Glide Path

by Arthur C. Clarke

  “Benny’s right,” said the Professor. His pencil was already flying over the paper, filling it with little squares and oblongs, and connecting one to the other.

  “This should do the trick,” he said, half to himself. “Trigger from scope central, variable gate, clipper, mixer, cathode follower-there you are, Howard—you can work out the details.”

  “I wish someone would please translate,” complained F/Lt. Evans, who had contrived to push his way in from the back. “Will it stop me making a fool of myself by talking air commodores into the drink?”

  “You’ll see what it does when we’ve fixed it up,” Schuster replied. “And I’m afraid, Arnie, that there’s no circuit yet invented that can stop a man making a fool of himself.”

  He happened to catch Alan’s eye at that moment, and he had the grace to blush.

  ***

  The electronics engineer, thought Alan, as he helped Howard assemble the bits and pieces, had a much easier life than the mechanical engineer. He, poor fellow, had to make accurate drawings, send them off to a workshop, and wait days or weeks before the hardware came back.

  How much simpler it was in this business! You sketched out a circuit, grabbed the necessary resistors, capacitors, and tubes from Stores, and then wired them up for yourself. The first model was usually a mess, and it seldom worked, but it took only minutes to change components and try again. The cathode-ray oscilloscope—that essential tool without which the radar technician would be completely blind—showed exactly what your brain child was doing; you could see on the screen what happened when you adjusted the controls, and could tell at a glance whether you were making things better or worse.

  “That’s the lot,” said Howard, ticking off the last item on his shopping list. “Mind you, I don’t know where we’re going to put the thing even when we’ve got it working. There’s no room left in any of the racks.”

  “We could tuck it under the controller’s desk.”

  “And get a rocket from him when it takes off his kneecap? Not if I can help it. We’ll manage somehow—even if we have to squeeze it under the floor boards.”

  Howard was always an optimist; many times, when the radar images had suddenly faded from the screens, his cry: “don’t worry—I’ll fix it in a minute!” had helped to sustain morale. Though he frankly admitted that he was the worst mathematician ever to graduate from MIT, he was brilliant at practical circuitry; he knew exactly what was happening throughout the miles of wire that made up the Mark I’s intricate nervous system, and understood precisely what each of its five hundred tubes was doing. His compatriots referred to him as the “rambling wreck”—a phrase that puzzled the British. Eventually Pat explained that a rambling wreck was a product of Georgia Tech—“an obscure Southern educational institution where Howard was incarcerated before he escaped to MIT. He still has the marks of the chains.”

  The little workshop-cum-store in which most of the GCD repairs and modifications were carried out was deserted at the moment; there were no wireless mechs surreptitiously building private radios or filing down homemade cigarette lighters. Alan and Howard had it to themselves, and as they waited for the soldering irons to warm up, Alan broached the subject that had been puzzling him more and more deeply ever since he joined the unit.

  “Howard,” he said, “what makes the Prof tick? I just don’t understand him.”

  “How d’you mean?”

  “Well, the other day he practically burned out my little shaver resistor by trying to run a soldering iron from it. I can tell you, it shook me rigid.”

  “I bet it shook the Prof, too, when you caught him at it.”

  “Not particularly; he just apologized and promised to let me have a new element—which he hasn’t done yet.”

  “Don’t worry; he will.”

  “I’m not worried about that. What puzzles me is how a man who invented GCD can be so impractical—yet at the same time can do the sort of job he did when he sketched out this circuit for us this afternoon. He did invent GCD, didn’t he?”

  “He invented it,” said Howard firmly. “Doc Wendt designed it, and we built it. Of course, it wasn’t as simple as that, but that’s the general idea.” He cleaned the bit of the iron with a few strokes of a file, and lightly touched it with a stick of solder. Like a film of mercury, the molten metal spread in a glistening mirror over the hot copper.

  “Let’s have that board… Have you screwed on the tube bases? Fine—I think we’ll start at this end.”

