The Higher They Fly

by Christopher Hodder-Williams

  ‘I’m extremely sorry, sir.’

  ‘It shall not go unpunished. You will do a special course with Rolls-Royce and from there be sent to the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough. You, Fleming.’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘I was struck, from the beginning, by your enormous interest in landing configurations as dictated by the somewhat different load distribution of the modern aeroplane. Though naturally, as an engineer, I was irritated by your tactlessness in confounding us all by being a pilot as well as an engineer, I was able to forgive that sin when you also annoyed your fellow pilots for the opposite reason. [Laughter.] You have detailed knowledge of undercarriage design and I’m told for what it’s worth—though you can never believe what these pilots say about each other—that you specialise in airfield performance in a somewhat obsessive way, such that you can execute a rather original type of landing with a tricycle undercarriage . . . a practice, may I say, of which I profoundly disapprove. However, as a result of your interest in wheels as well as wings, you will be giving special instruction to pilots on conversion courses with a view to their flying experimental aircraft with high wing-loading and fast approach speeds. You will also liaise with the design teams and advise on the practicability of new undercarriage gear generally.

  ‘The rest of you know your destinies. What I am saying is that the jobs you will be doing have been predetermined by your own personal whims. I couldn’t find these out without getting to know you—within the time allotted—reasonably well. When you take up your own assignments, therefore, remember the importance of this. It comes first, middle, and last. When you’re training a man, whether on his own or when he’s one of a group, study him. Find out everything from what he eats for breakfast to whether he can sing in tune. You will have many surprises and a few disappointments. Don’t, if you wish to be a successful instructor, go diving straight into technical swimming pools with a pupil until you know how best he can swim. You’re dealing with men, not machines; and they won’t function properly until you recognise the difference.’

  Ken Woodford gathered up his notes for the last time. ‘This course is over. But don’t run too wild in the next three weeks. Remember, you are not allowed to get married, as officers of the Royal Air Force, without permission. So do not be so rash as to make it necessary for an urgent application to be made. The child allowance in the Service is perfectly deplorable. You are dismissed.’

  *

  So Fleming pressed the transmit button and called Flight Forty-Six and said: ‘My name is Robert Fleming, and I’m afraid we have never been formally introduced. So tell me something about yourself . . .’

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘You’re very preoccupied.’

  ‘Oh, I’m okay,’ said Susan. ‘Where are the dry martinis?’

  Jill ran her finger along the row of little bottles, playing them like a xylophone. ‘Here. Right in front of your nose.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Jill said: ‘Changed your opinion of Jack Hubb?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You’re showing all the signs.’

  ‘I don’t really know why. I hope it isn’t just because he’s being a sort of hero.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s because he’s changed his opinion of himself,’ said Jill. ‘I admit I dismissed him as one of those brash Americans.’

  Susan looked at her. The answer mattered. ‘And now?’

  Jill had her back to her as she reached up for the glasses. ‘Well, it depends on what you can do with him, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Perhaps I’m just being a fool,’ said Susan, testing the words. ‘He didn’t even look at me when he went down through the hatch.’

  Jill turned round. ‘Then in that respect he differs from Jimmy Truman, doesn’t he? . . . Perhaps he doesn’t want you to think he’s making capital out of a rare opportunity.’

  ‘Yes. Come to think of it, he avoided my eyes deliberately.’

  Jill smiled as she left the galley. ‘I think your Romeo is okay,’ she said. ‘Just don’t spoil him. He’s obviously had things much too easy in the past.’

  Susan watched her go. ‘Thanks!’ she said.

  Jill walked the length of the gangway, delivering the contents of the tray as she went.

  Dulcie noticed that the girl was much calmer in her manner now. She felt sorry for the child—it must have been a shock to see her god so incontrovertibly dislodged from his throne. But she had gained courage from the needs of others and was tending them well.

