No Highway

by Nevil Shute

  There were smiles around the table. I spoke up in a cold fury. “I don’t know much about the ghosts or the end of the world,” I said. “I have looked over his work on interplanetary rockets, which was carried out in his own time in the years 1935 and 1936. So far as I can see, modern developments in guided missiles are following exactly on the lines that he forecast.”

  Prendergast glared at me. “I wish I could believe that certain other forecasts made by Mr. Honey would come equally true,” he said harshly. “As it is, they appear to me to be a particularly offensive form of blasphemy. Axe you aware that Mr. Honey expects Our Lord to descend to Earth in this country in the year 1994? Are you aware of that, Dr. Scott?”

  I said angrily, “Are you aware that He won’t?”

  The Chairman said, “Gentlemen, I don’t think any of this is really relevant to our consideration of what action we should take, if any, in regard to the Reindeer.”

  Prendergast said, “Our action depends upon our confidence in Mr. Honey’s work, sir. For my part, I have no confidence at all. The eccentricities that I have mentioned are plain indications of mental decline. Unless fresh evidence, as from the Reindeer crash in Labrador, should be produced, I don’t think we should take any action at all, though I would agree to Mr. Carnegie’s proposal to limit the flying time to two-thirds of the time done by the test.”

  The Chairman said, “Well, Mr. Prendergast, as I understand the matter no question of grounding any aircraft upon Mr. Honey’s estimate alone is likely to arise. It has already been decided to send a representative of the R.A.E., Dr. Scott, to make a fresh investigation of the wreckage in Labrador, in conjunction with the Accidents Department. How long do you suppose that that will take?” He turned to the Director.

  “It should not take longer than a fortnight,” the Director said. “That is, assuming that there is no further obstruction in regard to the air transport of my staff.” He said that very quietly.

  Sir David Moon said, “Sir, any action that we may have taken has been for the protection of the travelling public. If we consider any passenger, any passenger, to be mentally unstable, we refuse to carry him. We do not wish to obstruct the R.A.E. in any way.”

  The Director said gently, “I should like to say a word upon this question of mental instability, if I may. A wiser man than I once said that an unusual man is apt to look unusual, gentlemen. I will admit that Mr. Honey sometimes presents an unusual, an untidy appearance in his manner and his clothes. I do not condone that, but I should be sorry to see the R.A.E. staffed entirely by correct young men in neat, conventional, civil service clothes, with neat, conventional, civil service minds.” A smile ran around the table. “In my department,” he went on, “we seek for original thinkers, for the untiring brain that pursues its object by day and by night. If the untiring brain refuses to leave its quest to attend to such matters as the neat arrangement of collar and tie or to removing food stains from its waistcoat, I do not greatly complain.”

  He paused. “As regards Mr. Honey’s other interests, I would say this. You cannot limit a keen intellect or try to fetter its activity. At times, perhaps, I have no job on hand for a few weeks that will wholly occupy the energies of some member of my staff, but I cannot put the untiring brain into cold storage or prevent the thinker from thinking. If there is a hiatus in the flow of work my research workers will start researching on their own, into the problems of thought transference, or ghosts, or the Lost Tribes of Israel, or the Great Pyramid and the coming dissolution of the world. That, gentlemen, does not mean that they are going mad. It means that I have picked my men well, because the true research worker cannot rest from research.”

  Prendergast said acidly, “May I ask if other members of your staff destroy aircraft when they are not fully occupied?”

  The Chairman said hastily, “I think, Mr. Prendergast, we can pass on.”

  Prendergast interrupted hotly, “With every respect, I think we should hear more about the circumstances in which Mr. Honey wrecked the Gander aircraft. We have the captain of the aircraft here, Captain Samuelson. May we not hear what he has to say about Mr. Honey, sir?”

  “If you wish,” the Chairman said reluctantly. “Captain Samuelson?”

