“Who’s screaming?” he asked Brian. “Is the plane in trouble, mister? You don’t think we’re goin down, do you?”

The little girl stopped screaming. She struggled up from the seat she had fallen into, and then almost tumbled forward in the other direction. The kid caught her just in time; he was moving with dazed slowness.

Where have they gone? Brian thought. My dear God, where have they all gone?

But his feet were moving toward the teenager and the little girl now. As he went, he passed another passenger who was still sleeping, this one a girl of about seventeen. Her mouth was open in an unlovely yawp and she was breathing in long, dry inhalations.

He reached the teenager and the girl in the pink dress.

“Where are they, man?” Albert Kaussner asked. He had an arm around the shoulders of the sobbing child, but he wasn’t looking at her; his eyes slipped relentlessly back and forth across the almost deserted main cabin. “Did we land someplace while I was asleep and let them off?”

“My aunt’s gone!” the little girl sobbed. “My Aunt Vicky! I thought the plane was empty! I thought I was the only one! Where’s my aunt, please? I want my aunt!”

Brian knelt beside her for a moment, so they were at approximately the same level. He noticed the sunglasses and remembered seeing her get on with the blonde woman.

“You’re all right,” he said. “You’re all right, young lady. What’s your name?”

“Dinah,” she sobbed. “I can’t find my aunt. I’m blind and I can’t see her. I woke up and the seat was empty—”

“What’s going on?” the young man in the crew-neck jersey asked. He was talking over Brian’s head, ignoring both Brian and Dinah, speaking to the boy in the Hard Rock tee-shirt and the older man in the flannel shirt. “Where’s everybody else?”