Wyatt’s Hurricane

For nearly an hour Hansen battled with the big wind and, just when he thought he could bear it no longer, the plane was thrown out of the clouds, spat forth as a man spits out an orange pip. He signalled for Morgan to take over and sagged back in his seat completely exhausted.

As the buffeting lessened Wyatt took stock. Half of Jablonsky’s equipment had packed up, the tell-tale dials recording zero. Fortunately the tapes had kept working so all was not lost. Smith’s tale was even sorrier – only three of a round dozen capsules had returned signals, and those had suddenly ceased half-way through the flight when the recorder had been torn bodily from its mounting with a sputter of sparks and the tapes had stopped.

‘Never mind,’ said Wyatt philosophically. ‘We got through.’

Jablonsky mopped water from the top of his console. ‘That was too goddam rough. Another one like that and I’ll take a ground job.’

Smith grunted. ‘You and me both.’

Wyatt grinned at them. ‘You’re not likely to get another like that in a hurry,’ he said. ‘It was my worst in twenty-three missions.’

He went up to the flight deck and Jablonsky looked after him. ‘Twenty-three missions! The guy must be nuts. Ten is my limit – only two more to go.’

Smith rubbed his chin reflectively. ‘Maybe he’s got the death wish – you know, psychology and all that. Or maybe he’s a hurricane lover. But he’s got guts, that’s for sure – I’ve never seen a guy look so unconcerned.’

On the flight deck Hansen said heavily, ‘I hope you got everything you wanted. I’d hate to go through that again.’

‘We’ll have enough,’ said Wyatt. ‘But I’ll be able to tell for certain when we get home. When will that be?’

‘Three hours,’ said Hansen.

There was a sudden change in the even roar and a spurt of black smoke streaked from the port outer engine. Hansen’s hand went like a flash to the throttles and then he feathered the airscrew. ‘Meeker,’ he roared. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Dunno,’ said Meeker. ‘But I reckon she’s packed in for the rest of the trip. Oil pressure’s right down.’ He paused. ‘I had some bother with her a little while back but I reckoned you didn’t feel like hearing about it just then.’

Hansen blew out his cheeks and let forth a long sigh. ‘Jesus!’ he said reverently and with no intention to swear. He looked up at Wyatt. ‘Make it nearly four hours.’

Wyatt nodded weakly and leaned against the bulkhead. He could feel the knots in his stomach relaxing and was aware of the involuntary trembling of his whole body now that it was over.

II

Wyatt sat at his desk, at ease in body if not in mind. It was still early morning and the sun had not developed the power it would later in the day, so all was still fresh and new. Wyatt felt good. On his return the previous afternoon he had seen his precious tapes delivered to the computer boys and then had indulged in the blessed relief of a hot bath which had soaked away all the soreness from his battered body. And that evening he had had a couple of beers with Hansen.

Now, in the fresh light of morning, he felt rested and eager to begin his work, although, as he drew the closely packed tables of figures towards him, he did not relish the facts he knew he would find. He worked steadily all morning, converting the cold figures into stark lines on a chart – a skeleton of reality, an abstraction of a hurricane. When he had finished he looked at the chart with blank eyes, then carefully pinned it on to a large board on the wall of his office.

He had just started to fill in a form when the phone rang, and his heart seemed to turn over as he heard the well-remembered voice. ‘Julie!’ he exclaimed. ‘What the devil are you doing here?’

The warmth of her voice triumphed over electronics. ‘A week’s vacation,’ she said. ‘I was in Puerto Rico and a friend gave me a lift over in his plane.’

‘Where are you now?’

‘I’ve just checked into the Imperiale – I’m staying here and, boy, what a dump!’

‘It’s the best we’ve got until Conrad Hilton moves in – and if he has any sense, he won’t,’ said Wyatt. ‘I’m sorry about that; you can’t very well come to the Base.’

‘It’s okay,’ said Julie. ‘When do I see you?’

‘Oh, hell!’ said Wyatt in exasperation. ‘I’ll be tied up all day, I’m afraid. It’ll have to be tonight. What about dinner?’

‘That’s fine,’ she said, and Wyatt thought he detected a shade of disappointment. ‘Maybe we can go on to the Maraca Club – if it’s still running.’

‘It’s still on its feet, although how Eumenides does it is a mystery.’ Wyatt had his eye on the clock. ‘Look, Julie, I’ve got a hell of a lot to do if I’m to take the evening off; things are pretty busy in my line just now.’

Julie laughed. ‘All right; no telephonic gossip. It’ll be better face to face. See you tonight.’

She rang off and Wyatt replaced the handset slowly, then swivelled his chair towards the window where he could look over Santego Bay towards St Pierre. Julie Marlowe, he thought in astonishment, well, well! He could just distinguish the Imperiale in the clutter of buildings that made St Pierre, and a smile touched his lips.

