Trustee From the Toolroom (14 page)

Mr Adams stirred from a post-prandial doze. 'Wonderful the way they find their way about,' he said comfortably, and dozed again.

Keith was too technically interested to follow his example. He got up and stood in the dim alley leading to the flightdeck, watching what was going on. Nothing much seemed to be happening; the pilots sat relaxed and he judged that the machine was on the automatic pilot, for neither of them seemed to be flying it. The pilot's microphone hung idle on its hook, but now and again the radio operator seemed to speak to someone from his desk. Dick King sat upon a folding seat between and behind the pilots, but he did not seem to be doing anything.

As he watched, the darkness ahead through the windscreen seemed to lighten for a moment, darken again, and lighten. Suddenly a wisp of white cloud ripped by the windscreen and they were momentarily in moonlight. More cloud rose up ahead and enveloped them, and that in turn was ripped away. Then they were flying in full moonlight over a white, moonlit floor of cloud and climbing away from it. It seemed to Keith the most wonderful sight that he had ever seen, for it was new to him.

He could not repress his technical interest. He moved forward and spoke to Dick quietly: 'How high are we?'

The engineer said, 'Thirteen thousand five hundred. Have a cup of coffee presently, when we level off to cruise.'

The captain heard the question, and the answer. 'We're going up to twenty-one thousand,' he said. 'I'll let you know when we've settled down at cruising altitude, and you can come and sit up front here, if you like.'

Keith went back to his seat, and sat looking out on the moonlit clouds below, at the serene, untroubled security of the wing. Presently the note of the engines altered, the nose of the machine dipped slightly, and she seemed to take a new, stable, and rather quieter flight. He judged that this was the change to the cruising condition, and this was confirmed when Dick came aft to the galley. Keith got up to help him with the coffee and biscuits. >

'Captain says we'll have a meal for anybody who's awake and wants it at twenty-three zulu - at eleven o'clock English time. Then another sometime after we leave Frobisher. Breakfast on the ground at Vancouver. Coffee and biscuits every couple of hours or so.'

'When are you going to sleep?'

The engineer smiled. 'Pretty soon, mate. Take off, landing, and refuelling - those are my busy tunes. I'll take one of the inside chairs soon as we've cleared this coffee.'

' Show me what you do about the meal. I can look after that if you're asleep.'

When coffee was over and the cups rinsed, Keith went forward. The captain got out of his seat and stretched, and at his invitation Keith got into it and sat relaxed, watching the wide, dim panorama of deep blue sky and moonlit cloud far below. He studied the instruments massed on the panels in front of him, examining them one by one. Most of jthem were familiar to him in theory; some of the others were explained by the legend on the dial. When prolonged cogitation failed to yield the function of a lever or a dial he asked the first officer beside him, who explained it to him. He passed over the radio equipment without questions, knowing that the explanations would be quite beyond his understanding.

His day had been a long one, and at the conclusion of an hour he found that he was growing sleepy. He got out of the captain's seat, and one of the young pilots took his place. The navigator smiled as he brushed past him, and Keith paused to look at the chart. 'We'll be about
here
now,' the officer said, putting his pencil on the thin pencil line that led across the North Atlantic to Greenland.

Keith studied the line. 'Do we go over Greenland?' It seemed incredible that he, Keith Stewart, should be doing this.

'That's right. We might be over the icecap about one in the morning, Greenwich time.'

'Shall we see it?' Eskimos and explorers, and the dogs with tails curled up over their backs that they called huskies.
_t

'I doubt it. There's usually a lot of cloud cover. We might. Like me to call you if there's anything to see?'

'I would.' Keith hesitated. 'Are you going to be up for the next hour or two?'

'Captain's having a ziz now,' said the navigator. 'Supper's at eleven o'clock, Greenwich. He's getting up for that. After that I'll have mine.'

'Don't wake Dick King to get the supper if he's asleep,' Keith said. 'Give me a nudge. He showed me what to do.'