  The pilot hesitated. “Well, sir, I don’t know what to say. At the time I thought he was off his head, but having heard all this it seems there’s something on the other side as well. I think it’s a matter for the doctors,” he concluded weakly.

  “Exactly,” said the Chairman. “Well now, gentlemen—”

  Samuelson spoke again. “Excuse me, sir,” he said. “May I add just one more thing?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Well, I’ve heard a great deal this morning that I don’t really understand,” the pilot said. “I mean, I’m just the b.f. who knows how to fly the thing. But one thing I’m quite certain of, and that’s that that first accident report is wrong.” He pointed to the folder lying on the table before me. “That thing says that Bill Ward came down through the overcast to check his position, and flew into a hill at about fifteen hundred feet. I never heard such bloody nonsense in all my life. I’ve known Bill Ward for twenty years. He was as senior as I am in the Organisation. It’s just bloody nonsense to suggest that he’d have done a thing like that.”

  Group-Captain Fisher, red as a turkey cock, said, “The whole weight of the evidence supports that explanation of the accident.”

  The pilot said, “I don’t give a mugger about that, sir. It’s plain bloody nonsense. Senior pilots in the Organisation just don’t do that sort of thing. Whatever happened to that Reindeer, it wasn’t that.”

  Sir David Moon stared down the table at his pilot thoughtfully. “I think that we should give that view a great deal of consideration,” he said.

  The Chairman said, “I think we should. Well, gentlemen, I think we have heard all that can be said upon the matter at this stage. The R.A.E. will recover the relevant parts of the wreckage of the first machine and will report to me, if possible within a fortnight.” He glanced at the calendar. “That is, by the 25th. We cannot settle anything this morning, or, indeed, until we have that report upon the first machine. In the meantime, I will see Sir Phillip Dolbear and see if any interim investigation is possible, on high priority. If any action then seems necessary, we must have another meeting.”

  Prendergast said sullenly, “Very good, sir. If any action on our part is required, no doubt somebody will consent to let us know, sometime.”

  The chap from the Air Registration Board said, “It looks as if a little preliminary investigation for the modifications that may be required would be justified.”

  Prendergast said sourly, “It’s rather difficult to do that when there is no fault apparent in the present structure. Certainly, I can invent a weakness and get out a modification to put it right, if that is what you wish.”

  On that the meeting broke up; the various members stood about in little groups. Sir David Moon went down to the end of the room and stood in close conversation with his pilot, Samuelson; in a lull in the conversation I heard the little sandy-haired man expostulating, “I tell you, it’s all a lot of bloody nonsense, sir.” Group-Captain Fisher was complaining to the Chairman, who was trying to brush him off; he did so just as I was leaving the room with the Director, and bustled over to us.

  “You’re crossing over to Ottawa tonight, then, Scott?” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” I replied.

  “Fine,” he said. “Do your best to get this settled quickly, one way or the other. It’s very disturbing to everybody when these things drag on in uncertainty.”

  I left then, and went to the Royal Aero Club for lunch. The Director had to go back to the R.A.E., so I lunched alone in the snack-bar and sat for half an hour smoking in the lounge over a cup of coffee. I was very tired. The last few days had been a bit of a strain and the tensions in the meeting that morning had left me feeling slack and ill. Hanging over my head was the lecture in the evening; it should ha
ve been the great day of my life, but now it was just another hour of tension to be battled through. I sat trying to rest and read an illustrated magazine till it was time to go back to the Ministry to see about my journey to Canada.

  I went to see Ferguson first of all. “I thought old Prendergast was going to break a blood-vessel this morning,” he said cheerfully. “Specially when you picked him up on Jesus Christ. I must say, we do have fun at our meetings. That chap from the Treasury said he’d never been at one quite like it.”