He had not known her long, not really. She was an air hostess on a line covering the Caribbean from Florida and he had been introduced to her by a civilian pilot, a friend of Hansen’s. It had been good while it lasted – San Fernandez had been on her regular route and he had seen her twice a week. They had had three months of fun which had come to a sudden end when the airline had decided that the government of San Fernandez, President Serrurier in particular, was making life too difficult, so they dropped St Pierre from their schedule.

Wyatt pondered. That had been two years ago – no, nearer three years. He and Julie had corresponded regularly at first, but with the passage of time their letters had become sparser and more widely spaced. Friendship by letter is difficult, especially between a man and a woman, and he had expected at any moment to hear that she was engaged – or married – and that would be the end of it, for all practical purposes.

He jerked his head and looked at the clock, then swung round to the desk and pulled the form towards him. He had nearly finished when Schelling, the senior Navy meteorologist on Cap Sarrat Base, came in. ‘This is the latest from Tiros on your baby,’ he said, and tossed a sheaf of photographs on to the desk.

Wyatt reached for them and Schelling said, ‘Hansen tells me you took quite a beating.’

‘He wasn’t exaggerating. Look at that lot.’ Wyatt waved at the chart on the wall.

Schelling walked over to the board and pursed his lips in a whistle. ‘Are you sure your instrumentation was working properly?’

Wyatt joined him. ‘There’s no reason to doubt it.’ He stretched out a finger. ‘Eight hundred and seventy millibars in the eye – that’s the lowest pressure I’ve encountered anywhere.’

Schelling ran a practised eye over the chart. ‘High pressure on the outside – 1040 millibars.’

‘A pressure gradient of 170 millibars over a little less than 150 miles – that makes for big winds.’ Wyatt indicated the northern area of the hurricane. ‘Theory says that the wind-speeds here should be up to 170 miles an hour. After flying through it I have no reason to doubt it – and neither has Hansen.’

Schelling said, ‘This is a bad one.’

‘It is,’ said Wyatt briefly, and sat down to examine the Tiros photographs with Schelling looking over his shoulder. ‘She seems to have tightened up a bit,’ he said. ‘That’s strange.’

‘Makes it even worse,’ said Schelling gloomily. He put down two photographs side by side. ‘She isn’t moving along very fast, though.’

‘I made the velocity of translation eight miles an hour – about 200 miles a day. We’d better check that, it’s important.’ Wyatt drew a desk calculator and, after checking figures marked on the photographs, began to hammer the keys. ‘That’s about right; a shade under 200 miles in the last twenty-four hours.’

Schelling blew out his cheeks with a soft explosion of relief. ‘Well, that’s not too bad. At that rate it’ll take her another ten days to reach the eastern seaboard of the States, and they usually don’t last longer than a week. That’s if she moves in a straight line – which she won’t. The Coriolis force will move her eastward in the usual parabola and my guess is that she’ll peter out somewhere in the North Atlantic like most of the others.’

‘There are two things wrong with that,’ said Wyatt flatly. ‘There’s nothing to say she won’t speed up. Eight miles an hour is damned slow for a cyclone in this part of the world – the average is fifteen miles an hour – so it’s very probable she’ll last long enough to reach the States. As for the Coriolis effect, there are forces acting on a hurricane which cancel that out very effectively. My guess is that a high-altitude jet stream can do a lot to push a hurricane around, and we know damn’ little about those and when they’ll turn up.’

Schelling began to look unhappy again. ‘The Weather Bureau isn’t going to like this. But we’d better let them know.’

‘That’s another thing,’ said Wyatt, lifting the form from his desk-top. ‘I’m not going to put my name to this latest piece of bureaucratic bumf. Look at that last request –”State duration and future direction of hurricane.” I’m not a fortune-teller and I don’t work with a crystal ball.’

Schelling made an impatient noise with his lips. ‘All they want is a prediction according to standard theory – that will satisfy them.’

‘We don’t have enough theory to fill an eggcup,’ said Wyatt. ‘Not that sort of theory. If we put a prediction on that form then some Weather Bureau clerk will take it as gospel truth – the scientists have said it and therefore it is so – and a lot of people could get killed if the reality doesn’t match with theory. Look at Ione in 1955 – she changed direction seven times in ten days and ended up smack in the mouth of the St Lawrence way up in Canada. She had all the weather boys coming and going and she didn’t do a damn’ thing that accorded with theory. I’m not going to put my name to that form.’

‘All right, I’ll do it,’ said Schelling petulantly. ‘What’s the name of this one?’

Wyatt consulted a list. ‘We’ve been running through them pretty fast this year. The last one was Laura – so this one will be Mabel.’ He looked up. ‘Oh, one more thing. What about the Islands?’