The mood, beneath the tarnished wing of the Valetta, was warm-blooded and cheerful. We might have been a few friends hitching a ride on a freighter on our way to catch the sun in Spain, except we were leaving the glamour of the party behind. The fact that my heart ached to leave Nicola at all was a bit obvious and the little charade looked like those ultra-British films about casual departures into battle, with everyone underplaying like crazy.
Someone wheeled some steps over to the aircraft and Dr Flaske climbed up to the cabin, stooping unnecessarily at the entrance. Tesh went over to the car, where Nicola was standing looking somehow like a dishy little WAAF driver. Whatever it was he said to her I wasn’t in on it; and I remember standing a few yards away, just surveying the rest of the airport, watching Wiggins’ car receding along the edge of the apron toward the heap of buildings where the tower was.
There was little movement on the airfield at this time; a big Boeing was being tractor-towed into position, its navigation lights getting almost visibly dimmer, as the dawn etched at the far side of the airport, tinting it a fabulous gold-beige.
The mechanistic beauty of Heathrow in the early hours is not to be despised; it may not have the pastoral appeal of a moorland landscape, but it is something to be seen. Great expanses of grass, as the night-shadow lifts off the ground, show their sheen, and almost with an instantaneous flash — it’s as sudden as that — the uncertain grey becomes a dramatic, lush green. The stupendous curves of metal wings and tailplanes catch the subtleties of the early morning, reflecting all manner of outline tints against the rich sky. Beyond them, the grandiose perspective of even the more garish of the company hangars has a certain impact. And most striking of all, over there in a corner so remote it surely cannot be part of the same complex that is all one terminal, the stanchions on which are mounted the approach lights, back-lighted by the visibly brightened sky; the first of the refracted rays of the sun shimmer triumphantly through the vertical bars — pines in a forest — and over it all, a SUPER VC 10, in silhouette almost mystic…smoke-trails arcing down from the uppermost reaches of the visible sky…levels off over the wet grass, waiting expectantly for concrete…now floats inches above the runway, nose arrogantly raised as if flight is still infinitely preferable to becoming landborne…sudden pink dust in the dawnlight…horizontal profile against road trees…the lazy turn off the sun-glazed tarmac toward baggage men, customs officials, immigration officials and insolent minicabs.
I saw our captain, headphone-clad, make thumbs-up through the cockpit window. He grinned, aware of the contrast between his charge and the elegant hardware that had just landed. Tesh walked briskly from the car and said: “Two minutes, James,” then clattered up the steps and boarded.
No spitting aero-engines could mar the moment with asthmatic exhaust and slapping pistons; the metallic joke that awaited me receded totally from the mind. The policemen — being policemen — turned their backs, and when we had done I walked briskly up the rungs without looking back, knowing that Nicola had already seated herself snugly behind the steering wheel, concerning herself, for the only time, in that area where she was competing with the opposite sex.
We started to taxi toward the downwind end of the runway; and by the time I had settled in my seat and got my bearings through the window next to me, Nicola and the police car were just two blobs cornering around the far end of the buildings, surrendering up their identity to the ground mass we were about to quit.
Whatever the aircraft and whoever the people in it, there is always that moment of tension just before it leaves the ground. During this, Tesh, having put on a pair of pale-rimmed reading glasses, gave both Flaske and me a slow, amiable grin as the captain eased the throttle levers forward somewhere up front behind the partition. “Those engines,” said Tesh, “sound a lot more healthy than they look. Doctor: you haven’t done up your seat belt…”
As we took off, thumping along the runway and getting off early with only three people in a cabin that could seat over thirty, Tesh seemed to be in his element. These were tangibles…the proper angle of attack for those wings, the correct amount of flap to add lift without drag, a bit of rudder you could feel the pilot putting on to offset a crosswind — these and other factors were noted and approved by Tesh as we let the airport slide away under us and climbed noisily into the dawn.
