Chapter 1
She sat quietly in the big jet, wishing that it would set down and let her get off. This was home, the main reconstruction center for Consolidated Airways of America, and there should not be any need for stacking. But, they had been circling the field for some time now. Cassie Kimball decided that she would let the pilots handle the plane and think of the comfort and rest she could secure once she was on the ground and settled into her little cottage. The traffic problems at Consola, the home base, could be solved by buying more land, perhaps. If that was what it took, she would authorize the purchase of more land. Cassie owned Consolidated. She liked planes and she liked the semiannual reports that she was shown from time to time. The company was doing great business.
She felt the jet move into its landing pattern. She was already buckled into her seat and she gazed around her at the passengers. They were all Consolidated people on their way to a vacation at the plush R & R center below them. She glanced out of the window as the jet laid over into a turn and she could see the huge installations, a Vegaslike city, rising up out of desert land, a multimillion dollar Baghdad for the weary who came there to rest. She knew that most of the airlines had such reconstruction centers where they sent their tired pilots, their tired planes, and it all seemed to work quite well for everybody.
The plane touched down and she automatically felt a tendency to congratulate the pilot. He did a good job of putting it down. Maybe he knew that Mama Big Wheel was aboard. She had tried to keep her arrival secret. After all, it was no one's business that she was going to visit the gigantic terminal. She wished, too, that she had not had to come.
Bernie Potter had been very kind, very considerate on the phone when he suggested that she visit the base. "The medics say that Tom Drake has had it. They want to set him down. Permanently. He's logged too many miles, he's clawed his way through too many storms, he's finished his run."
"Oh, Bernie," she said, "knock it off. You know I am very fond of Tom. He's one of the old guard, Daddy's old friend. But, what must be, must be. So, that's that."
"You tell him," Bernie said. "I haven't got the heart. The docs say he has got incipient glaucoma. You know what that means and so do I. You tell him. Please."
"All right, Bernie," she said.
So she was here now and Tom Drake, senior pilot, aging fly guy and all-around good guy had arrived, presumably, too, with another planeload of people arriving for a retread job. She loved Tom Drake. Her father loved Tom Drake, but he was dead and Tom was trying to follow him.
She watched the others file off the plane, then she stood and gathered up her things. Her purse, her bag. She began walking toward the stairway. The pretty stew at the door had a drawn, unhappy look. She glanced at Cassie and her face grew cold and bleak. She was smoking a cigarette, a direct violation of company rules, when the plane was on the ground. Cassie was tempted to say something, then she thought she would just keep still.
"Please hurry, Miss," the stew said. "You should have gotten out with the others. Hurry, please."
Cassie looked at the girl. She was a very pretty blonde with big white teeth and unhappy green eyes.
"What's the rush? Cassie said. "This crate isn't going any place. We've got lots of time now. I like to take my time."
The stew took a deep breath and her boobs popped out a bit. The girl glared at Cassie.
"Just get the hell off of the plane, sister," the girl said. "I have other things to do besides stand here and wait till you make up your mind to move."
Cassie noticed that the girl was trembling. She said nothing. She walked down the stairway and found that the warmth of the day was delightful. The base was a busy place and planes were landing and taking off and she stood for a time, looking at a 707 that was taking off. It gleamed with new paint and polished aluminum and she knew that it had been checked from tail to nose and probably refurbished inside, too. Now it would go back into service and one of its brothers would come home for a rest and face-lifting.
She looked around her, seeking out new buildings that she had not seen before. There were hotels and cottages and a very fine hospital. There were chapels and a schul, a well-equipped city with everything for its residents that thoughtful minds could conceive.
One of Bernie Potter's bird dogs and fetch boys was waiting for her on the ground. There was a little golf cart thing that she rode in and the guy dropped her off in front of one of the bungalows. It was the one that she usually occupied whenever she came to Consola, as the airlines people called it. In a way, she supposed, she was much like the others here. She needed a rest, too.
She had boarded the big jet in L. A., knowing that it and its passengers were going in for repairs and rehab. She felt like she could use a little of that, too.
