Landfall (21 page)

Professor Legge had got the news by telephone about midnight, and he received it with the deepest disappointment. He had spent the evening relieved and rested. His wife had seized upon the respite that a change of pilot was to give him, and had made him take an evening off from work. They had dined together in the snack-bar of the Royal Clarence Hotel on a grilled steak and a fruit salad; the professor had been able to detach his mind sufficiently from distribution curves to take note of the pretty barmaid serving drinks to the young officers across the bar. From the “Royal Clarence” they had gone on to a movie, where they had seen
a film called
Blondie Gets Her Man
. For seventy-five minutes all thought of battleships, of electronic influences, and of explosives had been swept from his mind. He had laughed almost continuously throughout the film, and he was better for it. They had returned to their little flat in Southsea in the black-out happy and amused. Mrs. Legge had persuaded him to go to bed at once in order that he could be really fresh to recommence the work next morning. He had agreed willingly, and had gone to bed anticipating a long, restful night of sleep.

At midnight the telephone rang, to tell him that the trials would proceed next day according to the programme. He slept very little after that.

At nine o’clock he went on board the trawler in the dockyard, worried and resentful. There were more naval officers than ever this time, by reason of the success of the experiments the previous day. Legge said to Hewitt:

“I thought this trial would be postponed. Is it still Chambers flying the machine, or have you got another pilot?”

Hewitt smiled. “Burnaby took a less extreme attitude after all. So we didn’t have to change from Chambers, and the trial could proceed.”

The professor laughed shortly. “That’s very unfortunate from my point of view. I hoped that we were going to get a bit more time.”

The wing-commander nodded. “I had that in mind as well. But I’m afraid it’s not panned out that way.”

There were three trials to be carried out that day, each with the battleship. Between each trial it was necessary for the aeroplane to go back to the aerodrome for loading up. All day the trawler lay and rolled a mile from the battleship, while a protective screen of three destroyers kept guard to seawards on the alert for submarines.

Between each trial the civilian sat in the wheel-house, cold and apprehensive and rather sick.

The first trial worked satisfactorily at the first attempt. There was great satisfaction till the machine came out for the second trial, when the device failed to work for three successive runs over the battleship, functioning at the fourth attempt. On the third and last trial it worked at the second attempt.

The trawler went back to harbour, and the battleship steamed out to sea in the falling dusk, bound for some unknown destination. She had other things to do besides serving as a lay figure for the trials of a secret weapon. No other battleship was to be available for a fortnight; in the meantime trials were to go on with a cruiser.

As the trawler steamed back to harbour, Burnaby held a little conference with Legge and Hewitt in the reeling chart-room. “It works perfectly when it does work,” he said. “It’s a pity that it isn’t more reliable.”

Legge said: “That isn’t fundamental to it, sir. It can be made reliable as soon as we find out exactly what the forces are to operate it. But at the moment we’re trying to do the exploration without records, and with an explosive charge on board the aeroplane.”

Burnaby said directly: “Do you feel that we shall not be able to get it ready for service in this way?”

Legge said: “No, I don’t feel that. I think this way is far the quickest method of getting it ready for use in war. But I do think that we’re taking some appalling risks.”

Hewitt said: “We did decide to take them, after a good deal of thought.”

The civilian said: “I know. I suppose I’m not used to this sort of thing.”

Burnaby said, rather unexpectedly: “None of us are.”

It was practically dark when Legge and Hewitt got
back to the aerodrome. Chambers was waiting for them there; together they went through the results with him. “The milliammeter went up over thirty-five on the first and third run of trial two,” he said, “and on the first of trial three. I switched off each time. I can’t see why it didn’t work all right the second run of trial two.”

There was a long silence. The civilian studied the pencilled sheet of the pilot’s notes carefully and methodically.

Hewitt said at last: “Does that mean anything to you, Professor?”

The other said slowly: “I think so. I’d like to work upon this for a bit. It’s quite clear we want different modulation for the battleship, and while we’re at it we might drop the frequency a bit. How long did Burnaby say that it would be before we had a battleship again?”

