Episode Two: The Falling Machine

Roland couldn't save the engine. He needed to save the aircraft long enough to stop being inside it.

The nearest handle had a cable leading toward the nose. He moved it a little. The engine slowed, the propeller's blurred edge changed, and the flame along the cowling shortened.

Throttle. Probably.

He reduced it further. Less fire, but also less noise holding him in the air. The horizon crept upward.

He wanted to pull back on the stick. Instead he eased it forward and let the plane descend. Airspeed was something he might need more than height now. He couldn't read the dial, but he could feel the controls grow less vague. The land lay off the right wing. Turning toward it took three separate attempts because every time he moved the stick he forgot what his feet were doing. The pedals mattered. He pressed the right one cautiously, felt the nose move, and stopped before caution became another violent correction.

Sweat ran into his eye. He wiped it with his shoulder. Ahead, the coastline resolved into black cliffs, surf, and a long gray beach cut by a stream. Inland, smoke rose from several straight chimneys. A pale line crossed the slope above the shore. Road or railway, he couldn't tell.

He chose the beach because it was the only open ground he could see.

Another line of fire came out of the cowling. Red liquid spattered the windscreen. The engine coughed, recovered, and coughed again.

Fuel had to come from somewhere. Roland followed what he could see. Beneath the panel, a thin metal pipe ran toward a small rotary valve near his left knee. He couldn't establish that it was a fuel line. The fittings looked like they might be, and the pipe was separate from the transparent glowing tube.

He turned the valve a quarter turn.

The engine kept running for several seconds. Then its irregular hammer weakened and stopped. The propeller turned in the wind. The flame shrank, leaving a fierce red patch inside the torn cowling.

He waited for relief.

The transparent tube brightened.

Blue beads streamed toward the dead engine, gathering against a brass collar. The collar glowed orange. Whatever the fuel valve had shut off, it hadn't stopped that.

“Of course,” he said, frightened enough that the words had no humor in them.

Beside the tube was a small lever held under a wire clip. He didn't touch it. He traced the linkage first, losing precious seconds to the narrow space. It went forward to a shutter around the glowing collar.

A separate control. A separate supply. He flipped the clip and moved the lever. It resisted. He pushed harder, and something gave with a snap he didn't like.

The beads stopped advancing. The collar faded from orange to dull red.

He had broken something. For now, the broken thing appeared to be helping. Without the engine's noise, the wind seemed impossibly loud. Fabric trembled over the wing above him. A diagonal brace vibrated in the corner of his vision.

This wasn't any aircraft he recognized. It borrowed familiar shapes but assembled them differently, like a sentence that used all the right words and still meant something else.

A shadow crossed the wing.

Roland looked left.

Something flew alongside him.

At first his mind offered bird. Then it offered aircraft. Neither survived a second look. A narrow head extended from a long neck, its jaw lined with small exposed teeth. Broad membranes stretched between jointed bones. The creature's tail moved behind it, correcting the turn with a precision Roland recognized before he could accept what was doing it.

An armored rider sat between its shoulders.

The rider looked at him through a dark faceplate. A lance lay along one side of the saddle. Straps crossed the creature's breast without restricting the enormous wings.

Roland stared long enough to forget the beach.

The creature beat once and climbed above his left wing. Its wake rolled him sideways. He fought the stick, pressed a pedal he hoped was the right one, and got the aircraft level with his breath caught painfully behind his teeth.

The rider pointed toward the shore.

“I'm trying,” Roland shouted.

The wind took the words away.

He couldn't tell if the rider meant land there, leave there, or prepare to die there. The creature stayed above him instead of attacking. That was the only useful information he had.

The beach was larger now, but the route to it was worse. A ridge extended into the water between him and the stream mouth. He wouldn't clear it if he kept losing height this quickly.

He could turn out over the sea, add distance, and approach the beach beyond the ridge. Or he could pull up and hope. He made himself choose the sea.

The bank cost height. The nose tried to drop farther than he wanted. He eased it up a little, held the turn shallower, and watched gray water move beneath his feet. When the beach appeared beyond the ridge, he rolled level again.

The creature circled farther inland.

Roland aligned with the long strip of wet sand. The stream mouth was on his right. Dark rocks lay at the far end. He had room if the wheels didn't dig in. He had no good alternative if they did.

He checked the harness with his free hand and tightened it until breathing became harder.

An absurd thought arrived with complete clarity: he had a library book in his apartment, already two weeks overdue.

Then he was too low to think about anything else.

The sea flashed under the wheels. He pulled back gently. Too gently, perhaps. The aircraft remained eager to descend.

Sand rushed toward him.

One wheel struck first. The plane bounced, tilted, and came down harder. Roland tried to keep the wings level. The left wheel dug into a darker patch, and the whole aircraft slewed toward the stream.

He saw the bank coming. He couldn't stop it. The nose pitched down. Wood shattered ahead of him. The harness caught his chest, and his forehead struck the rim of the cockpit despite his attempt to brace.

For several seconds he heard nothing but a high whine.

He was still upright. Mostly. The plane leaned forward with its tail raised, one wingtip resting in the sand. Water lapped around the damaged undercarriage.

His right ankle hurt. So did his ribs. He could move his fingers. The smell of smoke reached him again.

He fumbled at the harness buckle until it opened. Climbing out required an effort his body seemed unable to provide. He got one knee over the cockpit edge, caught his coat on something, and tore it loose. Then he fell onto the sand.

Pain drove the air out of him, but there was air to lose. He lay there and took it back in small, miserable breaths.

The aircraft burned quietly behind him. He dragged himself farther away before trying to stand.

Across the water, sunlight pierced a break in the cloud.

A second light showed beside it, smaller and duller, with an amber edge.

Roland wiped his eyes. He looked down, counted his fingers, and looked up again.

Both lights remained.

He had survived the landing. The sky was still wrong.