Chapter 57

Sharing deep hugs with Isabelle, I spent the next six minutes describing the danger we were in. Hoshi listened in and occasionally giggled hysterically. I would occasionally look at her and try to reassure her of her sanity. It felt so strange to look at Hoshi, look at a healthy young alert woman who I knew would die within the hour...

A'moth still had the engines at full power, punching the jet to Mach 2 and climbing to thinner air as fast as the engines could push us. There were no afterburners. I'm sure she would have turned those on too if there are. "How's your head?" I asked her.

"Better! Give me another five minutes, and then we can jump." A'moth leaned back and stretched out in her pilot's chair and closed her eyes, trying to rest and get over her headache.

We were heading due north at Mach 2 at an altitude of 13,000 meters and climbing. Over deep water, the shock wave travels just over Mach 2, and we probably had come within two minutes of it, definitely within three. It was that close...

We gained some time as the wave crossed over Japan. The wave slowed to Mach 1.3 as we were accelerating to Mach 2. During the five minutes the wave spent on land, we probably gained more than an extra minute. A'moth and I both felt we were now pacing the shockwave about four minutes out in front.

I just found out I don't have the skills either to remote-teleport or even teleport just me if there are big differences in relative velocity. Since my maximum range is 23.16 kilometers, the issue of velocity matching Earth's curvature never came up. A'moth has been doing it since her childhood, but I never had the chance to practice. It just never occurred to me...

I had found that teleporting into a supersonic plane was impossible. I used everything I had to match the subsonic velocity and barely got A'moth and myself up here alive as the jet crossed over into Japan. Our plan was for A'moth to jump the three of us to Siberia, a finesse jump even for her, right at her limit, but she felt sure she could do it. Afterwards she would jump us to Nebraska via Canada. Our plan had a near fatal setback when A'moth hit her head...

"How are we doing?" I asked A'moth.

"Speed Mach 2.04, 13,900 meters and climbing. At full power, we have another 27 minutes of fuel..."

Isabelle was very distressed. "Mom, there are ninety young children aboard this plane!"

"Daughter, the whole world is dying! We have to get back to the Nebraska channel! Jim is waiting. Hawaii is gone! We'll jump to Siberia and then down through Canada..."

"Jump?" whispered Hoshi.

Isabelle was frantic. "And what about the children?! And their teachers?! Mom! How can you be so callous?!"

A'moth let out an enormous sigh. "I'm not a robot Isabelle, not immune to the sorrow. But what can we do?"

Isabelle turned and looked at me. "Dad! Come up with something!"

Me?! "What?!" I stared at her and then looked at my watch. It was 5 hours and 14 minutes post injection. "Kungnang will be destroyed in one minute! There's no place to land! The shock wave will hit this plane minutes after it runs out of fuel. You have no idea Issie, how strong it is! The plane will not survive the collision."

Isabelle was almost in tears. "Then we have to climb higher! Turn around and go over the shock wave!"

A'moth shook her head. "The plane can't climb that high Isabelle. And besides, where would we land? The world is being destroyed."

"Worry about landing later! Save the plane now!"

A'moth blew out a full breath of air. "How?!" She looked over at the controls. With her Level-6 clearance, she had the authority to reprogram the destination, and she had typed in 90-degrees north. The jet was flashing several warnings that it didn't have the fuel to reach its new destination.

The control room was silent. We all stood thinking for a moment. My eyes drifted to Hoshi. She had won the battle to control herself. She looked me in the eyes and said, "I think I've heard of you. Are you the Kyle?"

I shook my head. "No." I couldn't see any reason for deceit, not now... "Kyle left on the slip-ship to the Black Hole with Brianna. My name is Gary."

Hoshi giggled once. "No matter. Gary, Deputy Isabelle, Your Greatness Lisa... I don't care about me... but if you can save the children... or at least some of them... I beg you to do so."

Another minute passed in silence. Time was tight. We really should be going. A'moth gave me a silent nod that she was ready. I thought about wild ways to try to take one or two children with us. Could A'moth handle a fourth person? Should I pick a child at random? I could play God and jump one into the control room. But then Isabelle had a much grander idea.

"Dad! Can you jump a plane?"

"Huh? You mean this plane?! 200 tons?!"

"Well, yeah..."

I thought for a moment. 200 tons?! No way! But then again... but then again... I probed the plane with my jump sense, felt the delicate balance of the tremendous forces between the bow wave ahead of us and the nose of the plane... "Well, I don't think I want to try it while we're supersonic..."

"We have a four minute lead on the global wave, maybe a few seconds more," said A'moth quietly. "Enough time to go subsonic and make an attempt. Gary, it's your call to make. Is it possible?"

As I thought, Isabelle went over and hugged her mother. "I'm so sorry for calling you callous..."

"The cause is just Isabelle," A'moth whispered in reply, embracing her daughter. "You were right to fight for it. But I still don't know where we can land the children. The Mongolian plateau? Can nine-year-old children survive alone in such a harsh environment? Isabelle... Jim and our own lives have to be the first priority..." A'moth took a deep sigh and looked down at her controls. "Let me do some calculations, and see how much time we have before we have to be back for Jim..."

