by Nevil Shute
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. Once 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 the 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 you 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 blank, 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.
Miss Corder came to take away his tray. She bent to him, and asked, “Would you like another cup? I’ve got some more hot milk all ready, if you’d like it.”
He said, “No, I’ve done excellently, thank you.” He blinked up at her through the thick glasses. “It’s been terribly kind of you to take all this trouble.”
She smiled at him, “Oh no, sir. I’m so sorry you’ve got all this worry on your shoulders.”
This dark, kind girl would go too, when it happened. “Are you married?” he enquired.
She stared at him in wonder; surely he wasn’t one of those? She laughed. “Me, married?” she said. “No.”
“That’s a good thing,” he said quietly. “Nor am I. There won’t be a lot of trouble over us.”
The meaning of his words got through to her in a short pause. She hesitated for an instant, not knowing how to take it. She reached for a rug. “Let me put your chair back for you and put this over you,” she said. “Then you’ll probably get a little sleep.”
She helped him to arrange his chair and tucked the rug around him; then she took the tray and went back to the galley. A quarter of an hour later she said to the other stewardess, “I’m going up to the flight deck. Keep an eye on No. 11 for me, will you — Mr. Honey. I think he’s asleep.”
“That’s the boffin? Is he liable to cut his throat, or anything?”
Miss Corder said, “No, he’s not. He’s just a little, worried man, that’s all. I’ll be back in a
few minutes. I just want to tell Dobson how he’s going on.”
Mr. Honey lay relaxed in his reclining chair. He did not want to sleep; so little time was left he had no use for that. His mind drifted to the accident as it would happen, objective and dispassionate. He began to calculate in his head, as he had calculated all his working life.
The download on the tail in this condition he knew to be about 6,000 lbs. Assuming half of the tail failed only, leaving the rest of the plane intact, that meant a nose-down pitching moment of, say, 300,000 lbs. feet. He did not know the power of the one remaining elevator, but he guessed it might provide one half of that. The balance of the nose-down moment would be satisfied by an increase of speed, by diving till the forces came in equilibrium. He figured for a time, and came to the conclusion that a diving speed of 420 m.p.h., attainable at perhaps 7° of flight path to the horizontal, would be somewhere near it. With the maximum control that would be left to him, the pilot would not be able to do better for them than to dive at over four hundred miles an hour until he hit the sea.
He wondered what would happen when they hit. At that small angle they might well bounce up again and not plunge straight in, though there seemed to be a likelihood that the wings would be torn off. They might bounce once or twice, reducing speed each time. The impacts and decelerations would be very violent. After that the fuselage might float for a few moments before sinking; if anybody had survived the crash they might be able to get out into the sea, to float about in lifebelts till they died of cold. There was only one chance in a million that there would be a ship in the vicinity that could help, even if anyone got out.