First Knights

Nancy Berman and Noah Dudley

The wind screamed past Charlie's ears as the plane dove towards its doom! Cursing the name of Reed Champion, who had jumped from the plane with the only parachute, she struggled to release herself from the straps which held her fast in her seat. But with the plane headed straight down, her weight hanging away from the seat made it impossible to unhook them! Gritting her teeth, Charlie dug her heels into the floorboards of the little plane and pushed back against the force of gravity. By thrusting as hard as she could, she was able to give herself just enough slack to unhook the straps. She grabbed onto the now-flapping harness and looked around desperately. Below her the ground was coming up at a horrifying rate. Above her the empty cockpit so recently abandoned by Reed mocked her. She didn't have a lot of options!

In a flash, Charlie realized that is was all up to her. Daddy wasn't going to come along and make this one "all better." If she was going to survive, it had to be through her own efforts. Gritting her teeth once again, Charlie began to climb up the harness and out of the cockpit. As soon as her head rose above the fuselage, it was slammed forward by the wind. Holding on as tightly as she could, Charlie continued to pull herself up out of her cockpit and, grabbing onto the lip of the pilot's cockpit in front of her, she began to crawl up the body of the plane. The wind was howling in her ears and plucking at her body, trying to pull her free from the plummeting aircraft. With a last grunt of effort, she made it over the small windscreen and into the relative safety of the front pilot's cockpit.

By pushing, straining and practically pushing her heels through the floor of the plane, Charlie managed to get into the pilot's seat and buckle herself in. She looked at the control panel. She didn't understand what either of the gauges meant, but she was willing to bet it wasn't anything good. The only thing that looked familiar was the flight stick, since she had seen Reed fooling with the thing when they were flying. She grabbed the stick with both hands and gave it an experimental tug. Absolutely nothing happened. The stick remained rigidly in place, and the plane continued its dive towards the valley floor, now terrifyingly close.

Mastering her mounting terror, Charlie grabbed the stick again and this time pulled as hard as she could. At first nothing happened, then gradually she began to feel some movement in the stick, and the nose of the plane seemed to be edging up a bit. With everything she had Charlie pulled back, and the plane finally began to pull out of its dive. With agonizing slowness, the nose came up, and the ground tilted away under her. As the rocky terrain receded, Charlie gave a moan of relief and eased up on the flight stick. With a start, she realized that she had let it go too far as the plane began to nose down again, but she jerked it back and managed to get the plane flying fairly straight. A rough calculation, based on what little she could figure out from the instrument panel, showed that she was flying east, about 500 feet above the Valley floor.

With a sudden start Charlie realized something that shocked her; she was having fun! In spite of her fear, in spite of her fury at Reed for abandoning her, and even in spite of the fact that she was still very likely going to die when she tried to land the damn thing, Charlie had to admit that she was having the time of her life. She finally got the hang of the flight stick and the plane seemed to be responding immediately to her every move. For the first time in her life Charlie felt completely in control.

But it couldn't last long. The plane had picked up a huge amount of speed during its terrifying descent, but now that it was level it seemed to be losing that speed rapidly. Charlie could feel the plane slowing down and beginning to lose altitude. This plane was definitely no glider. Its stubby wings had been designed for maneuverability, not for extended lift, and it was coming down fast.

Charlie looked around frantically. By this time she was about 300 feet above the floor of the Valley, which was mostly farmland. Unfortunately, right here it was mostly orange groves, and Charlie figured that landing on treetops wasn't such a good idea. Up ahead she saw a stretch of dirt road,. It was long, straight and flat, but pretty narrow. Worse than that, it was running north-south across her flight path. Figuring that at this point she had nothing to lose, Charlie shoved the stick over to the left and screamed as the plane banked sharply into a tight turn. By the time she was able to fight the stick back up to a straight position, she discovered that she was now flying northwest away from the road! Worse, she'd lost a lot of altitude in that maneuver, and was now less than 150 feet above the ground!

MUCH more carefully Charlie eased the flight stick to the right, and was rewarded by feeling the plane come around, heading back towards the road. Charlie whooped with relief and settled down to some serious maneuvering. It was going to be close. The plane was slowing more and more now, and still dropping rapidly. Charlie could see the road up ahead, but the trees were coming up at her awfully fast. She could hear her wheels brushing the tops of the trees as she banked to line up with the road, her wing scraping through the trees. Now she was rushing along the road, with the trees whipping by on either side. Sending up a prayer to a god whom up until now she hadn't even believed in, Charlie eased the stick forward and the plane nosed down.

