Atlas Shrugged [444]
"I'll undertake to remain in charge for you and to deliver the Comet to your man at Laurel."
"Thank you . . . But if you're hoping . . . I'm not deserting, you know."
"I know."
"Then why are you so eager to help me?"
"I just want you to see what it's like to do something you want, for once."
"There's not much chance that they'll have a plane at that field."
"There's a good chance that they will."
There were two planes on the edge of the airfield: one, the half charred remnant of a wreck, not worth salvaging for scrap-the other, a Dwight Sanders monoplane, brand-new, the kind of ship that men were pleading for, in vain, all over the country.
There was one sleepy attendant at the airfield, young, pudgy and, but for a faint smell of college about his vocabulary, a brain brother of the night dispatcher of Bradshaw. He knew nothing about the two planes: they had been there when he first took this job a year ago. He had never inquired about them and neither had anybody else. In whatever silent crumbling had gone on at the distant headquarters, in the slow dissolution of a great airline company, the Sanders monoplane had been forgotten-as assets of this nature were being forgotten everywhere . . . as the model of the motor had been forgotten on a junk pile and, left in plain sight, had conveyed nothing to the inheritors and the takers-over. . . .
There were no rules to tell the young attendant whether he was expected to keep the Sanders plane or not. The decision was made for him by the brusque, confident manner of the two strangers-by the credentials of Miss Dagny Taggart, Vice-President of a railroad-
by brief hints about a secret, emergency mission, which sounded like Washington to him-by the mention of an agreement with the airline's top officials in New York, whose names he had never heard before-by a check for fifteen thousand dollars, written by Miss Taggart, as deposit against the return of the Sanders plane-and by another check, for two hundred bucks, for his own, personal courtesy.
He fueled the plane, he checked it as best he could, he found a map of the country's airports-and she saw that a landing field on the outskirts of Afton, Utah, was marked as still in existence. She had been too tensely, swiftly active to feel anything, but at the last moment, when the attendant switched on the floodlights, when she was about to climb aboard, she paused to glance at the emptiness of the sky, then at Owen Kellogg. He stood, alone in the white glare, his feet planted firmly apart, on an island of cement in a ring of blinding lights, with nothing beyond the ring but an irredeemable night-and she wondered which one of them was taking the greater chance and facing the more desolate emptiness, "In case anything happens to me," she said, "will you tell Eddie Willers in my office to give Jeff Alien a job, as I promised?"
"I will. . . . Is this all you wish to be done . . . in case anything happens?"
She considered it and smiled sadly, in astonishment at the realization. "Yes, I guess that's all . . . Except, tell Hank Rearden what happened and that I asked you to tell him."
"I will."
She lifted her head and said firmly, "I don't expect it to happen, however. When you reach Laurel, call Winston, Colorado, and tell them that I will be there tomorrow by noon."
"Yes, Miss Taggart."
She wanted to extend her hand in parting, but it seemed inadequate, and then she remembered what he had said about times of loneliness. She took out the package and silently offered him one of his own cigarettes. His smile was a full statement of understanding, and the small flame of his match lighting their two cigarettes was their most enduring handshake.
Then she climbed aboard-and the next span of her consciousness was not separate moments and movements, but the sweep of a single motion and a single unit of time, a progression forming one entity, like the notes of a piece of music: from the touch of her hand on the starter-to the blast of the motor's sound that broke off, like a mountain rockslide, all contact with the time