by Nevil Shute
“What’s all this about a Reindeer not being allowed to do more than seven hundred hours?”
“It’s true. They’ve all got to be grounded when they reach that time.”
Dobson stared at him; impatience and hostility were beginning to appear. “First I’ve heard of it.” He beckoned to the engineer, who left his seat and came to them. “Cousins, have you heard anything about Reindeers being grounded after seven hundred hours?”
“Not a thing,” the engineer said in wonder. “I never heard of that. Who says so?”
“Chap from Farnborough,” Dobson said. He had forgotten Mr. Honey’s name.
“That’s not right,” the engineer said scornfully. “What do you think the Air Registration Board would have been doing?” He turned to Mr. Honey. “Who told you that?”
“It’s true,” he said desperately. “My chief, the head of my department, Dr. Scott—he was arranging all about it.” They stared at him in utter disbelief. “Please—you must pay attention to this. Stop the inboard engines and turn back. If you stop the inboard engines it will break up the harmonic and modify the effective frequency, and the amplitude will be less, too.”
The engineer turned to Dobson and said, “What on earth is he talking about?”
The second pilot said quietly, “All right, Cousins—I’ll handle this. I’ll have a word with the captain.” The engineer went back to his seat, but kept a wary eye on Mr. Honey. Eccentric passengers with odd ideas about the safety of the aircraft are never very welcome on the flight deck of an airliner on passage.
Mr. Honey caught the last words. “Please do that,” he said. “I must have a talk with the captain. It’s very serious indeed, really it is. We must turn back at once.”
Dobson crossed to where Captain Samuelson was sitting at the controls, and bent beside him. “That passenger from Farnborough that you asked me to show round is up here now, sir. He’s making a good deal of trouble.”
From the navigating desk Mr. Honey could see them talking quietly together; he saw the captain turn in his seat to look at him. He stood at the desk waiting for them. His agitation was subsiding; already he was becoming aware that he had not got it in him to make these men believe that what he said was true. He had had so much of this in the past; he was accustomed to being right and being disbelieved on vital issues. It was what happened to him; other people could put across their convictions and win credence, but he had never been able to do that. Now it was happening again, probably for the last time. In the black night the aircraft moved on quietly across the sky above the cloud carpet, seen faintly in the starlight far below.
Captain Samuelson got out of his seat; the second pilot slipped into it, and sat at the controls. Samuelson crossed the floor to Honey, standing by the desk. He was a small, sandy-haired man of about fifty, rather fat; he had been sitting in the pilot’s seat of airliners for over twenty years.
He introduced himself to Mr. Honey, and said, “I understand from Dobson that you’re not quite happy about something, Mr. Honey.”
He stood in silence while Honey poured out his tale, nodding every now and then. Honey was more collected now and told his story better, and in Samuelson he had an older and a more experienced man to talk to. The Senior Captain had heard of fatigue troubles once or twice, and he even knew something of the eccentricities of scientists. He knew something of the routine of the Ministry of Supply and a good deal about the routine of the Ministry of Civil Aviation. Presently he started asking questions, and they were informed and penetrating questions. He very soon uncovered the fact that officially there was nothing wrong whatever with the Reindeer aircraft, that there was no ban upon its operation after seven hundred hours, and that there was no real evidence that the tailplane was subject to fatigue trouble at all.
Mr. Honey said miserably at last, “I’ve got to tell you what I know. If you don’t turn back to England now and do what I say about the engines, we’ll all probably be killed.”
Samuelson stood deep in thought. One or twice before in his career he had had over-excited passengers to deal with, who had required restraint during a flight; once he had had an attempted suicide, a woman who had been found struggling to open the main entrance door during the flight. He was not antagonistic, but he could not discount the likelihood that the excitement of the journey might have inflamed the fixed ideas of a man who, from his appearance, might well be a little bit unbalanced. He was, however, disposed to pay attention carefully to everything that Mr. Honey said, and for a special reason that had not been spoken of between them. Captain Samuelson had known Captain Ward, the pilot of the Reindeer that had crashed in Labrador, very well indeed.
