by Nevil Shute
Mr. Honey nodded. “I’d like to come,” he said. “I thought Samuelson was very reasonable. Not like that other pilot, the young one.”
She laughed. “Peter Dobson!”
An hour and a half later they were at the door of the house in Wimbledon, with the sun dropping down towards the horizon. It was a commonplace, medium-sized house in a suburban road; from somewhere within came the noise of children going to bed, with resonance from the bathroom. The door was opened to them by his wife. “Oh, Miss Corder,” she said, “he’s still down at the club. There’s been a tournament today, and when there’s a tournament there’s just no knowing when he’ll be home. If I were you I should go down and catch him there.” She gave them the directions.
At the Bowls Club they found a few spectators drifting away; out upon the greens there were three or four groups of middle-aged and elderly men in shirt-sleeves, very intent upon their game. They walked round the green till they saw the rather stout, sandy-haired figure of the Transatlantic pilot. Marjorie called, “Captain Samuelson!”
He raised his head, stared in surprise, and crossed the lawn to them. “Miss Corder — what are you doing here?” He glanced at her companion. “I know you. Wait — yes. Mr. Honey, isn’t it? You got back all right from Gander, then?”
Honey said, “The Royal Air Force brought me back.”
“Fine.”
Marjorie said, “Captain Samuelson, I’ve got something I want to ask you about. I wonder if we could go somewhere and talk for a few minutes?”
He glanced back at his game. “Well — we can talk here, if it’s not very long.”
“I’ll be as quick as I can.” She told him what had happened, about the deadlock in Labrador over the location of the missing tailplane, about Mr. Honey’s trials with planchette. She told her story quickly and well, far better than Mr. Honey could have done. “Nobody can say, of course, whether this information will actually help Dr. Scott or not. But it does seem to be all wrong that it shouldn’t get to him at all.”
The pilot nodded. “I see that. But what am I supposed to do about it?”
She hesitated. “I know you’ll think this a terrible suggestion,” she said diffidently. “But I was wondering if you could fly over Dr. Scott’s camp on your way tomorrow, and drop a letter to them.”
“Oh, you were, were you?” His manner was not encouraging. “Where is this place? North of the St. Lawrence, isn’t it?”
She said, “There’s a lake called Small Pine Water, about a hundred miles north of a place called Ivanhoe, on the St. Lawrence.”
He nodded. “I know Ivanhoe.”
“Well, there’s this lake a hundred miles north of it and the crash was eleven miles west of the south end of that lake. That’s where they are.”
Behind them came the clink of woods upon the green. The pilot said, “Well, I can’t go rushing off there. Miss Corder. That’s a hundred and seventy miles or so off our course.”
“It wouldn’t mean that much extra distance, would it?” she pleaded. “Honestly, it does seem a thing that ought to be done. And after all, it was an Organisation aircraft that crashed.”
He said testily, “Well, yes, I know it was. But if I go off wandering about the world instead of sticking to the route, I’ll get myself the sack, Miss Corder, and quite right, too. You can’t run airlines in that way.”
There was a long, slow pause. A bee droned past them; from the lawn somebody called, “Samuelson!” The pilot raised his head and glanced in that direction. “In about three minutes,” he called. “Roll for me, Doc.” He stood looking down, kicking the turf at the edge of the path irritably. “The Russians took away the spar stumps, did they? And you reckon that you’ve found the other part by planchette?”
“I don’t quite go so far as that,” Mr. Honey said cautiously. “All I’ve got is a sentence — UNDER THE FOOT OF THE BEAR. But that was produced under well controlled conditions, conditions that were identical with those of another research, in which we got some quite remarkable results.”
“I see.” The pilot stood deep in thought, his mind back on what had happened at D.R.D.’s meeting. Many people, Prendergast amongst them, took the view that this small man with the weak eyes was off his head; others, Dr. Scott and the Director were emphatic that he wasn’t. He had oscillated from one view to the other, himself, several times; on the balance he was now inclined to believe in Mr. Honey. But God, what types that Farnborough place did produce!
