No Highway (3 page)

It was the end of the morning. I left the paper in my office and walked up to the senior staff lunch-room. I found the Director there drinking a sherry; I waited for an opportunity when he was disengaged, and said, “Have you got a quarter of an hour free this afternoon, sir?”

“I think so,” he replied. “What is it, Scott?”

“It’s about Mr. Honey and his fatigue test,” I said. “I’d like you to be aware of what’s going on.”

“Can’t help being aware of it,” he answered. “You can hear the damn thing at the other end of the factory—it’s worse than the wind tunnels. When is it coming to an end?”

“He says it’s going on till Christmas,” I replied. “I think it ought to be accelerated. But if I can come along this afternoon I’ll tell you about it.”

“Quarter-past three?”

“I’ll be there, sir.”

I turned away to go in to have lunch, but he detained me. “Has Honey been all right recently?”

“All right? I think so, sir. I don’t think he’s had any time off.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” There was a momentary pause. “You know,” he said, “there has been a little trouble in the past. He seems to hold very firm ideas on certain semi-religious subjects.” I glanced at him in inquiry. “About the lost ten tribes of Israel and their identity with Britain, and that sort of thing.”

“I hadn’t heard that one,” I said. “What I heard was something to do with the Great Pyramid.”

He laughed. “Oh, that’s another part of it—that comes in as well.” He spoke more seriously. “No, just before you came there was a procession of these people in Woking, and it got broken up by a number of Jewish rowdies, and Honey was taken up and charged with creating a breach of the peace. He got bound over. I mention that because it’s one of the matters that one has to bear in mind, that he has rather odd ideas on certain subjects.”

I nodded. “Thank you for telling me, sir.”

“Poor old Honey,” he said thoughtfully. “He’s a man I’m very sorry for. But if you should decide at any time that a change would be desirable, I wouldn’t oppose it.”

I went in to lunch aware that the Director didn’t think a lot of Mr. Honey. Anderson was there, who looks after radar equipment and development for civil air lines. I sat down next to him and said, “I say, you can tell me. How many Reindeers are Central Air Transport Organisation operating now?”

He said, “Five or six.”

“Do you know at all how many hours they’ve done?

“He shook his head. “Not much, anyway. They only put
them on the route last month, because they waited until four had been delivered. I shouldn’t think any of the machines had done more than two or three hundred hours yet.”

I thought with relief that we had a bit of time. “How do they like it?”

“Like the Reindeer? Oh, they’re very pleased with it. It’s a lovely job, you know—nice to fly in and nice to handle. I think it’s going to be a great success.”

I went back to my office after lunch and sat turning over Mr. Honey’s papers, studying his Goodman diagrams, thinking out what I was going to say to the Director. Nuclear fission was quite outside my experience; I did not know enough about it even to read Mr. Honey’s work intelligently, let alone criticise it or determine for myself the truth of his prognosis. And turning over his pages, disconsolate, I saw one or two sentences that made me wonder if Mr. Honey knew much more than I did, for all his pages of mathematics.

I went down to the Director that afternoon and told him all about it. “On his estimates, he reckons that the Reindeer tail, the front spar, will fail by fatigue in 1,440 hours,” I said. “I don’t much like the sound of that. The Reindeers are in service now.”

“What is this estimate based on?” he asked.

I told him all about the nuclear fission theory and the separation of the neutron that produced an isotopic form of aluminium within the alloy. “Quite frankly, sir,” I said, “I don’t understand all this myself. I’m not capable of criticising it. If he’s correct it’s very serious indeed, and all those aircraft should be grounded. But knowing something about Mr. Honey—well, he may not be correct.”

He thought for a moment. “The test will show. How long is that going on for?”

“It’s only done four hundred and twenty-three hours,” I replied. “He’s not expecting it to break before next Christmas.” I paused, and then I said, “I should think the aeroplanes are piling up hours quicker than the test. After all, they fly day and night, but the test only runs in our normal working hours.”

“What is the longest time that one of the aircraft has done?”

“I don’t know, sir. One of them flew into a hill the other day, in Labrador or somewhere. I asked Anderson at lunch how many hours the rest of them had done. He said they’d only done two or three hundred hours each.”

“That gives us a little time,” he said. “I didn’t know they’d lost one of them.”

“It was in all the papers,” I told him. “The Russian Ambassador to Ottawa was killed in it, Mr. Oskonikoff or something. All the lot of them were killed.”

