|
a new classic by Edward Summer |
powerful
updraft seized the Pterademon's tail. Determined
to hang on, the huge creature was dragged upward and pulled the flap up
with it. The servo motors strained against the immense forces yanking them
in the wrong direction. They whined and groaned and at last gave out."No!" the co-pilot said. "I didn't fix anything. I didn't even move the controls. The plane is going up all by itself!"
The pilot struggled with the wheel, but the plane continued to bank slightly and to rise.
The upward movement of the plane slammed Sniffler against the side. He hung precariously to the fuselage, abandoning his attempt to break the window. Instead, he dug his claws back into the metal and howled.
Fred peeked out from behind the inner edge of the window. Sniffler's face was no longer pressed to the glass. Fred raised himself slightly to look below the lip of the window.
"Oh! It's still there!" Fred sat down in his seat in a great hurry.
"What should we do?" Ginger wailed.
Another tremendous jolt shook the plane. The angle of climb suddenly became so steep that all of the passengers were pressed back into their seats. In the cockpit, the pilots sat in shocked silence and just clung to the steering controls hoping that something good would happen.
As Fred stared out the window, he noticed that the black thunderclouds were beginning to glow.
All
at once, the plane broke out above the clouds. The sky was flooded with
light. The setting sun had not yet dropped below the horizon and still
shone brightly on top of the clouds which stretched like cotton in every
direction.
Still banking, the plane's wing tilted into the sunshine. The rays of sunset seared across the Pterademon's face and body.
With a scream of pain, the Pterademon let go of the wing. The huge creature dropped away behind the plane, spreading its wings, hoping to reach the safety of the storm clouds. But it was too late. The sunshine tore at the membranes of the Pterademon's wings. They dried, shriveled and cracked. Their scales flaked away in the blasting wind.
Sniffler watched in horror from the shadow of the plane as the screaming Pterademon's body broke into thousands of hard-baked fragments that blew across the sky in tiny flakes. Legs and arms and tendrils and bones and finally the creature's face and jaws crumbled into dust.
Then the Pterademon was gone.
At that moment, the pilot regained control of the plane. The wheel was suddenly responding properly. He began to turn the plane back toward the airport.
"Please make sure that your seat belts are fastened," he announced into the intercom system. "We're going to be returning to the airport to check out a small problem. Nothing to worry about. We'll be down in a few minutes."
Relieved, all three children settled back in their seats and relaxed.
As the plane turned, Sniffler realized that the line of shadow protecting him from the sun was moving rapidly toward him. Panic-stricken, he climbed down toward the belly of the plane as the sunlight moved closer..
He hung upside-down as the searing sunlight hit his face.
Sniffler's mind flooded with a vision of a huge battlefield. It was centuries and centuries ago. He stood with his master over the fallen bodies of thousands of men. As the King pronounced the curse, Reon removed his heavy mailed glove, reached down and stroked his dog's silken black fur for the last time. The dawn came and the sun rose above the burning village. Sniffler remembered the sudden agony of change. How his master's flesh became hard. How his own fur became impervious to sensation. How the gentle stroking became a scratching and a scraping that he could no longer feel. Only the odor of death reached his brain now. Only his nostrils had been left open to sense life.
As Sniffler remembered, he could feel his body changing once again. His
thick spiky skin began to soften, his nostrils to shrink, the fire in his
eyes to dim. The razor-sharp spines became soft fur. His long claws became
soft, padded feet, and all at once, they lost their grip in the shiny metal
of the airplane. Sniffler dropped into the sky..
As he fell through the air, Sniffler was wrapped in the long-forgotten warmth of sunshine. Sniffler sighed and relaxed. In his death dream, he rolled on a field of glowing grass, back and forth like a puppy, as the sun warmed and warmed and warmed him.
In his dream, he and the sun and the grass became one. But in the real coldness of the windswept sky, he disintegrated into a flurry of dust. The dust drifted down into the storm clouds and seeded a handful of raindrops. The drops mingled with the storm and fell to the mountains below, ran across the hard rocks. Thenthey soaked silently into the soil forever.
The plane glided through the clouds and came to rest on a runway lined with emergency vehicles. But there was no further incident.
The passengers disembarked, worried about missed connecting flights and waiting relatives. The three children, however, were delighted and giggled as they raced across the runway toward the terminal.
"Hey, slow down!" Judy called after them.
Tony suddenly realized that getting home was not going to be so easy. He and Ginger slowed down to a trot which enabled Fred to catch up with them.
Judy walked over to the children. "Another plane will be leaving in about forty-five minutes. We'll call your parents and tell them you're going to be a little late, okay?"
"Oh, yeah. Sure," Tony said as they walked through the doorway of the terminal.
"Great! I'll be with you in just a second." Judy stopped to speak with another flight attendant.
"We're going to the bathroom," Tony said.
"All right," Judy said absently., "Meet me at the information desk in five minutes."
"But I don't have to go to the bathroom," Fred blurted out.
"Shut up," Tony whispered as he clamped a hand over Fred's mouth. Tony started dragging Fred toward the men's room.
"What's going on?" Ginger whispered.
"How much money have you got?" Tony asked.
"Three dollars and…." She reached into her pocket."…seventy-five, no, eighty cents."