It was a little after ten in the morning and she wanted a quick shower, some clean clothes and then she would talk with Bernie Potter. She also wanted to have a little talk with the rotten-dispositioned stew who had jumped on her. The girl had problems, and she was letting them show. That was not good.
She closed the door behind her and then looked around the soundproofed bungalow. It was some distance from the runways and there was a restful, calming influence inherent in the decor. There were flowers for her, furnished by Bernie, not because he loved her, but because she had agreed to do a dirty for him. Bernie was always glad to see her whenever she would help him out with an unfortunate termination, an execution. He hated being mean to people. He admitted it. That's probably why he was so good as the general super of Consola.
She went into the bedroom and found that her bags had preceded her. She closed the blinds, drew the drapes, and then began peeling her cruddy clothes from her lily-white body. As usual, the creeping, crawling sensations began in her crotch and she was abruptly ablaze with the insatiable sexual hungers that seethed and squirmed in her loins. This was something new and horrifying, really, she felt. She had never been one for masturbation but in the last year or so her glandular demands had been insatiable. She knew that she could not seek and find sexual relief in the ordinary way. The thought of a man's hands on her person was too revolting to even think about for very long. She had tried to let a man kiss her and handle her breasts but she couldn't even manage that. She thought of seeing a shrink but gave up on that. She knew that she would not be able to tell the guy what her problems were. So, why waste the money?
She hurried into the shower, shivering, quaking as the rigorous throes of massive sexual agitations began their inexorable assault upon her neglected flesh. The urge to linger with soap and washcloth was just too intense and then she stood, shaken, shuddering, as orgasm turned her entire being into pure fire and flame. She was becoming too susceptible to voluptuous sensations and that was just too intolerable for her to endure. There were times when her mind had to function with extreme clarity, times during business meetings when her intellect was needed in its best efforts and her mind would become obsessed with sensuality and sexual fantasies and she would have to excuse herself and go off to the ladies' room and relieve herself.
She sighed and turned the cold water on and she stood until she began to shiver from the cold. Then it was all over and she could begin to select some pretty clothes and get herself made up, ready for her interviews with the people she had come to see. She wished that there was a way to avoid telling Tom Drake that he would not be flying for a while, maybe never again, but she knew that there was no easy way to destroy someone.
She put on a tailored pant suit and then walked over to the administration building. Bernie Potter was waiting for her and he ushered her into his office with a big smile on his face. He practically pushed her into the high backed chair behind his desk. The chair in front of the desk satisfied him for the time being.
"I asked Tom to step in and say hello to you," Bernie Potter said. "He has an idea what you are going to do to him."
She lit one of his cigarettes from the tray on the desk. "It's all right, Bernie," she said. "I'll do what has to be done. You know I will."
He nodded. He was about to say something when his girl opened the door and brought Tom Drake into the office. The pilot's face split into a big grin and he was so glad to see her he could not resist the impulse to reach for her. She wound up in a bear hug and the sting of tears hurt her eyes and there was nothing that she could do to stem the flood of warm wetness that appeared on her cheeks.
He squeezed her and she felt her ribs creaking. He was a big man, a tall man, a dear man, and when he let her go, she stood for a time, smiling up at him, wishing that she could be somewhere else. Anywhere else.
"What are you doing here, honey?" Tom Drake asked.
She went back to the chair behind the desk. She sat back and looked at him, her head tilted to one side. "Don't you know, Tom?" He nodded his big head slowly, judiciously. "Yep," he said. "I guess I can figure it out. Bernie hasn't got the heart to tell me himself, so they bring you out here to give me the bad news."
"I'm so sorry, Tom," she said. "You are not going to fly anymore. You are grounded. Permanently."
"I'm going blind," he said, figuring it all out quickly. "That has to be it."
"We are not sure about anything yet, Tom," Cassie said. "The doctors say that you need rest and treatment and you just may not face any bad news. I do wish you could be content on the ground from now on. You don't have to fly."
He sat in one of the big black chairs, smoking a cigarette, gazing at her with a mixture of great affection and worry in his eyes. She was trying to make it easy for him and he knew it, she suspected. He was not an easy man to fool.
"I'll do what I have to do," he said slowly. "That what you want me to say?"
