The Key to Irunium

I

All his life he had been vaguely aware of the way things around him disappeared without any reason. At his christening, so he was told with hearty guffaws, the water had vanished from the font. “Dried up in the hot weather, old man!”—that had been the official explanation, but it remained odd, all the same.

At school, his teachers—a faceless bunch by now—could never understand why Prestin’s books, rulers, pencils and other unlikely objects should always be in short supply, or why his classrooms always seemed to be short of educational items. But as he spent half his time in the United States and the other half in England, his schooling tended to grow empirically rather than be guided by firm academic regularity.

Walking out to the waiting aircraft at London Airport, a grown man with a job now, he knew he had never bothered about that. He hadn’t cared. He knew from the first what he was going to do: he was going to be a flyer like his father.

Prestin, naturally, had been mercilessly twitted about his name, Robert Infamy Prestin. Yes, all of them, all the permutations you could dredge out of it, he’d had them all. The initials on his traveling cases (written inside!) were R. I. P. An aviator would make a mine out of it, but he hadn’t worried about that, either. His every waking thought took wings, carried him away to the open blue, cavorted with him through the ethereal realms of the sky. He didn’t bother too much about anything else. He’d never concerned himself, for example, with girls.

Therefore, when he saw the dark-haired girl with the short skirt and the long legs so completely unoverlookable boarding the plane with the other passengers, he—certainly the only man there to do so—took more interest in the Trident with its lean and powerful tail-driving elegance.

Inevitably and without any conscious thought about the waste of time, Prestin rechecked his hand luggage as he sat down. Again, without any surprise or lack of it, he found he had still everything with him: the portable, the briefcase, the tape recorder, the magazines. He might have mislaid a paper or two, but that was not of major importance. He looked forward with intense interest to the forthcoming exposition in Rome. Italy always warmed him—physically, mentally and, if he admitted it guardedly, spiritually, too.

As an aviation journalist he had found himself a niche in the flying world that the lack of adequate eyesight would otherwise have barred him from forever. He would never forget the blank horror of that first refusal. The R.A.F., he was told, gently but firmly, required young men with impeccable eyesight.

He had passed every other test with ease.

Now he pushed his rimless glasses up on his nose and shook out the papers, selecting Flying Review. He would look out shortly. Right now he was using the magazine as a cover to shield the reactions his body experienced as the jet came alive beneath him.

Someone sat down next to him and, without looking up, he automatically shifted, although it was quite unnecessary in the super-luxurious Trident accommodations.

Rome would be nice. Not too hot there yet, although he reveled in hot weather and would wear pullovers long after more up-to-date American friends had donned their summer lightweights for the rigors of New York’s sweltering heat waves. Conversely, he didn’t mind cold (although he preferred heat) and he would continue to wear a light raincoat long after his English friends had shifted into thick topcoats and modish British Warms.

But of course climate toleration hadn’t done him any good with the U.S.A.F., either. Like the R.A.F., they wanted men who could see where they were flying.

Prestin had gotten over that double-barreled refusal now, even the wicked one-two disappointment. He wrote good stuff about flying, and he flew as a passenger whenever he could. But apart from a few callow hops in a Tiger Moth, a few circuits and bumps, a solo and a flyer’s ticket, he hadn’t done any real flying. But anyway, flying the old Moth gave you an experience that no Lightning or Phantom could ever give—so they said. He was never likely to make the comparison.

One of his clustered magazines dropped to the soft carpeting. Bending to pick it up, he became vaguely aware of white mesh stockings, long legs that went on and on and up and up—he looked up suddenly, face flushed, to stare into dark hazel eyes and a round saucy face smiling down at him. He was acutely embarrassed and felt like a fumbling fool.

“That’s the trouble with these damned skirts,” she said, wriggling and tugging—without noticeable effect—letting her handbag slide down so Prestin had to grab that, too. “Oh—thanks. And hadn’t you better get up? You’ll get curvature of the spine hunched over like that.”