“A fortnight.”

“That’s good. I think we should be able to be more reliable by then.”

Chambers turned to Hewitt. “A signal came through from the dockyard about the cruiser, sir. They want to know if the trial tomorrow is confirmed.”

The wing-commander turned to Legge. “Is that all right, Professor?”

“Is what all right?”

“To go on tomorrow with the cruiser.”

The civilian looked at them over his spectacles. “The current will rise quicker if it’s going up at all. That’s because of the smaller absolute size of ship, you understand. There won’t be much longer than two and a half seconds for throwing the switch.”

Chambers said: “If there’s two and a half seconds, that’s all right, sir. I had time to eat a banana today.”

“Two seconds is a very short time, Chambers,” Legge said seriously.

The pilot laughed. “It’s the hell of a long time when
you’re sitting with your hand upon the switch, wondering what that bloody little needle’s going to do,” he said. “No, seriously, sir—I think it’s quite all right.”

Hewitt said: “You’re the sole judge of that, Chambers. If you feel that time is rather short, just say so, and we’ll have to tackle it some other way.”

The pilot said: “Two and a half seconds is quite long enough to throw that switch out, sir. As a matter of fact, there is no other way to do this, is there?”

“Only by exploring and plotting the air all round a typical ship of this size.”

“Well, that’s absurd. I mean, it ’Id take a month of Sundays to do that. No, this is perfectly all right for me.”

They discussed it for a few minutes longer, sketching a little in pencil on a pad. Finally, Hewitt said: “All right, we’ll have the ship tomorrow. I’ll make a signal to the dockyard. We’ve got her till the end of the week.”

The pilot said: “That’s fine. We should be able to get somewhere with it in that time.”

They dispersed. Legge took the pilot’s notes and went back in his car to Southsea, driving slowly in the dark, with a new horror to sit by his side. To him, two seconds was a desperately short time. He was a man of middle age and his reaction times were getting longer with the years: it was difficult for him to place himself in the position of the pilot, who could operate the switch in one-fifth of a second. Disaster stared him in the face, and drove him to his calculations for the cruiser as soon as he got to his flat. The battleship problem was relegated to a corner of his mind. He had a shrewd idea now of the source of all their difficulties with that and he could see the means of overcoming them: when next they went out to a battleship the thing would work right every time. But that was now no longer of the first importance. In one night’s work he
must now cover the ground of three months’ steady research upon the cruiser if an accident were to be made reasonably impossible. No man living could do that, but he must do what lay within his power.

Immediately he settled down to work, with blueprints, pad, and calculating machine.

Chambers went back to the mess, and up to his bedroom. He had a little electric stove in his room at Titchfield that he had bought at the local ironmonger’s and had adapted furtively to work from the lighting circuit: it overloaded the circuit, but warmed the room beautifully. He turned on this and tuned the wireless to the Columbia system; for a few minutes he listened to an agricultural expert answering queries about hog-disease in Iowa. Then he got out the caravel and spent a happy hour shipbuilding.

He dined in the mess and played bridge for an hour or so, winning three and twopence. Then he drank a pint of beer and had a game of shove-halfpenny with a flight-lieutenant. By ten o’clock he was retiring to his room; he was sleeping quietly by eleven. He slept till after seven in the morning.

Mona, on her part, spent the evening in the bar, as usual. She was still vaguely dissatisfied, though less restless than she had been before Jerry had returned from Yorkshire. She still thought it would be nice to be in the perfumery department of a big shop, but you couldn’t do everything. She knew very well that matters could not be static now between Jerry and herself; she might end up as Mrs. Chambers or she might end up as Mrs. Smith; beside either avocation the perfumery paled into insignificance. If her life was in fact to be linked with Jerry’s she did not want his friends to know her as a girl that he had picked up in a shop. In a confused way she had certain social grades defined and ordered in her mind. She would do him less harm in
his career if she married him as a barmaid than if she married from a shop, or so she thought.

