No Highway (7 page)

He nodded. “It’s not evidence, of course,” he said. “It keeps the fatigue theory in the field, in that if the tailplane had been there and intact it couldn’t have come off in the air. But the mere fact that the port tailplane was missing, when so much else was missing, doesn’t take us very far.”

“It’s beginning to tot up,” I said. “It’s one more thing.”

I settled down to read the report through carefully; when I got to the end I turned back to the beginning and read it through again, making notes as I did so. It was clear from the circumstances of the accident that the wreckage could not possibly have been removed. It would still be lying where it fell three months before, with the new growth of the forest coming up around it and through it, gradually obliterating everything. There was my evidence, all right, there in the woods. In one of the photographs I could see the broken stump of the front spar of the port tailplane. It would not be necessary, perhaps, to search the woods for the tailplane itself. If that broken spar attached to the rear fuselage showed the typical form of fatigue crystallisation of the metal at the fracture, there would be all the evidence we needed. It would, of course, be better and would make the matter more complete if we could get the tailplane, too.

In the middle of the afternoon I went down to see the Group-Captain again, ready to be firm.

“I’ve read through this report,” I said. “It’s very interesting, sir—and, if I may say so, the most comprehensive report I’ve yet seen on an accident. It’s very thorough.”

He smiled. “Got all you want from it?”

“I think so,” I said. “I should like to take it down to
Farnborough to talk it over with the Director, if you could spare this copy for a few days?”

“That’s all right,” he said.

I went on. “Well, sir—about this suggestion that’s been made about tailplane fatigue. You’ll hear from us officially in the next day or two, if we want anything done. My present feeling—what I shall advise the Director—is that we should send an officer out there at once to make an examination of this broken tailplane spar.” His face darkened; I opened the report and showed him the photograph. “This one. As the port tail was missing altogether we can’t rule out this theory that has arisen. Of course, if it should be proved that fatigue is present in these aircraft at such an early stage, it’s a matter of the greatest urgency to put it right.”

I stared down at the photograph before us; it was horrible. “We don’t want another one like this,” I said.

Fisher said stiffly, “If you really think that necessary after the very careful investigation that has been already made, I suppose Ottawa can arrange it. If it comes at our request, of course, financial sanction will be necessary; these expeditions to out-of-the-way places like this are very costly, you know. It’s in a dollar area, too, so the Secretariat will have to submit the matter to the Treasury. But if you people insist upon it, I suppose it can all be arranged.”

“I can only state my own view, sir,” I said. “I think it’s necessary and a matter of great urgency. That’s what I shall tell the Director; I can’t say, of course, what he’ll decide. But I should like to see an officer on his way to Ottawa tomorrow, or the day after, at the latest.”

“It all seems rather ridiculous,” he grumbled. “The matter was most carefully gone into.”

I did not want to argue it with him, and I had given him warning of what was coming, as was only fair. I said good-bye and left the office with Ferguson. He was rather amused; in the corridor outside the office he turned to me, and grinned. “He’s putting up a good fight,” he said. “He knows all the tricks. He’ll run round to the Secretariat tonight and tell them that your journey isn’t really necessary.”

“He wouldn’t do a thing like that,” I said. I was a little worried at the mere suggestion. “He’s a good old stick—I’ve known him for years. And this thing concerns the lives of people in the air. He wouldn’t want to see another stinking crash like this.”

“Of course he wouldn’t,” Ferguson replied. “But you see—he thinks you’re absolutely wrong and just kicking up a stink in his department irresponsibly. People believe what they want to believe.”

I got back to Farnborough too late to see the Director. I went home with the report under my arm, tired and depressed by what had been my reading for the day. I was due to read my paper on the “Performance Analysis of Aircraft flying at High Mach Numbers” on the following Thursday, the first paper that I had been asked to read before a learned society. When I got home I found that the advance printed copy of this thing had arrived, and that Shirley had been reading it all afternoon. She had taken it upstairs to show to Mrs. Peters in the flat above; it was a great thing for us, because it was the first distinction we had managed to collect since we were married. Fingering it and turning over the pages, and discussing with Shirley the cuts that I would make when reading it, served as an anodyne; it took my mind off the Reindeer misery, so that I slept fairly well.

