Now put that out of your mind. I'm going to give you a glory ride, not a ride to glory. All set?”

“I'm set.”

“Remember what I told you. Don't touch that control bar. Let me do the flying.” Lon wrapped his arms around the outside of the downtubes and hefted the glider off the ground. “Ready?”

Rick took another deep breath. “Ready!”

“
Clear!
One, two, three,
Go!
”

Rick focused on staying in step. At the halfway mark, he picked up the pace as planned. The edge of the cliff seemed to rush forward to meet him.

He didn't hold back. This was his dream.

Even before the edge Rick felt a sudden hoist, and his feet left the ground. Then came the impact of the air rushing up the cliff face and the powerful lift of the wing. He reached with his left arm around Lon's back and hung on to his side.

As soon as Lon brought his hands from the downtubes to the control bar in front of him and below, Rick hung on to the pilot's upper right arm with his free hand. With a glance down, Rick's vision swam—the world had fallen out below. His stomach went into free
fall. The thought raced through him like an electrical discharge:
This is not going to be okay
.

Panicky, he was about to reach forward for the control bar; it was right down there in front of him. But Lon had warned him. If he grabbed hold of the control bar they were going to be in big trouble in a big hurry. Flying the glider was a delicate matter and the pilot didn't need any help.

Don't look down, Rick reminded himself. He was trying to kick into the bottom of his harness cocoon with his right foot, but he couldn't find it. He wasn't going to be able to hang horizontally until he did. “Take your time, Rick,” the pilot said coolly. “No rush. We're doing fine.”

In fact, they were already several hundred feet away from the cliff, level and steady. Rick felt a surge of confidence that everything was okay, that he hadn't somehow wrecked the takeoff. He was flying!

At last his right foot found the inside of the bag, and his left foot followed. With his right hand he pulled on the cord that controlled the bag's zipper, then resumed his grip on Lon's arm. He was all zipped up and perfectly prone, the way he was supposed to be.

Now that he was properly positioned in his cocoon, suspended alongside Lon and helmet to helmet, he could give himself over to the exhilaration. He was flying. Actually flying!

Rick allowed himself to look down. They were pass
ing directly over the camp, a thousand feet above it and rising. The instrument on Lon's control bar—the variometer—showed their elevation at 6,200 feet above sea level. The chirp tone meant they were rising.

Lon pushed the control bar away from himself; Rick felt the lift as they rose higher. Shifting his body weight, and consequently Rick's, Lon executed a gradual turn. Soon they were soaring along the line of the red cliffs but high above them.

Lon circled back until they were high over the spot where they'd launched. As they turned north once more, the pilot freed his right hand from the control bar and pointed below. “What do you see?”

Now Rick saw them, all soaring. “Five condors!”

“Let's go find that thermal!”

Lon steered away from the cliffs and out toward the Standing Rocks. Rick knew Lon wasn't finding his column of rising air—the variometer was buzzing, which meant they were losing altitude. Rick could see the secondary landing zone ahead: the red dirt patch near Chimney Rock, not far from Carlile's blue tarp.

He started thinking about the landing. Unless Lon found rising air soon, this was going to be a short flight. Let Lon stall the glider and put his feet on the ground before you touch down, he reminded himself.

Then it happened. Directly over Lizard Rock they entered a thermal. There was no doubt about it. The glider was rocked suddenly, and Rick felt the terrific
lift. “Up we go!” Lon shouted. He was making adjustments with his hands to swing their combined body mass to the right or the left.

They were into turbulence—major turbulence, it seemed to Rick—and taking a terrific buffeting. It's not that bad, Rick reassured himself. With a glance down he could see the earth falling away at an incredible rate. The variometer kept chirping as Lon negotiated his spirals.

Skyward they rose on that great thermal upcurrent, thousands of feet higher. He thought of Maverick, what this must have felt like for Maverick on his two thermal rides just yesterday and this morning. To feel the air under his wide wings lifting him up and up, to discover that this was what he was born for…

With a glance down Rick saw the Maze laid out below, all its intricate, twisting, convoluted canyons draining toward the Green River. It was all so easy to read from the air, as he'd imagined it would be—nothing like being down in it.

“Fourteen thousand feet,” Lon announced a few minutes later. “Let's call it good—getting marginal without oxygen!”