But Charlie wasn't a pilot, and she had no way of knowing that she was still going much too fast to attempt a landing, and that her angle was much too steep. She landed with a bone-shaking jar that threw her forward and crumpled the left landing strut. The left wing caught the ground and the plane slewed to the left, tipping up on the wing and crashing into the trees! The last thing Charlie saw was a curtain of greenery rushing at her...

When she came to, Charlie was aware of two things: that she hurt in every part of her body, particularly her head, and that the world was green, and turned upside down. Slowly getting her bearings, Charlie discovered that she was not dead, as she had first suspected, but was hanging upside down in a grove of orange trees, held in place by the pilot's harness. She estimated that she was about 15 feet from the ground, but couldn't quite figure out whether the ground was above her or below her.

All around her was the greenery of the trees on which the plane was now resting, The overpowering smell of oranges mixed with another, less pleasant smell. What was that smell? Suddenly Charlie suddenly recognized it! Gasoline. "Uh-oh," she thought. "Time to go!" She struggled frantically with the straps as the smell of gasoline grew stronger.

With a sudden "WHUMP!" a ball of fire shot out of the engine of the small plane, straight back towards her! With a final, desperate yank Charlie pulled the straps free from their moorings and dropped out of her seat just as the wall of flame filled the cockpit!

Charlie landed with a "whump!" of her own on the ground, the breath knocked out of her. She slowly pulled herself away from the burning plane, which fell out of the trees in an explosion of sparks. Aching in every limb and a little singed, Charlie staggered to her feet and stumbled through the orchard towards the road. As she reached it she heard the sound of an ancient engine. Looking up, she saw a truck full of worried-looking men heading down the road towards her. Charlie waved feebly. "Hey guys! Can you give a girl a lift into Hollywood?"

The taxi pulled to as top in front of the Steele mansion, but Charlie stayed where she was. The farmers had been very nice about the whole thing, especially once she identified who she was and told them that her father would make good any damage to their tree farm or whatever it was. They had taken her back to the farmhouse where a very motherly woman had bandaged her up a bit, and helped her get herself reasonably clean. They had also let her use the phone. She had considered calling her father directly and having him send out a car, but somehow she didn't feel up to that. Instead she had called for a taxi. The fare would be incredible, but that wouldn't be a problem when she got home, and at least that would put off the inevitable confrontation with her father. It wasn't that he would be angry. It was more that she suddenly didn't feel like being fussed over, which was strange, since she usually loved being taken care of and worried about.

Well, she might as well get it over. She marched up the front door and rang the bell. She told the maid who opened the door and stared slack-jawed at her singed clothing and bruised face to pay the cabbie and give him a big tip. Squaring her shoulders she headed up to her father's study. Just as she was about to knock she heard a voice which set her jaw on edge.

"I'm sorry to have to be the one to bring you the news, Mr. Steele. You know how she was. I told her to stop fooling with the controls, but she wouldn't do it. She pulled the flight stick and threw us into a dive. We were so close to the ground that there was no chance to pull out. I bailed out just in time. I only with that I'd had time to get the parachute to her. I'd give anything to make it me instead of her in that crash."

Charlie threw the door open. Reed was standing next to her father, who was sitting behind his desk with his head bowed. At the sound of the door opening he looked up and said "Charlie! You're alive!" But Charlie didn't care. She stormed towards Reed, who was looking sick. "YOU FILTHY LIAR! I wasn't the one who stalled us out up there with some stupid trick! And I wasn't the one who lost his nerve and jumped. And I wasn't the one who took the only parachute!!!"

"Charlie...I'm...I'm sorry...I didn't know..."

"You didn't know what? That I'd survive? That I'd be able to pull the plane out of the dive YOU left it in and get back here to tell the whole world what a liar you are? Get OUT of my house, and get OUT OF MY LIFE!!!!"

Reed turned to Edward Steele, but he was getting no help from that quarter. Steele looked at him with a cold stare. "Mr. Champion, I think that you had better leave. I don't ever want to see you around me or my daughter or my property again. I trust I make myself clear?"

Reed drew himself up and hissed "All right, I'm going. But my business here isn't through, and you haven't seen the last of me. I'll be back!" With that he stormed out of the room, and a few seconds later the sound of the front door slamming echoed back to their ears.

Charlie was relieved to have Reed out of her life, and thankful that their relationship hadn't progressed any further than it had. But she was troubled by his parting words. What did he mean by "my business here isn't through?" And there was no denying the menace in his words "I'll be back!" What further troubles did this bitter threat portend?