  It is always a pleasure to watch any craftsman at work, even if you do not understand his trade. Though Alan rather fancied himself a practical man, he had to admit he was not in Howard’s class. The circuit began to grow like a piece of abstract sculpture under his skilled fingers; he seemed to know where everything went, without glancing at the diagram. And as Howard worked, he talked in his soft Southern accent, not unlike Alan’s own.

  “There’s only one man on this team,” drawled Howard, “who can really give you the low-down on the Prof, and that’s Benny. They’re both mathematicians; the rest of us are hairy engineers, dragging our knuckles on the sidewalk. Of course, the really pure mathematicians would tell you that Prof Schuster is only a mathematical physicist, but I don’t think we need worry about the distinction. Until the war, all his work was purely theoretical—atomic physics—nothing of any practical importance. Let me have that twenty-K pot, will you? Thanks.

  “Then Radiation Lab grabbed him, soon after Pearl Harbor. One of our first big jobs there was developing an anti aircraft radar that would automatically follow an aircraft, so that the pilot couldn’t escape from the beam no matter how he twisted and turned. Well, we built it, and one day the Prof was watching it in action when he said to himself, ‘If radar can follow an airplane that accurately in order to shoot it down, why can’t it do something useful, like landing it in bad weather?’ Seems an obvious idea, doesn’t it? But it took the Prof to think of it first.

  “So he talked Radiation Lab into making a test. It worked, and that led to the Mark I. Right from the beginning we only regarded this as an experimental unit, to test the basic principle. But then along came Ted Hatton and kidnapped us all. We sent the Mark I across on an aircraft carrier, with an armed escort and classified Top Secret—”

  “Yes,” said Alan. “I heard how it was stuffed with Scotch and nylons.”

  “Oh, you knew that, did you? When we heard it had dodged the U-boats, we flew over by Clipper to join it. Bob Hope and his troupe were on board, and when we arrived at Shannon there was such a reception for us that Bob said, ‘I guess we should have made a bigger fuss over you guys.’ Maybe one day we’ll be able to tell him what it was all about. And that’s how we got here. Any other questions?”

  “I don’t think so—for the moment, anyway.”

  The picture was starting to come into focus, though there was much that was still unclear. But for the first time, Alan was beginning to appreciate the difference between a man like Professor Schuster and one like Dr. Wendt.

  The Doctor was enormously versatile; there was no technical task he could not carry out brilliantly. Alan could follow every detail of his performance, and be duly impressed by it, for Wendt operated in a world that he could understand completely.

  Schuster’s world, on the other hand, was one that Alan could scarcely glimpse, much less enter. Most of the things that Wendt could accomplish, Schuster could probably do after a fashion, if the need was great enough. But he could not be bothered; there were more important things to concern his mind. Only in one of his off moments, when he was trying to relax, would he start playing around with actual hardware in a halfhearted fashion—with the disastrous results that Alan had witnessed.

  Dr. Wendt was a highly capable engineer who would always be a leader of his profession, but Professor Schuster would be a Nobel prize-winner in the 1950s. All that separated them was the yawning, immeasurable gulf between superb talent and simple genius.

  14

 
Troubles never come singly, thought Schuster, as he read the priority signal for the third time.

  “What do you think it means?” asked Dr. Wendt anxiously. “Surely Burrows can’t have torpedoed us as quickly as this!”

  Schuster glanced at the time of dispatch on the signal form, and shook his head.

  “If he has, he’s a fast mover. Still, it’s a good idea to go to TRE; we may be able to do a little fence-mending. If Big Chief will back us up, we can trump our Air Commodore friend with a few generals.”

  Dr. Wendt’s cigarette holder, which had been at a very depressed angle, crept up a few degrees. “Dennis is going to be angry with us,” he remarked, “if we ask for an aircraft over the weekend. ‘D’ Right’s gotten used to working a five-day war.”

  “Too bad for ‘D’ Flight,” said the Professor grimly. “Unless we’re at TRE before nightfall, heads are going to roll.”