Samuelson and Bill Ward had both been short-service officers in the Royal Air Force in 1925; Samuelson had flown Bristol Fighters in Iraq and Ward had flown Sopwith Snipes in India. They had met as civil pilots in an air circus in 1927; they had met again as minor airline pilots in Canada in 1928. In 1932 they had come together once more, as pilots on the Hillman airline operating out of Romford in Essex; shortly after that both had joined Imperial Airways. From that time on they had met frequently, up till the time when Ward had received command of the first prototype Reindeer. Then Ward had been killed.
The accident report, when it came out, was a great shock to Samuelson; he disbelieved it utterly. He had known Ward as a fellow pilot for more than twenty years. It was incredible to him that Ward should have done what the report said he did, that he should have descended through the overcast to zero altitude above the hills of Labrador to check up his position by a sight of the ground. There were things a Senior Captain of C.A.T.O. just did not do, and that was one of them. Samuelson did not know what had happened to Bill Ward, but he did know one thing very certainly. The accident report was absolutely and completely wrong.
He had been flying for more than twenty-five years. Deep in his mind lay the feeling that there was something not right with the Reindeer; that this beautiful and efficient aircraft had a weakness that would presently show up. Some unknown Gremlin in it had leaped out upon Bill Ward suddenly, so suddenly that he had been unable to send word upon the radio, and it had killed him, and thirty other people with him. His instinct, bred of nearly twenty thousand hours in the air, told him that one day that thing would happen again.
He glanced at Mr. Honey thoughtfully. He saw the weak eyes behind the thick glasses, the unimpressive figure, the shabby clothes, the nervous movements of the hands, the quivering: wet lips. He thought, rather sadly, that he could not change his flight plan upon this man’s word alone. Mr. Honey looked a crank and what he said was unsubstantiated by any evidence at all. The captain decided, heavily, he must go on. If Honey turned out to be right, well, that was just too bad.
He said, “Look, Mr. Honey, I’m going to do this. I’m going to shut down the inboard engines as you say, and I can throttle down the middle ones to nineteen hundred revs. That drops our speed by fifty miles an hour and makes us nearly two hours late at Gander. I’ll do that if you think it’s the right thing to do. But I’m not going to turn back.”
“You’re taking a great risk if you go on. You ought to turn back now—at once—and land in Ireland,” said Mr. Honey.
“That’s what you think,” the captain said quietly. “But this decision rests with me, and we’re going on.”
Mr. Honey met his eyes, and that shy, warm smile spread over his face, surprising to Samuelson as it had been to me. “Well, let’s wish ourselves luck,” he said.
At that moment, Samuelson very nearly became convinced. It was on the tip of his tongue to say they would turn back, but one could not chop and change. One had to take a line and stick to it. He turned to the flight engineer and gave him a few orders; then he crossed to the pilot’s seat and spoke for a minute to Dobson. The second pilot got out of the seat and Samuelson slipped back into it, knocked out the automatic pilot and flew the aircraft manually while the inboard engines died and the note changed. Dobson crossed to Mr. Honey at t
he navigating table.
“I’ll take you back to the saloon,” he said. As they left the flight deck Samuelson motioned to the radio operator, demanding a signal pad.
In the saloon Dobson showed Honey to his seat with studied courtesy; then he went on down the cabin to the galley at the rear end. The tall dark stewardess was there, the one who was looking after Mr. Honey.
He greeted her with a grin. “Fun and games,” he said. “The boffin’s going mad.”
Miss Corder stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“He’s absolutely crackers. Says the tail’s going to fall off.” She asked quietly, “Is it?”
“No, of course it’s not. It’s the altitude or something, even pressurised down like this. The captain wants him specially looked after—he’s a bit excited. Got any bromide with your medicines?”
She turned to the medicine chest and pulled out a drawer, and examined two or three little flasks of tablets. “I’ve got these.”
He took the flask from her and read the label. “That looks all right,” he said. “Give him two or three of these if he gets restless. But he’s quiet enough now; I don’t think he’ll make any trouble. Give us a ring through if he does, and one or other of us’ll come down.”
