by Nevil Shute
By the beginning of January they had already done so. It began with three draughtsmen who, instead of receiving their pay in a little envelope on Friday evening, were told to go and get it at the office. They returned with glum faces and instructions to take a short holiday – unpaid.
There was no more work done in the drawing-office that evening. It did not matter much; the work was of little importance. The men stood about in little groups beside each others’ desks, ostensibly in search of data, really in gloomy speculation as to where the blow would fall next.
‘Someone said that Pilling-Henries were taking on men,’ said James, the engine draughtsman, to one of the discharged men. ‘I’d have a shot there, if I were you, old man.’
The other looked a little pinched. He had no illusions about Pilling-Henries, though he would try it, with every other firm that he could think of. He would start tomorrow, walking and omnibusing all over London, calling at various firms, only to be turned away. The evening he would spend talking cheerily about his chances to his wife, and in writing letters to provincial firms. The first three hours of the night he would spend in sleep, and the remaining five in thought. Then the round would start all over again.
Morris was concerned about all this, uneasy as to how it would affect him. He did not think he would be sacked; he thought he would be kept on as the firm’s pilot, till the Sesquiplane was flown, anyway. He believed he was to fly it. After that it was difficult to say. If the firm went on, he might go on with it. But if the firm bust?
He did not know what he would do if the firm bust. He had no qualifications, no engineering degree or status whatever. He had saved a good bit during the last fifteen months; latterly he had been making something like six hundred a year, all told. It was on the strength of that that he had bought Riley’s car. He could not afford to get married, because the majority of his income came from piloting, and he did not regard that as a certainty. But he could afford to buy Riley’s little car.
More draughtsmen were put on that euphemistic holiday, till only a bare skeleton of the staff remained. So far the technical staff, consisting of Nichols, Pocock, and Morris, had been inviolate. Then, one black day, they were sent for one after another.
Morris entered Rawdon’s office and found him by himself, if anything a trifle calmer, a trifle more self-possessed than usual.
‘Sit down, Mr Morris.’ Morris obeyed.
The designer caressed his chin with one hand. ‘As you see,’ he said, ‘this firm is in a serious state. We’ve had to cut down our staff very much, and we’ve got to reduce it still further. I hoped to get through without touching any of you technical men. Then I thought that if I’d got to cut any of you, I’d better have you all in and tell you just how things stand.’
‘I see,’ said Morris.
‘We ought to have got a biggish contract for the fighter. It hasn’t come, and it won’t come for some time now, perhaps with the next budget, perhaps longer. We’re going to build another torpedo carrier in place of the one they crashed – there may or may not be a contract for that later. In any case, it won’t be for some months, because they crashed the other one before getting any tests done on it, so that nobody knows what its performance is. Then there’s the Sesquiplane. I expect that to be out in March, or late in February. If it’s a success, we’ll probably get an order to build half a dozen for the summer traffic – that will be a rush job if it comes.’
He paused a little.
‘So you see the position is that we ought to be all right in three months’ time – if these things come off. I think we can hang on till then, but only by cutting the staff down to a skeleton. Now I want you to stay on and fly the Sesquiplane – I want that flown by someone who knows it inside out. I don’t want another repetition of that torpedo-carrier business.’
Morris smiled.
‘Well, Mr Morris,’ said the designer, ‘it comes to this. Things are pretty bad, but I think we’ll get through all right. I don’t want you to go off and take another job in a hurry, thinking you’re going to be sacked. You’re all right till the Sesquiplane has flown. After that, or by that time, I hope we shall be in a stronger position.’
He rose from his desk. ‘That’s all I wanted to say.’
Morris returned thoughtfully to the drawing-office. There he found that Rawdon had said substantially the same to each of them – with this difference. Pocock and Nichols were to go ‘on holiday’.
At the end of an hour’s desultory discussion, Pocock looked up with a queer smile.
‘I’ve been in some odd shows in my time,’ he said, ‘but this is the first time I’ve ever been on a sinking ship.’
By the end of February the drawing-office, once numbering over twenty, had been reduced to five members. There were Morris, Baker the chief draughtsman, James the engine draughtsman, and two others. Corresponding reductions had been made on the business side. Thus the staff became dispersed, that highly-trained staff that had worked together on the design of aeroplanes since 1916, in the days of the Rat. Pocock had gone north, and was reported to be working in a steel works. Nichols, who had been in aviation for eleven years, had found a safe, well-paid job in a biscuit factory; a permanency which at his age he was unlikely ever to abandon to return to the work in which he was of value to the country. He had children to educate. Of the draughtsmen, some had found other work outside the industry, some had taken to manual labour, and some were simply out of work, pathetically visiting the firm once a week in the hope of finding some improvement in the position, some chance of being taken on again. But no improvement was in sight.