The time passed by in silence. A'moth worked on her calculations. Isabelle and I strapped into the two rear seats, holding hands across the small aisle. Isabelle sat back and tried to rest. I practiced again feeling the entire plane with my jump sense. It was so huge!

A'moth spoke at last. "It's 6:24 AM now. The cluster-town of New York will probably be hit in about three minutes. With very conservative assumptions, the wave will hit Nebraska eighty minutes later. We have at least that much time before we need to get to Jim..."

"What about Nebraska getting hit from the West Coast or the Caribbean?" asked Isabelle.

"I think the Rockies will stop the wave from the west. From the gulf, South America is protecting North America. Even though the wave topped most of it, the continent acted as a giant wedge, diverting the wave to the east and west. I don't think North America will suffer as badly as most places... It'll still be gruesome along the coast... Gary?"

"Yeah?"

"We have seventeen minutes of fuel left at full throttle. How are you coming?"

"I think I'd like to try it."

"Okay. I'm going to set up a program for a steep climb. We'll transfer our speed into altitude, go sub sonic... You'll have a few minutes... Isabelle, if this doesn't work, the three of us jump, agreed?"

Isabelle nodded slowly. "Agreed," she whispered and then turned to me. "How are the passengers doing?" Isabelle knew I could probe with my jump sense.

I grimaced. "The kids are strapped in their seats. A lot of them are crying. Everyone is expecting the plane to run out of fuel at any moment. They pretty much know they won't be landing at any airport... They've given up pounding on the door..."

Isabelle sighed in compassion. "Tacara's nightmare," she muttered. "It's come true..."

I probed the plane again and decided I was as ready as I could be. "A'moth, execute!"

A'moth typed a command and the plane started to rise, shedding its speed as it did. The engines were still at full throttle we started to risw rapidly. We went subsonic one minute later at an altitude of 19,300 meters. We were just slightly above the recommended altitude for flying this plane, but my thoughts were up, not north. I locked the plane and pushed a jump up, as far as I could go...

"Dad... Are you okay? Please wake up..."

I opened my eyes, slowly. Isabelle was bent over me. She was petting my head, and she gave me a very affectionate kiss when I looked at her. "What happened?" I whispered. "How long was I out?"

"You did it!" smiled Isabelle. "You jumped us to over 42,000 meters high!"

I smiled back. "Where are we now?"

A'moth called out from the pilot seat. "Gliding north at about Mach 0.6, height just below 40,000 meters. Our descent rate is steady at 1100 meters a minute. Gary, you were out for two minutes. How are you feeling?"

"Fine... Tired... It was a lot of work..."

"Yeah... Up for doing it again? The jet engines when into automatic shutdown when you jumped us. There's not enough oxygen up here to run them. On our current glide path, I estimate the wave will overtake us in about five minutes. Our altitude will be about 34,000 meters then. High but I think still way too low..."

"Yeah... How high can this plane go?"

A'moth shrugged and started looking through her technical docs. After a moment Hoshi turned to me and asked, "Do you have a title?"

It took me a second to understand what she meant. "Oh no, just call me Gary."

"Okay... Gary, there is no maximum altitude for this plane. It was designed to fly sub- orbital when equipped with liquid oxygen tanks."

I nodded, decided I felt fine, locked the plane and pushed. There was momentary burst of extreme fatigue, but I didn't pass out.

A'moth called out from the controls. "Excellent Gary! We're at 62,000 meters! All our forward velocity is gone too, just like last time!" The air was so thin, much less than 1% of the pressure at the surface, that the computer guidance could not get the plane back into a glide path. We started to fall like a rock. There were some dim screams from the girls in the main cabin. So I pushed again. A'moth called out, "94,000 meters! Keep it coming Gary!"

I didn't want to, but I knew we were out of time. So I locked and pushed, and ten seconds later I locked and pushed again. That second push took everything I had. I felt very sleepy and collapsed back in my chair semi-conscious.

But I had done it. We were now 140 km (87 miles) above the Earth, in the vacuum of space just above the atmosphere. Isabelle inserted her ID into a slot along the side of her chair, and began typing at a console. A moment later numerous external sensors were feeding video to the cabin monitors. Hoshi cried out in warning, "Turbulence to starboard!"

A'moth activated the main-cabin intercom and called out, "Brace for impact!" The shock wave hit us a few seconds later. It was so incredible. The global shock wave was actually lifting Earth's atmosphere out of its normal layers. We were being buffeting by supersonic gusts of air...

But there was no real punch behind the gusts. The air was just too thin. The plane shook a bit in the turbulence, but everything was fine. Twenty, forty kilometers lower, it would have been a very different story.

The jet's piloting program is a superb piece of adaptive logic. It actually managed to set up a glide path in the turbulence. We started to surf the supersonic shock wave, descending only slowly as we rode the wave north. I could finally catch a few minutes of rest. I sank back into my seat and tried to relax...