The Orthogonal Galaxy (48 page)

“
This ok, Ground 2?” Blade
asked simply, yet dejectedly.

“
Just fine, Blade. I
understand that you are worried. At your current speed, you should
at least be at his last known position in about five minutes. Keep
an eye out in case he has turned his aircraft back towards the
base, ok?”

“
Roger.” Blade’s responses
were automatic, as he focused all of his efforts on the manual
pilot of his aircraft. His eyes strained to look for Paol in the
distance, but for several minutes, he saw nothing but the horizon
defined by the indigo sky above and the auburn terrain
below.

Eventually, a wispy gray
line was discerned in the cloudless sky.

“
Ground 2, I think I might
be seein’ his trail.”

“
Keep us posted,
XJ-2.”

Within a couple of
minutes, Blade was able to see a wavy gray cloud of smoke already
starting to dissipate in the breeze.

Following the line to its
end, Blade roared into his headset. “He’s down. XJ-1’s
down.”

“
XJ-2, can you give us
coordinates. We’ll contact emergency personnel and local rescue
operations as quickly as possible.”

Blade peered down at the
mountainous terrain where smoke continued to obscure the crash
site. An occasional flame pierced the gray and black cloud of
smoke, while his attention was captured by an occasional glint of
sunlight reflecting off of metal pieces scattered on the
ground.

Breathing heavily, Blade’s
voice cracked into his headset, “Ground control, I’ve locked on the
coordinates of the crash site. Latitude 40.584, Longitude
-115.407.” It’s ‘bout 500 feet below a steep mountain
ridge.”

Metch was already on the
phone with the Air Force, who promised to contact local emergency
support and dispatch a helicopter from Hill Air Force Base in
Ogden, Utah.

Arjen continued to
communicate with Blade, as Metch relayed developing
information.

“
Blade, based on your
description of the crash site and the plume of smoke leading up to
it, I have every reason to believe that Paol would’ve had enough
time to eject safely. He must’ve had at least three to four minutes
from first incident to impact. Can you cruise above Paol’s last
known altitude and hunt for a parachute?”

“
Roger, Ground 2. I will
continue to circle the area until I spot him or run outta
fuel.”

Blade circled to his left,
then to his right, he criss-crossed large sections of the mountain
range and the foothills below, all while maintaining rapt vigilance
on the terrain below him.
Hi
His eyes focused intently on the surroundings,
looking for any sign of Paol’s parachute, or any sign of human
activity at all for that matter. This was a very remote section of
the mountain range, and while he could see a few roads penetrating
the range from the west, they all ended well before the crash site,
where the terrain was steep and rocky with dense thickets of
evergreen barring the way to the cirque where Paol’s plane
continued to smolder.

Occasionally, Blade would
mutter under his breath so that he couldn’t be heard over the
headset. “C’mon, Paol… where ya’ at? Why can’t I spot no
parachutes. It’s been a half hour already. He should’a sent up a
flare by now fo’ cryin’ out loud.”

As Blade continued
scouring the landscape for his colleague, he discovered something
about himself that surprised him. Not since the botched robbery
attempt back home had he been under such stress and concern. During
those youthful years, where each mistake compounded the effects of
the previous, he had plenty of time to replay the scenario over and
over in his concrete cell. He realized that panic was his worst
enemy in that scenario, and it cost him dearly.

But now that was all
different. Why was he able to maintain focus and composure? As the
minutes passed, he found that he felt the stress of the scenario,
but none of the panic or fear. He realized both mentally and
emotionally that panic would not serve him here that there was
nothing he could do to change the past. He realized that Paol was
beyond his help, except that he could continue to search and relay
his position to rescue teams had he parachuted safely before the
plane slammed into the side of the mountain. As he glanced towards
the western horizon and watched the Sun lowering in the sky, he
realized that time was running out on finding his partner before
the day was over, and yet he knew that it would serve no purpose to
worry over the circumstances. He simply needed to utilize every
last bit of time available to him searching instead of
panicking.