He asked, “Do you still think Bill Ward had this fatigue trouble?”
Mr. Honey blinked. “Bill Ward?”
“The machine that crashed in Labrador. Do you still think that that one had fatigue trouble?”
“Oh, I see. Well, yes, I think that’s very probable,” Mr. Honey said. “I think that’s very likely indeed. In fact, I should be rather surprised, if they ever find these parts, if they don’t show a very marked fatigue fracture.”
The pilot stared at the gabled line of the suburban roofs behind the almond trees. “That bloody old fool — that Group-Captain the Accidents Department, I’ve forgotten his name — he said it was pilot’s error of judgment. I’ve never heard such cock in all my life.”
“I shouldn’t think it was that,” said Mr. Honey. “It would be a very remarkable coincidence if the pilot had made an error of judgment just at the time when we could reasonably anticipate a failure in fatigue.”
Samuelson said keenly, “At the same time, I suppose you can’t prove that it was failure by fatigue unless Scott comes back with that tail?”
“Well, no. I think you’d have to have some evidence from the crashed parts, if you’re going to upset the accident investigation.”
Marjorie Corder said, “Surely the Organisation would be interested in finding out what actually happened? Enough to let you go off your course a bit to drop a letter?”
“I don’t know about the Organisation ...” The pilot stood in silence, staring out across the level greens. Bill Ward was dead, and vilified after his death when he could not defend himself. Small, stupid people said that he had come down from altitude to check up his position, and had hit a hill, like any pupil on his first cross-country. He had been furious when first he heard of that report; he was furious still. He had spoken his mind at D.R.D.’s meeting; he would speak his mind again, at any time, to anybody who would listen. That was not how Bill Ward had met his death.
Professional pride was very strong in him, and the memory of Bill Ward in many a pilot’s room, in many countries.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s have your letter, and I’ll see what I can do.”
We searched that square mile of Labrador forest for three days, and it was a terrible job.
Before I went there I thought that Labrador was a country of rocks and sparse, scattered trees. I mentioned that to Russell once, who told me that it was, all except this particular bit. That bit was dense jungle — there is no better word. On the first day we did no more than cut a trail round our square mile, blazing the trees and cutting a track through the undergrowth as we went, sinking deep in the swampy muskeg in the bottoms and clambering over hills strewn with rotten, fallen trees. The flies were sheer torment all the time; we had fly-nets to protect our faces and streamed with sweat in them; our hands and wrists grew puffed and swollen with the bites.
The others were more used to these conditions than I was, and they were certainly in better training, but I found that I could keep pace with them in the work. The very novelty of these conditions was a stimulus to me; moreover, I knew that as a scientist from Farnborough I was expected to be a passenger, useless in the woods, and I was determined to show them that a scientist can also be tough. I found that I could do as much as they did or a bit more, but there is no doubt that at the end of the three days I was far more exhausted than they were. I couldn’t have kept up much longer.
On the second and third days we split up into two pairs and set to work to traverse the area in twenty yard strips; in
places the vegetation was so dense that even that left quite a possibility that we could pass each side of the tailplane and never see it. We found the starboard aileron and the No. 6 engine. We did not find the port landing wheel assembly, the No. 3 propeller, or the port tailplane and elevator. The position on the evening of the third day was therefore still inconclusive; we had not found the parts that we were looking for, but that was not to say they were not in the immediate vicinity. The port landing wheel and the No. 3 propeller were almost certainly lying somewhere very near us, and we had not found them.
That evening we were tired to death; I was so tired myself that I could eat nothing, though I drank some tea. Only a small piece of our self-imposed task remained to be done. We planned to finish that in the forenoon and get down to the Norseman on the lake shore after dinner, and fly down to Ivanhoe and rest for a couple of days before commencing the air search. I remember I was deeply depressed that night, and hardly slept at all.
