It contained half a dozen fat books, which had obviously been chosen with care. One was Terman’s Radio Engineering, which Alan knew well and was delighted to have. The others were of a more general nature—Mathematics for Engineering Students was typical—and it was quite apparent what the Professor had done. Alan could almost hear him saying: “This is the road ahead, if you want to follow it. The choice is yours.”
He wrote a short but heartfelt letter of thanks to the APO number that was the only address he could find on the package; but there was never any reply.
***
“That was quite a fire you had up at the aerodrome the other day,” said Lucille as she reclined lazily on the couch in a negligee so diaphanous that one had to look hard to make sure it was really there. “I hope it didn’t do too much damage. They say the fire brigades were coming all the way from Exeter.”
That last remark was perfectly true. Owing to some administrative oversight, half the fire engines in the West Country had converged upon St. Erryn during the FIDO tests, and had been dispersed again only with the greatest difficulty. It was hard to convince anyone that matters were completely under control when thousands of acres were apparently involved in a major volcanic eruption.
“Oh, it wasn’t as bad as it looked,” Alan answered reassuringly. “Just a drop of petrol going up—no damage at all.”
Lucille’s comment was a perfectly natural one, yet it set him wondering. But when he looked into those limpid blue eyes, he found it impossible to believe any harm of her. She was playful and mischievous, and loved to tease him (especially about Dennis); but he would swear that she was what she seemed to be, and nothing more. So was Elise, who had taken a whole week to recover from Howard’s departure.
Now Olga, perhaps… He had never really liked her; she had always seemed too flamboyant and gushing, greeting everyone with the same synthetic friendliness. Elise and Lucille were chic, but Olga was invariably overdressed and overjeweled. She was also overfed, and had a sleek and prosperous look that somehow jarred on one in wartime.
But he was imagining things, and jumping to wholly unwarranted conclusions. The truth of the matter was that he had scarcely given Olga a thought. What was more, he had never considered Lucille as a real person, with hopes and fears and ambitions. She had been no more than a delightful plaything, toward whom he would always feel gratitude—and nothing else. If he had believed otherwise, he had been fooling himself.
Yet was it as simple as that? If so, why did he feel jealous of Dennis? He really had nothing against the fellow; Collins could help neither his mannerisms nor his good looks, and if Lucille preferred him, that was her affair. It was foolish to get hot under the collar about it.
He suspected, rather uncomfortably, that he was jealous not of Dennis, but of all that he stood for. And even jealousy was the wrong word—envy would be better. For behind Dennis he could always see that bomber operations board, with its blank spaces and all that they symbolized.
Flight Lieutenant Collins stood for a world that he could not enter. But why did he resent that? Alan knew very little about psychology, least of all his own. His only contact with that elusive science had been through some eyebrow-raising books that Benny had been reading, and which he had borrowed briefly.
It had to be some complex or other, and it probably stemmed from his childhood. (After all, what didn’t?) He was very near the truth, but he would never reach it, for it was one of those obvious facts that the mind carefully focuses upon its blind spots.
There was a striking resemblance between Dennis Collins and the young Captain Bishop; anyone but Alan would have seen it at once.
It was almost midnight, and time to get back to camp. As Alan buttoned up his shirt, there was a knock on the door.
“Come in, Joan,” Alan called.
But it was not Joan with the usual nightcap. It was Elise, looking quite as attractive as Lucille, and less disheveled.
“Thanks, sweetheart,” said Alan, taking his steaming cup. “Where’s Joan? I haven’t seen her all evening.”
“She’s left,” said Elise. “She had a row with Olga. We’re running the house now, until we can get someone new.”
“Well, it’ll be good practice for you,” said Alan. “One day you’ll have a place of your own.”
He was still trying to picture what sort of place it would be when they let him out into the night. Whistling happily, he cycled away up the hill; and his departure was duly noted by a patient observer in the shadows.
24
Squadron Leader Strickland, Station Security Officer, felt very annoyed with the world. For the sixth time he read the police report on his desk, wondering what he had better do about it. The situation was an extremely delicate one, and action could not be delayed any longer.
He walked over to his heavily barred window, and stared out into the night. It had been a filthy day, and it was rapidly growing worse. A light fog had shrouded the airfield since noon, and during the last few hours it had turned into a fine drizzle—not exactly rain, but a steady precipitation that seemed wetter than ordinary water. Even driving a car was difficult, for visibility was less than ten feet. All operations had been canceled; not even the sea gulls could get airborne in this weather.