Morris’s paper on the fuselages had been published in the February number of the journal. He had searched about for other fields of activity when that was finished, and had determined to investigate the possibility of detecting eddies round an aeroplane by testing a small model in a stream of water tinged with red ink. He had spent a little time in calculation of water speeds and trough dimensions most nearly to approximate to the air-flow; then he fixed up a sort of trough in one corner of the works and paid the model-maker to make him a little model of the Sesquiplane. So far the results were not promising.
As the Sesquiplane approached completion, it became evident that it was going to be a surprisingly neat little machine. It was not easy, even for the initiated, to tell exactly what a machine was going to look like from the drawings. The model had been a pretty little piece of work; the machine itself was the best proportioned aeroplane that Rawdon had ever turned out. He had chosen a high lift section for the wing, which gave it a relatively small span and created the appearance of a small, handy little machine, that would have no difficulty in putting down in any reasonable field. This was important in air taxi work. The landing speed was estimated at forty-six miles an hour.
By the end of February it was ready for flight.
Morris did not anticipate any difficulty in flying it. True, it was of an entirely novel type; a type that neither he nor anyone else in England had had experience of before. That did not seem to matter much. The machinery of design was so perfect, the methods of calculation so accurate and clearly defined, that he knew, could almost say beforehand, what the machine would feel like in the air. He felt that he knew the machine inside out; he had confidence in it; it was a really fine little machine. It would make a big sensation when it appeared at Croydon. So far its existence had been kept a secret from the technical papers.
So when the day came for it to be flown, Morris was very fairly confident in his ability to bring off this, his first real test flight, without untoward incident. The engine had been tested the evening before; it was the middle of the morning when the machine was brought out on to the aerodrome, and Morris climbed up into his seat. In more normal times there would have been a little crowd of draughtsmen slinking about the place, ostensibly on their lawful occasions, actually waiting to see the machine go up. There was none of that now, for the whole staff were on the aerodrome, chatting together a
s they waited for the flight.
Morris started the engine and ran it up. Satisfied, he waved the chocks away and taxied out on to the aerodrome. Well, she taxied nicely; that was probably due to the new undercarriage, a compression rubber and oleo affair. That, in turn, had been due to an ingenious draughtsman, who was now out of a job, and likely to remain so, unless he took to manual labour.
Morris faced the machine into the wind and stopped, allowing the engine to tick over. He made his final preparations and wondered if the lucky pig, presented to him when he was a child and now reposing in his collar-box, was still valid. With the reflection that this question would shortly be decided, he looked to the pressure in the tanks and the temperature of the radiator water.
Then he settled himself more securely in his seat, one hand on the control stick between his knees, the other on the throttle. Gently he opened the throttle; the machine began to move; he opened it slowly, progressively. Instinctively he lifted her tail off the ground as she ran along, and steadied her in that position. The throttle was nearly full open; now she must fly herself off the ground.
From beside the hangars the little group watched her intently. Much depended on this flight. There was no sign of any Air Force contracts yet, and it was nearly budget time. Perhaps there would be no Air Force contracts this year. In that case, the very existence of the firm depended on the decent performance of this machine.
The Sesquiplane accelerated smoothly and ran lightly over the grass. Light appeared beneath her wheels; she sank again for an instant, then lifted clear and left the aerodrome on a long, slow slant.
At a height of perhaps seventy feet, a curious little incident occurred. The machine, to the watchers on the ground, seemed to sway a little laterally; one wing dropped – and did not come up again. Instead the whole machine side-slipped and seemed to progress sideways for an instant. Then the nose dropped a little and she steadied on to an even keel, with a louder note from the engine than before.
On the ground nobody spoke. They stirred a little when the machine recovered, but never took their eyes off her. They were all experienced men.
She began to turn towards the north, and came round in a wide circle. Apparently he was going to land her at once. Again he hit a bump, and again she sidled out of it in that queer, unconventional manner, losing height terribly.
The machine came in high above the hedge and made a very fast landing a quarter of a mile out on the aerodrome. Morris taxied her in carefully, jumped down, and walked with Rawdon to his office. Rawdon closed the door behind him.
Morris threw his helmet and goggles on the table. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it was most unpleasant. She’s got simply no lateral control at all. One could feel it almost before she left the ground – you know. Then when we hit that first bump – really I didn’t think she was going to come out of it. I don’t mind telling you, it put the wind right up me. It was only her dihedral that got her out – I hadn’t anything to do with it. I could just tip her over enough to make a very wide turn, using full aileron.’
‘Very lucky you managed to get her down undamaged,’ said Rawdon. He turned absently to a blueprint of the machine. ‘I don’t quite see it, though … ’
‘There was one thing I noticed,’ said Morris. ‘The lateral control seemed very unstable. At times it was almost as if there was someone out on the wing kicking the aileron, and the force was coming back to one’s hand by the control.’
‘Oh – ho?’ said Rawdon. ‘Turbulence?’
