Free Over the Rainbow - Book One - 'The Gathering Place' by Robert Vaughan Page B

chest with his free hand.
    “ AAAAAAAH! SH-!” Another wracking
spasm of pain hit Buddy, and he abruptly let go of the yoke as he
now clutched his chest with both of his hands, pitching forward
into the wheel and crushing it to the dash. Immediately, the
horizon disappeared and was replaced with the dark green cliff-side
that filled the tiny windscreen.
    Chris grabbed frantically for the
control yoke and yelped in alarm, “Oh MAN! Not AGAIN!!” Chris seized the wheel, the
tendons straining in his arms, and again his vision
suddenly- shifted . Twisting and skewing between reality and something else
entirely, between bright Technicolor and smeary black-and-white,
Chris suddenly found himself somewhere- strange, but also- familiar.
     
    The brightly colored Hawaiian
landscape shifted and changed, becoming the fractured and garish
nightmare of Dresden on fire, and then snapped back again ,
then slid elsewhere , again in a strange monochrome of light and dark. Chris
looked to his left, Buddy having somehow changed into the dark,
still bulk of another, less familiar figure, its pilots cap askew,
dark blood crusting around a scorched and shattered
face.
    The Electra lurched downward, and-
    The world snapped back to
the ‘now’.
     
    Chris tugged with all his might on
the wheel, desperately trying to right the plunging craft- but it
didn’t budge, having been pinned forward by the crushing bulk of
Buddy. Chris gritted his teeth and jammed his feet into the
floorboards and tried again, now desperately looking around the
cockpit for a solution to their inevitable demise. His gaze locked
on the twin throttle controls, and suddenly, the tiniest germ of an
idea came to him from- somewhere…
     
    … The ground raced towards him,
smeary black smoke streaking across the windscreen, and Chris
attempted a desperate ploy, one he had only tried before in the
comfort of altitude, but one which, if it worked-
    And again the world shifted…
     
    There-! Chris Grabbed the throttle controls with his
left hand and pulled them all the way back, at the same time
twisting the prop knob and reversing props as he simultaneously
pushed the throttles back to full. The unorthodox maneuver forced
the plane to attempt to stop in mid-air, the tail dropping like a
stone, and the sudden reversal of acceleration caused Buddy to
pitch back into his seat, finally releasing the wheel. Chris
scrambled to reset the props, this time without changing the
throttle- a move that in any other aircraft would have ripped the
engines from the wings.
    But the ‘Mighty Menehune’ was made of sterner
stuff.
    With a roar and groan of tortured metal, the twin
radials of the Electra grabbed air again and Chris yanked the yoke
back, forcing the nose of the plane up. He quickly looked out
through the narrow, slot-like windscreen, only to see the side of
the mountain still racing toward them through the glass. Twisting
the wheel to the right, Chris hunched his shoulders and braced for
the expected impact, watching the approach of fate with one eye as
the other closed tightly in anticipation of their impending
doom.
    The Electra banked smoothly to starboard, the roar
of engines ringing in Chris’ ears, and Chris watched the hill-side
approach, so close he could count the leaves on the trees clinging
to its’ side. Gritting his teeth anew and straining to bank and
pull away from the mountain, Chris breathed a sigh of relief as the
view changed from green- to blue. But to his renewed alarm, it was
not the comforting blue of the sky, it was the foam-laced and
turquoise streaked blue of the ocean; the plane was still going
down.
    “ Son-of-a-b-!” He hissed through
his teeth, and attempted to level out the craft with a jerk of the
wheel to his left as he stomped on the right rudder pedal. The twin
tails of the Electra responded quickly, and the nose of the plane
finally centered and rose as the kelp-strewn wave-tops disappeared
beneath the plane, the tires skimming the water