"I've got a dollar and eleven cents," Fred mumbled from between Tony's fingers.
"Mom gave me twenty bucks just in case," Tony said as he finally released Fred's mouth. He grabbed Fred's arm and dragged him, with Ginger following, toward the conveyor belt that shuttled suitcases around the baggage claim area.
"Don't!" Fred was annoyed.
"Shut up! As soon as you get to the door, get off and run outside. Wait for us by the cab stand." Tony helped Fred onto the moving belt and made sure that Fred's head didn't show over the top of a large suitcase. As Fred and Teddy were swept away with the luggage, Tony glanced over toward Judy who was still chatting with an associate on the other side of the terminal.
"Now you." Tony helped Ginger onto the belt. Clutching Dunkey to her chest, Ginger crouched behind a large cloth suitcase and rode away toward the other end of the terminal.
Tony waited. Deciding that the coast was clear, he got on and hid next to a group of cardboard boxes tied with rope.
The conveyor belt bumped slowly along carrying the children closer to the outside door. Fred and Teddy were the first to jump off. Fred stumbled for his footing, but stood up and ran out through the automatic doors. He turned, searching for a taxi stand until he spied a group of yellow cabs and decided that was the right place. He ran over, and Ginger joined him a minute later.
Tony was last. As he went out through the door, he looked back to see Judy standing next to the men's room door, glancing impatiently at her watch. Tony smiled and dashed over to the taxi stand.
He hurried Ginger and Fred into the first cab in line, jumped in and slammed the door shut.
"22 Travers Place, please. And hurry!" Tony instructed the driver.
"You kids are in a big rush," the driver said with amusement. "Going to a fire?"
"Yes, sir!" Tony answered as he settled back in the seat. "We sure are!"
The driver chuckled, turned on the meter and drove away from the airport.
At that moment, a scene of quiet desperation was unfolding on the runway. First one technician, then another drifted over to the wing of the aircraft that had just landed.
Walkie-talkies crackled. All sorts of vehicles drove over, stopped and stayed, discharging mechanics and engineers to join the growing crowd of spectators.
"I never seen anything like it!" one man said over and over again.
"Look at this! They're all the way up here!" a second technician said from his vantage point high up on the wing.
"It's a straight line from the flap all the way over to where Rich is standing," said a third technician up on a ladder near the center of the wing.
Amid the commotion, an argument grew more hearted.
"Birds? No way! Birds don't have teeth! And ducks don't have claws! Whoever heard of such a stupid thing?"
"Then what did it? Hailstones?"
"Hailstones with nails in them…. Lead hailstones…. No! Meteorites! That's it, a meteor shower!"
"In the middle of a rainstorm with hundred-mile-an-hour winds? Go back to meteorology school!"
"Hey! Cool the fight!" Another voice called from the opposite side of the wing, at the engine intake. "Come 'ere."
The argument didn't stop, but it got softer for a moment. The group of men ducked under the wing and walked to the front where an engineer had pulled a ladder in front of the engine.
When he had their attention, he reached slowly inside the engine, grabbed something, and withdrew his hand carefully.. He let the contents spill out slowly onto the runway. It was a handful of dust. The breeze caught it and dispersed it in a cloud.
The people gathered below coughed and blinked the dust out of their eyes in amazement. The man on the ladder reached in and pulled out a second handful, then another and another, letting all the dust blow away in the breeze.
A strange silence came over the group. No more explanations were offered.
"I told youse," said the first man, "It's like I said. I never seen anything
like it!"
It was dark when the cab stopped in front of Tony's house.
Tony paid the driver and got out with Ginger and Fred behind him.
"Good night!" the driver said and pulled away.
"Good night!" Fred waved after the cab.
Almost in unison, the three children turned and stared up the driveway of Tony's house. The street became quiet and lonely as the taxi drove off.
The moonless sky seemed to hang low over the neighborhood, pressing in with dark dampness. Even the night birds and crickets seemed reluctant to sing, as though the air was too threatening to disturb.
Tony led the way up to the front door of the house. He bent down and searched behind a large cement urn that stood near the door. After a moment, he stood up again holding a key.
Tony fumbled in the dark, there was a click in the lock, and the front door swung open. Tony replaced the key in its hiding place, then pushed open the door all the way.
Not even the light from the street lamps penetrated the dark hallway. With Tony in the lead, the three children tiptoed, terrified, into the darkness. Fred hugged Teddy with one arm and clung to Ginger's leg with the other.
"Not so tight!" Ginger whispered. But she made no move to dislodge Fred's arm. She clutched Dunkey even harder.
Tony could feel his heart pounding as he inched along the front hallway. Though he had been through this doorway a thousand times before and knew every inch of the walls and carpet, it seemed totally different tonight. He could not get over the feeling that if he went one step too far, he might fall over the edge of a cliff. Tony suddenly knew what it would be like to be struck instantly blind at the edge of the Grand Canyon.
"Shhhhh." he said quietly, afraid to disturb the silence.
Barely had the hiss of the word passed Tony's lips when every lamp in the room flashed on in a blaze of light!
Then an unearthly howl filled the house and a black form with blazing eyes
streaked through the air directly at Tony's startled face.