“
XJ-2, this is Ground 2,
do you copy?” It had been the first time in nearly an hour that
Blade had been distracted by his flight instructor.

“
Yeah, I’m still here,
Arjen.”

“
XJ-2, you are running low
on fuel. Please return to base.”

Blade’s response surprised
himself again. “Ground 2. It looks like I can lower my altitude
gradually to 18000 feet and buy myself another fifteen minutes of
search time safely, as long as my descent back to the base is also
sufficiently gradual.” Blade was surprised simply because he
expected to have been agitated by the order to return to base and
shout a stream of expletives for being asked to leave his companion
helpless. His calm, calculated response was as surprising to
himself as it was to Arjen.

The response from ground
control was not immediate. Blade figured that Arjen and Metch were
consulting, but that did not bother him. He welcomed the pause for
every precious second of searching.

After a minute, Arjen’s
voice crackled over the headset again. “Blade, we can give you ten
minutes, and then I will have to take over control to bring you
home safely.”

“
No need, Ground 2.” What
more could he do? It would do no good to waste his time arguing
only to have Arjen take over the controls of his airplane anyway.
He repeated: “No need… I accept the ten…”

His voice trailed off as
his eyes grew wide with shock. At first, he couldn’t believe his
eyes. Blinking a few times, he tried to refocus his eyes to the
north, where he saw a pillar of yellow-gray smoke rise in the sky
at a curved angle. A flare! Could it be Paol? No, it was too far to
the north! Surely, he would not have floated that far away from the
trajectory of the aircraft. Either way, he had to hope beyond hope,
and he banked his XJ-20 to the north to investigate the
source.

“
XJ-2, I didn’t copy on
that last response,” A hint of concern was apparent in Arjen’s
voice.

“
Sorry, Ground 2. I’m
headin’ north to investigate a flare.”

“
Did you say flare,
XJ-2?”

“
Yes, sir! A
flare!”

Blade dipped to an
altitude of 12000 feet, about 3000 feet above ground level. He was
determined to get one good look at the source of that flare. He
wanted to make sure that it was Paol and not some distressed
outdoorsman.

As he spotted the
blue-white parachute draped on the branches of a towering
cottonwood tree, his relief was immediate. Heaving a deep sign,
Blade smiled fully as recognition dawned on him. Flying directly
over the site of the parachute, he could just make out a human
shape in the olive green suite about fifty feet away from where the
tangled parachute perched.

“
Ground 2, I have a
positive ID on Joonter. Please point rescue crews to a visible
parachute near latitude 40.672, longitude -115.380 fo’
recovery.”

“
Will do, XJ-2. Please
return to base.”

“
Yes, sir,” affirmed a
jubilant voice from the cockpit of the surviving XJ-20 aircraft. In
one last burst, Blade banked hard into a corkscrew pattern and
slammed his thrusters after coming out of the maneuver. It was his
way of telling Paol both visually and audibly that help was on the
way.

…

The embrace was joyous and
painful—joyous for Blade, but painful for Paol. After hearing a low
grunt, Blade released his grasp on his companion.

“
What’s wrong?” Blade
asked.

“
Bruised ribs.” Paol
wheezed and coughed softly, so as to not aggravate the
condition.

“
So sorry, Paol… I’d no
idea.”

Paol returned to his
hospital bed and sat down softly. He lifted his legs onto the bed
and reclined back. The head was tilted up so that he could relax
while talking to Blade. Blade grabbed a seat and pulled it close to
the bed.

“
How hurt are ya’,
Paol?”

“
Not bad, really—just a
couple of bruised ribs when I slammed into the tree, and a twisted
ankle from the fall to the ground after cutting myself out of the
tangled parachute.”

“
You hit the tree that
hard? From what I recall, there wasn’t many trees in that
landscape. D’ya mean to say ya’ couldn’t’a landed on the
ground?”

