The Challenging Heights (22 page)

When he said nothing, Zoë spoke nervously, as if she guessed he couldn’t give his wholehearted approval.

‘We’ll fly it to Vancouver just as soon as the ballyhoo over the Dufee Derby’s finished,’ she said. ‘Hell, in this country people live off publicity and it’s no use trying to compete. The newspapers’ll lap it up.’

‘Once in Vancouver,’ Harmer went on, ‘we’ll get her ready and take off for Tokyo at the first sign of good weather and a wind from the east.’

‘Who’s flying it up?’ Dicken asked.

‘Casey and me,’ Zoë said.

‘You might have to wait a long time for a good wind for Tokyo. The winds come from the west. Why not take her to Tokyo by ship and fly the other way?’

‘It’d cost too much money and the Japs want the flight to end there.’

‘She’ll do around a hundred,’ Zoë put in, and Dicken was conscious that she was well aware of his unease. ‘We’re supporting the tail with a wheeled platform to put her in a flying attitude right from the start. It’ll get her off the ground more quickly. It’s an idea that’s been used before.’

‘Fonck tried it when he tried to fly the Atlantic in 1926,’ Dicken agreed. ‘It came adrift. What’s her weight?’

‘Two tons,’ Harmer said. ‘Six fully loaded. She had a housed cockpit originally but – well, we decided it was safer to have it open. There’ve been cases of leaking exhausts and pilots being asphyxiated, and Davis and Wooster might have been saved when the
American Legion
crashed if their cockpit hadn’t been glassed over. She’s already flown around two thousand miles.’

‘All up?’

‘No, of course not.’ Harmer sounded faintly irritated, as if he had suddenly noticed, as Dicken had, that in his concern for safety an unspoken doubt was hidden. ‘You don’t go filling a machine that costs as much as this to the brim until you need it. But we’ll fill her for Vancouver and see how she performs. And as for the platform under the tail, we’ve fixed a mirror to watch our rear end. We’ll use the trip north to check that everything works.’

Dicken kept his doubts to himself. It seemed to him that if Harmer had expended as much time and energy on the design of the machine as he had on the safety precautions and the colour scheme he might have had a better chance. The distance to Tokyo was four thousand seven hundred miles, longer than Lindbergh’s flight to Paris, longer than the Derby flight to Honolulu, but at least the Aleutian Islands stretched almost all the way across the North Pacific and in the event of trouble they might be able to reach them.

The thing that worried him most was Harmer’s casual approach. Lindbergh had taken enormous trouble. He had learned great circle navigation and checked time zone and magnetic variation charts, to say nothing of information on the weather ahead of him. Zoë was still not taking her navigation seriously.

‘There’s no problem,’ she insisted. ‘God Almighty, Dicky Boy, for a professional airman you sure let your nerves get on top of you. The navy made it across the Pacific to Honolulu. in a Fokker Trimotor. Even before the Dole Derby last year.’

‘The navy usually does the job thoroughly,’ Dicken pointed out. ‘And they installed a lot of navigation instruments and had an expert navigator to provide a dead reckoning course.’

‘And they were followed by another machine that didn’t,’ she snapped. ‘It landed on Molokai.
They
did the trip all the way with a solid cloud floor.’

Dicken refused to be convinced, but his worries were swamped in the furore that was taking place in the newspapers about the Dufee Derby. Despite the uproar after the disastrous Dole competition the previous year – when the newspapers, which had whipped up the enthusiasm had just as quickly turned their backs on it and claimed no responsibility – the press were plastering their pages with enormous headlines. The United States Navy had more than once indicated that it was not prepared ever again to comb vast stretches of ocean for missing competitors but they were being urged by interested politicians and businessmen to change their minds, while the National Aeronautical Association, which had condemned transoceanic flights instituted for individual publicity rather than scientific progress, were being accused of lacking enterprise.

As the start drew nearer, the newspapers became almost hysterical, all the chances and non-chances weighed up by newsmen who knew nothing about flying, and nobody seemed to notice that the Hawaiian group was only 317 miles wide so that an error of more than three and a half degrees either way could cause a machine to miss them altogether.

