“How long is it going to take?”

“Under optimum conditions — which would mean pumping with ground power — we could load 2,000 pounds of fuel a minute. Doing it like this makes it harder to figure. I’ve never had to use the APUs to pump fuel before. At least an hour. Maybe two.”

Nick gazed anxiously eastward for a moment, and when he spoke again his voice was low. “Do me a favor, mate — don’t tell the others that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t think we have two hours. We may not even have one.”

5

Alone in first class, Dinah Catherine Bellman opened her eyes. And saw. “Craig,” she whispered.

6

Craig.

But he didn’t want to hear his name. He only wanted to be left alone; he never wanted to hear his name again. When people called his name, something bad always happened. Always.

Craig! Get up, Craig!

No. He wouldn’t get up. His head had become a vast chambered hive; pain roared and raved in each irregular room and crooked corridor. Bees had come. The bees had thought he was dead. They had invaded his head and turned his skull into a honeycomb. And now... now...

They sense my thoughts and are trying to sting them to death, he thought, and uttered a thick, agonized groan. His blood-streaked hands opened and closed slowly on the industrial carpet which covered the lower-lobby floor. Let me die, oh please just let me die.

Craig, you have to get up! Now!

It was his father’s voice, the one voice he had never been able to refuse or shut out. But he would refuse it now. He would shut it out now.

“Go away,” he croaked. “I hate you. Go away.”

Pain blared through his head in a golden shriek of trumpets. Clouds of bees, furious and stinging, flew from the bells as they blew.

Oh let me die, he thought. Oh let me die. This is hell. I am in a hell of bees and big-band horns.

Get up, Craiggy-weggy. It’s your birthday, and guess what? As soon as you get up, someone’s going to hand you a beer and hit you over the head... because THIS thud’s for you!

“No,” he said. “No more hitting.” His hands shuffled on the carpet. He made an effort to open his eyes, but a glue of drying blood had stuck them shut. “You’re dead. Both of you are dead. You can’t hit me, and you can’t make me do things. Both of you are dead, and I want to be dead, too.”

But he wasn’t dead. Somewhere beyond these phantom voices he could hear the whine of jet engines... and that other sound. The sound of the langoliers on the march. On the run.

Craig, get up. You have to get up.

He realized that it wasn’t the voice of his father, or of his mother, either. That had only been his poor, wounded mind trying to fool itself. This was a voice from... from

(above?)

some other place, some high bright place where pain was a myth and pressure was a dream.

Craig, they’ve come to you — all the people you wanted to see. They left Boston and came here. That’s how important you are to them. You can still do it, Craig. You can still pull the pin. There’s still time to hand in your papers and fall out of your father’s army... if you’re man enough to do it, that is.

If you’re man enough to do it.

“Man enough?” he croaked. “Man enough? Whoever you are, you’ve got to be shitting me.”

He tried again to open his eyes. The tacky blood holding them shut gave a little but would not let go. He managed to work one hand up to his face.

It brushed the remains of his nose and he gave voice to a low, tired scream of pain. Inside his head the trumpets blared and the bees swarmed. He waited until the worst of the pain had subsided, then poked out two fingers and used them to pull his own eyelids up.

That corona of light was still there. It made a vaguely evocative shape in the gloom.

Slowly, a little at a time, Craig raised his head.

And saw her.

She stood within the corona of light.

It was the little girl, but her dark glasses were gone and she was looking at him, and her eyes were kind.

Come on, Craig. Get up. I know it’s hard, but you have to get up — you have to. Because they are all here, they are all waiting... but they won’t wait forever. The langoliers will see to that.

She was not standing on the floor, he saw. Her shoes appeared to float an inch or two above it, and the bright light was all around her. She was outlined in spectral radiance.

Come, Craig. Get up.

He started struggling to his feet. It was very hard. His sense of balance was almost gone, and it was hard to hold his head up — because, of course, it was full of angry honeybees. Twice he fell back, but each time he began again, mesmerized and entranced by the glowing girl with her kind eyes and her promise of ultimate release.

They are all waiting, Craig. For you.

They are waiting for you.

7

Dinah lay on the stretcher, watching with her blind eyes as Craig Toomy got to one knee, fell over on his side, then began trying to rise once more. Her heart was suffused with a terrible stern pity for this hurt and broken man, this murdering fish that only wanted to explode. On his ruined, bloody face she saw a terrible mixture of emotions: fear, hope, and a kind of merciless determination.

I’m sorry, Mr Toomy, she thought. In spite of what you did, I’m sorry. But we need you.

Then called to him again, called with her own dying consciousness:

Get up, Craig! Hurry! It’s almost too late!

And she sensed that it was.

8

Once the longer of the two hoses was looped under the belly of the 767 and attached to its fuel port, Brian returned to the cockpit, cycled up the APUs and went to work sucking the 727–400’s fuel tanks dry. As he watched the LED readout on his right tank slowly climb toward 24,000 pounds, he waited tensely for the APUs to start chugging and lugging, trying to eat fuel which would not burn.

The right tank had reached the 8,000-pound mark when he heard the note of the small jet engines at the rear of the plane change — they grew rough and labored.

“What’s happening, mate?” Nick asked. He was sitting in the co-pilot’s chair again. His hair was disarrayed, and there were wide streaks of grease and blood across his formerly natty button-down shirt.

“The APU engines are getting a taste of the 727’s fuel and they don’t like it,” Brian said. “I hope Albert’s magic works, Nick, but I don’t know.”

Just before the LED reached 9,000 pounds in the right tank, the first APU cut out. A red ENGINE SHUTDOWN light appeared on Brian’s board. He flicked the APU off.

“What can you do about it?” Nick asked, getting up and coming to look over Brian’s shoulder.

“Use the other three APUs to keep the pumps running and hope,” Brian said.

The second APU cut out thirty seconds later, and while Brian was moving his hand to shut it down, the third went. The cockpit lights went with it; now there was only the irregular chug of the hydraulic pumps and the lights on Brian’s board, which were flickering. The last APU was roaring choppily, cycling up and down, shaking the plane.

“I’m shutting down completely,” Brian said. He sounded harsh and strained to himself, a man who was way out of his depth and tiring fast in the undertow. “We’ll have to wait for the Delta’s fuel to join our plane’s time-stream, or time-frame, or whatever the fuck it is. We can’t go on like this. A strong power-surge before the last APU cuts out could wipe the INS clean. Maybe even fry it.”

But as Brian reached for the switch, the engine’s choppy note suddenly began to smooth out. He turned and stared at Nick unbelievingly. Nick looked back, and a big, slow grin lit his face.

“We might have lucked out, mate.”

Brian raised his hands, crossed both sets of fingers, and shook them in the air. “I hope so,” he said, and swung back to the boards. He flicked the switches marked APU 1, 3, and 4. They kicked in smoothly. The cockpit lights flashed back on. The cabin bells binged. Nick whooped and clapped Brian on the back.