For me it was different. I had clung to those last few minutes on the ground, because I knew somehow that we were departing from known natural laws; and to me this flight symbolized not a free flight through sweet morning air but a linking-passage with the unknown.
Small deviations from the expected — the quasar-like pulsing of a luminous watch and a fluctuation in the normal background radiation sufficient to register on Tesh’s geiger counter — had occurred as isolated events in the quantum-vagueness of the night. They hadn’t drawn blood; they hadn’t eradicated the undisturbed efficiency of London Airport; they hadn’t changed the aerodynamic facts that raised this fat tub of an aircraft from its awkward rolling-bumbling on the runway to the shoulder-shrugging indifference of mere flight.
But in everyone’s mind there ticks a clock. It is this clock that tells us, by an increase in our heart rate and blood pressure and odd messages in the temporal lobe of the brain, that events have arranged themselves in a configuration in which ‘Something’s Gotta Give’.
To me then, the take-off came at just that instant and I knew there was no going back. Mentally I was reluctant to leave the ground; and I chose to look out of the window while we executed that left climbing-turn. Absurdly, I tried to spot the car, having carefully estimated how far along the M4 it would by now have progressed. Of course, I didn’t identify it for certain; but Nicola would be doing around sixty and sticking to the inside lane. Sure enough a black Vauxhall doing that was visible in the right position. It gave me comfort.
Then we sliced a cloud in half and the motorway became dimmed, then erased. I felt lost and alone.
*
D.P.G. or not, the document cleft the chasm yet wider between Tesh and me. It simply emphasized the two sides of the coin.
Flaske, with his disarming habit of saying things of immense importance as if they didn’t matter, drew attention casually to the one obscure point that made the intervention of Major Wiggins worthwhile.
We huddled around the only three occupied seats in the cabin while he explained what it meant. “Look. Most of these pages of waffle might be interesting to someone who wanted to understand the minds of the Los Alamos people, even if the whole thing is tilted heavily on the side of the Military. This thesis is an attempt to justify the use of the atomic bomb. The reason it fails to amuse is because there was no justification for the use of the atomic bomb. The whole thing was based, in any case, on the mistaken assumption that the Nazis were in the race; and hey presto! — the lovely bomb was born.” He tapped the paper before him. “This penny-dreadful here is merely an attempt to show how the Germans jolly-well should have made a bomb in time and it was very unsporting of them not to hand it on to the Japanese so the Queensberry rules were properly observed by the Allies.
“But…” he shuffled through the pages on which the white letters were already starting to fade into the black background. “But…could this paragraph be of interest, I wonder? Where it says: ‘The position in nineteen fifty-nine had grown much different; for as the emphasis on further developments concerning nuclear warheads drifted from pure science into straight technology the original groups of scientists had become much spread throughout the world.’”
Flaske interpolated here: “Actually a great deal of supposedly secret information was exchanged, even with Russia, by various scientists who sought to maintain a balance between the powers…I think they were more naive than treacherous. But really it was fair enough, wasn’t it? — It had been the scientists who sped to America on the outbreak of war and carried with them the glad tidings of the possible chain reaction. You can’t suddenly pretend their views don’t count!<
br />
“But to continue: ‘Consequently almost no information was exchanged as to what might have happened at Moorbridge in England and British sources make light of the affair. Claiming it was of no military significance they do not enlarge upon the subsequent conduct of the scientists involved. British security was embarrassed enough already by the publicity afforded to leaks generally and the matter of H. Brundash’s defection to Russia — or not — was left open-ended…’ I love their jargon! Open-ended. It means nothing, but sounds as if it takes care of everything.
