Pilot Gust Askounis and Avigator Bob Newcomb saw the lightning sweep closer along the cloud tops. It was like a barrage now, pounding along the thunderheads and lighting up the cabin of the advanced avigation trainer. It gave an unreal pallor to the faces of the two lieutenants who sat looking straight ahead.
"Looks bad", said Pilot Askounis. The words were unnecessary. For many minutes now there had been an electric understanding between him and his avigator that they were in for some tough weather … also an understanding that they would not alarm the three cadets sitting behind them in the ship’s belly.
Newcomb, their avigation instructor, would tell them only what was necessary. Calmly he said into the intercommunication phone: "Get on your parachutes and tighten your safety belts." He could see the three students in the lightning flashes. They were plainly nervous, but they obeyed his directions calmly, looking to him for what to do next.
At 2:32 am, the airplane slammed into the storm. It hit the rain and wind with a solid smack. Lightning struck. All lights went out and the radio clicked off. In the blackness the ship rocked end on end like a hollow clapper in a thunderous bell. Then it was out of it. The moonlight suddenly was startling bright and the black storm was behind.
The quiet was too sudden. It was too quiet in this strange moonlight cathedral above the clouds. The engines sang strong but thinly in the high lost place. The sound was like that of picked piano wires humming in the void. It was 3:20 am.
Pilot Askounis stared at the cloud rack tumbling below like an endless surge before he announced, "I think we’re lost." Turning to the avigator beside him, he said, "What do you think?"
"An aerial navigator must know where he is at all times – even when he’s lost,": thought Newcomb. Once on the warm, safe ground the old cadet gag might have sounded funny – not now. To Lieutenant Askounis he said, "How much gas is left?’
"I don’t know," replied the pilot. "The gas gauge is out. But by my calculations, we’re running low."
Newcomb glanced back at his three students. In the storm their wits had scrambled around like a squirrel in a revolving cage in an attempt to keep their equilibrium. But now as they picked their maps and charts from the floor, they were lost. They had no idea about the position of Langley Field, Virginia, which they had left earlier in the evening or about their home base, Turner Field, Georgia, toward which they had been heading when the storm closed in. Though badly frightened, they were viewing the situation as an adventure to be described with laughter when they reached Turner – not as an ugly predicament which might be told in black headlines in the afternoon papers. Here among the silent gorges of the clouds, Newcomb was their instructor. If he failed….
Newcomb said to the silhouette of the pilot beside him: "I’ll have you a fix in ten minutes."
He would take the "fix" a definite position obtained by shooting stars, sun or moon with an octant and he would locate the airplane definitely in the sky wilderness through which it sped.
He felt the students’ eyes on him as he peered through the glass-domed turret in the top of the ship. The sky was their classroom and he was their teacher. He could not let them down.
As Newcomb raised the octant to take the reading, he was fascinated by the little instrument. He never had been actually lost before. This was different from working problems for grades. His life and the lives of the rest of the crew depended entirely on the octant. At the moment he raised the instrument to focus on a star, he had no idea where the ship was in relation to the ground. Up here above the cloud scuff the night seemed peaceful enough as the two-engine ship hurled itself toward nowhere. But below the clouds was rough air and visibility zero. There was no gas to waste. When the airplane finally needled its way down through the thick cloud-rug, there must be – there had to be – a landing field beneath…. Or else.
As he focused his attention upon the star-studded firmament above him, he was deeply aware that here was the one element upon which he could depend – the stars. He knows that the correct operation of his octant would indicate the plane’s position with a radius of fifteen miles.
It wasn’t a difficult trick. But upon its proper execution depended their lives. Of first importance was the correct determination of the "substellar" points of the stars selected as a basis for his reckoning. Under each star, at any given time, is some point on the earth’s surface when the star is directly overhead. This is the substellar point. By measuring with his octant the height of two or more stars above his horizon, Newcomb knew he could locate their substellar points.
Using these points as a center, he would describe circles, which should intersect each other. Inasmuch as the plane would be located in some part of each circle. It followed that where the circles intersected, there would be the plane’s position. It would then be comparatively easy to pick out the proper intersection. All other intersections would be absurdly out of the way…. Which might explain why embryo avigators frequently locate their position at the North Pole, the Sahara Desert or some other equally remote, place.