“Oh, that one—I remember. Was that a Reindeer?”

I nodded. “That was the prototype Reindeer, the one we had here for the trials. But that’s a clear case; it flew into the mountain. Hit just at the top of a precipice and fell about five hundred feet down into the forest, in flames. It always beats me how a pilot manages to get into that sort of position, with all the aids we give them.”

“It’s the human factor,” he said. “Still—I agree, you wouldn’t expect mistakes of that sort in a decent air line.” He turned to the papers. “I don’t quite know what to say about all this, Scott. I’m like you—I can’t criticise this nuclear stuff, myself. It’s clearly a matter of urgency. I think we ought to put it up to I.S.A.R.B., on a high priority.”

The Inter-Services Atomic Research Board were certainly the proper people to advise us upon Mr. Honey’s stuff, provided they would do it quick. “I’m very nervous about any delay,” I said. “Could you send it personally, sir?” I hesitated. “I’d really like to ground those Reindeers till we get the thing cleared up, but I suppose that isn’t practical.”

He stared out of the window. “That means, stop the entire operation of C.A.T.O.’s Atlantic service … I think we’ll have to get some supporting evidence for Mr. Honey’s theories before we could do that. But I agree with you, Scott, this thing has to be taken seriously. I’ll send it to Sir Phillip Dolbear tonight, with a personal note.”

I went back to my office satisfied with this; I knew Dolbear to be acute and hardworking, a good chairman for the Atomic Board. I sent for Mr. Honey and told him what was in the wind. I reminded him that he was playing with a real Reindeer tail, and that when he said blithely that his experiment would culminate at 1,440 hours, he really meant that real aeroplanes would crash after that flying time.

He blinked at me through his heavy glasses. “Of course, I know that,” he said. “But till the research work is completed, everyone is guessing in the dark. You must realise that in all this kind of work one has to feel one’s way. I may be very much in error, very much indeed. There’s nothing definite about it yet.”

“Do you think it could fail sooner?” I asked.

“Oh, I shouldn’t think so. In fact, I’ve been preparing myself for a real disappointment about Christmas time. It could quite well go on till April, or even longer.”

He lived and thought in quite a different world from me if he could contemplate waiting a year for data on a thing like this. He was pure scientist all through, and I suppose I’m not. I told him that Sir Phillip Dolbear would probably want to have a talk with him in a day or two, and he went away.

At the end of the week Mr. Honey went to London at the request of Sir Phillip. I sent for him next day and asked him how he had got on.

He looked uneasy and unhappy. “I don’t think he was really very much interested in the subject,” he said.

“What makes you think that?” I asked quietly. It looked as if they had not agreed too well.

He was silent for a minute. “He was just out to pick holes in it,” he said at last. “You aren’t going to get a very good report. He’s the sort of man who wants everything docketed and proved, and each stage made secure and buttoned up before you go on to the next. Well, as I told you, there’s a great deal still to be confirmed in the entire basic theory. It will take years to do that. These experiments we are doing now are meant to confirm all the points that I have made assumptions on, one by one. I told him that. But he insisted on regarding the test we’re doing now as a test of the Reindeer tail. I told him it was nothing of the sort. It’s a test to find our errors in the theory.”

“But Mr. Honey,” I said, “this test is, in fact, a fatigue test of the Reindeer tailplane. The Reindeer is out and flying, carrying passengers across the Atlantic, and what you say is that the tailplane will break up in 1,440 hours of flying. That’s a very serious thing to say. It means that all those aircraft should be grounded.”

He said unhappily, “I never said anything of the sort. I told you I was quite prepared for a disappointment. Theoretically, and if all the assumptions I have made should be exactly and precisely correct, a separation of the neutron should occur at 1,440 hours. The purpose of this test is to show where the assumptions are wrong and to correct the theory. You’re trying to turn a piece of basic research into an
ad hoc
experiment. Well, you can’t do that.”

He glared at me angrily through his thick glasses. He was very much upset.

“I see your point,” I said slowly. “But that doesn’t help
us in deciding what to do about the Reindeers that are in service now.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” he retorted. “It certainly won’t help them to keep badgering me like this. Sir Phillip Dolbear didn’t believe a word I said, and he’s quite right. Nothing is proved yet, nothing is confirmed. You’re trying to make me run before I can walk, and the result is I just look a fool. Well, that’s not very helpful.”

