Complete Works of Nevil Shute

by Nevil Shute

  David nodded. “I’ve got Cummings ready to take off the plate, down in the forward hold,” he said. “If you’ll go down there, I’ll go aft and fetch it along.” He grinned. “Keep your fingers crossed.”

  He turned to Ryder. “Steer south now, one eight zero true. You’ll come out over sea again in a couple of minutes. Go on down like this, and level out at seven thousand feet. Then decompress. Then reduce speed to two hundred knots and flaps half down. Then lower the undercarriage. Carry on like that until I tell you.”

  The second pilot repeated the instructions, and David went quickly aft through the saloon to the luggage bay. Jim Hansen was still there standing guard over the suitcase. He was very white, and David grinned at him. “We’ll get rid of this thing pretty soon, now,” he said.

  “I’ve been saying me prayers, sir,” the lad remarked.

  “Well, keep on saying them for about five minutes longer.” The pilot stooped, and took the metal case in both his hands, wondering if this was the end of it for all of them. He raised it to the level of his waist, and turned, and walked forward into the saloon, and up between the lines of seats. As he passed Rosemary, he heard her say softly, “Good luck, Nigger.”

  He came to the cabins, and the Queen was standing at her door with the Consort at her side; she was in a white, flowered dressing gown. She said, “Is that it, Commander?”

  He paused for a moment. “That’s it, madam. We’ll be rid of it in a few minutes now.”

  She said quietly, “I am so very sorry for you all. This wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been on board.”

  He left her, and went forward walking very carefully; although if it went off in any part of the machine it would mean certain death for all of them, it seemed to him to be important to remove it from the Queen as far as possible. The forward hold was reached by a hatch in the flight deck under the engineer’s seat covered by a hinged duralumin flap, now open. Below were two ladder rungs on the side of the aircraft and then the floor of the hold, with not more than four foot six of headroom. The radio officer came forward and offered to hold the thing for him as he went down. David made him sit upon the floor and put it in his hands, and went down through the hole, and standing on the floor below reached up and took it from him. The boy went back to his desk, streaming with sweat.

  Crouched down by the inspection plate were the Group Captain and the engineer, Cummings. David moved very cautiously towards them in the dim light, stooping almost double, terrified of stumbling or hitting his head against some unseen beam, and dropping the box. He knelt down beside them with it still unshaken in his hands, and said, “Well, here we are. What’s the betting the bloody thing goes off before we get it out?”

  “Five to one on,” said Cummings.

  The Group Captain said, “What’s our altitude now?”

  “I don’t know,” said David. “We must be pretty well down. I didn’t stop to ask.”

  They waited, tense and motionless as the minutes crept by. It would be bad luck, thought David, if the thing went off now . . . His wrists ached with holding it. When suddenly the attitude of the machine began to alter and a change in the whisper of the air told that she was slowing down, it came almost as a surprise. He glanced at Cox, and met his eyes.

  “Levelling out,” said the Group Captain.

  The pilot nodded. He knelt by the inspection plate noting the phases of the manoeuvre, the hydraulic whistle as the air brakes went in, and then the groaning of the flap motor as the flaps went down. Finally came the action they were waiting for, the clank and hiss immediately beneath their feet as the undercarriage fell, and the shock as it was locked in place. In the semi-darkness David said to Cummings, “Get that plate off now.”

  The engineer worked methodically, removing the studs one by one and putting them with the washers into the breast pocket of his overall. He hummed a little tune about love as he worked. Finally the last stud was removed, and he freed the plate.

  A great rush of air came upwards through the hole, as solid as a wall. It beat about them in the narrow space, insensate; David was forced backwards, still holding the metal case desperately horizontal. In the roar of the entering air he signed to Cummings to put the cover back. The engineer laid the plate beside the hole and slid it forward with the weight of his body on it and, half sitting and half lying on the plate with Frank Cox helping him, he got half a dozen of the studs back into place. The bay seemed strangely quiet after that blast of air.