He straightened up like a marionette. Another magazine fell. He let it lie. He couldn’t face another salvo if he bent over again.

“I—ah—I’m sorry—” he began, not at all sure what to say.

“Skip it, alf, life’s too short for mumbling apologies.”

The Trident bellowed into inaudibility, rumbled for a few moments and then, lifting her nose, catapulted into the air. Everything in the luxurious cabin settled down to relaxation. Bob Prestin settled down to a wary contemplation of the girl sitting next to him. He had no idea at all of what she might be; hazy notions of models, secretaries, film stars and photographers’ assistants flickered haphazardly through his mind. She appeared to be alone. That was nice. He took his mind off the plane a little more. That he hadn’t bothered with girls did not mean that he didn’t know what they were for; they’d merely figured low on his life priority list.

Covertly studying this one, he decided that a little upgrading of priorities was in order. After all, a man born in 1941 did have certain privileges.

The Trident whistled her stately efficient way along the airlanes leaving London, routed out over the Channel and straight across Europe—first stop Rome.

What had she meant by calling him Alf ? Prestin asked himself.

He frequented the hip joints in London; he knew the patter and kept abreast of it; he dressed well, if a little more sedately than most of his friends; and he was with it, in a minor sort of key—but he hadn’t come across that one yet. Alf. Never hit the popularity of Fred. Never.

The stewardesses were anxious to be polite to him, but this phenomenon was not unusual. They often seemed to regard him with his six-foot-one of brawn and muscle as a lost little boy. They—he squirmed at the idea but knew it to be just—they wanted to mother him.

If this bird sitting next to him wanted to mother him, he might have to be firm about that.

“You’ve been to Rome before?” she was saying, glancing at him under violet artificial eyelashes that adhered quite well. Her face had been made up with extreme attention to detail in the fashion currently in vogue: heavily emphasized eyes, unpowdered nose, glisten-lipsticked lips that, at least to Prestin, looked gangrenous.

“Yes,” he said, jerking his eyes away from her face. Poor thing, he felt with some compassion, a stunner in looks, really, and she does that to her face. “Oh, yes. I’ve been to Rome before.”

“This is my first trip. I’m looking forward—oh, you can’t guess how I’m looking forward to it.”

“No?” he said politely, amused by her freshness and unselfconscious awareness of herself. Her voice pitched high and clear without a falter.

She wore a short leather coat of darkish maroon and now she began to wriggle around to take it off, revealing a scintillant dress, loosely girdled at the hips, fashioned in slinky green, silver, and a shimmery rose color. Prestin liked it.

He helped her with her coat and waited while she snuggled back again, wondering why she had elected to sit next to him. Across the aisle he could see another girl, blonde and quite pretty, with the same outre uniform of facial makeup as this girl. Beyond her sat a dark man in the inconspicuous gray suit of business efficiency, wearing thick hornrimmed glasses on his thin pinched nose. Prestin had never been one to burden himself with the appurtenances of the modern world in any shape or form if they did not suit him. The idea of loading down your face with a massive pair of thick glasses because the theory went that it made you look important and impressive, lifted you into the executive class, amused him with its infantile idiocy; Uniforms belonged to uniformed minds. He wore his own dark gray traveling suit because he liked it; it was comfortable. That minor flunky’s glasses were going to torture him in Rome.

The girl fidgeted with her bag, eventually producing a cigarette pack and a small jeweled lighter. She offered a cigarette to Prestin.

“No, thanks,” he said, a little offended. “I’ve given up.”

“So that explains it,” she said with a barbed smile.

“Explains what?”

“I thought you were an American—then I thought I was mistaken, and you were English. So—”

Amused again that the old ambiguity should come up, and so quickly, with this girl, Prestin said, “I’m both.”

“Well,” she said, flicking her lighter. “Lucky you.”

