by James White
He made several gentle turns to port and starboard. He had the odd sensation of being motionless while pictures of the hazy blue sky, the horizon and the patchwork of roads and fields below were flat images projected on to the outside of the perspex canopy. To move the pictures in a way that would please Pebbles one had to be very neat and accurate in one’s movements. Carson tried very hard to do it neatly, the way he did most things, and gradually he began to think that his slipping and skidding all over the sky might not be quite as bad as when he started.
More and more often he looked at the ground below while he was banking, at the doll’s houses, doll’s villages and towns, at the roads like black shoe-laces and the microscopic cars and asking himself what the hell he was doing up here? But the question was rhetorical.
He was flying an aeroplane.
His body felt as if it was being boiled in its own sweat. His shoulders and neck ached with tension and his teeth were clenched so tightly his jaw hurt. But suddenly he wanted to laugh, and did.
Pebbles said, ‘Head for the airfield, Mr Carson. We don’t want to work you too hard on the first day....’
He had wanted to talk to Pebbles, but the instructor had to take up another pupil as soon as they landed. Carson was not too disappointed, however--his feet had not yet touched the ground and he doubted his ability to hold any sort of coherent conversation with anyone. When Jeff Donnelly met him later in the clubhouse, it was a good thing that the treasurer did all the talking.
‘How did you make out, Joe? Terrible, eh? All thumbs. One of the early fringe benefits of learning to fly is that you lose two pounds during every lesson. But don’t worry, it will come.
‘John works you hard, though,’ Jeff rattled on. ’But then if you want to sightsee you should be in the passenger seat, right? He’s a bit finickety about checks and inspections, too--treats Tango Zulu like a supersonic jet, or as if he’s married to it and they’re still on their honeymoon! I’m not criticising him, mind. If you learn to fly like John Pebbles you’ll certainly die in bed ...’
During the drive back Carson kept thinking how strange and pleasant it was to have a horizon which remained horizontal even when he came to a sharp bend. And later, when he was back at his flat, he found that he could not concentrate on a book, or listen to a record or do anything but sit watching the mental tele-recording which played itself over and over in his mind’s eye. When he went to bed it was even worse.
Learning to fly had been something he had wanted to do as a kid, and now it was, or should be, simply a means of getting closer to Pebbles for security reasons. But his normal, everyday thought processes seemed to have suffered multiple derailment. He found it impossible to think coherently about the shy, stupid, Hart-Ewing Pebbles, or the ultra-secret project or anything but the ground and sky as they had looked from fifteen hundred feet, tilting and wheeling around him because he told them to. It was like asking a man to think about routine office work on his honeymoon.
Carson had never been on a honeymoon, but he felt that it was a true analogy.
Chapter Nine
There had been a succession of fine weekends, so good that Carson had learned how to fly straight and level, climb, descend, perform gentle turns and survive the rather hectic lesson on stall recovery. On his third lesson he wobbled down the runway and staggered into the air with the stall warning hooting derisively all the way up to three hundred feet. It was possibly the worst take-off ever perpetrated, but it had been all his own work.
Subsequent take-offs improved and he moved on to circuits and landings. He would continue to do circuits and landings until he satisfied Pebbles and the CFI that he could take off and land safely. He had been sitting within a few inches of Pebbles for something like seven hours without being able to get really close to him.
‘Does he make you feel uncomfortable, Joe?’ said Jeff Donnelly when Carson brought up the subject during lunch. ‘You can change your instructor if you like. Have a word with the CFI.’
‘I’m not uncomfortable with him,’ said Carson, then added, ‘Well, perhaps a little, when he’s expecting me to land that thing and the runway won’t hold still. I don’t want to change instructors, but outside flying time he seems to avoid me--or is it just my inferiority complex showing...?’
‘No,’ said Jeff seriously. ‘He is a first-class pilot and instructor, but some people remember him as he used to be and talk about it to newcomers when they ought to know better. We like him and ... ‘
‘If you don’t let me in on this dark and desperate secret,’ said Carson, ‘I shall die of a curable disease, curiosity! ‘
‘That,’ said Donnelly, ‘is one of the sneakiest forms of blackmail I have ever encountered...’
According to Donnelly, Pebbles had been coming to the club for about three years--four or five months, in fact, before he had joined Hart-Ewing’s. He had come to their attention first as an odd, rather pathetic character who daily haunted the edge of the airfield in the morning and afternoon to watch the planes take off and land.
When he began wandering into the hangar for a closer look at the aircraft they had tried to shoo him away, but gently because he looked so desperately puzzled about everything they said to him and his clothes were always muddy and rumpled. Then one day he arrived looking as if he had fallen into a muddy ditch and somebody had taken him into the club-house to dry off. They discovered that he was not a tramp, that except for the fresh mud his clothes were clean and that he was not a nut--just retarded, childish.
So they found odd jobs for him to do. He could not talk very well and some of the mistakes he made in word and deed were very ... elementary. When he was not tidying the club-house or helping make sandwiches behind the bar, he could always be found standing beside a plane and looking into the cockpit, his face like that of a child trying to do a difficult problem in mental arithmetic.