  The Group Captain said, “We’ll never get it out through that, Nigger. It wouldn’t fall.”

  The pilot knelt in thought. “I wonder where the hell that air was going to?” he said. And then it came to him that after decompressing, perhaps Ryder had opened the cockpit window at his side, because air coming into the machine must be going out somewhere. He mentioned this to Cox, and then he said, “If I shut this hatch above us, and see everything battened down, and stall her — could you get it out then, sir?” In stalling, the machine would be poised momentarily at barely a hundred knots, before she fell into a dive and the speed rose again.

  “Are you happy about stalling her at night, at only seven thousand, Nigger?”

  David nodded. “I’ve stalled her on instruments several times. She comes out in about three thousand feet.”

  The Group Captain bit his lip.

  The pilot said, “Would you like to ask her if she’d rather change her mind and land?”

  “She wouldn’t do it. She’d say, go ahead and stall it. She won’t land anywhere outside the Commonwealth.”

  “There’s Malta,” David said. “We could make Malta in about fifty minutes, at low altitude.”

  The Group Captain was silent, and David was sorry for him in the decision that he had to make. At last he said, “We’ll try stalling it, Nigger. Do it yourself, and send Ryder aft first to tell them to hold on to something. If I can’t get it out safely I shan’t try. In that case, we’ll go on to Malta.”

  The pilot said, “Okay, sir. I shan’t be able to give you much of a signal. I shall pull up pretty sharply, about thirty degrees nose up. I think you’ll be able to get it out then, at the top. But if you have to hang on to it, get yourself wedged tight. She’ll go sixty or seventy degrees nose down before she starts coming up. She’ll probably spin a bit.”

  He went up into the cockpit, and put down the hatch under the engineer’s seat to check the rush of air in when they took the plate off again, battening down Frank Cox with the engineer in the forward hold. He went to Ryder at the controls, and glanced at the window, but it was shut. He discussed the position briefly with the younger man. “The air was going backwards through the ventilation system,” the younger man said. “It was going in here, instead of coming out.” He pointed to the punkah louvre in front of him.

  David spoke to the engineer, who shut off the ventilation trunk at the main. Then he sent Ryder aft through the machine to tell the passengers to fasten their safety belts, and to explain personally to the Consort and the Queen what he was going to do. He sat at the controls settling comfortably into his seat and fastening his own belt, and turned out the flight deck lights, and adjusted the dim instrument lights. Then he put on a little power and climbed to about nine thousand feet.

  Ryder came back and slipped into the seat beside him.

  “Everything all right aft? All ready for it?”

  “Quite all right, sir.”

  “Okay. Don’t touch your controls unless I tell you.”

  The pilots sat together in the dim light, peering forward into the darkness. They were flying between two layers of cloud; there was a very faint light from the setting moon away on their right hand, but there was no horizon and no means of judging the attitude of the machine except by the instruments. David set the gyro to zero, checked the flap setting, throttled the outer engines, put the nose up a little, and slowed the machine to about a hundred and eighty knots. He held her so for a whole minute, to give Frank Cox and Cummings notice that the s
tall was imminent, and to give them time to take the plate off.

  As he sat there in semi-darkness concentrating on the small illuminated horizon bar before him and the zero figure on the gyro, he suffered an experience that he had had before in difficult test flying, and that he welcomed. He saw the instruments with only a small portion of his mind. Only a small portion of his being was seated in the cockpit beside Ryder, holding the controls. The rest of him seemed to be seated in mid-air forty or fifty feet above and behind the rear fin and rudder of the machine. From there he could see the whole aeroplane spread out before him, from wing tip to wing tip. He could see the four engines, the elevons, the flaps, the long line of the fuselage tapering to the nose, the fin and rudder itself. All this was clearly visible to him in every detail; it was blueish grey in colour, slightly luminous. Beyond the aeroplane he could see the horizon clearly defined in two shades of grey, a light grey above that was the sky and a darker grey below that was the ground. With the small portion of his mind he knew that the horizon bar had tilted very slightly; from his heavenly seat he saw the left wing drop a little. He moved his hand a little and saw the elevons move a fraction under his control, and he levelled the wing up upon the grey horizon.

