Dormia Read Online Free PDF Page B

lunged at it together, crashing into the glass. The window held, but spidery cracks appeared.
    Suddenly Hill's eyes twitched open. His nose wiggled. His lips puckered. An instant later he was sitting erect in his seat, squinting sleepily through the windshield. "Not exactly sure where I am," muttered Hill. "But I think it might be best to depart promptly." With that, he gunned the engine and the plane began to slide across the frozen lake. The plants of war lunged again but missed the window and hit the metal fuselage with such force that the plane rocked as it built up speed. "Up, up, and away," muttered Hill. He pulled back on the plane's steering wheel. Moments later, they were airborne and Hill navigated the plane expertly through a tight space between two large trees.
    As the seaplane gained altitude, Alfonso looked out the window and saw the frozen landscape of Minnesota expand beneath him, all those ice-covered lakes and snowy fields. From this height everything looked so peaceful, like a soft white carpet lit up by the moon. Inside the cockpit, however, things were far less calm. It sounded as if someone was banging together two frying pans directly in Alfonso's ear, and the noise seemed to be coming from the plane's rickety propellers. Plus, everything rattled—the floor, the seats, even the steering wheel. The vibrations worked their way through Alfonso's feet, up his legs, along his spine, and into his jaw.
    Hill piloted the plane and snored peacefully for about an hour until, rather abruptly, he woke up and gingerly rubbed his head.
    He looked at Alfonso. "You really gave me a good whack with that wrench."
    "Hill, what are you doing awake?" asked Judy nervously. "I thought you could fly the plane only when you were asleep."
    "Actually," said Hill, "I can fly well enough when I'm awake, but I'm really much better at piloting when I'm asleep, especially when it comes to tricky operations—like taking off in a rickety old seaplane in the depths of winter." He paused. "How's Pappy? I haven't heard anything from him since the greenhouse."
    "I don't know," Judy gravely replied. "His foot is completely broken at the shin. He's been passed out now for a long time. He's still breathing, and I want to wake him up, but he should rest while he can. He needs medical attention quickly."
    "He'll be fine," replied Hill. "I suspect he's as healthy as a horse. I'm not a doctor, but being in the military, I saw my fair share of injuries, and I can tell that it was a clean break."
    "I hope so," replied Judy. She glanced at Pappy. "You say you were in the air force?"
    "Indeed," Hill said, nodding vigorously. He eased back into the pilot's seat and began to explain. Back in his air force days he'd actually set a world record for flying a transport plane—56.8 hours straight—on a trip from Los Angeles to Miami. There was just one problem: he had gone the wrong way. He had, of course, intended to take the direct route of flying across the United States from Los Angeles to Miami, but he had fallen asleep at the wheel and gone the other way around the world instead. He flew over the Pacific Ocean, Asia, Europe, and then over the Atlantic Ocean to Miami. The following day the
Miami Herald
ran the following banner: MAN TRAVELS AROUND THE GLOBE BACKWARDS IN HIS SLEEP: AIR FORCE IS ANNOYED BUT PROUD.
    The highlight of his flying career, said Hill, came when he and a Soviet pilot named Yuri Napinoff, who was also famous for flying in his sleep, were asked to do a joint mission in the early 1970s, to show that the United States and the Soviet Union could get along. When the two pilots finally met in Moscow, Hill discovered that Yuri was actually a quarter Dormian on his mother's side. Hill wasn't entirely surprised. According to him, the globe was sprinkled with men and women like Hill and Yuri who had some kind of connection to Dormia and who yearned to go back, but could never find the way. During their mission, Hill and Yuri