“Mayday, mayday, mayday,” Santa shouted into his headset as his sleigh continued its rapid, unplanned descent through broken clouds. The lights in the small town below all twinkled, reflecting off the thin coating of new snow.

“Ah North Pole come in, we have a problem,” Santa said as calmly as he could, hoping that someone could hear him.

“I need to talk to my chief engineer and I need to talk to him now,” he bellowed as the sled continued to rattle and shake. It threatened to pitch the Jolly Old Elf, as well as the remaining toys and gifts from the sleigh into the gloaming.

Christmas Eve was nearly over and Santa was almost done with his yearly rounds. There was just one small village in Maine left to visit. Santa always liked to save the best for last. And this town was right along his natural route home.

This was the first year for Santa’s fly-by-wire digital sled – The Red Ryder Vista 86.0. It had all been working fine until just a few seconds ago.

Santa, foolishly, pushed the button to make a cup of hot chocolate. He forgot he also had the navigation system, his iPod, the autopilot, a Twitter feed and his Facebook page all open at the same time. Just as the little marshmallows dropped into the steaming mug, both flat screens went blue, the delivery confirmation subroutine shut down, and the flight controls went dead.

Try as he might, Santa could not keep the sled from falling fast. The lights below were getting closer – dangerously closer. The only sound, besides the rushing wind, was an annoying voice with a British accent repeating over and over “Recalculating, recalculating … ”

“Whooooooooa, whoooooooa, whooooooa,” Santa yelled as the sled, all eight tiny reindeer too, did a triple barrel roll, even though he was pulling back on the reins and stomping on an imaginary brake pedal trying to get it to stop. “Oh no. My tummy doesn’t feel so hot,” Santa thought. “I guess I shouldn’t have eaten all those cookies.”

“Thank you for calling North Pole Enterprises, please hold,” Santa’s earphones crackled before it switched automatically to an oompah band playing “White Christmas.”

By this time Santa’s merry dimples were starting to form a frown. But, as the accordion solo kicked in, the music mercifully stopped. “This call may be monitored for quality assurance. All of our associates are busy helping other customers. If you know your party’s three-digit extension you may dial it at any time,” a computerized voice said.

“Come one, come on, come on,” Santa mumbled while frantically punching the “O” button on the keypad, trying to get to the operator.

Just as the sleigh began pitching wildly from side to side, an elf with a chipmunky voice finally answered. “Merry Christmas, Feliz Navidad and Happy New Year to all. My name is...”

Santa couldn’t help it. Even though he hated to be rude. He interrupted.

“Forget all that foolishness! Get Montgomery on the line now!” he demanded.

“Yes sir, Mr. Kringle,” the elf replied, and put him right through. “Aye Keptin,” Montgomery answered quite matter-of-factly in his thick Scottish accent. “On our radar, ah, it looks like you’re a tad low. You need to pull up,” he said.

“I know that,” Santa stammered. “The whole system’s crashed … Ooooooooh no! We’re goin’ down!”

Montgomery’s voice was tense. “Santa, I can’na’ hold ’er together. She won’t take much more,” he said.

Santa was feeling guilty. “I guess it wouldn’t have killed me to have read the instruction book,” he thought. Still, he didn’t want Montgomery to know he had no idea how the new sled actually worked.

“I have it under control,” he said. “I just need to know; do I cut the blue wire or the red wire?”

“Neither. Have you tried unplugging ’er?” Montgomery asked. “What?” answered Santa. “Yeah, unplug it. It will default to manual control.”

“You mean the big cable with the orange label that says ‘Under no circumstances should this ever be unplugged?’” Santa asked. “Aye laddie, yank ’er,” Montgomery responded. “By the way, you’ll find that’s the first item under troubleshooting in the book.”

By this time Santa was slamming up and down in his seat as he struggled to reach under the dash to get to the plug. The reindeer had managed to get the sled relatively level but the sleigh’s runners were clipping off the tops of tall trees. The digital speedometer was pegged in the red zone at “ludicrous” speed.

“Can’t quite……. almost there……. just another…,” Santa mumbled as he tried unsuccessfully to reach down by his feet and grab the plug with his mittened hand. “Oh fiddlesticks,” he said as he grab hold of the thick wire itself and gave it a yank.

Instantly the ride smoothed out and the sled began to slow. All eight reindeer looked back over their shoulders at Santa with very peeved looks on their faces. “Alrighty boys,” he said to the herd. “Let’s find us a nice flat spot to set down.”

*******

As the sleigh hopped and skipped to a stop in a great puff of snow, Santa looked around to see where he was. He knew it was somewhere in Maine, not far from the coast, but wasn’t sure exactly where. They had come down in a long open area, a clean wide path through the trees that seemed to go a long ways in two directions. Santa took a moment to catch his breath.

“Hey. Can yah hear me now? Everybody all right?” asked Montgomery.

“Well, I guess I picked the wrong week to quit candy canes,” Santa laughed, brushing the snowflakes off his bright red suit.