  I went with him to the Secretariat and spent an hour in various departments getting my passport and my tickets and my money. We got back to his office at about a quarter to four, and his secretary was waiting for me with a message from the Director of Research and Development, our chairman this morning. “Dr. Scott, Mr. Morgan wants to see you …”

  When I got into his office, he said, “Sit down, Scott. I want to have a talk with you about this morning’s meeting. How well do you know Mr. Honey?”

  “Not very well,” I said. “This matter of fatigue is the first job of his that I’ve investigated. He was working on it when I took over the department.”

  “Is he a friend of yours? Do you know him personally?”

  “No,” I said. “He’s been to my house a couple of times, and I’ve had his daughter staying with me for the last two days.” I told him about Elspeth.

  “I take it that you’re friendly with him, then?”

  “Not specially,” I said. “I think he has rather a hard time, living alone after the death of his wife and all that, sir. And I think he’s an able little man. As regards his daughter, I hope we’d do that much for any of my staff who got into a jam.”

  “You think he’s able?”

  “I do, sir.”

  He drummed on the table for a moment, staring out of the window. “Well, I hope you’re right,” he said at last. He raised his head and looked at me kindly. “There’s going to be a row about this Reindeer, either way,” he said. “If it proves that there is real trouble in the tailplane, that you and Honey are right, then there’s going to be Parliamentary trouble over the suspension of the North Atlantic service. People will start saying that this country can’t build aircraft so we’d better give up trying.”

  “We can plough through that one, sir,” I said.

  He nodded. “Of course we can. But if it goes the other way, and it turns out to be a mare’s nest—that there’s nothing wrong with the tailplane at all, then there’ll be trouble of a different sort. Then the Treasury will come in over the payment for the aircraft Honey wrecked at Gander. I rather wish you hadn’t thrown your weight on his side quite so definitely this morning, Scott.”

  “There’ll be a row about that, will there, sir?”

  “I’m rather afraid there will. I had the Treasury man with me for half an hour after lunch. He’s very much concerned about the action that Honey saw fit to take.”

  “Too bad,” I said wearily. “But I can’t help that. Honey knew my views and what he did was certainly influenced by what he knew my attitude to be. You can’t go through life sitting on the fence. You’ve got to make decisions, and sometimes you’re pretty sure to make them wrong. If you’re going to chuck Honey to the lions, sir, you’ll have to chuck me too.”

  He said doubtfully, “Oh, I don’t think it will come to that.” He stared out of the window for a minute; it was hot in his office and I was sweating a little. “You must have thought about this for a long time,” he said. “What makes you so positive that he is right?”

  I could not relate the sum of tiny things that had built up my judgment, the strong hiking boots, the rocket thesis, the quality of his discourse upon automatic writing, his spartan mode of life, the beauty and intelligence of the women who had loved him. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve just got a hunch that he’s right.”

  “From your experience?”

  I knew he understood. “That’s right, sir,” I said eagerly. “I just kind of smell trouble here. Honestly, I think there’s something the matter with the Reindeer tail.”

  “I believe I agree with you,” he said slowly. He smiled. “Well, we’ll keep our fingers crossed and hope you bring something definite back with you from Canada.” He stood up and held out his hand. “Good luck. You’ve got everything you want for the journey—money and tickets and all that?”

  “Everything,” I said. “I’ll come back with the evidence all right, sir”—I smiled—“for or against.”

  I went back to Ferguson’s office. “What did he want?” he asked casually.

  “He wanted to break it to me that if the Reindeer hasn’t got fatigue trouble I could start looking for another job,” I said. “But he didn’t get around to putting it in so many words.”

