Beyond Our Control

Book Excerpt.

For seven transcontinental stateliness, the situation was almost tragic. The superfast, rocket-driven, robot-controlled ships, speeding their way through the lower ozonosphere, fifteen miles above the surface of the Earth, were suddenly without the homing beams they depended upon to guide them safely to their destinations. Their beam-detection instruments went into a search pattern while alarm bells shattered the quiet within. Passengers in the lounges and in the cocktail rooms looked suddenly wide-eyed. Not until the flight captain caught the hysterical passenger on the chin with a hard right uppercut and explained that everything was in good order did the passengers quiet down. He didn't worry them by explaining that there were no parachutes aboard; at eighty thousand feet of altitude and a velocity of over forty miles per minute, a parachute would be worse than useless.