“We are only a few kilometers from Cape Race.”
“No,” Max says, “that’s not possible. That would put us…” he turns to his chart and flips the pages three at a time. It is one long moment of suspended animation in which Max realizes what has happened. What he has done. And then the Hindenburg’s newly installed sonic altimeter begins to beep—two bright chirps with a five-second gap between them—indicating that the ground is rising fast.
“On the cliffs,” Bauer finishes for him.
There is a pause in the control car, no more than four seconds, as every man in the room looks at one another and then at the instruments in front of them. Denial. Shock. Fear. These emotions are evident on their faces, tumbling over one another like falling dominoes. When the next chirp sounds they all fly into action. But now the time between alarms is only three seconds.
The device is new and state-of-the-art and has been on board for less than a year. It measures the distance between the control car and the ground, much like the sounding line on a boat, but with the added benefit of an audible warning system that alerts crew when the distance begins to recede quickly.
There is a nervous tremor in Kurt Bauer’s voice. “Ground rising at approximately ten feet per second!”
“Bring it up!” Pruss shouts. “Lau, back at the rudder.”
Pruss takes two quick steps from where he has been stationed since they flew into fog and hovers over Bauer at the elevator wheel. His eyes are locked on the sonic altimeter, watching the needle climb. “Up. Now!” Pruss commands, and Bauer spins the wheel like a mad pirate at the helm of the ship. Max cannot help but think of Blackbeard and the Queen Anne’s Revenge, and he feels, in his post-drunken state, that he has been transported to a land of make-believe where pirates take to the skies in flying whales. He is brought back to reality when the nose of the Hindenburg tips upward abruptly as the fins at the back of the ship respond and direct the structure to rise. Max can feel the weight of his body shift into his heels as he adjusts his balance.
Two seconds between chirps now.
Then one.
“Faster!” Lehmann orders as the alarm merges into one unbroken, shrill tone indicating that they are flying directly into a landmass.
Max does not realize he has been holding his breath until his lungs begin to burn and the pounding of his heart echoes in his ears. He gasps, pulls in a panicked breath, and holds that one as well.
The screeching alarm continues its metallic warning. Max can feel the sharpness of the sound in his brain, like claws on metal. It is the sound of looming disaster. He watches the elevator wheel spin and waits for the sickening crunch of metal against rock. The officers are coiled, waiting for impact. They can see nothing outside the windows. They can hear nothing but the sonic altimeter. They are blind and deaf and hanging vulnerably beneath the Hindenburg in a cage of metal and glass.
THE CABIN BOY
The floor beneath Werner tilts. It’s almost imperceptible at first, but after a few seconds he finds that he’s leaning forward several degrees to keep his balance, and there is a slight strain along his Achilles tendon, as though he has begun to walk uphill. The airship is lifting at a rapid pace.
He stops in the middle of the catwalk and listens. Werner is fifteen yards from the spiral staircase that connects the keel catwalk to the axial catwalk above, exactly in the middle of the ship. At this distance he can see it shudder against the strain of such a rapid, uneven ascent. All around him the supports and girders begin to groan, low at first, and then deeper as the climb continues. It is the sound of an old man rising from a chair.
Thirty seconds. A minute maybe. He doesn’t count, but it can’t be longer than that. It’s over quickly and the floor levels out beneath him, but it takes another ten seconds before the structure around him ceases to object. There is an echo of metallic tensity, and the gas cells that hold the hydrogen quiver. Then calm. The stillness at the end of a deep breath. But Werner knows something is very wrong. The Hindenburg never makes such drastic movements. She is a great lumbering beast, not a jackrabbit. Now the space around him feels different somehow, as though it has lost elasticity.
Only once Werner has started the trek back toward the passenger quarters does he notice that he’s been holding the paper bag in his hand so tightly that his fingernails have dug imprints into the heel of his hand. He relaxes his grip on the empty bag, then wads it up. Owens gobbled up all the scraps Werner had taken with him. The dog is a bottomless pit, and Werner is more than a little curious to know who its owner is.