“But here we come to the bit I’m wondering about: ‘It would constitute a disquieting change of procedure — for instance, in matters of law — if a person were to be assumed deceased without reasonable proof that his flesh and bones had been destroyed physically or at least some reasonable trace or explanation confirmed his death by recognizable means. Yet exhaustive attempts on the part of this department to produce evidence of either (a) Brundash’s survival, or (b) Brundash’s non-survival, fail completely. A total of some twenty-eight thousand dollars comprises Brundash’s estate; in what way should it be treated? The brother’s attorney claims that since their client is (or would be) Dr Brundash’s next-of-kin the estate should be settled accordingly. Unofficial enquiries made of perfectly reliable sources in Academgorokok, Siberia, suggest it is quite impossible that Brundash did in fact go to Russia since no line of research remotely similar to that started by him in the forties and continued at Moorbridge up to the time of his disappearance has emerged behind the Iron Curtain at all.
“‘Yet it can be shown that “splintered elements” of Brundash’s work are still being continued in England, almost as if Brundash himself were still at work. For there is no doubt that none of his followers, including Gray, Davvitt and Pollenner, fell into that class of Nobel standard likely to achieve the level of original research and theory thus maintained. From where, then, has the impetus come that has given rise to the private work of Dr Davvitt? For though he has failed to communicate it to former colleagues throughout the world, it still is known to comprise a brilliant practical proof of some theories propounded in the abstract by physicists on a level with Einstein. Yet Davvitt showed himself at Los Alamos, during the mounting of the Manhattan Project, to be merely a second-class researcher useful when supervised. The question that has not so far been answered satisfactorily is how he has apparently become (in the words of one eminent physicist) “probably a genius of the most breathtaking kind”? Although such questions fall right outside the terms of reference of this Department, in the lack of hard information it would seem to be relevant to the truth concerning Brundash’s fate that Davvitt has exceeded by thousands per cent the present state of the art.’” Flaske giggled at the last phrase. “The only current okay word they left out is ‘pragmatic!’ Present state of the art! How it rolls off the typewriter and the tongue!”
The aircraft droned on. None of us said anything for a while. We just sat there, while the type visibly faded from the sheet; going to blackness, undiscernible.
Then Tesh said firmly: “Brundash is dead. He couldn’t be deader if he tried. Everything points to it.”
I said mildly: “But you thought he had defected to Russia.”
“I hadn’t really gone into it. My brief has definite limits; and those limits are there to make sense of things.”
“But what if the things don’t make sense?”
Tesh said irritably: “Supposing the lawyer they mentioned in that document went beyond the bounds of reason so as to decide whether or not to distribute that twenty-eight thousand dollars? He can only think in terms of law. He has to decide whether or not the money is available to his client. This depends on information — or else a decision based on strong likelihoods. If the lawyer thought any different, in his job, he wouldn’t be fit to do it.”
It was Flaske who said: “But who is to decide what the bounds of reason are? Who’s qualified for that? The law? — hardly! Laws are designed to operate in an irrational society. Scientists? — indeed not! We are only interested in what lies beyond ‘reason’, because that’s what we’re for. I think ‘reason’ is what people cite when they don’t want to know; it has rules and regulations and it’s thoroughly comforting.
“What we have to do now is to take into consideration all the broken rules that have got us into this pickle — or more accurately, into this aeroplane — and match them up together.”
I said: “Tesh, those fuel rods from Windscale you’re studying at your computer centre…Have they broken any rules?”
But he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking beyond, toward the partition door leading to the flight deck. Both Flaske and I caught his expression and jerked round.
The partition door up front had been flung open. And a very shaken-looking First Officer came loping into the cabin. He seemed to be half-blinded.
He reached our little group halfway down the empty cabin; and with what looked like a mammoth effort of will took control of himself. “We’re in trouble,” he said.
Tesh gave a cool glance at the engine on his side, then glanced across to the starboard. “Engines are still there,” he said. “What’s the problem?”
The young officer turned to me: “You’re scientists?”
For once I saved time and let my delusions of grandeur have their head. “Yes.”
“Captain Duquay says he wants you on the flight deck — all of you, please.”