  To do the Flight justice, it was ready. There were grumbles, of course, about weekend leaves. Yes, said pilot and navigator testily, we know there’s a war on—but this is a training unit, so why the panic?

  Schuster wished that he knew, as he watched St. Erryn fall behind. As soon as they were airborne, he took over the controls. He was too important now to fly solo, and had been expressly forbidden to do so, but before the war, flying had been his chief relaxation. When his hands were on the wheel, and his fingers were sensing the tug and pull of the air’s invisible forces, he felt completely happy. Riding a spirited horse must be like this—but horseback riding was too dangerous for his frail body; so instead, he had half a thousand horses at his finger tips.

  He knew perfectly well why he needed this form of recreation, and felt no bitterness against the infantile paralysis that had closed all other sports to him. That was the luck of the draw, and there were many compensations. He could never have become what he was without the long years when he had lain in bed or bath, always reading, reading, reading. (How many books he had ruined in the salt water of the hydrotherapy rooms! Well, it was worth it; books were meant to be used.)

  Three thousand feet below, something strange caught his eye. A circle of stone columns, dull gray in the somber light of this cloudy afternoon, stood in lonely isolation on an open plain.

  “What the devil’s that?” Schuster asked the pilot, jabbing his thumb toward the ground.

  “Stonehenge, of course,” came the prompt reply. “I guess you haven’t got anything as old as that.”

  Schuster was impressed; he banked the aircraft in a great circle, picking out the pattern of the immense slabs and wondering how they had been reared into position. In the face of such antiquity, his own problems seemed suddenly transient and trivial. A thousand years from now, these monoliths would still be defying the elements, while the only record of his existence would be a few articles in moldering scientific journals.

  No—that was not true. Already he had made his mark upon history—upon real history, not the blindered, myopic narrative that records only the doings of generals and politicians. He was a part, and no small part, of the forces that were shaping the future.

  A staff car was waiting at the airfield, and a few minutes later they were driving into the small provincial town that, if Hitler had only known what it housed, would have been one of the Luftwaffe’s prime targets.

  From the outside, Malvern College still looked like a typical English public school; but none of its old pupils or masters would have now recognized the interior. The classrooms and halls were crowded with weird equipment, most of it either unfinished or else in the process of demolition. Wires, meters, cathode-ray tubes, electric motors, sprawled over benches and tables. Silent men stood in little groups around blackboards covered with the hieroglyphics of radar, contemplating miracles yet unborn. Models of experimental antennas spun and rocked and wobbled with peculiar motions. Less identifiable devices did even odder things, watched by their anxious inventors. Air Force squadron leaders, Royal Navy commanders, U.S. Eighth Air Force generals, pipe-smoking civilians, and Royal Engineer lieutenants argued technicalities with a complete disregard of service and rank.

  Schuster had been to the Telecommunications Research Establishment dozens of times, but the place never ceased to fascinate him. TRE was a unique institution, and the Germans would never have been able to understand it. What would they have thought of its famous Sunday Soviets, where the problems of the week were thrashed out in discussions so democratic that the humblest lab technician had no scruples in telling a Nobel laureate that he was talking nonsense? In Germany, it would take weeks for the diffident correction to reach the Herr Doktor Professor; here, the feedback was almost instantaneous.

  Generations of boys had trembled outside the heavy oak door that now carried the sign RADIATION LAB—LIAISON. Schuster knocked, heard a familiar voice reply, and went in.

  Dean Walters looked perfectly at home in a headmaster’s study, as indeed he should. In his time, he had administered two of America’s greatest universities, but now his responsibilities were somewhat heavier. Though he had made only one important discovery—and that twenty years ago—he was known to every scientist in the United States. According to legend, the reverse was also true. “Nice to see you—Carl, Alex,” he said. “And I’m sorry to pull you in at such short notice… especially at the moment.”

  “So you’ve already heard how we laid an egg in front of Bomber Burrows?” said Schuster, without surprise. He had long since ceased to be astonished by the efficiency of Big Chief’s spy system. Thanks to his network of loyal colleagues and ex-students, he knew everything that was happening along every sector of the scientific front line. He was supposed to, of course; but he usually knew well before the official reports reached him.