Blade shrugged his
shoulders in embarrassment. “The wind was really sweeping me along,
and I just couldn’t seem to get down before those trees flew up at
me. So I hit the tree, crashing through the branches and took a
six-inch thick branch right in my side.”

Blade winced to
acknowledge the pain. “That must’a been awful.”

“
That wasn’t even the
worst part. So there I am dangling about 30 feet off the ground in
a spaghetti of ropes and canvas.”

Blade’s eyes grew wide at
the thought of Paol’s predicament. “How’d ya’ get outta
there?”

“
Well, I just dangled
there for a few minutes in order to collect my thoughts and my
breath. The adrenaline of ejecting and parachuting took its toll on
any intelligent thought process. As my heart settled down, I knew
that my best option was to release my chute straps and work my way
down the tree. So I worked my way out of most of the harness and
swung myself up to the branch that I had hit. It was strong enough
to support my weight, so I worked the remainder of the harness off,
but only then did I realize that my waist and legs were hopelessly
tangled in cords. I reached the chute’s survival pack, and unzipped
the main compartment. I grabbed the knife and cut myself loose.
Then I cut the pack away from its cords and threw it and the knife
to the ground.

“
I will say that it took
some thought to work myself off of that branch, but one by one, I
lowered myself to other branches until I ran out of room and had to
eventually drop the last fifteen feet to the ground. I grabbed
everything else up and ventured away from the clump of trees in
order to launch the flare out to the west, hoping somebody in the
valley below the mountains would catch a glimpse. I heard your
plane off in the distance, so I figured it was somebody looking for
me too.”

Paol stopped to take a
couple of shallow breaths. He would’ve preferred to breathe deeply,
except for the jolts of pain that shot through his side and
back.

Blade took advantage of
the break and asked, “How’d ya’ end up so far away? I was lookin’
fer ya’, but I never thought to go that many miles away until I
spotted the flare.”

“
The seat ejects with more
velocity than I expected it to. I know it has to clear the craft,
but because I was already tilted at an angle, it shot me to the
north like a cannonball. From there, the wind continued to push me
farther away.”

Blade couldn’t imagine
what horror this all must’ve been to Paol. He shook his head and
gathered himself for the next question. “So what happened up there,
Paol? What went wrong with the plane?”

“
I’m not really sure. I
got a warning alarm on engine two, and when I looked back, I could
see thick, black smoke coming from under the wing. I couldn’t see
where it started. But the plane started to veer to the left. I
tried to correct it, and it almost seemed to work, but then I heard
and felt a large jolt, and the plane continued rolling to the left
again. The nose also started to pitch downward. I’m ashamed to
admit that I started to panic, after I heard no response from
Ground Control. I couldn’t figure out why Metch didn’t talk to me,
or take over controls directly.”

“
He couldn’t, Blade. He
lost comm with you. He said it was total blackness.”

“
Well, there I was all
alone, and panic was setting in. I couldn’t remember emergency
procedures, was straining to recall hand gestures of any sort, so I
was completely at the plane’s mercy. The plane had probably rolled
about 40 degrees to the left or so, when a memory came racing back
to me—a memory that saved me, but it didn’t come from flight
instruction. It came from lunch. Lunch saved my life.”

“
Lunch?” Blade snorted.
“How on earth did lunch save yer life?”

Paol showed Blade his
middle fingers with a smile.

An expression of
recognition appeared on Blade’s face. “You mean…”

“
Yep, the middle
fingers.”

…

Blade returned to Johnson
while Paol spent two more days at Hill Air Force Base, recovering
from his injuries. Both were given the time as leave from all
training in order to recuperate. During that time, Blade spent many
hours in his room, reviewing the accident. Nightmares consisted of
vivid descriptions of the crash scene, and a couple of times, he
saw in his dream Paol’s lifeless body lying next to the smoldering
debris.