‘I think so,’ said Morris. ‘She was too good in the wind tunnel. I was talking to the chaps down there. When the air’s running over her so well, the least little thing upsets it, and then you get eddies and things. I don’t know … ’
‘It may be that big fairing on the strut,’ said Rawdon. ‘That’s what it’s most likely to be. Perhaps if we had that off and simply streamlined it … ’
The next day Morris took Rawdon down to his water apparatus in the shops.
‘Look at that,’ he said.
Rawdon looked. He saw in a smooth stream of clear water, submerged beneath the surface, a small model of the Sesquiplane.
‘Hullo, where did that come from?’
‘Jackson made it for me,’ said Morris. ‘I’ve been working on this stuff for some time, you know, and I’d just chucked it as being useless. Then last night I thought I’d have a look at this control business with it – it comes out rather curiously.’
He lifted the model from the water. ‘You see this aileron? I’ve put it down about fifteen degrees; that’s extreme, I know, but it doesn’t show what I want it to otherwise. And I’ve got the fairing on that strut in plasticine, you see.’
He put the model into the running water. Then he took a thin glass tube leading to a supply of red ink and, placing this in the water two or three feet upstream from the model, allowed a thin streak of colour to flow down and play about the body and strut. Behind the strut the colour formed itself into a great whorl, which crept outwards from the body and upwards, creeping round up-stream till it formed a complete horizontal oval eddy behind the aileron, extending to half its length.
‘What on earth is that thing doing – do you know what it means?’ asked the designer.
‘I haven’t the least idea,’ said Morris cheerfully, ‘but it doesn’t look very healthy, does it? Funny thing is that it doesn’t seem to happen at all with the aileron up normally. And of course, it may not happen in the air. But now, look at this.’
He lifted the model from the water and peeled off the plasticine from the strut. He replaced the model in the water and turned on the colour again. The stream flowed comparatively smoothly over body, wing, and strut, with no sign of the previous eddy.
‘No elastic up the sleeve or anything,’ said Morris.
‘That’s what they told you at the National Physical Laboratory, isn’t it? That something of the sort might happen?’
‘That’s about it,’ said Morris. He turned off the ink. ‘It only really confirms what we always knew – that we’ve hit a case where the body and wing suit each other so well that we’ve got to be jolly careful what we’re doing.’
The designer mused a little. What he had deduced from fifteen years’ experience had been definitely proved by Morris with the experience of one. True, it was luck that this effect had happened to show in such a tank.
‘Well,’ he said at last. ‘That’s very interesting confirmation of that strut interference, Mr Morris. I was going to have it stripped, anyway. Don’t dismantle this apparatus; I’d like to see some more experiments done before we abandon it.’
He moved away towards his office.
Five days later the Sesquiplane was again ready for flight. A small notice on the office door, offering seats in the machine at ten shillings apiece, was eventually attributed to Morris, whose confidence in the machine was not shared by the draughtsmen. He took her off again in much the same manner; there was no longer any sign of aileron weakness, though a nasty draught came into the cockpit and gave him a stiff neck for the rest of the day. He stayed up for half an hour or so, putting her into every position he could think of, short of actual stunts. Finally he brought her in and made a moderately slow landing, and was loud in his grumbles against the windscreen.
Now began a curious period of inactivity, which Morris found very trying. His purpose in the firm was ended with the flight of this machine; it was unlikely that there would be any more test flying for many months. There was no news of any contract that would enable the firm to keep going; he had not cared to ask Rawdon for details of the firm’s position. All the rest of the technical staff had been sacked or put on holiday, and there was very little work for him to do in the office. Indeed, nobody was doing any work; they sat about reading magazines all day and wondered what was going to happen next. The designer sat in his office or went up to London, and gave no sign.
Morris decided that he must go and ask him what his prospects were, what he was to do. It was bet
ter to know at once rather than to sit waiting to be sacked. Besides, he was genuinely concerned for the future of the firm; it seemed incredible that it should be allowed to break up. Yet that was what seemed to be happening.
That interview never came off. A week after the successful flight of the Sesquiplane, Morris received an official-looking letter. The notepaper was the office paper of Pilling-Henries, the armament firm, who had dropped aviation at the end of the war. He opened it curiously; it ran:
Dear Sir,
We are reorganising our aviation department under Mr G. A. Haverton, F.R.Ae.S., who has mentioned your name to us. Should you be free, Mr Haverton would be glad to interview you with reference to an appointment any morning during the next week, at eleven o’clock at the above address.
It was signed by somebody he did not know.
Morris sat staring at it for a long time, while his breakfast froze to the dish. So far as he had known, he was a complete nonentity in the industry. He had very seldom visited any of the centres of aviation, such as Croydon; on such occasions as he had, he had merely passed through. So far as he knew, his name had never appeared in any technical paper; he had counted himself as completely unknown. In any case, there it was. It looked as if his financial difficulties were solved.
Presently it occurred to him that there was an unpleasant tone about the letter, slightly disconcerting. The writer evidently knew all about him, and was evidently counting on Rawdon’s failure. It was a good deal too much like robbing the body before it was dead. Still, he would go and see them.