We were all anxious to get finished with the wretched job. The fourth morning we were up at dawn and started off after a cup of tea and a few biscuits. It was better early in the day; it was cool, and the flies did not get going in full strength until the day was well advanced. We worked for a couple of hours and knocked off for breakfast a little after eight, with only a trifle left to do. We were still sitting smoking when the Reindeer flew over at about a quarter to ten.
She came from the south-east, flying very low, only about five hundred feet above the tree-tops. She passed to the east and north of us and came round in a great circle to the west; then they evidently saw our camp, because they turned directly for us and flew over. From the port window of the cockpit someone waved to us and we ran out into the clearing in among the crosses of the graves and waved back to them; she flew over us so low that we could see the faces of the passengers at the windows.
I cannot describe what a beautiful sight she was, that summer morning, above the fronds of the spruce trees, shining in silvery silhouette against the bright blue sky. She was flying well throttled back, a great shining lovely thing that slipped through the air without effort, with only a murmur of noise. I stood and watched her, fascinated by her beauty. Down in the forest we were tired and hot and grimy and bitten to death by bugs of every sort, but up there they were clean and well fed and comfortable and safe, up in the clear air in that lovely, lovely thing. I remember looking at her perfect lines and at the great clean grace of her, and thinking it was worth while, after all, to bear with Prendergast, who could turn out so wonderful a design as that.
They went well over to the east and turned again, and now they came so low that they were not a hundred feet above the trees. We stood out in the little glade amongst the graves and as she came to us I saw someone’s head half out of the starboard window of the cockpit, and I recognised Samuelson whom I had met in London a few days before at D.R.D.’s meeting. I doubt if he would have recognised me. His arm was out of the window and he was holding something with coloured streamers flying from his hand, and as they approached he let this go, and it came parabolically down to us, its bright tails flashing in the sun. It landed on the edge of the clearing and Stubbs ran to get it; the Reindeer opened up her engines and climbed away from us towards the west.
Stubbs came back with the message bag and gave it to Russell, who opened it. It contained one letter, addressed to me in the uncouth scrawl that I had come to know as Mr. Honey’s writing. I slit it open; there were two sheets of notepaper. As I read it, I sighed with disappointment. It was just sheer stupidity; it seemed that he had been playing with planchette, and he sent me an incomprehensible message that he thought must be important. Honey again ...
I raised my eyes, and the other three were standing there looking at me eagerly, waiting to hear what it was all about. I smiled wryly. “I don’t think it’s very important,” I said. I hesitated, embarrassed. “One of my staff has been messing about with spiritualistic stuff — planchette. He got a message that he thought might be useful to us.”
Russell laughed. “Oh!”
“I know,” I said ruefully. “You know what people are.”
“What’s the message?”
“‘Under the foot of the bear’,” I said.
“That’s all? Just, ‘Under the foot of the bear’?”
“That’s all,” I said. He turned away; I think he was as disappointed as I was. When we had seen the message bag flash down we had expected something that would help us.
“Which foot?” asked Hennessey, with ox-like stupidity. He was a good bush pilot, but he was pretty slow sometimes.
“I don’t know,” I said irritably.
“The one he stands on, I suppose,” he said. “That’s what it must mean.”
Russell knew him better than I did. He turned back, suddenly. “Say, is there a place round here that’s called Bear anything?”
“Dancing Bear Water,” Hennessey replied. “That’s the only Bear I know of round these parts. But it’s the heck of a long way from here.”
I stared at him. “Which way is it?”
He looked towards the sun. “Over that way,” he said, pointing. “East — east with a bit of north in it, maybe. Thirty — forty miles.”
Russell said quickly, “Back along the course to Goose, from here?”