Lon steered out of the turbulence, and then they took a sudden drop that felt like a stomach plunge on a roller coaster. “Over the falls!” Lon called.

Rick's stomach was going to be okay. Lon glided into smooth air and they hovered over the Green River,
over the Island in the Sky, over the confluence of the Green and the Colorado. Rick could see a thousand canyons and more, all at once.

At eight thousand feet Lon caught another thermal, and they skyed out over the desert again, rising all the way up to 14,463 feet. They soared over the confluence of the rivers again, over the Island in the Sky, back across the Green, over the Maze.

When the time came to return to earth, Lon made it look so easy. They glided in over the formations of the Doll House. Lon circled his landing zone once, then turned into the wind. They hit the ground running.

 

It wasn't until the condors had roosted and the cliffs were lit by the moon that the return to Lon's call came crackling over the radio. “How's everything in the Maze?” asked Josh's cheerful voice.

Lon told of Maverick's death without ever using the condor's name. He only called him M4. Lon's account was dispassionate, scientific. Rick kept waiting for him to explain that this had been no accident, that Carlile had loosed the dog on purpose.

“Tough loss,” came the voice from the Vermilion Cliffs.

“Tough, tough loss,” Lon agreed.

What Lon said next took Rick completely by surprise. “Josh, I want you to get set to relieve me here when you drive in the evening of the fifteenth. Plan for a two-
week cycle. Maybe you and Andrea both, if David can hold the fort there. I have some personal business I have to attend to.”

There was a moment's hesitation from the other end. “Anything I can help with? Is anything wrong?”

“I'll tell you all about it when you come in. Ice a cooler especially for M4.”

As Lon signed off, Rick couldn't contain his frustration any longer. “You didn't tell him how it really happened!”

“Carlile's camp is just a few miles down the road, and he's got a radio. He might have been listening in. I expect this is his last trip to take out his contraband—there's no point in getting him stirred up. I'll tell Josh an earful when he gets here.”

“What's this about you leaving? What's that all about?”

Lon shrugged. “It's about you. I'm going to drive you out. I've been thinking it over all day.”

“Drive me where?”

“All the way to Reno. Try to get a hearing with the judge who sent you to Blue Canyon. I intend to stand up for you.”

Rick didn't know what to say. He would never have guessed that Lon would leave his condors. “You don't have to do that,” he mumbled. Here was a glimpse of hope.

“'Course I don't,” Lon said gruffly. “Don't know
if I can do you any good either, but I want to try. I have a question for you. It seems to me you could use another ally. Got any suggestions? Anybody else who might speak for you in front of that judge?”

“The librarian at Blue Canyon. His name's Mr. B.”

Rick lay on the cot feeling weightless. All he had to do to recapture the sensation of flight was to close his eyes.

It was the greatest feeling in the world. The only way to improve upon it would be to control the glider himself. He could imagine what that would feel like, having his hands on the control bar and soaring, making turns, looking way down at the revolving earth.

As he fell asleep, his conscious images melded seamlessly into dream images. He had a new kind of flying dream, not the miraculous hovering. This time his hands were on the control bar of a brightly colored artificial wing. He was shifting his body weight, actually controlling the glider as he spiraled up and up, then soared over the shifting shapes of the canyonlands. Climb and glide, climb and glide, all night long. If it went on forever, that would be fine by him.

In the morning everything looked a little different. In the aftermath of flying with Lon, nothing seemed impossible. Surviving Blue Canyon, even that seemed possible.

Lon's eyes made contact over the rim of his coffee cup. He took a drink and set the cup down. Blue Canyon turned out to be on his mind too. “Don't expect any miracles,” Lon said. “I think it's likely a question of keeping your next sentence down to the minimum.”

“Believe me, I'm not expecting miracles—I remember that judge. He disliked me in particular.”

“So let's not talk about it for now. Let's talk about hang gliding. Do you think you might want to pilot a hang glider someday?”

“I know I do.”

“How come?”

“How come? Same reason as you—I want to fly! Now that I've done it, I can't stop thinking about it.”

“You know you have to be strong to fly, to handle that control bar, wrestle the big wing. How many pull-ups can you do?”

“I was doing eighteen consistently at Blue Canyon.”