'Okay.'

He passed aft to the rest quarters. The captain and the radio operator were sleeping in their clothes in the two bunks. Keith settled down in a vacant chair and pushed it back to the reclining angle. So many technical interests that he could not absorb because of the need for sleep. Janice and Katie in the flat at Baling all seemed very far away; his many years of work for the
Miniature Mechanic
were something that had happened in a previous existence, quite unreal. The even murmur of the engines, the motionless flight, wrapped him round, and presently he slept.

He was roused by Dick climbing over him from the inside seat to start getting the supper. He got up and lent a hand. The whole crew seemed to come to life with the smell of the meal heating on the stove. Captain Fielding and the radio operator got down from the bunks, shook themselves, and put on their shoes. Keith realized for the first time that the aircrew were divided virtually into two watches, that the pilots could do the routine navigation and the routine radio checks. The meal, served in two sittings, signified a change of watch.

He rinsed the dishes when Mr King went forward, and put everything away. Mr Adams slumbered agaih, uninterested in the flight, and Keith went forward to the flightdeck again. He sat at the navigator's desk for some time, but presently he grew sleepy and went back to his seat.

He was roused by the changed note of the engines as they began the letdown an hour out from Frobisher. He knew what was happening from the slight pressure difference in his ears, and from the time. He went and washed his face to clear his mind, and then went forward again to the flightdeck. The navigator was back-at his desk. 'Clear for landing,' he said. 'Cloud two tenths at three thousand. Temperature on the ground minus ten Fahrenheit. Good and cold - forty-two degrees of frost. I should stay in the machine, if I were you.'

Keith was startled. 'What's the outside temperature here, now?'

'I don't know.' The officer leaned^back and glanced at the panel. 'About minus thirty.'

' I'd like to do anything I can to help - if there's anything that I can do.'

The navigator shook his head. 'It's just the refuelling, then we'll be off again. Get your bloody nose frostbitten if you go outside.'

They landed presently upon a white,' snow-covered runway lit with amber lights, using the brakes very little and the engines in reverse pitch a great deal. They followed a blue-lit taxiway to the few buildings constituting the base and came to a standstill in front of the control tower. Steps were wheeled up and the door opened; the captain and the flight engineer and the two youngest pilots put on heavy coats and leather gloves, and went down on to the snow. Keith followed them to the door and stopped in the entrance, checked by the bitterness of the cold.

The moon was bright upon the snow plain of the airfield and the snow-covered buildings, the lights brilliant. He saw the captain and the navigator hurrying to the control tower. He saw a refuelling truck drive up and stop by the port wing, he saw a ladder erected and Dick get up on to the wing with one of the refuelling crew and commence to sound the tanks. Then he could bear the cold no longer, and retreated forward into the machine across the web of cables lashing down the rotor.

In the rest quarters warmth still lingered, though cold air was seeping forward from the rear. Refuelling took three-quarters of an hour. The crew made a quick external inspection of the aircraft and came hurrying into the fuselage again. The door was slammed shut, the steps removed, the motors started again, and the machine moved out on to the runway and took off with a slow, careful acceleration on the icy surface till she was airborne on the long flight over the northern wastes of Canada to Vancouver.

Presently Keith went forward and spoke to Dick King seated between the pilots at the console. 'What time for the next meal ?' he asked in a low tone.

'Nine or nine-thirty, Greenwich,' the engineer replied. He pointed to the clock above the navigator's table. ' That time, there.' It showed about five-thirty when Keith looked. 'We'll have coffee and biscuits soon as we level off.'

'I'll start getting that ready. What are you having for the main meal ?'

'There's some pre-cooked steaks in a carton on the left-hand side, up at the top.' They went on to discuss the detail of the meal. ' I'll probably be up for it,' the engineer said. 'Get my head down for a bit presently, but I'll be up.'

'You don't have to be,' said Keith. 'I can do all that.'