The entries numbered twelve, the oddest a big awkward triplane, but while being flown to the starting point at Oakland, in California, it stalled on landing and the three wings had crumpled into a shambles. It had become clear by this time that, despite the disasters of the previous year, there had once again been more enthusiasm than thought in the preparations, and a shocking haste on the part of some of the contestants to meet the deadline.

Dicken, Zoë and Harmer were all in the same hotel and Dicken noticed that now that Harmer was on the scene Zoë showed no inclination to share his room. In the evenings as they listened to the big brown radio with the fretwork motif on the front, she sat equidistant between the two of them, as if she were establishing the fact that she belonged to neither.

As the aeroplanes lined up at the Oakland Municipal Airport, it was noticeable that none of the famous firms had provided entries, as though, after the previous year’s casualty list, they didn’t wish to be associated with another failure. But the newspapers, despite their complaints that money prizes did more harm to aviation than not by encouraging the unready to take chances, were busy whipping up enthusiasm with questions about which was to be the fastest machine in the race – a Lampert Omega or a Norden low-wing monoplane. Another of the competitors had already been eliminated when a Trewint with a defective fuel system had crashed en route to the takeoff, killing the two naval officers who were crewing it.

As they ate a late breakfast on the morning of the start, the newspapers announced that yet another competitor had been eliminated. The Norden had failed on a test flight and the pilot had taken to his parachute too late.

‘This isn’t a rat race,’ Dicken growled. ‘It’s another slaughter.’

There was an across-the-nation radio hook-up and everybody in the hotel had crowded into the lounge where the air was full of cigarette smoke.

‘There goes the first!’ The announcer’s voice rose excitedly.

‘The flag’s gone down and away goes Si Izzard’s
Voyager.
He’s away, heading bravely for the good old broad Pacific. Now it’s the turn of Roy Lewis’
Esperanza.
He has another naval flier as his navigator. There he goes – heading down the field, picking up speed, he’s going to unstick at any moment – hey!’

As the commentary stopped in a shout of surprise, the whole room leaned forward, their faces tense for news of an accident.

‘He groundlooped!’ The announcer’s voice was shrill. ‘He groundlooped, folks! He groundlooped! Just as he was about to leave the ground, he whirled round and came to a dead stop! From here, it looks as though he might have touched a wing. Maybe his undercarriage collapsed. I can see the ambulance and the fire engine heading down there, but – wait a minute! – yeah, there they are! I can see Roy himself climbing out with his navigator. They’re okay. No harm done, except to the ship.’

As it went on, the tension increased. The next machine off, a Knevett monoplane, veered from the runway and had to be towed back to the end of the line of waiting machines for a fresh start. Then the Lampert Omega, as expected, made a beautiful take-off, half an hour after the first machine.

‘There goes the favourite,’ the announcer crowed. ‘He sure looks fine. He’s climbing away now at speed and looks set for a fast passage. Now here comes the Thurston,
Muriel of Milo.
She’s named after Muriel Nugent, the pretty stenographer from Milo, Michigan. She’s not much more than twenty-one years old but she’s mad about flying. Her pilot’s Art Gaydon, a guy of twenty-four who walks with a limp, the souvenir of a crash. Rooney Savage’s the navigator. And there goes the Flying Stenographer! But, wait a minute, the Thurston’s backfiring badly! They’re turning round and coming back for another go! I guess it’s spark plugs!’

Another Knevett, a French-built Lafosse, a Kelly biplane and a Mirac Messenger followed, pursued by the Knevett which had veered from the runway. This time the Knevett groundlooped and smashed a wing.
Muriel of Milo
left for a second time and the commentator breathed what sounded like a sigh of relief.

‘Well, there you are, folks,’ he said. ‘We’ve now got eight of the entries actually in the air and making for Hawaii. That’s a whole lot better than last year. They’re being followed at the moment by a crowd of escort and camera planes, but I guess
they’ll
soon be on their way back.’

The commentary went on for a little longer but it was desultory now that the machines had left and someone rose and switched off the set.

‘I guess that’s that,’ Harmer said. ‘My money’s on the Omega.’

The following day, the radio messages, punctuated by crackling, were being relayed from Honolulu.