She nodded. "It may not be much of anything, Tom, but you have to admit that a senior pilot should have perfect vision."
"I've got perfect vision," he said.
She shook her head. "You have perfect vision, but only sometimes. There are too many times when your eyes fog up and you miss too much. If your co-pilot hadn't brought that 747 down in L.A. last week, things could have gotten to be quite sticky. You got any idea what these big jobs cost us, Tom?"
He sat back in his chair and put his cigarette out in the ashtray beside the chair. Cassie noticed that his hands were shaking and she wished that Tom could be hale and hearty as he had always been. She remembered a big handsome man who came to the big house outside of Phoenix and held her in his arms as though she were a tiny doll. He'd bounced her around, tossed her up in the air and handled her like a tiny toy. Now she was grown up and she was repaying his love and affection by grounding him. He told her that he had already been to the eye men on the base and she could easily see the reports. Just ask that mealy-mouthed rat, Bernie Potter.
Bernie Potter sighed. He grinned sadly at Cassie.
"Bernie wants you to get well and so do I. You do just what the doctors tell you to do, and if it works out that you are through in the cockpit, we'll talk about a job on the ground for you. All right?"
Tom Drake stood up. He was a tall man and he made everyone around him know it. He bent down with his palms on the desk and his face was close to hers.
"I'll let you handle it, Cassie," he said. "I know you know what being grounded did to your Dad. He rusted out in a hurry. I don't want to go like that."
She moved so that she could kiss his cheek lightly, chastely. He straightened up and then he said good-bye for now and he went out. Cassie sighed and she smiled at Bernie Potter. He was surprised by Tom Drake's docile acceptance of illness and its consequences, too.
"What else can he do?" Cassie said finally.
Bernie Potter discussed some of the other matters with her, problems that had impelled him to ask her to visit the base. When they were finished with business, it was well after lunchtime and Bernie offered to take her to lunch.
They ate in the sunshine beside the pool that went with Bernie's cottage. Two waiters brought their food and served it, then departed so that they could dine in relative privacy.
She asked Bernie about the snotty young stewardess that she had run into and Bernie didn't know very much that was helpful. He had to check the paperwork for the flight and then he could pull the file on the girl. He said that he would do it right away. Cassie supposed that the plane and all of its passengers were people coming out into Consola for rest and rehab, but Bernie said no.
"That was a regular flight crew," he said. "We wouldn't risk the lives of our people by letting a sick crew bring them in here. That girl is part of a regular flight crew and she certainly should not be surly or impertinent to anyone. Certainly, not to the boss."
"You get the information for me, Bernie," Cassie said. "Then have the girl come and see me. I'd like to talk with her once she knows who I am."
Bernie nodded. He lit a cigarette and looked out at the clear water in the pool. It was plain that he wished he could take the time for a swim. But he could not.
He walked with her when she returned to her cottage and he promised that he would stop by and deliver the girl's folder. Then, after she had had a chance to look at the records, she could ask to have the girl come by for a talk.
"She is almost spectacularly lovely, Bernie," Cassie said. "She has gorgeous long blonde hair, big green eyes, big white teeth and she is very young. A girl like that should not have any serious problems."
"We'll see," Bernie said.
He was talking with her, standing on the tiny porch in front of the cottage when one of his henchmen came looking for him with the golf cart and he went off to his work.
She went inside and asked the operator at the main exchange for her calls. That kept her busy for at least two hours. She became so absorbed in the business matters that she had to deal with on the telephone that she forgot all about her request to see the pretty young stewardess until one of Bernie's messengers rang her bell and left the paperwork on the front table for her.
Surprisingly, she was very much interested in the girl and she went through her folder with exceptional intentness. The girl's name was Carol Burke, she was eighteen, with a brilliant education record behind her. She had telescoped some years in the lower grades and finished high school three years earlier than ordinarily. She had two years of college, the company's minimum requirement, and she had majored in psychology. The rather detailed dossier showed no indication of emotional instability or any other suggestion of nervous agitation. When she was finished with the file, Cassie was convinced that she had learned very little about the girl.