“I didn’t mean to do that, Mr. Honey,” I said. “I’m just trying to find out what we ought to do about these aircraft that are in service now.”

“Well, I can’t help you there,” he said. “I’ve told you all I can, and I’m not going to be bullied into saying any more. You’ve got your troubles, and I’ve got mine.” He did not say that most of his troubles were of my making, but he meant it.

He went away, and I rang up Ferguson in the Department of Experiment and Research at the Ministry, who serves as our London office. “Ferguson,” I said, “this is Scott speaking. Look, we’re getting a bit doubtful about the Reindeer tailplane; there’s a suggestion that fatigue might crop up at a fairly early stage. It’s got rather an exaggerated aspect ratio, you know. I believe I’m right in saying that C.A.T.O. are operating five or six of them on the Atlantic route. Could you get on to the Corporation or the A.R.B.—without alarming anyone unduly, because I think it may be a mare’s nest—and find out how many hours flying these machines have done?”

He said at once, “They can’t have done much. They’ve only been operational for about a month. What number of hours represents the danger point?”

“Mr. Honey’s estimate is 1,440 hours. But as I say, I think it’s a mare’s nest.”

He laughed over the telephone. “Oh, this is Honey, is it? In that case, I should think it might be. I’ll find out from the Corporation, and let you know.” He rang back later in the morning. The longest time that any of the machines had done was 305 hours, up to the evening before.

Next day at about tea-time Shirley rang me up in the office. She said, “Dennis, darling, I’m sorry to worry you. I’ve got Elspeth Honey here because she wanted to listen to the Pastoral Symphony on the wireless, and theirs is bust. I’m just going to give her tea. She wanted to let her father know where she is, because she won’t be home when he gets there.
I was wondering if you’d like to bring him back with you to pick up Elspeth.”

“Okay, dear,” I said. “I’ll do that.”

I rang up Mr. Honey and told him, and suggested that he came back with me in my car instead of going by the bus, as he usually did. I was rather pleased to have the opportunity to do something for him, because the last time that we had spoken our relations had not been exactly cordial, and I didn’t like to feel that he was nursing a grievance against me. I was aware, too, that there was a good deal of reason on his side. He met me at the car at half-past five, and we drove out on the road to Farnham.

“It’s very kind of Mrs. Scott to invite Elspeth like this,” he said diffidently. “She mustn’t let her make herself a nuisance.”

“Not a bit,” I said. “She’s probably company for Shirley—for my wife. It gets a bit slow for her sometimes when I’m away all day.”

“That is the trouble, of course,” he replied. “I mean, with Elspeth. It’s all right in the term time, but in the holidays it’s sometimes very difficult.”

“I should think it is,” I said, thinking of his womanless menage. “What do you do with her in the holidays?”

He said, “There’s a clergyman who runs a holiday home for children down at Bournemouth, and she goes there sometimes, but it’s rather expensive. And he’s started to take mental defectives now—very backward children, you know—so it’s not quite so suitable as it used to be. But really, Elspeth’s so good at playing by herself that I don’t know that she isn’t just as happy at home.”

The thought of his little girl of twelve spending her holidays alone all day in the villa in Copse Road was not an attractive one. “It’s very difficult,” I said.

“It’s a great deal easier in term time,” he remarked. “Elspeth likes being at school, and she’s very fond of Mrs. Scott. She talks about her a great deal.”

I was not surprised to hear that Elspeth liked being at school if her holidays were spent alone in a deserted house. “You’ve met my wife, have you, Honey?” I asked. “Miss Mansfield, who used to be a tracer in the Aerodynamics? A girl with fair, sort of auburn hair?”

He did not think that he remembered her.

At the flat we found Shirley and Elspeth sitting over tea in the sitting-room listening to the wireless; we went in
quietly, not to disturb them. I made a fresh pot of tea for Honey and myself, and we sat listening to the symphony with them till it was finished. It was the first time I had seen Elspeth Honey, and this pause gave me an opportunity to study her. As Shirley had said, she was an ugly child, but this ugliness seemed to me to be more associated with her unbecoming clothes and the way her hair was cut than with the child herself. She had rather sharp, pale features; she was thin; and she looked intelligent. She did not look to be a very happy child. She had fine, well-shaped hands, and when she moved she did not seem to be clumsy. If she had had a mother, I reflected, she might have been very different.