No Highway
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Carnegie asked gloomily, “What’s the delivery of these special steel sections?”
“Enough for two machines will be available on Thursday next,” the designer said. “The remainder will follow on after that as required.”
We stared at him incredulously. Carnegie asked, “Do you mean to say that we can get these special steel sections without any delay at all?”
“I am not accustomed to having my word doubted, Mr. Carnegie,” said the designer haughtily. “I have been thirty-seven years in this industry, and I hope I know what I am talking about. I have chosen this particular solution, one of several, because it seemed to offer certain production advantages, though at a small cost in extra weight. We already have the necessary dies, prepared as part of our policy of laying by the dies required for all our nesting sections.” He glared down the table at the Treasury official. “And I may say, in passing, that we experience continual and increasing difficulty in obtaining payment for dies which are not immediately required for our contracts. If it were not for our foresight and prudence in preparing these dies in the face of all the obstructions thrown in our path by the officials of this Ministry, I should not be able to assist you in this way.” The Treasury official made a note upon his pad. E. P. Prendergast swelled himself out like a frog. “The great company which I have the honour to represent,” he said, “has placed the full facilities of its Sheffield steel plant behind this matter, with overriding priority, in anticipation of our requirements. I see no reason to suppose that we shall be held up for materials.”
D.R.D. remarked. “Well, I’m sure we all feel that that is very satisfactory, Mr. Prendergast. Have you been able to prepare any estimate of the time that the modification is likely to take?”
“I have.” The designer pulled a paper from his case. “In the first place, I have assumed that you will give me verbal authority to commence work now—this morning—upon the preparation of the necessary parts, which are, in fact, already in hand.” The man from the Treasury frowned, and then laughed. “I also assume that you sanction night-shift work upon this contract, and overtime excepting Sundays. Am I correct?”
D.R.D. was somewhat at a loss. “I think so.”
The designer grunted offensively. “Well, you must make up your minds if you want this work done or not.”
Ferguson leaned over and whispered to D.R.D., who said, “Yes. We can give verbal instructions to proceed, Mr. Prendergast.”
Sir David Moon said, “Mr. Chairman, in view of the extreme urgency of this matter to us, may I ask if Sunday work can be authorised?”
E. P. Prendergast stuck out his great jowl and said, “On no account would I agree with that. If you want work done on Sundays, you must go elsewhere. It is uneconomic upon any account, and it strikes at the root of family life, which is the basis of the greatness of this country.” We stared at him, blinking. “God comes before the Reindeer, gentlemen,” he said.
D.R.D. said smoothly, “Of course. On the assumptions you have made, Mr. Prendergast, how long do you suppose this job will take?”
The designer consulted his paper. “We can accept the first machine for modification on Monday the 18th, and the work will be completed by the evening of the 21st. Thereafter we can modify one machine in each four complete working days.”
We stared down the table at him. Sir David Moon said, “Am I to understand that each aircraft will only be out of service for four days?”
“That does not include the time of the delivery flights to and from our Stamford works,” said Prendergast.
Carnegie said impulsively, “But that’s fantastic!”
Prendergast glared at him. “I am not accustomed to that language in relation to my statements,” he said harshly. “If you are unable to accept our estimates, you must take your work elsewhere.”
All good designers are difficult men or they could not be good designers; I think everybody at the table was more or less aware of that. We set ourselves to mollify the great man, and I say that with sincerity. A great man he was, a great designer and a superlative engineer. But not an easy man to deal with. No.
In the end Sir David Moon said, “This represents a different picture altogether, Mr. Chairman. If the company can do the necessary modifications in so short a time, there will be no need to interrupt our present schedule of services at all.” Prendergast nodded. “We can allocate the machines off service one by one for this work to be done. The general public need not know anything at all about it.”
D.R.D. said, “I think that’s very desirable. It never does any good to have a garbled version of these troubles in the newspapers.”
The Director leaned across to me. “They’d only print half the story, anyway,” he remarked. “They wouldn’t believe the other half.”
The meeting broke up. I said to him, “I had a chat with that Assegai pilot, sir. It was at the speed of sound, of course; it stuck for several seconds in the region of high drag. He said he’d been through to the supersonic zone several times. He was quite positive about that incandescent line along the leading edge. He’s coming down tomorrow to sketch it on the wing.”
He nodded. “Morrison back yet?”
“Not yet,” I said. “I think he’s coming in tomorrow. I hope he sees more daylight in this matter than I do.”
He smiled gently. “It’ll come,” he said.
Honey got married to Marjorie Corder about a month later, and on the third day of his honeymoon the test tail broke, at 1,296 hours only, which gave him something to think about. Flight-Lieutenant Wintringham said it was a wedding present for him. He came hurrying back from Bournemouth, where they were staying, to view the body, and I sent him back to his honeymoon with a flea in his ear. But I don’t know what kind of a honeymoon they had after that, because he came back to the office with a considerable extension to his nuclear theory of fatigue, expressed in twenty-six pages of pure mathematics.
That autumn I was restless after office hours. I had nothing much to work at in the evenings and I was very worried about the Assegai. I tried reading Shirley’s novels, but I can’t take any interest in those things; real life always seems to me to be so much more stimulating. I tried listening to the wireless and got fed up with that. And it was much too soon to write another paper for the Society.
One evening Shirley laid her sewing down. “Dennis, I wish you or somebody would write up some of these things that happen, like the Reindeer tail. I mean, write literally all about it, not just the scientific part. All about Monica Teasdale, and Elspeth, and planchette, and the Director going to Kew Gardens—all the bits that made it fun. We shall forget what really happened in a few years’ time and we’ll have lost something worth having. I’d like to try and save some of the fun we’re having now, to look at when we’re old.”
I stared at her thoughtfully. “That’s not a bad idea,” I said. “It’ld be better than sitting worrying about the Assegai.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
THIS BOOK is a work of fiction. None of the characters are drawn from real persons. The Reindeer aircraft in my story is not based on any particular commercial aircraft, nor do the troubles from which it suffered refer to any actual events.
In this story I have: postulated an inefficient Inspector of Accidents, with a fictitious name and a fictitious character. Only one man can hold this post at a time, and I tender such apologies as may be necessary to the distinguished and efficient officer who holds it now. I would add this. The scrupulous and painstaking investigation of accidents is the key to all safety in the air, and demands the services of men of the very highest quality. If my story underlines this point, it will have served a useful purpose.
NEVIL SHUTE
ith friends