  I left the office and walked slowly across the Green Park towards the club. I was tired and dispirited; everything was massing up on me as if for a disaster, I had backed Mr. Honey in his fatigue theory because one has to take a positive line. I had thought it out and come to the conclusion that he was probably right, and I had plumped for that, but I could not overlook the other side of the question. What if he were wrong? He had never seen a washing-up mop or an electric hot-water heater; he had walked in a provocative procession and had been taken up by the police and charged with creating a breach of the peace. Lucky that Prendergast did not bring out that one at the meeting! Suppose, in fact, he was a stupid, trivial man; suppose, in fact, I found nothing wrong at all with the wreckage in Labrador? My name would then be mud; it would take a long time to live down the stink that this would make in official circles. Probably it would mean that there would be no more promotion for me at the R.A.E. In that case I would do better to get out of the country, go down to the bottom and start again, perhaps in Australia or New Zealand.

  I sat for a long time on a bench in the park tired and trying to rest, wondering miserably if my life in my own country was coming to an end.

  Presently I got up and went back to the club. Shirley was waiting for me there, and I ordered tea. “We got Elspeth moved all right,” she said. “She’s back in her own room now, with Miss Corder looking after her. She’s a nice girl that, Dennis.”

  “She is,” I said. “Where’s she sleeping?”

  She looked at me reproachfully. “In the little spare room, of course. All in among the suitcases. You didn’t think she’d sleep in Mr. Honey’s bed?”

  “Not yet,” I said. She aimed a kick at my ankle under the table. “Is Elspeth happy to be back in her own place?”

  “Oh yes. Marjorie was going to wash the stairs and the hall this afternoon, and she can talk to Elspeth while she’s doing that. After tea they were going to make toffee.”

  “Where’s she going to get the sugar from?”

  “Mr. Honey’s got about thirty pounds of it in the larder. It’s their jam sugar ration for about four years. He doesn’t know how to make jam.”

  “She’d better make him some.”

  “She’s going to do that tomorrow. There are strawberries in the shops now, and they’re reasonably cheap.”

  She turned to me. “How did the meeting go, Dennis?”

  “Not too well,” I said. “There’s going to be the hell of a row if these machines have got fatigue and a worse one if they haven’t.”

  “Oh, darling, I am sorry.”

  Presently we left the club and walked across the park to the lecture hall; my lecture was at half-past six, but I had to go through the slides with the lantern operator first. Then came a period of waiting and nervous, distracted talk with various people in the industry while the hall filled up, till there was an audience; of six or seven hundred people. Finally I went through with the President on to the platform, with the Secretary behind me, and sat nervously trying to control my twiddling fingers while the President introduced me as the lecturer on the “Performance Analysis of Aircraft Flying at High Mach Numbers.”

  When I got on my feet, all my nervousness vanished after the first few
words. I was very tired and stale, but I knew my subject, and the familiar graphs and diagrams followed each other on the screen without a hitch. I spoke for about fifty minutes; at the end I was a little hoarse, and was glad to sit down and take a drink of water, happy that the damn thing was over. There was applause, of course; there always is. It seemed a terribly long time before it stopped; the next fence was the discussion, and then it would be over. To my dismay I saw Prendergast get heavily to his feet in the second row. I waited with sick anticipation for what he was going to say.

  He said, “Mr. President and gentlemen. I have worked in this industry for nearly forty years, and during that time I have attended most of the meetings of this Society. I have several points on which I wish to cross swords with the lecturer, but at the outset I wish to pay my tribute to his clarity. I have very seldom listened to a lecture that explained so difficult a subject in such simple language. I am left with the feeling that the most inexperienced student in this hall must have learned as much as I have this evening, and I have learned a great deal which will be of value to me.”

  I sat blinking as I listened to this incredible man. He changed like a chamelion, but I sat back sick with relief that he was not going to go for me in public as he had that morning at the meeting. The fact that he then proceeded to tear to pieces my analysis of the critical area of the pressure plate based upon the harmonic surges that occur when passing through the compressibility zone did not worry me a bit; it was done constructively and in one instance at least suggested a line well worth further investigation. Morgan was there and I could see that he was pleased. Other speakers took their tone from Prendergast, and the discussion went on for another three-quarters of an hour. I replied to the various points as best I could, and then it was all over.