I went down to see the Director first thing next morning. I showed him the Reindeer accident report, and told him all about my interviews with Group-Captain Fisher. “In spite of what he says, I think we ought to send somebody out there,” I remarked. “I should like to see an officer from here sent out by air straight away, sir, to make a metallurgical report on that spar fracture.”

“I think you’re right, Scott,” he said slowly. “I believe that’s the only thing to do. Who would you send?”

“I should send Honey.”

“You have sufficient confidence in Honey, Scott?”

I said, “I have, sir. I’m beginning to get quite a respect for Mr. Honey. I’m beginning to think he’s right in this thing, and he’s certainly the man in the Establishment who knows most about fatigue.”

“Yes, he is that.” He turned over the pages of the report, thoughtfully. “This place where the accident is located—I understand it’s eleven miles from a lake where you can land a seaplane? That’s a journey of eleven miles through the Canadian woods?”

“I think so.”

“I’m not so sure that Honey is the right man for that sort of assignment, Scott. He isn’t what I should describe as an outdoor type.” He paused. “You wouldn’t rather go yourself?”

I hesitated in my turn. I would have given my eyes to go off on a trip like that and it would have been a very welcome change from my office routine. But whoever went would have to go at once. “I’d go like a shot, sir,” I said. “But I’ve got this paper to read on Thursday of next week, the one on the performance of high Mach numbers. Of course, I could cancel it.”

He said, “I had forgotten that.” He shook his head. “You’ll have to stay for that—after all, the Royal Aeronautical Society is an important body; you can’t treat them like that. No, it will have to be Honey. You really think he will get on all right upon a trip like this?”

“I’m sure he will, sir,” I replied. “Technically, he’s certainly the best man we’ve got to send. And as regards the physical aspects of the journey, we can warn Ottawa that we’re sending over somebody who isn’t very fit. They’ll make things easy for him, and push him through all right.”

We stood in silence for a minute; evidently he didn’t like it much. “I only wish he had a better presence,” the Director said at last. And then he straightened up. “All right, Scott, I’ll tell Ferguson what we’ve decided, and I’ll get on to the Secretariat about the air passage. You’d like him to fly out at once?”

“Immediately, sir. I don’t think we can afford to waste a day.”

I went up to my office and sent for Mr. Honey. He came in blinking through his thick spectacles; his hair was untidy, his collar was dirty, and there was a smear of what I judged to be an egg upon the front of his waistcoat. He looked even more of a mess than usual. It was certainly a problem how to clean him up without hurting his feelings and making him bloody-minded, to make him look a little more presentable before I pushed him off to Ottawa.

I told him what had happened in London and I showed him the report of the accident. He did not seem to be very interested in the factual circumstances of the crash, but tie seized on the photographs and looked for a long time at the stump of the tailplane front spar. “It has all the appearance of a fatigue fracture,” he said at last. “Look. There’s no crumpling or elongation of the metal there. There’s practically no distortion of the flange at all, right up to the point of fracture. That’s not natural. That’s a short fracture, that’s what that is. The metal must have been terribly crystalline to break off short like that.”

I could see what he meant, though the detail was very tiny in the photograph. It was one more thing.

I told him that we had decided that an officer should fly to Ottawa at once, and that we were arranging for a seaplane or amphibian to take a party up to Small Pine Water immediately for a further technical examination of the wreckage. “I want you to go and do that, Honey,” I said. “I don’t know anybody who could do it better.”

He stared at me. “You mean—that I should go to Canada?”

“That’s right,” I said. “I want you to go at once, starting the day after tomorrow. It really is most urgent that we should get this matter settled up and find out if that tailplane failed in fatigue or not.”

“I don’t know that there’s all that rush about it,” he said. “I agree—it’s information that we must have ultimately, and the sooner we get it the better, I suppose. But we’ve still got to go on with the trial here, and I can’t possibly get out even a preliminary report for limited circulation till November.”

“I know,” I said patiently. “But that’s the other aspect of it, Honey—the long-term research. What I’m concerned about now is—have we got to ground the Reindeers that are flying now?”