  Some time had elapsed since Hubb had begun work down in the bay, almost exactly beneath Dulcie’s seat. In that time Dulcie had tried unsuccessfully to lay her hands on a suitable drug. Almost any stimulant from the aminopropyl-benzenes to amyl nitrate would have done. It seemed on the surface that no occupant of the aircraft had ever taken so much as bicarbonate of soda, from the indignant way they reacted to the question.

  In her enquiries, she had used as a pretext that one of the passengers was inebriated, and might be revived by a suitable pill. It sounded pretty thin; but it was the least alarming excuse she could think of. Mr Valentine, who in point of fact was the only passenger who was drunk, had waxed most indignant when asked if he was in possession of Dexadrine, or anything else with a reviving effect. And although Dulcie felt it was more than possible that his unwarranted annoyance at her question was an indication that he might well have in his luggage the drug in question—or something more potent for purposes which were not hard to guess at—there was no means of proving it and there wasn’t a case for searching him.

  The mood of the passengers reflected the feel of the aircraft itself—to all outward appearances all was as it should be, but underneath it all lay the concealed question mark.

  Conversation was well-drilled, like an over-rehearsed play, the actors of which knew their lines so well that they had forgotten their meaning. It sounded all right, but it didn’t convince.

  Keith continued to be the expert pilot . . .

  He brushed some hair out of his eyes in a manner he considered to be fetching and addressed a girl who was sitting in the seat in front of him. ‘I think you’d find flying quite surprisingly easy, Pam.’

  ‘Actually it’s Pen.’

  ‘Boob number one!’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Go on about the flying.’

  ‘Look . . . why don’t you let me take you up in the Cessna? Then you could try your hand at the controls.’

  ‘I might.’ She added as an afterthought: ‘That is, if we ever get to New York.’

  ‘We’ll get there.’

  ‘I hope so . . . How can you afford to run your own aeroplane in America? It must cost quite a lot.’

  ‘Yes, it is quite expensive.’

  Keith suddenly found himself confronted by a pair of eyes that were as sceptical as they were attractive. ‘You shouldn’t be travelling tourist class,’ she observed. ‘If you can afford your own Cessna I don’t see why you have to stint yourself on this.’

  He manipulated his love-lock hastily. ‘Oh, don’t you know about party-owning?’

  ‘You didn’t explain it to me. Tell me about it.’

  He fought the blush that was surging to his face. ‘Well, no one person can afford an aircraft, these days. We have a syndicate, you see.’

  ‘Ah, I see.’

  ‘Yes. There are five of us altogether; three Americans and myself and another fellow.’

  ‘It must be a bit of a squash to get you all in.’

  ‘That’s the whole point . . . We don’t fly together. We take it in turns. And I thought you might like to come up with me sometime.’ As if the point hadn’t been made quite clear, he said: ‘You know, just the two of us.’

  ‘Yes, I understood what you meant.’ She was laughing at him silently.

  He looked miserable and said: ‘I’m not doing very well, am I?’

  ‘I think,’ said Pen, ‘that’s the first really honest thing you’ve said yet.’

  ‘Oh, as bad as
that.’

  ‘Anyway, I’d like to come in your aeroplane—even if it isn’t really yours. But you mustn’t tell lies, because you’re not very good at it. Lying is an art. I’ve done a great deal and I know.’

  Keith said: ‘I think I’m a bit out of my depth.’

  ‘Why do you keep doing that to your hair?’ She didn’t wait for an answer but went on: ‘The trouble with you is you advertise. You advertise with your flying and you advertise with your forelock.’

  ‘Everybody advertises, these days. It’s the new medium.’

  Pen said: ‘Unfortunately people don’t always believe the commercials.’

  ‘Now I feel thoroughly snubbed.’

  ‘It’s about time somebody did that to you. Anyway, I was going to say that I rather like the product. So why waste time on the ads?’

  ‘Will you meet me in New York?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t know how to take you. I’ve never met anyone quite like you before.’

  ‘Watch out. I’m as hard as nails.’

