by Nevil Shute
In the flight deck, Dobson the first officer took a star sight with his bubble sextant through the astrodome; the navigator took another one to check it, and they plotted the position lines upon the chart. They had about two and a half hours flight to go before landing at Gander. Their hands were dirty and soiled the chart as they drew in the position line, for they had had some trouble in the flight deck. One of the electrical circuits of the undercarriage-operating mechanism had become defective and was blowing fuses with monotonous regularity; they had worked for two hours with the engineers in an attempt to rectify the fault, only to discover that it lay in the safety circuit of the retracting undercarriage mechanism and could be reached only from the ground; it was not important, so they had isolated that circuit and put it out of action. Then navigational necessities had intervened before they could wash, and they had taken their star sights with dirty hands.
Dobson walked down the saloon to the toilets; he noted with surprise that Mr. Honey had got off with the actress; she was sitting by him, smiling at him, listening to what he said. He washed his hands and came out, and went into the galley, and said to Miss Corder, “I see the boffin’s got off.”
She put her head out and looked up the aisle. “She’s been sitting and talking with him for some time. How far off are we?”
“About two and a half hours. Had any more trouble with him?”
She shook her head. “Have you had any trouble with the tail?”
He laughed. “It’s still there, so far as I know. Be still there in ten years’ time, if you ask me.”
“It’s funny,” she said thoughtfully. “He was so positive that we were going to have an accident. But nothing’s happened yet.”
He grinned. “Nothing’s going to happen either,” he said. “He’s got a bee in his bonnet — all those Farnborough types are the same. They just don’t know what it’s all about. It really is the most fantastic place. We might get some decent aircraft if it wasn’t for them.”
He moved off up the aisle towards the flight deck.
The Reindeer flew on towards the last of the night, in rising moonlight. An hour later the navigator crossed to Samuelson sitting in the captain’s seat and spoke a word to him. The captain spoke to Cousins, the engineer, and knocked out the automatic pilot; the engineer drew back the throttle levers a little, watching the boost gauges. The note of the engines dropped, the nose tilted down a fraction, and the Reindeer started on a slow descent, losing height at about two hundred feet a minute. Gander lay ahead.
At ten thousand feet they started up the inboard engines at reduced power and went into the cloud layer. A quarter of an hour later they were below it in diffused moonlight. They made their landfall at a rocky, barren point of land that lay between two islands, seen dimly beneath them in the hazy, silvery light. At three thousand feet they flew for a quarter of an hour above fiords and inlets of the rocky coast, all full of ice. Then straight ahead of them appeared the twinkling runway lights and the cluster of lights round the airport buildings of Gander.
In the saloon the stewardesses were busy waking the passengers who were still asleep, and making them do up their safety belts for the landing. Miss Corder, bending over Mr. Honey, said, “Well, we’ve got here all right.”
“I know,” he said. “We’re very lucky.”
Miss Teasdale had gone back to her own place. Mr. Honey sat looking out of his window as they circled the airport and went off over the spruce woods and the river to turn into the runway. They turned in to land and the note of the engines died; the nose dropped a little, and he saw the flaps come down. The ground came closer and closer till the tops of the fir trees were near to the machine. Then there was the surface of the runway close beneath them; they sped over it, and suddenly a rumble and a forward tilt of the fuselage told him they were down.
Samuelson slowed the machine to a walking pace, and turned the Reindeer on to the taxiing track, towards the hangars and the airport buildings. He yawned. Cousins, the engineer, came forward to his elbow and said, “Watch the undercart switch, sir. The safety locks are out.” He nodded.
Dobson leaned across to him, grinning, and said, “Well, we’ve still got our tail.”
Samuelson nodded; he had not yet reached the point when he could joke about it. He still had to decide whether to go on normally to Montreal or to ground his aircraft at Gander, one of the most bleak and desolate airports in the world at which to strand a load of passengers, and one where there were few facilities for any serious repair. He sat gloomily considering this as they rolled up to the tarmac. He had heard nothing from his Flying Control in reply to his signal stating Mr. Honey’s bleat. Perhaps a signal would be waiting for him here to give him guidance and to take the onus of deciding what to do from him.
It was then shortly before dawn, about nine o’clock in the morning by British time. The stewardesses disembarked the passengers and took them to the restaurant for breakfast; the refuelling tank trucks drew up to the Reindeer and began pumping in their load. Captain Samuelson went to the Control and asked if there was any signal waiting for him; there was nothing. He tightened his lips; the responsibility for the decision lay on him.
He sent Dobson to find the local Air Registration Board Inspector. Very naturally, Mr. Symes was in bed, and he was not too pleased at being woken up at that hour in the morning to make a difficult decision. He was a man of fifty-seven, and Gander was his last appointment before retirement. He had never risen very high in his profession because he had never shown initiative; in his view an inspector should stick closely to the rules as they were framed for him. That quality made him valuable enough at a place like Gander where he was far from the control of his head office; his superiors could rest content that Mr. Symes would never put a foot wrong or deviate one hair’s breadth from the typescripts sent to him from time to time.
