THE most unbelievable ten pages…

Atlas Shrugged – Day 063 – pp. 689-698 (Oooooh. End of Part II coming up.)

It’s an airfield.

Dagny tells the night dispatcher boy to pick up Mr. Kellogg. She’s got other plans.

She has to get to Quentin Daniels before “they” do and she’ll do it any way she can.

Owen offers to see the train to its destination for her. But why is he doing it?

“I just want you to see what it’s like to do something you want, for once.”

The air field has 2 planes. One is a burned out heap. The other is a shiny new beaut.

The airfield was manned by another schlep who had no idea what he was doing. When Dagny and Owen ask about the availability of the plane, he has no idea what to do.

“The decision was made for him 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 hear 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.”

OK

“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.”

Wait a minute. . .

“. . .but at the last moment, when the attendant switched on the floodlights, when she was about to climb aboard, she paused. . .”

WAIT A MINUTE! WHO’S FLYING THIS DAMN THING???

She’s flying the plane?!?!? OH COME ON!!! At night. On instruments. Without a formal flight plan. With only a map.

WTF Ayn!!!

Yeah, I guess she is.

So Rand goes on for about three pages describing her flight through the night. Blah Blah. I can’t believe she’s flying a plane. She’s never flown a plane before.

Anyway, as she comes upon the airfield at Afton, UT (no chance of getting lost in the dark. . .) she has to circle because a plane is taking off.

After landing (perfect three point landing no doubt) she asks the field attendant if she can get a lift to the Institute where Daniels works.

“. . .but what for? Nobody’s there.”

“Mr. Quentin Daniels is there.”

The attendant shook his head slowly — then jerked his thumb, pointing east the the shrinking taillights of the plane. “There’s Mr. Daniels.”

OH COME ON!!!

“What?”

“He just left.”

“Left? Why?”

“He went with a man who flew in for him two-three hours ago.”

“What man?”

“Don’t know, never saw him before, but, wow! — he’s got a beauty of a ship.”

OH. . . . . COME ON!!!

I’m in stunned disbelief. How the hell does this story come to this?

“She was back at the wheel, she was speeding down the runway. . .”

OH. . . . NO FUCKING WAY! She’s gonna chase down John Galt?!  In a plane?

OK. I suppose this is supposed to show us her culmination of frustration at fighting the G, at fighting her mysterious destroyer. Her final maddened stab at reclaiming some control over the world that she’s living in. But Jeez. . .

Yep.

“She felt nothing but the emptiness left by a fire that had been hatred and anger and the desperate impulse of a fight to the kill . . . [she would] give her life, if she could take his first.”

OK, I can sympathize with that. But all this flying nonsense. How much gas does she even have?

As she gives chase, she sees him taking an unusual route. One that doesn’t seem to lead anywhere. (How would she know.) Then the plane banked into a big curve and started spiraling down. Then she lost sight of the plane behind a ridge of rocks.

“She banked sharply, circling above the valley. . .”

Why not?

As she circles down after her destroyer, she seems to get disoriented. Suddenly the propeller dies. She’s struggling. Gliding in to a field she can’t be sure is there.

“Flung from side to side, like a battered pendulum, clinging to the wheel, half in her seat, half on her knees, she fought to pull the ship into a glide, for an attempt to make a belly-landing. . .”

Uh. . . a belly-landing??

“And in answer to the earth that flew to meet her, she heard in her mind, as her mockery at fate, as her cry of defiance, the words of the sentence she hated – the words of defeat, of despair and of a plea for help:

“Oh hell! Who is John Galt?”

I expect we’ll meet him soon. . .