“I dare say it would be,” he replied. “It’s right next to Piddling Dog.” He turned to me. “I guess these names sound kind of funny to you,” he explained. “This section of the country was mapped out first by an air survey, back in 1929. Nobody hadn’t ever been here, only a few Indians, maybe. When they got the survey all laid out in Ottawa they found they’d got the heck of a lot of lakes they didn’t know about, so they set down to give ’em all names from what they looked like on the map. I got a map down in the Norseman that shows Dancing Bear. Just like a bear it is, with a little island for the eye, ‘n everything.”
And there, that afternoon, we found the port tailplane of the crashed Reindeer. We saw it first from about a thousand feet as we flew over; it was standing nearly vertical between the spruce trees, about a quarter of a mile due south of the sole of the foot of the Dancing Bear. It was about thirty-seven miles from the crash. We might have found it ultimately in our air survey if we had gone so far, but I think we might have stopped short of that.
We landed on the lake and taxied in to the shore, and beached the Norseman on a little bit of shingle. The going was fairly easy upon land, and we reached the tailplane in about a quarter of an hour. And when we got to it, it was a clear case if ever I saw one; a fatigue fracture of the top front spar flange, the metal short and brittle and crystalline at the break. The rear spar had been twisted off after failure, and the metal there was good.
Bill Ward must have kept her in the air for five or six minutes after losing half his tail, before they hit the trees and they all died. One thing puzzled us a lot at first; how was it that they had not managed to get out a wireless signal in that time? Then we found the insulators of a wireless aerial on the tip of the tailplane, and that, too, was explained.
12
I GOT BACK to England three days later, and I was very tired indeed. I had slept very little, because the itching of the bites that I had got in the woods was with me still when I got home; indeed they took a fortnight to subside completely. Moreover, the strain and tension of the travelling and the research were having their effect, preventing sleep. I should have asked some doctor to prescribe for me, but I could not wait for that. I felt it urgent to get back to Farnborough without delay.
We landed at Heath Row from Montreal about midday. A car was there to meet me; I had a packing-case for luggage and we got it into the back seat with difficulty, and drove to Farnborough. I went straight to the main office block, to the Director’s office.
I got in to see him at once. “Good morning, sir,” I said. “You got my cable?”
He got up from his chair. “Yes, thanks.” He looked at me, and then said, “Rather a hard trip?”
“It was anxious for a time,” I said. “I thought at one time that we weren’t going to find it.”
“You brought some samples back with you?” he asked.
“Oh yes. They’re in a crate outside. I couldn’t transport the whole thing, of course, so I cut off all the bits that seemed to matter. I’ve told the Transport to take them to the Metallurgical. It’s absolutely clear, sir. It’s a straightforward fatigue fracture of the front spar, the top spar flange.” And I told him what it looked like.
“Really ...” He stood in silence for a moment. “Well, that’s very satisfactory from our point of view,” he said. “We come well out of it. That’s not what matters, though. It’s shocking bad for C.A.T.O., and bad for the country. This means that all those machines will have to come back for modification, and that means the end of the British Transatlantic service for the time being, I’m afraid. But there’s nothing for it, now.”
I made a small grimace. “It’s just one of those things. It’s a frightful shame. That Reindeer’s a delightful thing to travel in.”
“You crossed in one, did you?”
“Both ways. It’s a lovely job.”
“I know it is,” he said. “Still, I don’t know that I’d have fancied it myself, in the circumstances.”
I laughed. “You have to shut your mind to that,” I said. “Be like an ordinary passenger. Forget about the structure and take an interest in the stewardess.”
He glanced at me quizzically. “I understand that Mr. Honey has been doing some of that.” It’s extraordinary how the Director gets to know what’s going on.
“A very good thing, too,” I said.
“Oh, very.” He turned the conversation back to business. “I’ll wait until those parts are ready for me to see and we’ve all seen them,” he said. “Then I’ll ring up D.R.D. and I expect he’ll want to call another meeting.”
“Had we better let Prendergast know, unofficially?” I suggested. “He had a bit of a drip last time because we kept him in the dark.”