Dobson stayed with him while he pulled on his trousers, putting him au fait with the position. “This little squirt from Farnborough, he’s clean off his rocker, I believe. I don’t know what you’ll make of him, but that’s what we all think. Of course, if there is anything the matter with the tail, we’ll have to stop here, but Cousins hasn’t heard a thing about it, nor have any of us. Captain Samuelson wanted you to have a good look at the structure with us, and see if it’s all right.”
Mr. Symes grunted, “You get some funny sort of people coming from those places,” he said. “You remember Skues in the Airworthiness at Farnborough, back in 1928 or so? No — before your time. He always used to take his Siamese cat with him, in the offices, or into conferences — everywhere he went he took this blessed cat....”
They walked together from the dormitory block where Mr. Symes stayed back to the Reindeer on the tarmac. Dawn was just showing in the darkness as a grey line to the east; there was a bitterly cold north-east wind, and Mr. Symes had had no breakfast. Samuelson met them on the tarmac with Cousins, the engineer. A tall, wheeled gantry gave them access to the tailplane twenty feet above the ground; they commenced a meticulous examination of everything externally visible, moving the gantry from time to time. The bitter wind whipped round them mercilessly; very soon they were so cold that even holding torches became difficult.
They could find nothing wrong at all externally. They came down and went into the rear fuselage, behind the pressure cabin; clambering about in there they could see the structure of the tailplane spars where they passed through the fuselage and intersected with the fin girders. They twisted their bodies in amongst this structure, flashing their electric torches upon channels, webs, and ribs, laying the straight edges of steel rules along duralumin angles to check for any distortion, peering carefully at scratches on the paint and anodising. At the end of an hour of the most thorough examination they had finished; they had found nothing whatsoever wrong with the machine.
It was too cold to hold a conference outside or in the hangar. They went up into the heated flight deck of the Reindeer, and sent for Mr. Honey from the restauran
t. While they were waiting for him, Dobson and Cousins made an examination of the defective safety circuit of the undercarriage-retracting mechanism, climbing up the undercarriage legs from the ground into the engine nacelles. Mr. Honey, hurrying across the tarmac to the Reindeer, saw them go back into the fuselage ahead of him; when he reached the flight deck the engineer was making his report to Samuelson.
“Port switch is burnt out, sir,” he said. “We haven’t got a spare. I’ve got both circuits isolated now. If Mr. Symes agrees — —” he indicated the inspector— “I’d suggest we go on like we are to Dorval. They’ve got spare switches in the stores at Dorval.”
The inspector said, “That means no safety locks are operating on the undercarriage.”
“That’s right,” the engineer replied. “It just means being careful not to trip the operating lever while you’re getting in or out of the seat. That’s while she’s on the ground, of course; it wouldn’t matter in the air.” Mr. Honey waited his turn patiently in the background, till they were ready to attend to him. The inspector and the engineer and Samuelson moved over to the control pedestal between the pilots’ seats. “This one,” the engineer said, fingering the undercarriage lever. “It’s just a matter of being careful not to put this up, while the auxiliary engine’s running, like it is now.” It was running to provide the heat to keep the aircraft warm. “When the auxiliary’s stopped, of course, nothing could happen if you put this up, because there wouldn’t be any current.”
They talked it over for a minute or two. “All right,” the inspector said at last to Samuelson. “You can go on like that. But have somebody standing by it all the time you’re taxiing, just to watch that nobody’s coat catches in it or anything.”
Samuelson nodded. “I’ll see to that.” He turned to Mr. Honey, and introduced him to the inspector. “Look, Mr. Honey — we’ve made a very careful inspection of the tailplane, and there’s nothing wrong with it at all. I don’t know if you’d care to tell Mr. Symes here what you told us on the way across?”
Mr. Honey started wearily to tell his tale again. He had had no sleep and he was overtired, blinking more even than usual. He had not shaved and he had not been able to eat his breakfast, spoiled as it had been by his anxieties; he was feeling rather sick. He told his story badly, defeated before he started by the atmosphere of utter disbelief he sensed around him.
Mr. Symes gave him some little attention because he came from Farnborough, but his mind was already made up. He was a man who had never taken any action except on physical facts; it was not his business to assess the eccentric theories of wandering scientists and take a chance on them. There were no written instructions in his files that he should take any special precautions in regard to the Reindeer tail. On the suggestion that there was something wrong with it, he had made a thorough inspection and had found everything correct. That put him in the clear, and he had no intention of imperilling his pension by a rash display of individuality, at that stage of his career.
They talked for a quarter of an hour. At last Samuelson said, “Well, if Mr. Symes agrees, I think the best thing we can do now is to go on to Dorval. I’m prepared to shut down the inboard engines after climbing up to operating height, as I did coming over, if you think that will ease things, Mr. Honey. At Dorval we can assess the matter properly.”