  Then with the small portion of his mind he saw the second hand of the clock upon the panel creep to the end of the minute he was giving Frank Cox to prepare. In his heavenly seat he moved his hand and throttled both the inner engines, and he saw the glow from the exhaust tubes on the wing deepen in tone, and die. He pulled back gently with both hands and saw the luminous blue nose of the machine rise to the horizon, and then he pulled back firmly and lifted it right up into the air. It was all so easy when you could see the whole aeroplane spread out in front of you, in this way.

  For a second the Ceres hung poised nose up at a steep angle, virtually standing on her tail. It was incredible to see a blue aeroplane stand up like a fish rising to a fly. Then the nose dropped violently and a wing dropped; with the small portion of his mind the pilot saw the horizon bar rise and tilt quickly, and the gyro move around. From his heavenly seat David saw the wind drop and the spin commence, and he was amazed at the rapidity and violence of the rotation. Seated behind the aeroplane, however, and with everything in view, it was easy to correct. His hand and foot moved gently and he saw the tail pipe of the port outboard engine glow and rise in colour till a long streak of blue flame came from it, and he saw the rudder move a few degrees to bring the wing up. She was nearly vertically nose down now, but let her go. Poor old thing, she needed her speed. The spin was nearly checked, a trifle more from the port inner engine . . . so. He pulled the throttles back and the glow from the tail pipes died, and now she was diving straight for the dark ground, and the turn had stopped. From his seat up in the air behind her he could see the flaps half out, and he noticed that they were bending slightly with the pressure of the air at the increasing speed; he put his hand to the flap control, and saw them sink back into the wing. He could sense the relief in the machine and feel a gladness in the structure, and now he eased back very gently on the wheel again, watching the line of the blue wings as they rose up towards the grey horizon, and correcting now and then gently to keep them level. The dark ground slipped backwards underneath them a long way below, and now she was nearly horizontal again. He pressed forward slowly on the throttle levers of the inner engines as the blue wings met the light grey of the sky, and moved his hand upon the trimming wheel to keep them so.

  Gradually his being came back to the cockpit, the vision faded, and he was trimming the machine to fly steadily at five thousand feet. He turned to Ryder by his side. “Keep her at about two hundred and thirty,” he said. “I’m going to see what’s happened down below.”

  He slipped out of his seat, and went to the hatch and opened it. Group Captain Cox stood up in the hole, and heaved himself out on to the floor.

  The other nodded. “It fell away quite clear,” he said, standing up. “If anything the air was blowing out this time, instead of coming in. I got it out before you actually stalled her, before she got to the top.” He grinned. “I got the wind up that you’d catch it up in your dive.”

  “You didn’t see what happened when it hit the ground.”

  Frank Cox looked at him, astonished. “We were in thick cloud!”

  “Yes,” said the pilot. “Yes, of course we were.”

  Frank Cox dusted his uniform a little, and straightened his tie. “I’ll go back and tell them it’s all over and done with. Cummings is putting back the studs.”

  “Get up to operating height again, and set a new course for Ratmalana?” said the pilot. “We use a lot of fuel down here.”

  Frank Cox nodded. “Get on up. I’ll come and check the fuel reserve with you when I’ve had a drink.”

  “I think we’ll be all right,” the pilot said.

  “Have you had any dinner?”

  “Not yet. You might ask Gillian to bring me a tray here.”

  He went back to his seat, but handed over to Ryder, and sat resting, tired with the strain of the last hour. He sat watching the second pilot and the engineer get the aircraft into climbing trim and take her up, and presently they broke out above the clouds again to the glory of the setting moon upon their right-hand side. Then Gillian brought him a tray of dinner with a cup of hot coffee, and he ate it, and felt better.