A few minutes later, the stewardess in question rang her doorbell and when Cassie told her to enter, the girl walked in and stood, staring at Cassie with a look of utter astonishment on her face. Cassie was sitting on the living room couch and she waved the girl into a chair.
Carol Burke was wearing lime green hot pants and a halter that matched and when Cassie looked at the exceptional beauty of legs and thighs and svelte hips she was a bit shocked. The girl's breasts were pushing the fabric of her halter to the breaking point. Cassie shook her head to clear it, amazed by her interest in the girl's beauty. That was very much unlike her.
"Mr. Potter asked me to come by and talk with you," the girl said. "I can't imagine why."
"Sit down, Miss Burke," Cassie said. "I own the airline, that's why Bernie Potter asked you to come by. I told him I wanted to talk to you. I do feel that a snotty stew on any flight is something that we can do without. I hoped that you and I could talk and I could find out if there is a reason for your incivility to me and others, too, perhaps."
The girl sat in the big armchair, her legs slanted across the front of the chair, her knees glistening in the sunlight that was in the room. Her big green eyes were too moist and she was close to tears.
"I'm not going to fire you," Cassie said quietly. "I just hoped that we could talk and I could be helpful if you have any real troubles that need help."
The pretty young stew shook her head and tears splashed onto her bare thighs. "I'm sorry I was rude to you," she told Cassie. "I guess I was just tired. I am not usually rude or unkind. And when I do blow it, it has to be you, the owner. That's the way it is for me, lately. Nothing is working right."
Carol Burke began to weep. Cassie watched her for a moment, then got up, fixed a stiff drink for the girl, and handed it to her. When Carol Burke sipped it, her head snapped back and she looked startled.
Cassie smiled at her. "Sip a little of that and then we'll talk. You'd better tell me what's bugging you. Maybe I can help."
Carol Burke shook her head, but she did sip at the drink and then she was all right and she did talk. She had a boyfriend. She was very much in love. The boyfriend wanted to marry her but he insisted that he should try her out sexually first. She just could not do it that way and when she told her boyfriend about the way she felt, he turned cold to her and he said that they had better fold it up and forget it. But, he did leave the door open.
"He said that I could change my mind and call him, but I would be expected to go to bed with him right then and there. That's the way he made it sound. I just can't do that so I had to say I wouldn't and then I lost him."
Cassie sat and listened and she could feel her skin tingling and crawling as it became goose flesh. She could understand so easily. She had faced the same problem often and she was chicken, too. Very chicken.
"Are you here on an R & R?" she asked.
Carol Burke shook her head. "No," she said. "I was supposed to be aboard that flying boxcar that I came in on. They left a few hours ago. I was told to sit tight until the big boss had a chance to talk with me."
Cassie smiled. "I'm sorry if I've upset your schedule, but you simply cannot continue working if you are going to have problems with nerves and take it out on the customers. That simply cannot be."
Carol Burke lit a cigarette that she took from a tray on the coffee table in front of her. She glanced at Cassie and she seemed to be very nervous, a bit in awe of Cassie.
"I've heard about you," she said. "I've read a lot about you too. They say that you own or control about a hundred different corporations that you inherited. The airline is only one of them."
"I suppose that's right," Cassie said. "But, we are not talking about my problems, we are talking about yours. I want you to visit with Doctor Stoddard this afternoon. I'll have Bernie set up the appointment and after you've talked with the doctor, I'll take you back to L. A. with me in the morning and we will take it from there. That's where you live, I believe?"
Carol nodded. "What's that got to do with anything?"
"If Doctor Stoddard thinks you need a rest, you will pack and do what is necessary, then you can return here until you are completely restored to your ordinary good humor. In other words, you will take a little rest for a while. At our expense."
The girl did not argue. She finished the drink that Cassie had fixed for her, then she stood and said good-bye for now and left. She seemed to be somewhat relaxed, Cassie thought.
The afternoon got away from her, somehow. She spent most of it on the telephone and she was delighted when Tom Drake knocked on her door and invited her to have dinner with him. He had to sandwich his invitation in between telephone calls but it got done. Cassie waved at him a bit forlornly when he went off and she was very glad to be rid of the last necessary call.
