ARIA by Geoff Nelder Page A

but also for himself. Joking aside, he’d never been affected by the constant drone and vibration of jet engines. At thirty-three, twenty years the junior of the captain, the stresses in the job didn’t get to him in the same way. Maybe his blood pressure and pulse rate leapt when taking off and landing, but not as much as the worry of his wife finding out about Hazel Draper. How could any red-blooded man resist her? She wouldn’t win beauty contests, but she’d win any contest for Miss Lust-After. Her sleek, long, black hair, full, sensuous airline-pink lips, and deep, come-to-bed eyes drew out Linus’s primitive urges. And she knew it.
    He pressed the buzzer, calling for her.
    Closing the cockpit door behind her, she looked around.
    “Hey, this is a bit much; throwing the captain overboard just to grab some nooky with me.”
    “Yeah, I gagged and tied him up in the officers’ rest room. Now come and sit on the co-pilot’s lap and loosen some clothing, you minx.”
    “I don’t think your wife would approve. In any case, we have a problem with some of the passengers.”
    “Not again. Another riot over wrong cheese in the sandwiches?”
    “If only. Several of them acted confused when they boarded then one, a Mr Cowley, insisted we take him off because he had a funeral to go to upstate.”
    “You’ve dealt with weirder situations...”
    “But his business partner with him said he went to the funeral last week. Others are missing a lot more of their memories and don’t remember booking this flight. I wish I hadn’t come on it now.”
    “Well, you are allowed to give difficult passengers sedatives. Get the other cabin crew to help you; the sedative in the sweets should help them sleep off the rest of the flight.”
    “Okay. Linus, what’s going on? The crew aren’t so hot either. No jokes.”
    “I suppose I’d better put my smart hat on and do a captain-like reassurance tour then.”
    “Excuse me, you are not supposed to leave the cockpit unattended even if you don’t do anything useful all flight.”
    “It’ll be all right for a few minutes. We are on autopilot and Gilmore’s only having a brief nap behind the curtain there.”
     
     
    L INUS HADN ’ T ANTICIPATED the ugliness of passengers when they were confused. One red-faced bully of a woman insisted they continue their flight to Chicago even after he’d explained their schedule. In desperation, Hazel sought his help to stop an old man from repeat-swallowing beta-blockers. Linus took the old man’s tablets off him and told Hazel to lock them up until they landed. The old chap’s wife just muttered away in Russian.
    A distraught mother hit him with a rolled up in-flight magazine because it must be his fault that her two-year-old son had forgotten how to talk sense. He didn’t help the situation by pointing out her boy had teenaged before his time. Linus hadn’t welcomed the sanctuary element of the cockpit so much.
    He should wake the captain and let him placate the passengers. Gilmore had that mature ship’s captain air of comfort and experience that quelled any brewing unrest. First, he’d like to check on their progress, see what near misses they might have had. Now, where were they going?
    He decided to fly the Dreamliner on manual for a few minutes. He leant forward to flip off the autopilot. It wasn’t there. He sat back, reddening, feeling his face heat from his neck upwards. There on the control panel, a green-lit LED shone at him. Of course some were proximity-sensor operated these days. He shook his head. Fancy thinking he was back in the older 747s.
    The aircraft belonged to him as he took control. She handled beautifully. Even on manual, most of the adjustments depended on computerised actuators and relays. He couldn’t crash this bird into another aircraft, mountain, or office block. A lot of failsafe engineering would have to be disabled for a pilot to have complete control these days.
    A few more slow deviations to port