On the weekend of the yearly international rally, when aircraft from all over had flown in to take part in the first day’s flying display, John Pebbles had turned up in a dark suit with only his shoes muddy and no tie. The CFI’s wife had insisted that Jeff Donnelly give him a club tie--he had learned how to clean his shoes by then--because he never took the money they tried to give him from time to time. He did not seem to understand money, nor was he capable of using public transport to get from where he lived to the airfield, hence the muddy shoes. Somehow he had become the club mascot, replacing the export reject cross-eyed idol somebody had brought back from India, and without being too forceful about it the members let it be known that this was one lame dog who was not to be kicked.
Two weeks after the rally Wayne Tillotson visited the club to get, as he was fond of putting it, the taste of flying supersonic computers out of his mouth. On impulse he had taken John Pebbles in the passenger seat and, being a cautious man, strapped him in very firmly in case their mascot got violent. But the precaution was unnecessary--Pebbles’s reaction, according to Tillotson, had been one of excitement approaching ecstasy. Again on impulse he had allowed Pebbles to take control.
They were gone for over two hours and when they returned Tillotson could not talk about the trip in detail. Pebbles had tried to say a lot but he did not at that time have the vocabulary and he was so excited that he stuttered like a machine-gun. Shortly afterwards Tillotson got him a job in Hart-Ewing’s.
It was not a very good or well-paid job, Donnelly understood, but Pebbles did not smoke or drink or have girl-friends, so he had been able to spend most of his pay on flying lessons. He qualified very quickly and stopped being the club mascot, although if anything the members liked him even more and were intensely proud of him for the way he had overcome his disability. Later he got his instructor’s rating which allowed him to fly more while actually being paid a small fee for doing so, and he had checked out on several twin-engined types and was talking of trying for his commercial licence.
Flying, studying and working at Hart-Ewing’s was all that he seemed to do. Apparently h
e was trying to broaden his studies as much as possible, but he still dropped conversational bricks and made elementary, but embarrassing, mistakes on social occasions.
When they heard about his background newcomers to the club sometimes worried about the possibility of his having a mental relapse while flying with them ...
‘ ... I’m no psychologist,’ Jeff went on quickly, ‘but he seems to be improving mentally rather than falling back. We all thought he was retarded at first--you know, a grown man with the mind of a child. In many ways he still is a child, but not in an aeroplane! I wish I knew what went wrong with him as a kid, Joe. It’s as if his intelligence was there all the time, building up pressure, just waiting for someone to pull the plug out.
‘More than anyone else,’ Donnelly ended seriously, ‘it was Tillotson who pulled out the plug. Pebbles has never looked back since then.’
‘This,’ said Carson, ‘is an unbelievable story, but I believe you.’
‘Gee, thanks.’
‘... In fact,’ Carson went on, ‘it is remarkably like a wish-fulfilment dream. You know, boy watches planes taking off and landing, gets the chance of a flight, finds he is a natural born pilot, qualifies for more complex aircraft culminating in him becoming a top test pilot and being considered for inclusion in the next batch of trainee astronauts . . .’
Astronauts, he thought; Tau Ceti...
‘... But pilots are not born, they are made,’ Carson continued. ‘In my case with extreme difficulty. It’s rather disquieting to think that someone who doesn’t know enough about money to ride on a bus is teaching me to fly....’
A shade apprehensively, Donnelly said, ‘I didn’t mean to worry you, Joe. He has come a long way since ... ‘
‘Relax,’ said Carson. ‘I told you that I don’t intend changing my instructor at this stage. Besides, if we are all figments of John Pebbles’s wish-fulfilment dream, I don’t think I would be able to...’
On the way home he drove past Pebbles’s address and stopped at the police station two streets farther on. He knew the station inspector from way back and should, by pulling the old pals act, be able to keep his enquiries unofficial even though they had never liked each other when they had worked together. George Russell had been big, loud, sarcastic and insensitive in those days and apparently only his voice had changed for the better.
‘Pebbles isn’t exactly a public enemy,’ said Inspector Russell quietly. ‘He broke a window once playing ball in the street with kids less than half his age and size, but he paid for it. Are you chasing spies again, Joe?’
‘No, George,’ said Carson, and explained, ‘he is a dimwit about some things and there is danger of his getting into serious trouble at the factory because he is so easily led. I need a little background information about his home life and so on--to help me understand him before I start talking to him like a very stern father.’
‘You always were a lousy policeman, Joe, and you haven’t changed a bit,’ said Russell, laughing. ‘With crime--the detection of criminals--you were very good indeed. But punishment--especially the punishment of habitual or petty criminals--always seemed to bother you. I suppose that was why you resigned from the force
‘That was it,’ said Carson drily. ‘There weren’t enough master criminals to keep me occupied. But about Pebbles...?’