“That's got me beat. Takes a cool head too, good nerves, but I think you've got that covered. Now I get to feel responsible for getting you into this, whatever happens.” A grin was spreading across Lon's face. “'Course it's not like your parents will sue me.”

They both laughed, but Rick's was nervous laughter.
“You aren't talking about now…about teaching me to fly
now
, are you?”

“No time like the present. It'd take us fifteen minutes to get ready to go.”

The idea thrilled him and terrified him at the same time. “You can't mean really flying by myself? Is there a bunny hill around here or something? No way I'm going to jump off a cliff.”

“There's a perfect place to catch just a little air—the dunes right above the LZ. I'll grab the portable radio. It'll give you a leg up if I coach you through the receiver in your helmet. The condors don't get active until late morning; we'll be back in camp by then. Let's go!”

It took them closer to thirty minutes to get ready. Lon couldn't find the fold-up antenna for the portable two-way radio even though he went through everything in his tent twice looking for it. “I remember setting it on my footlocker last night,” he said. “I'm positive—that's where I always keep it. Oh, well, I can use the one in the truck if I stand real close.”

The pickup jolted through the potholes as they neared Carlile's camp at Chimney Rock—a wall tent and a tarp, a couple of card tables. Rick tensed. There was no way to avoid passing close by. Carlile was pouring coffee. His partner was flipping pancakes. The two stared. The dog barked.

Rick stared back at them. “How come this time they
set up camp?” he wondered aloud. “Think it means they're staying awhile?”

“I don't even want to guess,” Lon replied irritably as the truck began to descend the ridge into the sandy gullies that led to the landing zone and the dunes.

Rick decided to change the subject. He had something he'd been wanting to ask. “When Maverick died, you said something about flying too close to the sun. Isn't that what happened to Icarus, in the story from Greek mythology?”

“You know about Icarus! I love that story. But I have this theory, Rick…. I never bought the bit about the sun melting the wax that held the wings together. Everybody knows that as you go higher up in the atmosphere, it gets colder, not warmer.”

“It's just a story, Lon.”

“What if it
wasn't?
The Greeks were about the smartest people who ever lived, and Daedalus was the most brilliant inventor who ever lived. His time might have been thousands of years ago, but let's give him the credit he's due. Suppose for a minute that the Icarus story is a poetic account of something that
actually happened
.”

“That would be amazing.”

“Imagine for a moment that Daedalus actually built two devices, very much like modern hang gliders, one for himself and one for his son.”

“I like this theory of yours.”

“Here's what happened. Very simply, Icarus got caught in a thermal he wasn't experienced enough to handle. It took him up and up, who knows how many thousands of feet up—”

“And then he tucked and tumbled into the sea.”

“That's it.”

“Icarus flew out of a maze, you know.”

The driver's grin was back. “Interesting…. Hey, wait a minute!”

Lon had stepped hard on the brake, and he was staring down at the base of the gearshift. He'd suddenly gone pale. “Radio's gone!”

Rifling through the assorted junk between them, Lon came up with the mike attached to its coil and jack, but no radio.

“Carlile?” Rick wondered.

“During the night, I guess. Must've stolen the antenna too, for the portable, right off my footlocker.”

“Your truck antenna, Lon! Look, it's been snipped off!”

Lon stared at the spot, unbelieving. “We're out of communication, Rick. We've got the portable in my dresser, but it has no range without an antenna. He's cut us clean off.”

A bolt of fear had every nerve in Rick's body buzzing. “Why?” he asked, trying to glimpse what was coming.

The biologist's features reflected the extreme frustra
tion and anger that had been building inside. “I'm not scaring out of here. They're going to find out I'm not that easy to run off.”

“I just remembered something,” Rick said. He felt sick.

“Remembered what?”

“When Carlile was telling Gunderson about the stuff that was in your tent, he mentioned that you had a two-way radio in there. Maybe that's what he was trying to find out—if you had a second radio.”

“Makes sense. He was threatened by my having the capability to report on his activities. Which I did, very shortly thereafter. This time he made sure I couldn't do it again. Hey, don't get mad at yourself.”

Get even, Rick thought, but he didn't say it. He asked, “So you don't think he'll steal other stuff too?”