“Yes,” said Prestin, meaning it.

“I’m Fritzy Upjohn.” The way she said it made it a formal introduction, nothing more.

“Robert Prestin.” He matched her tone.

The Trident wheeled, the power from her triple engines cutting a clean course through the upper levels. The quiet comfort and luxury of the cabin afforded a futuristic comparison with the old propeller-piston engine planes that had had their day lording it in the skies. Prestin’s father had told him long ago, while showing him how to control-line fly a remarkable gas job they had built together: “Aviation grew up almost too fast for its own good, Bob. Luckily for everyone, there were a few long-sighted and level-headed people around, and we muddled through. There won’t be many more opportunities for muddling through in the future. A mistake then—and blooey!—that’s the third planet gone.”

Even then young Prestin had known he wouldn’t be someone to blind himself to realities, to act out a fantasy against unreason and fear. He’d met the R.A.F. refusal, and he’d faced up to it, squarely. But this girl now, Fritzy Upjohn with the long legs and the pretty face ruined by makeup—this girl represented an area of life which, to employ the old routine again, he had so far failed to face up to.

The journey unreeled and, in his own stiff and punctilious way, he talked to Fritzy. She said she was a model, and this assignment was alf and gone, fab and all the rest. Young—she could only have been almost twenty—she bubbled with the animal confidence and poise of a self-possessed and extraordinarily observant young girl. Prestin found an amused awe stealing over his thinking; she tended to curl his ideas at the edges.

She took no time at all to skewer through to his preoccupation; maybe the magazines clued her in there.

“I always say that three engines are better than two, and four are safer than three. But then, I’m only the fare-paying passenger and my views in a technical world don’t count.”

Prestin smiled. “I’m only a fare-paying passenger, too. Or, to be correct, I’m a passenger with my fare paid. I prefer more than one or two engines myself; but if the technical and scientific boys tell us that two giant engines are all right—we have to believe them.”

“It sends shivers up my backbone.” She shivered, a most interesting and rewarding experience for Prestin. “Just think,” she said, flinging one limp hand out dramatically. “Four or five hundred people all crammed in on seats like on top of a bus, and one of these damned great engines stops or something. Why, she—she’d—”

“Spin in?”

“She’d ker-rash! alf, and that wouldn’t be funny.”

“It would be far from funny. But they guarantee the engines.”

“Yeah, I’m sure they do. I don’t want to talk about airplanes any more. Let’s talk about you or me or nothing.” She lay back and closed her eyes, the lashes moving with a gentle lagging motion of their own. She looked too young and defenseless to be out of the nest, even though Prestin knew well enough that the claws were only temporarily sheathed.

Preston almost always enjoyed flying. When the stewardesses came around with the meal trays he prepared to eat the excellent meal with gusto, glad when Fritzy opened her eyes, sat up and accepted her own tray. He knew she really had been asleep but even if she hadn’t been, he would be reconciled to a woman’s stratagem for disposing of his own unwelcome company.

He ate without worrying about the food, being fully committed to the girl now, dizzied a little and yet exhilarated. She ate hungrily, he could see clearly, without having any idea of what he was thinking. Why should she have? On a luxury air flight, flying non-stop to Rome, eating and drinking well, looking forward to the adventures that lay ahead, she was fully committed to her own life. She would have no time for him yet. Not yet.

Perhaps after she’d been through Ciampino-West and experienced Rome, she might wish for a companion, to share in these new delights with her. Robert Infamy Prestin saw with sardonic amusement the way he was going and yet he was incapable of halting that fool’s progress by a single step.

Soon they would be circling to join the pattern over Ciampino-West and coming in for one of the Trident’s smooth and foolproof landings. Just how should he go about retaining in conversation a young girl that he didn’t even know existed until a few hours ago? Lack of this kind of vital practice daunted Prestin. He would have to figure something out that, like the Trident’s landing, would operate in automatic and infallible perfection. While he was thinking to himself, Fritzy had left her seat and gone to powder her nose. He chuckled to himself about that unpowdered nose and he waited for her to come back.