Mr. Honey, nearly in tears of weariness and frustration, said, “I assure you ... I assure you that’s the wrong thing to do. It’s absolutely — —” his voice cracked, and went up into a little nervous squeak— “it’s absolutely courting disaster to go on. You must ground this aircraft. Really you must.”
Samuelson glanced at Symes, and their eyes met in common agreement; this was not a normal, reasonable man. This was an eccentric plugging away at a fixed idea, a man whose mental balance was abnormal. “If you would rather stay here, Mr. Honey,” the captain said, “I can make arrangements for you to finish the journey in another aircraft, probably tomorrow. But I’m afraid I can’t listen to any more of this.”
The inspector nodded in agreement. This Reindeer would be off before long, and he could get back to bed and have a couple of hours more before breakfast. Then, in the course of the morning, he would write out a report upon the incident and send it in to his headquarters. Two copies would be sufficient, and one for his own file.
Honey said desperately, “Is that your final decision? You’re really going on?”
Samuelson turned aft, partly to hide a final irresolution. “That’s right,” he said. “We’re going on.”
“I assure you ...” Mr. Honey’s voice died in despair; it was useless to go on trying to convince these men. He turned forward to the pilots’ seats. And then, quite nonchalantly, he put his hand upon the undercarriage lever and pulled it to UP.
He did it so quietly that it did not register with anybody for an instant; Symes was the only man who actually saw him do it, and it took a second or two for the inspector to appreciate what was happening. Then he cried, “Here — stop that!”
The note of the auxiliary motor changed as the load came on the dynamo. Samuelson turned, saw what Honey was doing, said, “For Christ’s sake!” and made a dive for the lever.
Mr. Honey flung his body up against the pedestal, covering the controls. He said, half weeping, “If you won’t ground this aircraft, I will.”
The motors of the retracting mechanism groaned, the solid floor beneath their feet sagged ominously. Cousins, with quick wit, leaped for the electrical control panel and threw out the main switch to cut the current from all circuits. He was a fraction of a second too late. The undercarriage of the Reindeer was just over the dead centre. She paused for a moment; for an instant Samuelson thought that Cousins had saved her, as he struggled to pull Honey from the pedestal. Then she sagged forward, and the undercarriage folded up with a sharp whistling noise from the hydraulics. A pipe burst and fluid sprayed the ground beneath her, and she sank down on her belly on the concrete apron, all the seventy-two tons of her. By the mercy of Providence nobody was standing underneath her at the time.
The noise of the crumpling panels and propellers, a tinny, metallic, crunching noise, brought the mechanics running to the wide doors of the hangars. Marjorie Corder, going from the Reindeer to the reception and booking hall, turned at the mouth of the passage and stared aghast to see her Reindeer lying wrecked upon the tarmac. Instinctively she began to run back towards it, horrified: she met Dobson running from the machine to the Control.
She cried, “What happened?”
He paused for an instant. “The boffin did it,” he said furiously. “I told you that he’d put the kiss of death on it. Well, now he has!”
5
THAT MONDAY WAS a bad day.
It began normally enough. I went to the office as usual. When I had left on Saturday the arrangements had been all set up that Mr. Honey was to leave for Ottawa on Sunday night by C.A.T.O.; I had seen nothing of him over the week-end, and I had not expected to. I went down to the old balloon shed at about ten o’clock as soon as I had cleared my desk, however, to see that he had really got away and to see that young Simmons was getting on all right with the responsibilities of the trial on the Reindeer tail.
The trial was running; I had heard it above the noises of my car when I was driving into the factory; it filled the whole district with its booming roar. In the old balloon shed it was as deafening as usual; Simmons was up upon the gantry taking readings of the strain gauges; he saw me and came down, and came up to me smiling, and proffered his foolscap pad showing the rough daily graph of the deflections. We could not talk in the noise; I ran my eye over the results, and they were absolutely normal. The trial was going smoothly.
I led him into the office and shut the door; in there we could talk. “Everything all right?” I asked. “Did Mr. Honey get away all right?”
“Oh, yes, I think so, sir. He was in most of Sunday; I was here with him. He left at about four o’clock to go home and have a meal and pick up his lugg
age. He was catching the eight-forty up to London from Ash Vale.”
“That’s fine.” I stayed with him for ten minutes going through the work; he was a clever, competent young man who only needed guidance now and then. I soon found that I had nothing to worry about. When I couldn’t think of anything more to ask him, I looked around the littered little office before leaving; there was a neat pile of stamped and addressed letters on his desk, ready for the post. I glanced idly at them; the top one was addressed to Miss Elspeth Honey, No. 4, Copse Road, Farnham. I lifted it, and the second bore the same address, and the third, and all of them.
Simmons said, “Don’t get them out of order, sir. I’ve got to post one each day, and they’re all dated.”
