The Night of the Triffids by Simon Clark Page B

around three hundred knots, the turbulence buffeting the plane like a breeze would a feather. The sheeting rain dazzlingly reflected the plane's lights. Slipstream howled mournfully over the wings.
        My heartbeat increased; perspiration slid unpleasantly down my chest.
        I now abandoned options two and three. I descended. Still I could see no ground below. And yet at this height (the altimeter was at all but zero) I could easily bury this thirty-year-old aircraft into the side of one of the Isle of Wight's gently rolling hills.
        'David… David, can you see the runway yet?'
        'No.' But then, I could see damn-all anyway.
        I throttled back again, taking the airspeed down to two-fifty. The plane's nose dropped a little, and we were a few feet closer to terra firma.
        'Good grief,' I gasped.
        'What's wrong?' Seymour called.
        'Sea,' I said tersely. Just feet below us I had suddenly seen waves.
        They were white-flecked; the sudden gusts of wind had stirred up the sea into a boiling mass.
        I had to keep a steady nerve. There was no point in taking the plane higher. Our fuel was all but gone in any case. Besides, if I lost sight of the sea I wouldn't know when we did reach land. I banked left, the plane's port wing-tip almost top-slicing the waves. A moment later the nose was pointing north. Now I must reach land. Either our island or the mainland. Not that it mattered now.
        I'd have to land the plane in the next sixty seconds or we risked getting more than our feet wet.
        'David, I think…'
        'Please, not now, Seymour. I'm going to have to do some concentrating for the next minute.'
        He clammed up.
        In the lights beneath me, the sea raged. I fancied I could even see individual spray droplets flying up towards the aircraft.
        A red light winked on the control panel beneath the fuel gauge. You didn't have to be an aviation expert to know what that meant. I eased the throttle back, trying to conserve the precious splash of fuel that by now could barely have wetted the bottom of the tank.
         Nice and easy does it…
        Ahead. A darker mass. One that didn't reflect the lights.
        I told myself that if it wasn't land I'd eat my hat, with my plimsolls for pudding.
        I could see no outcrops of rock, no trees or houses. It looked like flat pasture down there. There was no chance of going in with the undercarriage lowered. If the nose wheel hit so much as a rut or a rabbit hole we'd cartwheel. We'd have to slide in on the plane's smooth belly.
        'Hold on tight,' I said. 'We're going in.'
        
***
        
        The landing made me lose interest for a while in pretty much everything this big, wide world had to offer.
        Eventually, I opened my eyes and thought I was waking in bed.
        But I could hear rattling sounds against my skull. Gingerly, I probed my head with my fingers. It was numb - no sensation whatsoever. My fingers were numb, too.
        Then, in a sudden moment of clear awareness, I realized that I was still sitting in the aircraft. The rattling sounds were rain drops falling on my aluminum flying helmet. Someone had raised the cockpit canopy.
        My neck ached. And the way pains were shooting up my shins didn't bode well, either. I released the harness and groaned.
        'David,' a voice shouted above the sound of the tapping rain. 'Are you all right?'
        I nodded. That made my neck ache, but at least everything moved as it should have. 'Seymour?' I called back.
        'Yes?'
        'Are you still in the plane?'
        'Yes. I thought I'd wait here until you came round.'
        'Good God. How long have you been sitting there?'
        'About half an hour.'
        'You idiot. There might, still be enough fuel in the tanks to blow us sky-high. Why didn't you get out?'
        'I didn't realize. Sorry.'
        Now that my senses