The blonde girl leaned a little into the aisle and looked back. She half-smiled at Prestin.

“I didn’t see Fritzy get up,” she said in a husky voice. “I heard you two talking”—this by way of explanation—“but we’ll be fastening seat belts soon, won’t we?”

“Don’t worry, Sibyl,” the thick-glassed specimen said tartly. “You know Fritzy, madder than a March Hare. The stewardess will straighten her out.”

“Yes, well, I hope so,” said Sibyl. She sank back into her chair and stretched out chubby legs that, with their mesh-nylon stockings and short skirt, made Prestin think in a kind of hilarious rib-tickler of Fritzy’s long and elegant legs. But this Sibyl seemed to be a nice kid and also fond of Fritzy; his theory that she was traveling alone, and all his plans, had been incidentally knocked for a loop.

He leaned forward and glanced across the aisle past Sibyl at the man in the next seat. He looked like an unpleasant—yes, that was the word—an unpleasant character. Sleazy. With a high forehead, fair hair and somehow indecent big nose—soft, like putty—he looked overly large, blown up. His skin was pitted with tiny black-shadowed holes, like orange skin. His face held an orange cast, too. It wasn’t that Prestin had ever worried about the color of a man’s skin, but this strange hue suggested aspirations that had not materialized; he found it difficult to articulate his instinctive dislike for the man.

Fritzy did not resume her seat.

“Wherever can she be?” Sibyl fretted.

Prestin found it strange. Any minute now their plane would be in the layer and seat belts would become necessary. Fritzy had struck him as being an unconventional girl, a bit of a madcap they’d have said when ultra-short skirts were last in fashion, and she was liable to do anything. But this could be serious.

The stewardess went past, glanced at the empty seat, frowned, and tilted her head inquiringly at Sibyl.

“No,” said Sibyl. “I don’t think so.”

“I’ll check,” the stewardess said efficiently, and went swaying up the aisle, a gathering wave of reassurance following her progress.

A few moments later she returned, shaking her head. “She isn’t there. This is most odd. I’ve checked all over—where she can possibly be?” The stewardess, young, efficient, sterile-dressed and practical, found this contretemps more than puzzling. “I’ll have to speak to the captain. He’ll know what to do.”

Close though the aircraft was to Ciampino, the captain himself came back aft. Middle-aged, craggy, beginning to run to fat a little, with a round dedicated face, he poked about with the stewardess in all the obvious places. People in other seats turned their heads. Conversation went onto the private-I’m-talking-about-you channels. The Trident whistled serenely through the air and the captain grew shorter and shorter in his replies.

“The hatch hasn’t been opened. The doors are fast shut. Anyway, we’d have known—and the air pressure is normal.”

“She must be somewhere—”

An odd, thrilling shiver of unbidden alarm tickled Prestin unpleasantly. “You mean,” he said tartly, “she must be aboard somewhere.”

“Well,” said the stewardess, as though Prestin were a lunatic. “Well, of course, sir.”

“Fritzy wouldn’t jump out of an airplane!” Sibyl sounded as though the idea offended her mortal and immortal soul. “Of course she wouldn’t—”

“She couldn’t.” The captain didn’t want to hear any more about passengers—his passengers—jumping. “She is aboard somewhere. And if she’s playing a joke, when I find her, I’ll—I’ll—”

“If,” said Prestin, not too loudly. “If she’s still aboard.”

From that moment on until the Trident touched down with a featherlight impact and rolled smoothly to dispersal, the interior was searched, researched, and then searched again.

No Fritzy.

Gone.

Vanished.

No longer on passenger list.

“But,” said a chalk-faced Sibyl, “she can’t have just vanished into thin air!”

“She can’t,” said Prestin. “But she has!”