The Nameless Luna novel · Chapter 10 of 32

Chapter 10: River Bar

"We're leaking," I said.

"Fuel?"

"Fuel."

The engine coughed again, longer this time.

Then it quit.

Just the wind on the windshield and the propeller windmilling, slow, useless.

I trimmed for seventy knots without thinking about it.

"Tell me what to do," Warrick said.

His voice was very calm.

"Tighten your belt. Then don't talk."

He tightened his belt.

Below us everything was black, except the river.

It ran through the hills in a pale ribbon under a half moon.

And in a bend, a gravel bar.

Long and flat.

I put the wheels down out of the floats and heard them lock.

I had one try.

I came down the river low, in the dark, with the hills on both sides higher than me.

No engine to save a bad guess.

The bar came up out of the moonlight.

I held her off. Held her. Held her.

The wheels hit, bounced, hit again and stayed.

Gravel roared under the floats.

We rolled and rolled and stopped twenty feet from open water.

I sat with both hands on the yoke.

Warrick let his breath out.

"Can I talk now?"

"Yes."

"That was the best thing I've ever seen anybody do."

"It was a gravel bar."

"Don't."

The radio got nothing down in the valley.

I dug my satellite messenger out of my flight bag and thumbed out our position to Coldfoot base.

Down safe. River bar. Fuel leak. Both fine.

Three minutes later it buzzed.

GUSSIE: coming at first light. dont you dare die.

The thermometer on the strut said four below.

We built a fire of driftwood on the bar.

Then we lay down side by side in the Otter's cabin, in our coats, under the medevac blankets.

"Tell me something," he said in the dark. "So I don't think about my feet."

"Like what?"

"Anything. What you were going to be, before."

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