She nodded. “What does he think is going to happen?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Says the tail’s due to fall off after this number of hours. Says we ought to turn back and land in Ireland. It’s all sheer nonsense—something he’s made up. It really is a most fantastic place, that Farnborough. There’s not a whisper of truth in it.”
“How do you know that?” she asked.
He laughed. “Do you think the Inspection would have let this aircraft fly if there was any danger of that sort of thing? Be your age.”
She nodded slowly. “That’s right, of course. I suppose he’s been overworking or something.”
“Overdrinking. Someone’s given him an egg-cup full of ginger cordial.”
She said, “He’s a nice little man.” Above her head the telephone buzzer from the flight deck rang, she lifted the hand microphone. “Yes,” she said, “he’s here. I’ll ask him to come up at once.”
She turned to Dobson. “Captain wants you on the flight deck.”
“Okay. I like your idea of a nice little man. Ruddy little squirt, I call him, coming up with a tale like this and frightening us all into a fit.” He turned away, and moved forward up the aisle in the soft, dimmed lights of the quiet cabin, past the sleeping passengers stretched in their reclining seats. She watched him till he passed through the door at the forward end; then she moved up the aisle herself and stopped by Mr. Honey. He was sitting upright in his seat, his hands playing nervously with the fringe of his overcoat upon his lap.
She said, “Can I get you a hot drink, sir? We’ve got plenty of milk; would you like a cup of Ovaltine and a few biscuits?”
He said nervously, “Oh no, thank you. I don’t want anything.”
She said gently, “Would you rather have some soup or a whisky and soda? It’s better to have something when you can’t sleep.”
He turned to her, roused from his obsession. Airline stewardesses are not chosen for their repellent qualities, and Miss Corder was a very charming girl. “It’s awfully kind of you,” he said. “I’ll be all right. It’s—it’s just a bit worrying, that’s all.”
“Let me make you a hot milk drink,” she said. “It’s very good when you’ve got something on your mind. We’ve got Horlicks if you’d rather have that than Ovaltine.”
It was years since any woman had spoken in that way to Mr. Honey; he was irresistibly reminded of his dead wife, and the tears welled up behind his eyes. It might have been Mary speaking to him. “All right,” he said thickly. “I’d like Ovaltine.”
She went away to get it, and a minute or two later the door at the forward end opened, and Captain Samuelson came into the cabin. He moved down the aisle, nodding and smiling at Mr. Honey as he passed. He went on past the galley, past the toilets, and opened a door in the rear wall and went through the aft luggage bay to the end of the pressurised cabin and the concave dome of the rear wall. There was a perspex window in the dome and a switch that turned on an electric light for the inspection of the tailplane and the elevator mechanism in the space behind. He stood peering through the perspex, looking for trouble.
Mr. Honey saw him go through into the luggage bay towards the tail, and smiled, a little bitterly. He got out of his seat and followed him, passing Miss Corder as she tended a saucepan of hot milk over the electric stove. She turned and saw him go through into the luggage bay, following the captain; she said, “Oh, damn!” and turned off the current of the hot plate, and went after him. It was one of her jobs to keep the passengers from wandering about the aircraft.
In the luggage bay Mr. Honey came up behind Samuelson. “It’s no good looking at it,” he said a little bitterly. “You won’t find anything wrong.” Behind him the stewardess came up, but seeing that he was talking to the captain and that Samuelson was attending to what was being said, she did not intervene.
“If what you say is right, there might be some preliminary sign,” Samuelson said. “But there’s nothing to be seen at all. No paint cracking or anything. It’s all perfectly all right. Have a look for yourself.”
“I don’t need to,” Mr. Honey said. “The spar flanges are perfectly all right now, or we shouldn’t be here. In half a minute it may be a very different story. When it happens, it happens as suddenly as that.” Captain Samuelson’s brows wrinkled in a frown. “If you cut a section of the front spar top flanges now and etched it for a microscopical examination, ten to one you’d find the structure of the metal absolutely normal. But all the same, it may be due for failure in ten minutes. There’s nothing to be seen in the appearance of it that will tell you anything.”