  They came to operating height somewhere over Rhodes at ten minutes past nine, and put the machine into the cruising trim. David checked the fuel with Frank Cox with Bahrein in mind for possible refuelling, but they came to the conclusion that they would still have adequate reserves to reach Colombo in spite of the two climbs, favoured as they were with general tail winds when flying east. Frank Cox volunteered for a watch at the controls, and Ryder went to lie down, and David strolled aft down the saloon for another cup of coffee.

  The doors of the Queen’s cabin and the Consort’s cabin were both shut. He found Rosemary awake, and paused by her. “Fun and games,” he said. “We do see life in this job.”

  She cleared the seat beside her. “Sit down a bit, Nigger,” she said. “Or have you got to go back?”

  He motioned to the stewardess to bring him the coffee there, and sat down by Rosemary. “What was it like back here, when she stalled?” he asked. “Did anyone fall over, or get hurt?”

  She shook her head. “Ryder and Jim Hansen came along and saw that we were all strapped in, and collected all the loose cases,” she said. “I think Fethers was sick.” Miss Fethers was the Queen’s maid.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll have a word with her as I go back. It was the only way we could get rid of the damn thing. I think I’ll suggest we have a hatch made right aft somewhere, by the tail, in case we ever have another one.” He sipped the coffee. “You were all right?”

  She nodded. “Did she swing round when she went down? Something funny happened, didn’t it?”

  “She got in a bit of spin,” he replied. “They do that very easily, these things. They’re quite all right when you understand them.”

  He sat with her a little, and pressed her hand discreetly between the seats. “Try and get some sleep now,” he said. “It’ll be dawn in a few hours. You’ve had enough excitement for one day.” She smiled at him, and he got up and went back to the flight deck, pausing to talk a little to Miss Fethers.

  In the blackness of the night they passed over Nicosia and Beirut and Basra, and went on down the Persian Gulf past Bandar Abbas. As they cleared the Gulf of Oman the sky lightened ahead of them, and forty minutes later the sun rose over the Arabian Sea. Soon after that David put the Ceres on the long let down that would bring them to Colombo at a moderate height, and had another cup of coffee and a few biscuits.

  He was sitting eating these in the pilot’s seat when Frank Cox came to him. “The Queen’s coming in here,” he said. “She’s been talking to the passengers and the stewards in the saloon. She wants to talk to the rest of you here, on the flight deck. I’ll take over. G
et that chap out of bed and get them all lined up. She’s coming in here in five minutes’ time.”

  David got out of the pilot’s seat and Frank Cox got in; they exchanged a few words about the course and rate of descent. There were a few minutes of hurried putting on tunics and straightening ties, and then the door opened, and the Consort and the Queen were there. The flight deck of the Ceres was not very spacious, and with eight people standing in it it was definitely crowded. The Queen stood close against David for all the room he tried to give her, and her head came hardly to the level of his shoulder.

  She said in the clear voice he knew so well, “First of all, I want to thank you all for what you did a few hours ago. When the Federal Government first suggested that they should give this aeroplane for the use of my Flight and that they should man it with an Australian crew, I knew that I should fly very safely. Now I have seen it proved. I do not think I can say very much more than that, except that I thank you with all my heart.”

  She paused. “And now I have a command for you, and it is this. You are not to talk about this bomb that was put into the aeroplane. You are not to say a word about it to your wives, or to your sweethearts, or to anybody at all. You are not to talk about it even between yourselves. It is to be forgotten. This is a Royal command from myself to you, and if anybody should break it I shall be very severe. The world outside this aeroplane is not to know that this has happened.”

  She smiled at them. “But since we are friends, and since you boys have saved my life, I will tell you why this is. There have been two attempts upon my life since I came to the throne thirty years ago, and this is the third. It is one of the occupational hazards of the throne of England, or of any other throne, that poor, distraught, unbalanced people think that their troubles will be rectified if they can kill their Monarch.” She paused. “In the previous two instances of my own experience I could feel nothing but pity for the people who tried to kill me, when their cases were investigated and disclosed. It has always been the same, because political murder has never been a fashion in our Commonwealth.”