With his position calculated, he accordingly could set his course.
Newcomb said, "I’ll shoot Venus" and the pilot said "good gal". Presently Newcomb sat down and drew lines on a map. He used the light on his octant to work by, and he had to squint. He made a calculation and scribbling something on a piece of paper, handed it to the pilot. It was a new course. It called for a 355-degree compass heading back to Langley Field.
The pilot said flatly, "From where I thought we were, I ///// are you sure it isn’t taking us out over the Atlantic?"
Newcomb was silent. Askounis said, "You’re the avigator." And in the lost glen of the sky this meant, "You’re the doctor."
Newcomb said lightly, "Always get you back, don’t I?" He tried to sound cheerful, as Askounis veered the plane around on the new course.
Askounis said, "If you get us back this time, I’ll buy you your breakfast."
Newcomb said, "It’s a go…. And if I don’t get you back?" He tried to think of a bet which would mean something. If I don’t get you back, I will……"
"We will," said Askounis, and that was that.
From time to time, Newcomb got up to shoot the stars through the ship’s blister. But there were hours to sit hunched in the cabin and think. In the silver emptiness above the cloud waste, the air was growing colder. And in the hours of waiting Newcomb could feel himself growing chilled, like the numb feelingless walls of the ship itself. The airplane had lost all of the human attributes of a vehicle that seems to find its own way. The unreal vastness was so great that the ship seemed to stand still, feeling its way more and more feebly, more and more uncertainly, like a blind thing among the huge pawn shaped figures of the sky.
Newcomb shook himself. Was he dreaming? Suspended for long in the world above the overcast, a man lost track of time. True time was recorded accurately, precisely on a watch’ but he matter of its actually passing was an uncertain thing. On the earth, objects moved and made sounds denoting its passing. Up here for so long above the clouds, nothing seemed to move or make a sound. The clouds became a frozen sea. The roar of the engines became so monotonous as to be discounted. Avigator Newcomb fought back a tendency to become utterly indifferent. He almost wondered if one star in all this vastness, and a set of figures on his small chart ever could guide the ship and crew down out of the waste.
Pilot Askounis began to whistle in his teeth a tune called "Tangerine". Newcomb knew that Askounis had brought the ship through a storm many pilots never could have survived. He was calm now, guiding the ship exactly according to Newcomb’s directions. Handing him a slight correction in course now and then, Newcomb almost wondered if his directions were correct. He thought about all the stories he had heard about aerial navigation at Turner Field.
There were big names in avigation now – names which had helped take the guesswork out of flying. Staring at his chart, making his last calculations, Newcomb wondered if all he had learned in training would be sufficient to get him and his students out of this predicament. Though it was cold in the airplane, the sweat rolled down his face. For the last time he traced on his chart the line he had drawn for the ship to follow. An insidious doubt about his course crept into his own mind. It was the most mathematically certain thing the ship had to follow; yet, the cramped little figures surrounded by the vastness of space left a large margin of suspicion in the mind of the mathematician.
The motors, eating the last of the gas in the reserve tank, sang high over the waste. It was near daylight and the stars by which Newcomb had plotted his course were beginning to fade. Askounis pushed the wheel forward and the ship nosed down through the overcast. He was still whistling the song called "Tangerine", but he did not think of the song. His eyes and four other pairs of eyes strained for the first glimpse of what lay under the cloud layer – Land or Water.
A crew could get just so tired, just so tired. Then it didn’t matter. Askounis’ arms were numb as he shoved the wheel forward and the ship dropped, dropped.
Newcomb squinted to see the landscape rising in the dawn. There was the raw spot on it just a little off and to one side of the plotted course. And the raw spot ha d beautifully familiar appearance. Why shouldn’t it? It was Langley Field.
The ship’s crew was a bunch of happy men, standing on the ground and beating each other on the back. Soon they would smell bacon cooking in the operations canteen.
Pilot Askounis turned to Newcomb. He said, "How do you like your eggs…. Fried?" then "Okay, Avigator, you’ll get them fried!"
To the hungry Newcomb, the word "Avigator" had a new and certain ring. It sounded even better than the thought of food.
AVIGATOR – the flying navigator, to whom the trackless sky has become a beaten path.