“Looks like it was the radios he was after. Let's just hope he takes the last of his contraband out on this trip—in that case we'll have seen the last of him. I can guarantee you the Condor Project won't be buying gas from him anymore, that's for sure. Let's forget about him, Rick. Get you started with the hang glider.”

They parked on the side of the road next to the head of the landing zone. Lon tied a green wind streamer to the branch of a juniper, and then they trudged up and around the side of the dune field that sloped gently down to the landing zone from a cluster of sand hilltops. Rick was carrying the furled seventy-five-pound solo glider
over his shoulder while Lon walked behind with the duffel bag. “Set it down and rest a spell,” Lon called.

“I can't. I'm too psyched to rest. Are we going up to the top of those dunes up there?”

“Not today, not a chance.” Lon led him out onto the center of the dune field, onto a sand bench a football field's length from the landing zone and no more than thirty feet above it.

Rick laid the long bundle down gently on the sand. As he looked down the slope, he realized it was time to focus. “I'm ready,” he said quietly.

“That streamer is pretty limp down there. Not much wind; this isn't the top of the Condor Cliffs. We'll take our time assembling the glider. I'll tell you what everything is and what it's for. Theory is important. You can't control the glider without understanding the principles.”

Rick watched with utter concentration as Lon began to assemble the glider. He focused on the order of each step as Lon slowly described what he was doing. Rick concentrated on the names of every member. He committed the theory to memory: air rushing over the wing has farther to travel than the air underneath. The difference makes lower pressure over the wing. Low pressure above the wing creates lift.

At last the wind was blowing and Rick was harnessed. He was helmeted and poised for his first attempt, wearing a long shirt of Lon's, a pair of jeans, and Lon's hard plastic knee pads. Sticking his head under the joint
where the downtubes met the keel, he wrapped his arms around the tubes and lifted. The streamer he'd been watching suddenly went limp. He had to set the glider back down on its wheels.

Half a dozen times he lifted the glider in anticipation, only to have to set it down. Finally the wind held, and Lon gave the nod. “
Clear!
” Rick yelled. He began to walk, then to jog, then to run. Whatever happened, he wouldn't have very far to fall.

At the edge of the sand bench he felt the sensation of lift. He was about to be lifted from the ground, but something went wrong. His momentum took him over the edge, and the slope seemed to rush up to meet him. The glider crashed on its nose, and he was dragged on his face and chest through the sand.

“What happened?” he sputtered as Lon ran to help him up.

“Partly not enough airspeed, partly it was your angle of attack. We'll talk it over and try again.”

He tried all morning. He spilled the glider on its nose and onto both sides, and he stalled it backward. The wind was good, and he'd been lifted time and again free of the ground, but he hadn't really flown. It was difficult knowing exactly when to move his hands down to the control bar. After he accomplished that, it was difficult to know what to do with his hands on the bar and when it needed to be done.

It was easy enough in theory. “When you push your
body back relative to the bar, the glider climbs and decelerates,” Lon had said. “When you push your body forward over the bar, the glider dives down and accelerates.”

Theory and practice were two different things. It didn't seem to come naturally, knowing whether to pull himself over the bar or to push himself back from it. “Shift your grip—and consequently your body weight—to the right, you'll steer to the right. Shift your body weight to the left, you'll steer to the left.”

He knew Lon wanted to get back to his birds. “One more try,” Rick almost pleaded.

“You have quite an appetite for sand.”

And then he flew! Miraculously, it seemed, he felt the lift as he approached the dune face, and he responded with the right moves at the right time. The sensation was unmistakable, a thrill beyond anything he'd expected. He was flying on his own, by himself! He flew two hundred yards straight down over the landing zone, ten, twenty feet above the ground.

True, he blew the landing. It wasn't that he didn't land into the wind; the wind remained blowing against him as it should. He forgot to reach up for the downtubes early enough, to stall the glider as he'd been taught, in order to land on his feet like a parachutist touching down.

He ended up flopping on his belly and his knees. It didn't matter, he'd been doing that all morning. He was
okay, and he had flown, actually flown. He let out a victory whoop as Lon came running across the field.

“What an inaugural flight! Took me two or three days to pull that off when I was learning.”

“It felt good. Unbelievably good. I want more!”

“Tomorrow.”