She showered and then stood dripping on the bright red carpeting in the bathroom, staring at the reflection of her too perfect body in the glass. She could admire the trim pertness of her breasts, their sweetly sculpted perfection, the way they sprang out from her chest without a hint of sag, the nipples pale coral pellets of overexcited flesh. The pale pink rosettes were not too sharply accentuated and when she stood up straight the twin beauties stuck out like the fantastically alluring goodies that they were. She cupped them in her hands and squeezed and she could feel the shifting, squirming sensations deep within her loins and she moved in a way that left her legs parted, the delicately clefted creases quite visible. She kept her crotch free of hair, not because of any unusual sexiness but because she hated hair on her splendid body and so she kept herself scrupulously clean always.
And now she could feel the heavy, ponderous surges of a cresting passion and she used her fingers without thinking and her body shook violently as orgasms began and one triggered another and it was a long time before she could recapture the serenity that her climaxes finally gave her. She looked at the white purity of her thighs and she could see where the juices had trickled down from the erupting fountain and she used a towel to eradicate the heavy rivulets of thick fluids. She sighed and stepped back into the shower again.
She let the water cleanse her, soothe her and then she dressed and fixed her face so that she could look lovely for her dinner date with Tom Drake. She smiled as she realized that she was very deliberately trying to look her best for the aging pilot. And that was sort of foolish because he had known her as an infant and he was at least sixty now. She shrugged and inspected herself minutely in the mirrors. She was quite pleased with the way she looked.
When Tom Drake came by for her she was ready and she was hungry, too. They dined at one of the larger dining rooms. There were several hotels and each had its dining room and pool and saunas. There were bands for dancing and the food was exceptional.
She sat and talked with Tom Drake and she patted the back of his hand as she reminded him that his life was not really coming to an end and if he was so captivated by being in the air, he could always take a flight for a ride. Just let someone else do the actual flying. He smiled at her and his nice eyes liked her but she could see the hint of sadness behind his smile. He was so sure that his life was coming to an end and she knew that that simply was not so. She tried to make him believe that.
"You may still go back to work, Tom," she said. "Bernie says that the medics think they can straighten it all out for you. Give them a chance. They can do wonderful things these days."
"I'm ready," Tom Drake said.
They danced and he was a very good dancer. She had a grand evening with him and when he took her back to her cottage, she could hear the loud noises of parties all around her.
"Now that we are admitting the people from the independent airlines," Tom Drake said, "we are getting in some rather noisy and boisterous people."
She didn't mind the noise. It pleased her to know that people were having a good time at the compound.
"Some of the smaller lines could not afford a place like this," she pointed out. "So, we accept their people as well as our own. Very often we will steal someone away from the little companies. That's how we got Bernie Potter, you know."
He nodded. Then he stood on her front porch while the sounds of much too loud music was all around them. She could sense that he didn't know quite what to do about her so she solved the problem for him by raising up onto her toes so that she could kiss his cheek. She squeezed his hand and said good night and then he went off and she went inside and she realized that she was desperately tired.
She went around the cottage, closing the windows against the loud music that was alive and throbbing in the night.
She got undressed and into bed and then she could not sleep. She dozed and woke and then she dozed again. She sat up, wide awake and she knew, instinctively, that she would not sleep anymore. That worried her because she was leaving the compound the next morning. As usual, she would fly the company's executive jet to L.A. and then the man they sent along would fly it home again. She was going to take Carol Burke back with her so that she could get the girl packed and situated in the compound for a long rest and rehab period. She worried that she might turn surly and ill-mannered if she did not get a good night's sleep, but that only made her more restless, utterly incapable of sleep.
She found her cigarettes in the dark and she realized that the sounds of music and revelry were gone. It was as quiet as a cemetery now. She got up and opened the window at the foot of her bed. She opened the drapes and then she was looking right into the bedroom of the cottage next to hers. A handsome young man and a very pretty little brunette were standing in the well-lighted bedroom and they were embracing.
Cassie had the awful sensation of being right in the room with them because the nearness of the other room and the weird tricks that the night could play made her a party to the lovemaking of the young couple. She watched for a moment and she was shocked when she saw the young girl reach down and grasp the man's visible erection.