Samuelson stood in silence for a moment, cursing his own irresolution. This little insignificant man was getting terribly plausible. He had sent a radio signal to his Flight Control reporting briefly what Honey had said and stating his decision to go on; the signal had been acknowledged but not answered. He could hardly expect such guidance from his Flight Control in view of the difficulty of the technical points that were involved and the fact that it was then the middle of the night when all right-minded technicians would be in bed and sound asleep. The most that he could hope for would be guidance when they got to Gander, by which time it would be nine o’clock in the morning in England.
“I’ve shut down the inboard engines,” he said at last.
“That should help it,” Mr. Honey said. “But you ought to go back while there’s time. Really you should.”
Samuelson smiled brightly and confidently, more for the benefit of the stewardess than for Mr. Honey. “Oh, I don’t think so,” he remarked. “I think we’re quite all right.”
He ushered Mr. Honey forward out of the luggage bay, and went forward up the aisle himself to the flight deck. Mr. Honey stayed at the aft end of the cabin with Miss Corder, scrutinising the structure of the fuselage so far as could be seen by reason of the cabin furnishings; he opened the doors of the toilets and investigated the methods of staying the bulkheads, peering at everything through his thick glasses.
He was behaving very oddly, Miss Corder decided. She came to him, and said, “I should go back to your seat, sir. I’ll bring you the Ovaltine in a few minutes.”
“I’ll go in just one moment,” he said meekly. “Let me have a look at your stove first.” Thinking to humour him she showed him into the galley and began to explain the operation of the various switches and ovens to him, but she found he was not interested in that at all. He examined very carefully the methods of fixing the unit to the floor and the fuselage side; then he was through, and went back to his seat. She brought him a tray with his Ovaltine and biscuits a few minutes later, full of a queer, detached pity for him in his self-induced trouble. He seemed so very helpless.
She said quietly, “I’ve brought y
ou your Ovaltine, Mr. Honey. Do you like these sweet biscuits? I’ve got some oatmeal ones if you’d rather have those.”
He said quickly, “Oh, thank you so much. These will do splendidly.”
She smiled down at him. “Would you like a little drop of rum in the Ovaltine to help you sleep?”
“Oh no, thank you. I never take spirits.”
“All right. Drink it: while it’s hot. I’ll come back presently and take the tray.”
The Reindeer moved on steadily across the starlit sky, alone in space above the overcast seen dimly far below, shrouding the black, empty wastes of sea. In the quiet cabin Mr. Honey sat sipping his Ovaltine, gradually relaxing with the warmth and comfort of the drink. His hands ceased to fiddle nervously, the tight, set muscles round about his mouth relaxed, and the feeling of a tight band round his forehead eased a little. He no longer sat tense waiting for the first movement of the aircraft that would herald the steep dive to their destruction; his ears were no longer strained to hear the first crack from the tail that would be the beginning of the sequence.
It now seemed to him that he could take things as they came. There were six hours more at least to go before they came to Gander; it seemed to him most probable that they would all be dead before that time was up. The thought did not now appal him as; it had. Death came to everybody in its time; it had come to Mary earlier than they had dreamed it could. If now it came to him, well, that was just one of those things; he had a simple faith that somewhere, somehow after death he would catch up with Mary once again and they would be together.
He was saddened and distressed for Elspeth. But Elspeth was twelve years old; her character was formed for good or ill; it would not alter her so much if now he had to go. Materially he knew that she would be looked after by the Ministry; she would get as good an education as if he had lived. I am almost ashamed to record that for all the little homely pleasures that make the life of a child happy, he put his trust in Shirley and myself. I do not think he quite thought that we should adopt his daughter, but he did think very certainly that we should never let her suffer the lack of a home life; he thought that when he caught up with his Mary he could tell her that their daughter would be happy. I hope we should have lived up to his expectation of us. I don’t know.