He said irritably, “Oh, the
ad hoc
trial. Surely, anybody can do that, and leave me free to get on with the stuff that really matters.”

“This is the most important thing of all at the moment, Honey,” I said firmly “Look. You’re an older man than I am, and probably a better scientist. Perhaps I’m better as an administrator than you would be—I don’t know. In any case, here I am sitting in this office and it’s part of my job to decide the priorities of work in this department. I think this trip to Canada is top priority of anything that’s going on at Farnborough today and I want you to drop everything else and go and do it, because I can’t think of anybody who could do it better. It’s not an order, because we don’t work that way. But I hope you’ll accept my decision about priorities, because that’s what I’m here for.”

He smiled, a shy, warm smile that I had never seen before. “Of course,” he said. “I wasn’t trying to be difficult. I only hope I shan’t have to spend too long away from here.”

I thought about that for a moment. “I know it’s important to get you back as soon as ever we can,” I said. “I don’t want to see the basic work held up. I’ll see that you get an
air passage home immediately the job is done. I should think you’d probably be away from here for ten days or a fortnight.”

His face fell. “So long as that?”

“I don’t believe you’d do it in much less. First, you’ve got to get from here to Ottawa. Then there’s the flight back from Ottawa to north-east Quebec, and then to reach the site of the accident is a day’s trek on foot. And then the whole thing in reverse again, to get back home.”

“It’s an awful waste of time,” he grumbled.

“It’s not,” I said. “That’s my sphere of decisions, Honey, and I tell you that it’s not a waste of time.”

“It is from the point of view of the basic research.”

“So is eating your breakfast,” I remarked. “But you’ve got to do that, too.”

I went through the various arrangements that would have to be made for carrying on his trials in his absence; he was quite business-like and alert where anything to do with basic trials was concerned, and in ten minutes we were through with that. “Now about your trip,” I said. “It’s going to mean some days of living rough in the Canadian woods, I’m afraid. You’ll be with the R.C.A.F. and they’ll look after you, but I understand that there’s a ten or fifteen mile walk from the lake you land on to the site of the crash, and the same back again. It’ll probably be quite difficult going. Have you got an outfit of clothes that would do for that, Honey?”

“I’ve got some good strong boots. I haven’t looked at them for years, but I think they’re all right.” He paused, and then he said, “We used to do a lot of hiking on Sundays, when my wife was alive.…” He stared out of the window, and was silent for a moment; I did not care to interrupt him. “We used to go in shorts.… I’ve got those somewhere, I think. Do you think shorts would be suitable?”

The thought of Mr. Honey turning up in Ottawa in short hiking pants as a representative of the Royal Aircraft Establishment made me blench. “I wouldn’t take those,” I said. “I don’t believe they wear shorts in the woods, on account of the mosquitoes. I’ll get a letter through to Ottawa asking them to kit you up for the trip, and we can charge it up as necessary expenses. I should take the boots with you, or … no, they’ll supply those too. But look, Honey, go in your best suit. You’re going as the representative of this Establishment. Put on a bit of dog, you know. Don’t let anybody sit on you in any technical matter; you’re the expert,
and you’re the man that counts. We’ll back you up from here in anything you feel you’ve got to insist on.”

He nodded. “I’ll remember that,” he said.

“Now, how about your personal affairs? Are you all right with those?”

He hesitated. “Well, no, I’m not. I’ve got a man from the electricity company coming in one day next week to fit up that electric hot-water heater. And then there’s Elspeth—I shall have to see if I can get somebody to come and sleep in the house, I suppose. It’s rather a long time for her to be alone.”

I was a bit staggered at the suggestion that he could leave Elspeth alone at all. “What about her?” I asked. “Have you got a relative who could come and stay with her?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think there’s anybody like that.” He paused for a minute in thought, and then he said, “Don’t worry about that, Dr. Scott—I’ll think of something. I’ve left her for two days at a time, once or twice when I had to. Of course, she’s older now, but I think this is much too long to do that. I think I can get Mrs. Higgs—that’s my charwoman—I think she’d come and sleep in while I’m away.”