Page 71 of Flight of Dreams

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.

Werner fights the instinct to run. The security door is still far ahead, but rushing will do nothing other than make him clumsy. The last thing he needs is to fall and hurt himself and lose what modicum of respect he has earned.

The cabin boy lengthens each stride and reaches the access door in record time. He swaps out the felt shoes for his loafers and steps back into B-deck, expecting there to be pandemonium. Instead he finds two stewards and a cook’s assistant loitering in the corridor between crew cabins. They have the restless look of men who would like to be on a smoke break but can’t afford cigarettes. One of them has made a lewd joke—the boy can tell by the color in their cheeks and the coarse laughter—but they do not look troubled about what has just happened. Nor do they share the punch line.

“What are you doing back there?” Severin Klein asks.

He lifts the empty bag. “Feeding the dog.”

“I thought that stupid mutt was going to bite me when we boarded it. I’d sooner shoot it than waste my time feeding it breakfast.”

“Do you know who it belongs to? Not the white one. The mutt.”

“No idea. I didn’t check. Why do you care?”

Werner doesn’t answer. He simply shrugs and continues down the corridor. But his adolescent mind has found a puzzle, and, as is typical of boys his age, he is fixated on solving it. He doubts Kubis will let him look at the manifests, but Werner has long since learned that the chief steward cannot be everywhere at once. The manifests are kept in his stateroom, and anyone with a bit of time and a master key can get in to take a look.

THE STEWARDESS

Emilie feels as though she is wound tight, ready to spring. She is a jack-in-the-box, locked inside a floating cage, waiting for disaster. She has grown familiar with calamity over the last decade, but still, this is too much. Bomb threats and confiscated papers. Arguments and intrigue. Every fiber of her body feels keyed up. Tuned in. It is exhausting. If she were at home, away from curious eyes, she would pace the walls and pick at her cuticles. As it stands, however, she forces herself to sit with the Doehner family, to stay relaxed. Amiable. Feet crossed at the ankles. Hands in her lap. Expression languid and unperturbed.

Yet it is this heightened state of awareness that enables her to notice the pencil. It falls, rolls to the edge of the table, and drops to the floor. Emilie stares at it, nearly oblivious to the shoving match that has ensued between Walter and Werner Doehner.

“You owe me five marks!” Walter shouts.

“Liar! It was my turn. You owe me!”

They roll on the floor like ferocious little octopi, arms and legs flailing. Something white—teeth maybe—flashes in her peripheral vision. One of them throws a punch, and Matilde Doehner rises with a sigh. She does not raise her voice, merely bends over the children, her fists propped on her ample hips. Emilie can barely hear her over the tumult.

“Stop it. This moment.”

Emilie once heard that a whisper is more effective than a scream when dealing with children, and this must be true, for the boys come apart and look at their mother warily.

“Sit on your hands. Both of you. And if you so much as blink before I give you permission…”