  Dean Walters gave a long puff with the famous pipe that was responsible for his nickname.

  “Yes, I’ve heard,” he said slowly. “But it’s not about GCD that I called you. You won’t like this, but something bigger’s come up—much bigger. You’re both going back to the States as soon as you can pack your things.”

  There was a long pause. Then Schuster gave a sigh and answered: “Well, I was expecting it. But I’d hoped that we could get GCD accepted before they grabbed us.”

  “Who’s ‘they’?” asked Wendt.

  “Use your head, Alex,” replied Schuster. “There’s only one thing bigger than radar, and you know what that is.”

  Big Chief said nothing, though a whole series of smoke signals went up from his pipe.

  “But what about GCD?” demanded Wendt, angry and upset. “If we leave now, we may lose everything. Anyway, I know damn little about uranium isotopes, and care less.”

  “Then you’re going to learn a hell of a lot, and very quickly,” said Dean Walters sharply. “As for GCD, Carl’s work is effectively done; we can’t waste him any longer as a sort of Fuller Brush man trying to sell his product to the services. Hatton and the boys can carry on without either of you. Isn’t that true?”

  “Yes,” admitted Schuster a little reluctantly. “But the Mark II—the production model…”

  “All the fundamental ideas are in that report you gave me; from now on it’s a matter of straightforward engineering. And you can still keep an eye on the project when you get to Los Al—to the States.”

  “That’s just it,” said Schuster unhappily. “Will there be a project if you pull us out? Can you do anything to head off Burrows? I can just imagine what he’s saying right now, back at Bomber Command.”

  “I’m doing my damnedest,” said Walters. “But at the moment we’re having a little fight of our own with the bomber boys. We’ve just put up some new proposals for navigation aids, pointing out the miserable accuracy of their present aiming techniques. And do you know what the C-in-C answered?”

  “I can guess,” said Schuster.

  “He said: ‘Tell TRE to mind its own ruddy business.’ Well, blast his eyes, we’re doing just that.”

  There was a brief, indignant silence; then Dr.
Wendt remarked, to no one in particular: “I wonder what he’ll do with the bomb, when he gets it?”

  “I still hope,” said Schuster, “that the filthy thing won’t work. But if it does—what’s it going to do with us?”

  15

  That’s the lot,” said Howard decisively, switching off the oscilloscope and unplugging the soldering iron. “We’ll start fixing it into the truck tomorrow.”

  “But we can’t—the operators will need it. We’ll have to wait until Saturday.”

  “Where I come from,” said Howard, “Saturday usually follows Friday. This happens to be Friday—all day.”

  “Oh,” said Alan, counting on his fingers. “I seem to have lost a day somewhere.”

  “You take things too darn seriously. If you carry on like this, you’ll soon be ulcer fodder. Why not relax once in a while?”

  “When and how?” demanded Alan, reasonably enough. The camp cinema, installed in a drafty hangar with excruciating acoustics, was showing an antique comedy which might have racked up one laugh per reel when it was made, but had not improved with age. There had been a variety show last week over which it was best to draw a veil of oblivion. A Mess Dance had been planned by the Entertainments Committee at the end of the month, despite the damage done at the previous one, when painstaking experiments had refuted the popular theory that beer improved the tone of a grand piano.

  Of course, there were the nearby towns, the closest of them ten miles away at the end of an erratic bus service that ceased operating at 9:00 P.M. Alan could still recall Pat Connor’s summary of the local urban scene: “The first time I’ve ever come across a cemetery with traffic lights.” Yes, it was hard work relaxing; so much so that it was really less trouble to stick to the job.

  Howard glanced at his watch and did some mental calculations. “Maybe I can help out,” he said thoughtfully. “Pat was supposed to be coming with me tonight, but he’s got a heavy date somewhere else. Can you meet me after dinner—around 8:30?”