“Okay, I’m gonna talk you through rebooting in safe mode and we’ll get you back on your way,” Montgomery said. “Begin by putting the plug back in.”

“Weeeeeell, there’s a little problem with that,” Santa answered sheepishly, looking down at the broken bundle of wires still tight in his hand. As if to emphasize the predicament, two wires touched and sent a shower of sparks flying.

“Oh great,” said Montgomery when Santa told what he had done.

“What do we do now?” asked Santa.

“Sit tight and I’ll get the guys in mission control to come up with something,” Montgomery said. “We won’t give up. There are still some good boys and girls out there waiting for Christmas.”

“Whatever you do,” Santa said. “Don’t put me on hold.”

*******

As Santa sat enjoying the peace and quiet, he noticed a small, bright light far in the distance. It grew steadily bigger and ever brighter, and Santa swore he could feel a low rumbling in the ground. Finally, there was a blast of a mighty horn, and Santa knew exactly what it was. It was a train, the Downeast Scenic Railroad, making its last run back to Ellsworth after taking children for rides on Christmas Eve. A big, green wreath, with lots of brightly colored lights, was mounted on the engine’s nose.

With a roar of the big diesel engine, the clanging of a bell and a squeal of the wheels, the train slowed and stopped right next to the sleigh. The airbrakes let out a mighty swooosh and Santa could see a figure moving between the seats inside the old-fashioned passenger car. The figure walked out onto the adjoining open flatcar and stepped forward in the moonlight. He took a long look at Santa and the sleigh, and pushed back on the brim of his hat. “We’ll, I’ll be,” the kindly conductor said, grinning from behind his big wire-rimmed glasses. “I’ve seen a lot of strange things during my 30 years in this business, but I have to say, this is a first.”

“What are you doing out so late?” Santa asked.

“We’re heading home,” the kindly conductor replied. “It’s been a long day. We want to get back to our families for Christmas. But what are you doing way out here?”

“Well, as you can see, I’m having a bit of technical difficulty,” Santa answered. “I’ve got my people on it but we’re running out of time to get to one last town on time.”

Then his cell phone buzzed. “Excuse me,” Santa said. “I have to take this call.”

It was Montgomery. “Aye, Santa, it’s worse than we thought.” Santa listened intently to what Montgomery was telling him, with only an occasional “Ahuh,” “okay,” and a then finally, a last, “Oh no!”

He looked over at the train conductor, sighed, and explained the situation.

“They’re going to e-mail me a software patch that will give me some maneuvering control, but it’s not enough to get us all the way to that last town. The sled’s only good for short hops. They can’t get here with a backup until after sunrise, after all the kids are up. I just can’t bear the thought of any children waking up on Christmas morning not finding anything in their stockings. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

The conductor stood there for a minute, thinking, then smiled. He had an idea. “You wait right there,” he said, as if Santa had any choice in the matter.

*******

From where he sat, Santa watched through the fogged-up window of the locomotive as the conductor talked to the engineer. The conductor put his hand on the engineer’s shoulder. They seemed to nod in agreement. Then the conductor turned up his collar and stepped back out into the cold.

“So here’s the thing,” he said. “We can take you where you need to go.”

“But that will make you late for Christmas with your families,” Santa said.

“Well sure,” the kindly conductor said. “But unless we do this there are hundreds of kids who won’t have any Christmas at all. Let’s get that sleigh and those eight tiny reindeer onto this flatcar. Allll aboaaard!”

The gears inside the locomotive clanked as the engineer put the motor in reverse. With the whoosh of the airbrakes and the rumble of the diesel the train began heading back down the track. Out on the flatcar, Santa was busy going through his big bag of toys to make sure that everything was in order. The software download he was waiting for came in, and he transferred the file into the sled’s systems.

As the train chugged along, it passed cozy houses with Christmas lights aglow, crossed sturdy iron bridges and went by tall lonely trees, their tops decorated by Mother Nature with the snow-covered nests of eagle and osprey.

The clickity-clack of the wheels on the rails marked off the seconds, which turned into minutes, which became miles.

Finally, as they got close to the town, the train slowed down and stopped just short of the station. The kindly conductor stepped back out onto the flatcar, looked at the sky to the east, which was just starting to show a hint of dawn, and then glanced at his pocket watch. He smiled as he snapped it shut. “Looks like you’re going to make it on schedule,” he said.

Santa nodded and pushed the big red “start” button on the control panel.

Nothing.

Frowning, he tried it again.

The sled shivered and shook a few times and stopped.

Gritting his teeth and holding his breath Santa pushed it a third time and, after a second, it started to hum as the eight anxious tiny reindeer began to pull and tug on their harnesses. “I can’t thank you enough,” said Santa as the sleigh began to rise. “You, take care,” the conductor said.

“Giving to others is what Christmas is all about – but you know all about that,” Santa shouted back as the sled flew toward the first house. “Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.”