‘There’s a crowd of thirty thousand here at Wheeler Field,’ the metallic voice said. ‘All ready to welcome the winners. Among them are the Governor and Ryan Dufee himself and there’s to be a monster civic celebration in the city when the machines arrive.’

It was clear nothing was happening and the commentator was being pushed to provide something to say. Music started, light music that turned to jazz, then it was abruptly interrupted.

‘Here it is!’ The metallic voice was high and loud with excitement. ‘Here’s the first one! Everybody’s cheering! It’s only a speck in the sky but I guess it’s the first!’

There were a few tense minutes until the machine was identified. ‘It looks like the Omega! I think it is! No, it isn’t! Now, that’s a surprise. I thank it’s either the Voyager or the Knevett. I can’t make it out. They’ve both got the same engine and the same two undercarriage struts up to the wing root. Wait a minute, I can see the name! It’s the
Voyager!
It’s Si Izzard in the
Voyager!
Si Izzard is the winner, folks!’

A few dollar bills changed hands as bets were settled and there was a lot of relieved laughter that the machines had made it. Two hours later, news came that the Knevett had landed to claim the second prize, followed soon afterwards by the Mirac Messenger.

‘Where the hell’s the Omega?’ Harmer demanded. ‘She ought to be there by now.’

When no more machines had landed several hours later, it was clear that a depressed feeling of defeat had come over the commentators.

Later in the morning the news was flashed that the French Lafosse had landed in the sea three hundred miles out with a faulty fuel feed, but that her crew had managed to put her down close to a freighter on its way to San Francisco which had picked up not only the crew but the aeroplane as well. The delay in learning what had happened was because the freighter’s radio had been out of action and they had had to wait until they had spoken to another ship with a radio which had passed the message to the shore. Then an hour later news came in that the Kelly had landed on the Mexican island of Guadalupe.

‘But that’s almost due south!’ Harmer said. ‘How the hell did she get there? Their compass must have been acting up.’

It helped to relieve the tension a little but by this time the commentators were finding it difficult to unearth something new to say and the information that yet another machine had failed to make it wasn’t quite the same as that the other missing machines had arrived. In Honolulu aching eyes were still watching the sky but it was already obvious that the Omega and the
Muriel of Milo
were beyond the limit of their fuel. As it became obvious that there would be no more landings, it was possible even over the radio to sense the exuberance draining out of the festivities that had been planned.

By the following day, despite its statement to the contrary, the United States Navy had mounted an air-sea search and, as if more money could retrieve the situation, Dufee had offered another ten thousand dollars for the rescue of the crews of the missing planes. Other interested tycoons put up more sums.

Izzard, the pilot of the winning
Voyager
,
his machine refuelled and serviced, took off again to fly back to the mainland, promising to search for the lost aeroplanes en route. Several hours later a flash message on the radio announced that the plane was in trouble and soon after that it went off the air while only six hundred miles from the coast.

There were no crowds round the hotel radio by this time. Everyone was going sheepishly about their business and all the exuberance had faded. Harmer’s face was flushed and his eyes were red, and Dicken suspected he’d been drinking. Like Zoë, he had not changed his plans and it seemed to Dicken that, like so many long-distance fliers, he was impelled along his path less by the wish to go than by the feeling that the great newspaper reading and radio listening public would regard him as cowardly if he didn’t follow through with his plans.

That night there was a soft scratching at Dicken’s door. ‘It’s me. Zoë. Can I come in?’

As he opened the door, Zoë slipped into his bed. As he took her in his arms, he heard her whisper, ‘Dicky Boy, all those poor people! Eleven of them! All dead! It’s worse than last year.’

Dicken said nothing for a while. ‘It’s all so bloody pointless,’ he said eventually. ‘We know people are brave. Why go on proving it?’

She was silent for a while, curled up in his arms.

‘Zo,’ he said. ‘Don’t go on this trip of yours. You’ll never make it.’

‘Casey thinks we will.’

‘I’ve been flying a long time, Zo
,’
he said. ‘Longer than you. Longer than Casey. I don’t think you will.’

She sat up in bed. ‘Christ,’ she said bitterly, her whole mood changing. ‘You’re bloody encouraging! Why not?’