True-Life Adventure

unbelievable.”
    “Let’s fly.”
    “Are you nuts? There’s no way to…”
    She stopped, because this time I was already dialing, calling my friend Crusher Wilcox, amateur pilot and small plane owner.
    “Crusher?… No, nothing’s wrong. I just need your help, that’s all. I have to get to Lassen County tonight.”
    “You want to borrow my car?”
    “No. I want you to fly me there. A friend and me. I’ll buy the gas.”
    He brightened. “Oh, fly. Let me see— the forecast says, umhmm. The hmm, something or other.”
    He didn’t really say that. It’s just that when Crusher starts talking about flying, it all sounds like that to me. I think he was figuring out if the weather was going to be good enough to do it.
    “Looks good,” he said finally. “Where, exactly, do you want to go?”
    “Just a second.” I asked Sardis.
    “Little Valley,” she said. “Near there, anyway.”
    “What else is it near?”
    “Nothing, really. Little Valley’s on the edge of Lassen National Forest. Susanville’s not too far.”
    I spoke to Crusher. “Near Lassen National Forest. It doesn’t bode too well for an airport.”
    “This could be interesting,” he said. “Very interesting indeed. Meet me at the airport in forty-five minutes.” He meant the Oakland Airport, where he kept his Cessna 182, and we were there with five minutes to spare, even though we’d taken time to throw a few clothes in a bag.
    One thing I’ll say about Crusher— he’s always ready to fly. Any time of the night or day, all you have to do is say the word and he’s Mr. Enthusiasm. He’d already gassed up and figured out a flight plan.
    You can’t talk in a small plane until you’re five miles away from the airport, because this might distract the pilot from hearing the tower. So we were pretty well on our way by the time Crusher noted cheerily that weather conditions weren’t exactly ideal, but he was sure we’d be all right. Quite a challenge, he seemed to think.
    I asked him where we were going to land, figuring he’d looked up the nearest tiny airport in some pilot’s manual or other. Good old Crusher. He’d probably have it all figured out.
    “Let’s see.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s nearly three now. I think it’ll be okay. Yep. Should be okay. It’ll probably take us a couple of hours to get there.”
    “What does the time have to do with it?”
    “Can’t land until dawn.”
    “How come? If you can take off at three A.M., why can’t you land when you want to?”
    “No lights. Or anyway, maybe no lights. Fall River Mills is the closest airport to Little Valley and who knows what they’ve got there? See, a lot of little airports don’t have anybody there at night, so they turn the lights off. On the other hand, some of them have a great thing— you can turn on the runway lights by punching your microphone button five times. Very ingenious system. Not sure about Fall River Mills.”
    “So what are we going to do?”
    “Well, let’s see, how close are you going to Little Valley?”
    “About three or four miles,” said Sardis. “Southwest.”
    “No good for Fall River Mills. It’s a good fifteen miles away. I can set you down within a mile or two. I mean, who’s going to be driving in a national forest at dawn?”
    “What difference does that make?”
    “That and the light are the two crucial factors. If it’s dark, we can’t see to land; and if there’s cars on the road, we can’t land on top of them.”
    “You mean we’re gonna do it in the road?”
    “Like I said, it’ll be a challenge.”
    We encountered, as the airlines say, unexpected turbulence— unexpected by Sardis and me, at least. I guess Crusher pretty well figured on it because the four-seater was well-stocked with barf bags.
    Sardis only threw up once. I regret to say that my record was somewhat worse. My nerves get a bit frayed when I’m in a plane that feels like it’s being hammered apart by Thor and half a dozen of his minions.
    But do you think that bothered Crusher? The truth is, I don’t know. Either he kept up a line of relaxed patter to keep our spirits up or it didn’t faze him.
    He told Sardis how he got his nickname (shortened from Bus Crusher after a traffic mishap involving a public conveyance), and in between heaves we told him why we wanted to go to Lassen National Forest in the middle of the night.
    He nodded, as if three murders and a missing TV personality came along every day. He’s a