"I want to suck you off," the girl said, her voice a whisper. "Connie will be in here in a minute once she gets Fred set up for a little party. I know that she always blows you when she is on your flight, but I like to do it, too. We've got all night, baby. We don't have to knock ourselves out. So, just be a good boy and let mama suck and you will have a grand time."
The girl, obviously excited and aroused, slid down to her knees. Then her fingers were busy with the man's fly, a moment later his splendid organ was exposed and the girl was licking its shining head and using her fingers to manipulate it. She opened her mouth and then she was sliding the huge organ in and out in her mouth while her blood-red nails plucked at the man's balls. The girl twisted her head so that she could look up at the young man and then his hands were grasping the sleek brown head and he was shoving his organ in and out with savage, pistonlike thrusts.
"Suck it, baby," he said, "you gonna get a mouthful of honey right away. You just enjoy, baby."
Then his organ was exploding, swelling the girl's cheeks, and much of the thick white cream spilled from the girl's mouth to trickle down her chin. The girl was swallowing quickly, then she was sucking fiercely and eagerly, trying to force more of the material from the man's loins. Then she slid her mouth off the red, inflamed penis and her fingertips captured the dribbling overflow from her chin. She licked her fingers, obviously tasting nectar, then she stood up and she was smiling as she kissed the handsome young man on the mouth.
Cassie realized that she was shaking violently and she was sure that she was appalled, revolted by what she had seen. It was utterly disgusting.
A tall, slender blonde girl with a nice-looking young man on her arm, entered the bedroom and she looked at the naked penis that the other young man was displaying.
"That fucking Ruthie," the girl said. "She just couldn't wait, she had to suck his cock and take the edge off for everybody. Well, we will certainly punish her for that, won't we, Freddie boy?"
"Sure, Connie," the young man said. "We sure will."
"Let's have us an orgy like the one we had in Omaha last week," Ruthie said.
Connie giggled. "Freddie wasn't there, dear. Remember?"
"Yeah," Ruthie said. "Dan Roberts was with us. Now, there is a real red-hot lover. That guy can pop his nuts all day and all night too, and there isn't anything that he won't do."
"Wally, dear," Connie said to the young man who was standing with his sexual parts exposed, "I want to suck you off, too, but that can wait. I like doing it to you when you are trying to fly. You shake the people up when you come, you know. They think we must have hit an air pocket, but you and I know that it was only because I made you bust your nuts good. Lots of the girls enjoy blowing their pilots, just so that they can get the big charge we get when the guy pops. You'd think a guy would put the ship on automatic or let the co-captain fly it, but no. These bastards want that great big ship in their hands when they come. It's weird. But, I get a big kick out of it, too."
Ruthie began to unbutton her blouse and she was gazing adoringly at the young man who had already partially satisfied her. "Shall we talk," Ruthie said softly, "or shall we have us a party?"
"A party, by all means," Connie said. She began unbuttoning, too. The men grinned at each other and then they began getting out of their clothes.
Cassie was laying on her back on her bed and she could feel the wetness between the lips of her sexual parts and she could enjoy the crawling, wriggling sensations that were alive and seething in her loins. She put her hand down between the sleek hairless thighs and then she was rubbing the flat of her finger deep in the cleft of inflamed flesh. Her hips began a shifting, thrusting motion on their own accord and she used her fingers in an expert and experienced way so that she rubbed the tip of her clitoris as her finger rode deep in the excited crevice and the finger eventually slipped into her tiny, unused hole. She was writhing and shaking with fierce frenzies and she seemed to have learned that she had strong urges toward voyeurism. She wished that she had the type of strength and character it required to simply close her window and draw the drapes closed. She should not invade the privacy of those in the bedroom so near at hand. That was awful and she knew it.
She could look into the other room and see the vast king-size bed and everything in the room. She could hear the merest whisper plainly and she sighed and squirmed as an orgasm of immense intensity shook her, soothed her. She knew, with sickening venality, that she was going to enjoy the sexual frolics that were about to begin nearby. She was certainly going to watch.