The Finger in the Sky Affair

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Screaming, the man pelted from the blazing wreckage towards the airport buildings and the control tower. Flame licked the trousers and sleeves of his lightweight suit, his tie was on fire, and thin trails of smoke streamed from his hair. Behind him, the inferno which lay across the main runway dwarfed the scarlet shapes of fire truck and ambulance racing towards it along the perimeter track.

To the horrified watchers in the tower and along the crowded observation terraces, the man's pumping legs seemed hardly to move him across the immensity of the apron (one of the ambulances had changed course and was dashing across the field to intercept him). "Lie down, man! Lie down and roll," the duty officer was shouting impotently behind his green glass window high in the tower. "Lie down and roll on the ground to smother the flames, you idiot!" But the injured man was still running, staggering now, falling to the sun-drenched asphalt, dragging himself to his feet and stumbling doggedly on. When he was near enough for the airport workers pounding towards the crash to see his open mouth and staring eyes, a second explosion erupted from the center of the wrecked plane. One of the lazily spinning fragments of incandescent debris brushed him lightly with its flaming tail as it flew past and dropped him once more to the ground. This time he did not get up.

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