We didn’t try and question him but filed up the gangway in a line. I was just behind the First Officer, and entered the cockpit before the others.
The trouble was immediately obvious and recognizable to me.
Aviation instruments are often luminous in case of a failure of the instrument lights.
And these instruments were blazing. Brilliant green light took all the shadows away and left the captain bathed in a dazzle. He tried to protect his eyes, tried to squint down through the side windows at the misty scene below as he spoke, with an enforced calm, on the radio: “Have you got us in radar contact?” He looked up at me, as if I were personally responsible for the whole spectacle.
Evidently he wanted us to hear the reply, for he flipped a key and a speaker inset in the cockpit ceiling relayed it. “Negative, nothing but interference all over the scope. We suggest you try flying on the one-seven-zero radial of Carlisle V.O.R.”
Duquay flipped back the switch and said: “We can’t read the V.O.R. and we’re using the medium frequency beacon at Ringway, flying on the backbeam. But the signal is so distorted we can’t get a bearing. Stand by a minute.”
Duquay, whom I had only seen briefly as he had grinned out of the window at us before take-off, was young for a captain but cool-headed as they come. He pushed some untidy hair away from his eyes (he had no cap) and turned to me with an unnerving glare. “Is this something you can explain?”
I glanced quickly at Tesh and Flaske. Tesh, of course, had seen something akin to this phenomenon; Flaske was new to it. Neither seemed willing to speak, just stood there like ultragreen spectres in a surrealist play.
I didn’t reply for a second, then remembered my wristwatch.
I looked at it.
The dial was burned out. It didn’t glow at all. This must have happened as a result of the nocturnal episode and was why we had not noticed, back in the passenger cabin, that anything was wrong.
Duquay said: “They’re waiting.”
I recalled the fact that the telephone lines from Moorbridge had apparently linked the behaviour of my watch-dial with the source of influence; and by the pseudo-logic that seemed to have replaced natural laws it seemed pseudo-logical that radio communications might transport interaction in the same kind of way.
I said: “This radio station you’re talking to…where is it? Can you show me on the map?”
The First Officer held up the chart. “It’s the airfield we are heading for…here…near the Southern end of Ullswater.” He traced the Western shoreline of the lake with his
pencil, drawing the point downward till he marked a spot where the airfield was.
“And Moorbridge is there,” I said, fingernailing a position less than five miles off.
Tesh saw what I was getting at, but said: “The instruments are still blazing; yet no one is transmitting just at this moment. You can’t be right.”
The First Officer looked from one to the other of us, not having the least idea what we were talking about.
Nor did Duquay. But some instinct made him come up with the right answer. “The I.L.S. beam from the airfield is on all the time. We’re not getting the signal properly but it’s there,”
“Can you fly visual?” I asked.
“With this glare in the cockpit it would be all I could do to get down on instruments.”
“But as you can’t read the instruments, anyway, it’s no good.”
“You’re saying that if they switch off all radio — including the radiobeam we need for the landing — the glare will subside? Trouble is, it gets us both ways, doesn’t it?…Out there there’s a lot of low cloud and ground mist. There are hills and quite respectably sharp-looking mountains in the area and without radio-aids it’s taking a chance.”
There was silence. Then the First Officer cleared his throat. He was just a youngster; quite inexperienced, quite young enough to understandably fall back on puffed ego.
He did precisely the opposite. He said: “You’re Philbar, aren’t you?”
Tesh, not understanding: “Yes.”
“Group Captain Philbar?”
Understanding better: “Yes.”
First Officer to Captain: “Len, if you had Group Captain Philbar in the right-hand seat?”
Captain to First Officer: “You telling me there’s someone who actually flies better than you?”
“I’ve heard of…certain exploits.”
Tesh: “I deny it all.”
Tesh took the co-pilot’s position and Duquay said without ceremony: “Have you flown one of these?”
“No.” A grin. “Terrified of it.”
The Egg-Shaped Thing Page 12