  ‘I don’t entirely believe that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when we meet in New York.’

  Dulcie, who could hear most of this, smiled to herself and made a mental comparison between this and the way Hubb had tried it on her. ‘Poor boy,’ she said to herself, ‘he’s for it!’

  Few others in the tourist class had much to say. There were no further satirical comments about the safety of the aircraft. Dulcie’s thoughts returned to the problem in hand. Although she had reported her lack of success to the captain, she did not accept defeat easily. Crooke had told her that in these few minutes, at any rate, Hubb had shown no sign of altitude fatigue and it was up to her to try and make sure he got by.

  But how?

  In the cockpit the atmosphere was as foreign to normal flying as a wasp would have been in one of the airliner’s cellophane-wrapped sandwiches.

  Nobody spoke.

  Geoff Simmonds, who was listening intently to the conversation between Fleming and Hubb, sat once more at the engineer’s panel. The crimson lights emphasised the tension, which had changed his face into something very different from that which Robin had ever known.

  Roger Perkins, sensing the vital spell, kept his navigation strictly to himself, handing Crooke any changes of heading by writing them on slips of paper. Crooke acknowledged these by marking the slips with a tick and altering course by using auto-pilot and zero-reader.

  Crooke, like Geoff, was listening to the RT. Occasionally he nodded or frowned or smiled, according to how things were going. In this he contrasted with Geoff, who registered no change of mood; but only thought of the time limit, of the decreasing fuel supply, of the impending date with a runway which no raincheck could ever delay, once those tanks had been sucked almost dry.

  The words that came through the headphones were not reassuring.

  ‘Oaf! I said cut along the line opposite frame number five-eight-two.’

  ‘This is five-eight-two,’ said Jack, aggressive as his tutor.

  ‘How can it be? You say you’ve exposed a hydraulic pipe?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, you’re lucky you didn’t axe your way straight through it. Look again, man!’

  ‘All right. I have it.’

  ‘Marvellous! Now mark the line with a punch.’

  ‘There isn’t time.’

  ‘What do you want, then? A can opener?’

  ‘I’ll have to guess the line.’

  Fleming said, more quietly. ‘No, mark it off. You won’t gain time by taking chances. It’ll be hard enough to aim that axe as it is.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Have you done that?’

  ‘Take it easy! Wow, but it’s cold in here.’

  ‘Save the weather reports, Jack. Think about the job and you won’t notice it so much.’

  ‘You should be in here.’

  ‘Sorry, can’t make it. Done that?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Now start cutting. No half measures. Take a big swing with that axe and make up your mind you’re going to hit in the right place.’

  Hubb said something, but it sounded distorted and Fleming didn’t catch it.

  Fleming said: ‘Your throat-mike has shifted. The pads should be either side of your windpipe. Yours sound as if they’re round your ankles.’

  ‘That better?’

  ‘Yes. Now tell me what you see as you cut.’

  ‘Okay. Here goes.’

  For a while, Hubb’s laboured breathing was all that could be heard. He swore once or twice. Otherwise he was silent for half a minute.

  ‘How are you getting on?’

  ‘I’ve cut two sides of the square.’

  ‘Good. Cut the third side and then prise the metal up a bit and take a look . . .’

  Panting, Hubb said eventually: ‘That’s done . . . I’m looking down now . . . holding the lamp. Yes, that looks like your locking gear.’

  ‘Can you slice off the metal panel you’ve cut, without cutting any cables?’

  ‘As far as I can see, yes.’

  ‘Have it off, then . . .’

  In the time it took to do this, Geoff glanced at Crooke and said: ‘I think Fleming is pushing him too much.’

  ‘No. He’s struck a good attitude. He’s trying to make Hubb more annoyed than frightened. Provided he keeps it up it’ll work.’

  Geoff thrust out his lower lip sceptically, and shrugged. ‘Fleming wasted nearly ten minutes just talking to the man.’