Russell laughed again. ‘I didn’t think you needed to check on mental defectives--oh, all right, I’m just pulling your leg. He boards with a widow called Kirk. Well, not exactly a widow--her husband left her shortly after their first child, a mongol boy, was born and hasn’t been seen since. She really loved that boy even though there were complications which meant that he couldn’t live much past nine or ten years. When he died about four years ago she went to pieces for a while, until Pebbles came along. Now she treats him as her son, is intensely proud of the way he is improving, going to night school and so on. I think she tells herself that if her own boy had lived he might have been able to make good just like Pebbles has done.
‘She’s not quite right in the head,’ Russell concluded, ‘but harmless and well liked. Don’t worry her with this, Joe.’
‘I won’t even have to talk to her,’ said Carson as he rose to go. He could not help adding, ‘You have changed quite a lot, George ...’
Any real information about Pebbles’s background would probably entail asking personal questions of the man himself. Perhaps if he tried to talk to him at Hart-Ewing’s instead of at the club, showed a friendly interest in his new job, something might develop. Among the test gantries and aircraft sections undergoing their continuing series of simulated take-offs, wind-buffetings, engine vibration and landing shocks there would be no problems about which knife or spoon to use or how to keep food on the plate while eating.
But Pebbles was not available for questioning or as an object of friendly interest. Charlie Desmond, his new department head, said that he was owed two weeks leave and had decided to take it before settling into the new job. Carson suggested that, while he was there, it might be a good idea to check door and window fastenings and the department’s fire-fighting arrangements. Charlie said to be his guest and delegated Bob Menzies, one of his engineers, to go around with him.
While they were speaking the constant thump of simulated loads hitting wing and undercarriage specimens under test punctuated every word, hurrying on the conversation and doing nothing at all to soothe Carson’s nerves or reduce his impatience. Pebbles’s absence worried him for some reason and for reasons equally vague he felt that the project was reaching a critical point. If only there was more information ...
Menzies was not affected by the noises off and talked easily and freely. About Pebbles he did not know anything for sure, but there were rumours that he was spending a working holiday doing a training course somewhere, probably as a preparation for his new job. Not for the clerical position in the EH93 test section, Menzies added--there was another rumour that when he returned Pebbles would be moving again to a better job in the module test area.
A little later when Carson displayed mild interest--no one but himself knew the effort that mildness cost him--in the big, shining cone of a life support and command module which occupied a cradle in one of the storerooms he was told that Menzies was not sure why it was there. The modules came in from time to time, they were defective and at a guess he would say that they were sold as scrap, or one of the Government agencies might have bought a few for training and simulation purposes.
But the best man to ask about that was Dreamy Daniels. The chief designer and his crowd were in the storeroom half the night, sometimes--measuring and fitting test equipment, Menzies supposed, to find out why such important hunks of hardware had to be rejected in the first place and to decide on a good story if one of themselves was responsible ...
‘ .. I’m a cynic, Mr Carson, if you haven’t guessed that much already,’ Menzies said laughing. ‘Oh, would you like to climb in. They even have a padded acceleration couch in this one ...’
‘Thank you,’ said Carson as he wriggled feet first into the hatch. He began to feel cynical, too, but for a different reason.
The couch was sinfully comfortable and, so far as he could see, complete with harness, air supplies and associated life support equipment. Facing him at waist level there was a control panel also complete except for one large round hole which seemed to stare at him like a computer pirate through its empty eye socket. Through the opening there was enough light to show a space of perhaps four cubic feet and a bunch of cable looms, their individual strands opened and tagged where they were supposed to join the missing piece of equipment. Everything else in the module looked bright and new and complete, lacking only power to be fully functioning.
It had become impossible for him to believe that an intricate and expensive fabrication like this could reach such an advanced stage before someone discovered an error which necessitated it being scrapped.
But if this vehicle was not to be scrapped then it had to be the
end-result of the secret project, or perhaps the equipment destined for that empty space was what the project was all about. At the same time the vehicle was small, almost as small as the early Mercury capsules. Did its size suggest that the Government was giving it only limited support? Perhaps the idea was potentially valuable but too radical to warrant the cost of pushing a greater weight into space. Or the missing device might do the pushing itself and be very dangerous to the crew...
The memory of the two charred pieces of paper came back to him. They had mentioned interstellar distances--when up until now manned spaceflight had yet to go beyond the Moon--and psychological damage to lab animals, and had suggested the use of a human guinea-pig so that exact data on these psychological effects would be available. Carson found himself imagining that he was in space, the instrument panel no longer missing its eye and an enigmatic something behind the panel at GO. His mental picture of the panel and of the awesome glimpse of eternity through the port was so real and sharp that he was angry when Menzies tapped him on the shoulder.
‘You’ve been in there for nearly twenty minutes, Mr Carson,’ he said with just a trace of impatience. ‘You’re nearly as bad as John Pebbles--he likes playing astronaut, too. Of course, don’t we all...?’
‘I’m sorry, Bob,’ said Carson. But he spent another few minutes in the capsule anyway, memorising the drawing reference numbers on the support brackets which would hold the missing piece of equipment behind the control panel. Herbie Patterson would be able to tell him which factory they had come from and, by a process of clerical cross-checking, something about the gadget they had been designed to support.