“We can’t descent in this storm!” Gerald shouted. “We’ll hit the ocean!”

“If we stay at thirty-five thousand feet with no clean air, we’ll slide into unconsciousness in ten minutes,” Malachi said.

He looked over at Gerald, his young face suddenly looking much older than twelve.

“My dad wrote down the exact pitch and power settings to descend safely without autopilot,” Malachi said. “Read them to me, Grace.”

I looked at the yellow paper, my thumb tracing a column of numbers labeled *Manual Descent Profile*.

“Pitch minus three degrees,” I read. “Thrust levers to fifty-five percent N1.”

“Okay,” Malachi said, his hand reaching for the two metal levers between the seats. “I’m pulling the power back.”

He slowly retarded the throttles, and the deep roar of the engines subsided to a low, hollow whistle.

The nose of the huge aircraft began to tilt downward into the black, churning clouds below.

“Keep us steady, Gerald,” Malachi warned. “If the nose drops too fast, we won’t be able to pull it back up.”

Just then, a faint scraping sound came from the darkness of the avionics bay hatch beneath my feet.