  Crooke flicked his eyes across the cockpit. ‘That wasn’t time wasted. Fleming is obviously a trained instructor—I didn’t know that. Look what he found out . . . Hubb’s reflexes have to be snapped into action; he responds to challenge but not soft-soaping; he’s a bit pouty over taking orders because he’s a rich young man, but when he finds he’s got to he accepts them; he likes Susan and is thinking of her in the back of his mind. In short, Hubb is a bit of a young stallion who’s hard to break but knows he’s got to be a lot less wild if he’s going to be useful. Fleming assessed this in ten minutes. Not bad going.’

  And Hubb’s voice: ‘That’s done. One piece of sheet metal. Anybody want it?’

  ‘Keep it as a souvenir,’ said Fleming. ‘Now, is your rope secured? Check the knot.’

  ‘That’s okay.’

  ‘It had better be. If you slip, those undercarriage doors will give right under you . . . I want you to take a good look at the starboard locking gear. You’ll find it’s folded up tight, like somebody’s knee when they’re crouching. Is there a lot of slipstream blowing up?’

  ‘Half a gale. And there’s a lot of fluid around. But as far as I can see the jaws are properly secure . . . No, wait a minute! Only one jaw is engaged; the other isn’t biting.’

  ‘We expected that. All right. When the captain lowers the undercarriage, that “knee” is going to be about three feet lower. Can you see a way of getting down? . . . Remember, you won’t be able to stand on the doors; even if they took your weight they won’t be there then. But you’ve got to be able to work with your hands free, so you can lash the bottom of the strut into place.’

  ‘Where will the knee-joint be relative to the hull?’

  ‘Just inside it.’

  ‘Well, I think I can kneel just by the hinge of the door. There’s not much room though.’

  ‘But enough?’

  ‘There’s going to have to be.’

  ‘That’s the spirit. But I tell you what we’ll do. I want to change the order of events a bit, so that you take the other side as far as this. Then we’ll tackle the problem of lashing. Okay?’

  Geoff took off his phones. ‘The man’s chopping and changing around.’

  ‘He’s right,’ said Crooke. ‘He wants to see how much time he can gain before he commits us. Don’t forget that until we lower the undercarriage we can still do a belly landing if the job
looks too dicey. Meanwhile Fleming still has time to work out just how Hubb can position himself for the lashing job. I hoped Fleming would do this.’

  ‘I wish he’d thought of it when we planned the job. It’s going to be difficult to calculate the time factor if he keeps changing his mind.’

  Crooke smiled gently. ‘Geoff, may I bring up an old criticism?’

  Geoff smiled. ‘I know. I’m inflexible. But I’m afraid this kind of thing is rather outside my experience.’

  ‘The thing is, Geoff, that now we’ve calculated the time factor it’s not much good worrying about it . . .’ Crooke broke off and said suddenly, ‘Listen!’

  There was some heavy breathing and then Hubb said: ‘Hang on a second.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I feel a bit . . . kind of dizzy.’

  ‘Put your head between your knees.’ Fleming waited. Then: ‘Hubb?’

  No reply.

  This time Geoff made a sharp movement of his head and engaged Crooke’s eyes.

  Crooke said: ‘Wait. He’ll be all right.’

  ‘We’ll have to do something about it though, captain. He won’t last out if it’s happening already.’

  ‘No.’ Crooke could hear Hubb deep-breathing. ‘That doctor woman has a suspicion that the tipsy tycoon travelling first has got something useful on him but he won’t confess.’

  ‘Dexadrine?’

  ‘Or something. You know, these slobs get a bit anxious about their static thrust, after they’ve passed fifty and have overfed their dirigible bodies with too much caviar, whisky and blue chips. So whenever they want to make sure they can give a girl something romantic to remember them by, they slam the lever into “fully rich” and confidently take off on borrowed time. You may vomit later. Meanwhile Hubb seems to be recovering.’

  ‘We could search him,’ said Geoff.