In spite of his bold assertion, he was growing tired. The flight from Frobisher to Vancouver was a repeat of the flight to Frobisher, a night, flight without incident, with nothing to be seen. The four pilots, the radio officer, and the navigator took their turns in the bunks; the flight engineer slept in one of the seats. These men were all younger than Keith Stewart, physically more fit and accustomed to long hours of flight and irregular sleep. They seemed to stand it well, but for the first time Keith realized the meaning of crew fatigue. By the time they reached Honolulu, he knew, he would desire nothing so much as sleep in a bed. He'could well understand the necessity for two or three days' rest before the crew flew home again to Blackbushe.

He slept most of the way to Vancouver, only rousing himself to help to serve the meal. Few of the aircrew ate much during that stage of the flight, but the demand for coffee and biscuits was brisk. They landed in from over sea on the long Vancouver runway in the darkness at about six in the morning of local time, refuelled and inspected the machine in misty rain, and walked wearily to the airport restaurant.

'You won't get bacon and eggs, English fashion, here,' the engineer told Keith. 'Hot cakes and syrup with a side order of bacon. I'll show you.'

Where everything was strange this seemed no stranger than the rest; he accepted the North American food and enjoyed the novelty, though Mr Adams grumbled at the little teabag hanging in the cup of hot water. They ate together sitting up in a long row at a stainless steel counter, while outside the grey dawn showed in the rain. ' Might as well be in England,' Mr Adams said.

The navigator heard him, and smiled faintly. 'You'll be gasping for breath tonight in Honolulu.'

In the grey morning light they walked through the rain to the machine, and settled in their places. The clock over the navigator's desk showed either four or sixteen; both seemed quite inapplicable to Keith and which it was he had no means of knowing. They took off to the west down the long runway and climbed away over water till they entered cloud. ' Eleven more hours,' the navigator told him. 'Then we'll be through.'

Half an hour later they broke out into sunshine over a cloud floor; the pilots reached for their sunglasses and put them on. Presently, while the first cups of coffee were being consumed, the cloud beneath them thinned into holes through which they could see the sea, corrugated with waves. By the time the empty cups had been collected, rinsed, and placed in their racks to dry, the cloud had practically disappeared, and they flew on under a cloudless sky, over a blue sea. Later they met cloud again.

The day passed in boredom and fatigue for Keith. He had long exhausted those technical interests of the aircraft that were within his comprehension, and he was growing very tired indeed. He dozed wearily much of the day with his shoes off, for his feet and legs were swelling with the continued sitting and lack of exercise. He ate little of the midday meal. As the hands of his watch moved gradually past twelve and on to one he began to come to life again, for three was the hour of landing, English time, when this slow purgatory would be over. Since they were nearly half way round the world and they were to land in the late afternoon, he guessed that his watch still cherished the opinion that it was the middle of the night.

Soon after two activity began on the flightdeck, and the letdown began. He went forward, and the captain pointed out a very small cloud dead ahead of them and very far away. 'That could be over Oahu,' he said. 'It's either that or Maui. But I think it's Oahu. We're on the range now.'

Keith nodded and went back to the navigator's desk to look at the chart. Honolulu, it appeared, was the name of a town and not an island, as he had supposed. It was on an island called Oahu, by no means the largest of the group. He went back to his seat and sat down, wondering for the first time if he was not absolutely crazy to be here at all. Ealing was his place, and writing articles for the
Miniature Mechanic
was his job. These wastes of sunlit sea, these islands with strange names like Oahu, were no part of his life. He owed it to Janice to try to get back her inheritance . . . but still . . . Ealing was his place. He could stay with the air-"craft, of course, and presently the crew would take him back to Blackbushe, only forty miles from Ealing; a truck or a coach would take him up the Great West Road, a red bus up the South Ealing Road, and he would be home again, home in his workshop, in his own routine.

Abruptly he realized that he was afraid, afraid of the unknown that lay before him. He must do better than that for Janice before he could have licence to go home.