These reflections mitigated the snack-bar of the “Royal Clarence” to her. She was tired of the smell of beer and of the stickiness of vermouth, but she was able to bear with it phlegmatically.

That evening was fairly slack, being the middle of the week. In the seven months that had elapsed since the beginning of the war she had come to know a great many young naval officers by sight, habitués of the bar, young men serving on ships based upon the port, who came there for a grill when their ships were in. That evening there was a little party of new faces, a lieutenant-commander, R.N., two lieutenants R.N.R.—men of thirty-five or forty, these, hard-looking toughs—and a young sub in the R.N.V.R. This party joined up with a little group of minesweepers: their gossip very soon told Mona that the newcomers were off a salvage ship.

The salvage men drank whisky. They talked a good deal of the war in Finland, recently concluded; one of them had spent a good many years in Baltic ports. They talked of football pools, and of magnetic mines and how to sweep them up. This last discussion was in very low tones, so low that the barmaid only heard a few words here and there. From that, by natural transition, they went on to submarines.

A trawler officer said: “I was at Sheerness the first three months. The destroyers were at them every day, then. But it’s eased off now. Down here, we don’t get hardly any. One a week—not more.”

One of the R.N.R. salvage men said: “They’re still getting a good few around the estuary. Not like they were, of course, but still—a few. We picked up one of them off the Goodwins, ’bout a month ago.”

“Picked it up?”

“Yah. Took it into Dover.”

The trawlerman said: “Get any of the crew?”

The other shook his head. “There was plenty of them in it, but they were dead. It had been depth-charged all to hell—the hull was split in three places. We reckoned she’d been going home upon the surface in the night, and hit the sands about low water. Then up comes the tide before she can get off, and drowns the lot.”

The trawlerman said: “What’s everybody drinking?” He turned to Mona: “Same all round, lady.”

She busied herself with the whiskies. Somebody else asked: “Did they learn anything useful from the submarine?”

“I don’t know about that. We went off on another job. I only know that there was one bloody funny thing we found.”

“What’s that?”

The man turned to the lieutenant-commander. “Tell ’em about the torpedo-tubes, sir.”

The naval officer smiled slowly. “Only one tube,” he said. “I went in at the first low tide to see if any of the tubes were loaded.”

One of the R.N.V.R. officers said: “Grisly sort of job.”

“Yes—it was rather.” He was silent for a minute, thinking again of that eerie journey through the black cavities of the dead submarine, flashing an electric-torch before him. The structure had dripped salt water on him at each step: it had smelt abominably of fuel oil, salt water, chlorine, and corruption; it had been slippery and very dark.

He said: “I opened the back doors of all the tubes. One of them was full of fuel oil.”

“Fuel oil?”

The officer nodded. “I opened the door and it all came out, all over the floor and my boots and everything.”

One of the trawlermen said: “How did that stuff get into a torpedo-tube?”

The other laughed. “That’s not the end of it. What do you think came out with the oil?”

One of the R.N.V.R. officers, fingering his third whisky, said gravely: “A nest of field mice.”

The naval officer said: “Well, you’re wrong. Most of a British rating’s kit.”

They all stared at him. “In the oil?”

“In the oil, in the torpedo-tube. There was a hat, and a couple of jumpers and a shirt, and a pair of bags, and a lot of Portsmouth City Council tram-tickets, if you please. All sorts of stuff.”

They were incredulous. “But how did that get there?”

The salvage officer laughed. “It’s one of their tricks. They keep a tube full of fuel oil and British sailors’ stuff. If they get in a tight corner they discharge the lot, blow the tube through with the compressed air. We see a lot of oil and air come up and stop our depth-charges. Then we see a British matloe’s hat floating in the oil, and we get all hot and bothered and stop bombing altogether. And while we’re dithering about it, he gets away.”

“How long have they been doing this?”

“God knows. We’ve only just cottoned on to it. This one on the Goodwins was the first definite case we found of it.”

Somebody said: “They’re up to any bloody sort of trick you like.”

Somebody else said: “I’ve heard of periscopes being stuck in a floating barrel, but I never heard of that one.”