He turned his back on the dismal prospect, and picked up the direct telephone to the Guardroom. “Sergeant Jenkins?” he said. “Would you send someone to find Flying Officer Bishop? He’ll be in the Mess anteroom, unless he’s working over at the GCD unit. Tell him that he’s wanted urgently, and bring him straight here.”
Well, that was that. When he had hung up, Strickland ran through Bishop’s file again. It was absurdly clean; he was a highly conscientious and hard-working officer who had been “mentioned in dispatches” only a few weeks ago, and was now due for promotion to Flight Lieutenant. He had done an outstanding job in connection with the Meteor he’d landed, and he appeared to have no political affiliations of any kind. Strickland wished that his own record were as spotless.
Jenkins seemed to be taking a long time to locate Bishop, and the Squadron Leader was about to call back when the phone rang. He picked up the receiver, and listened to the Guardroom’s report with mounting incredulity.
“I can’t believe it!” he said, glancing at the wet and Stygian gloom beyond the windows. “Not on a night like this!”
“That’s how it is, sir,” replied the Sergeant. “They’re moving out now. I’ve just checked with the Flight Commander.”
“I’ll call you later. They must be absolutely crazy!”
He could hardly have guessed how completely Alan would have agreed with him.
It had started off as just another demonstration, but had somehow got out of control. Originally, the plan had been to see how well FIDO and GCD worked together, for the two systems were complementary, rather than competitive. GCD could bring an aircraft onto the runway, but the pilot had to depend on his own eyesight for the last seconds of the landing, and FIDO would be able to help him there.
A demonstration as spectacular as this one promised to be had attracted an unusually large collection of VIPs. Signals specialists ranged all the way up to group captains; Fighter and Bomber Commands were represented by air vice marshals, no less; while the Petroleum Warfare Department was led by a world-famous scientist who had chain-smoked his way past so many million-gallon gas tanks that his associates had acquired permanent gray hairs.
For good measure, three U.S. Air Force generals had arrived at the last moment in a B-26, which had made a hair-raising landing just before the fog closed in completely. The aircraft had come in on the Beam Approach Beacon System—and the pilot had homed on BABS all too thoroughly. For the B-26, in a slightly bent condition, was now entangled in the beacon antennas off the end of the runway, while its passengers sat in the anteroom in a very pensive mood, reading old issues of Punch with baffled concentration. It would take several days to get the beacon working again, and still longer to straighten out the B-26
.
Owing to the appalling weather, the day’s normal training program had been abandoned, and there seemed little chance that the spectators would see anything at all for at least twenty-four hours. Late in the afternoon, however, a mildly encouraging forecast came through from the Meteorological Section, and though it needed the eye of faith to see any improvement in the weather, there was nothing to lose by getting the trucks into position. If the FIDO boys decided to light the wick, Alan decided, then GCD would be ready for them.
Even in good visibility, driving around the airfield was now a hazardous undertaking, for the massive pipelines supplying the few points. To find these narrow gaps, when the driver of the transmitter truck could not even see the ground clearly from his cab, needed a more accurate radar than any yet invented. Alan solved this navigational problem by standing on the running board and shouting directions to Mac. It took twenty minutes to make the journey from hangar to runway—a trip that normally took five.
The raw, wet day merged imperceptibly into a raw, wet night. The massive GCD trucks and their retinue of transport vehicles formed a tiny, isolated enclave in a world of slowly moving fog—a fog that was saturated with water, yet seemed unable to make the transition to honest-to-goodness rain. It was hard to believe that anything else existed beyond the impenetrable wall of mist. Alan was reminded of a description of the planet Venus he had read in one of those farfetched science-fiction magazines that Howard used to patronize. He would much rather be on Venus, he decided; apparently it was a good deal warmer there.
It was shortly to become a good deal warmer here. Alan was pointing out the various landmarks on the radar screens to the three American generals when the field telephone started to ring.
“Excuse me,” he said to his distinguished pupils, picking up the receiver. “Flying Control has a message for us.” When he hung up a few seconds later, he had a slightly surprised expression.
“They’re going to light FIDO,” he reported. “It seems that this is just the sort of weather they’ve been waiting for. I suppose if it can work in this, it can work in anything.”
“Tell me, Mr. Bishop,” said one of the generals in an honest spirit of curiosity, “are your London fogs as bad as this?”
Alan had never been in a really bad London fog, so was not in a position to answer. But he felt it necessary to uphold the reputation of his country.
“Oh, much worse, sir,” he answered with relish. “After all, you can see at least two yards in this one.”
“Migawd,” muttered the general, and subsided thoughtfully.
“I think it would be a good idea,” continued Alan, “to go outside and watch them light up—that is, if you don’t mind getting wet.”
“I can’t get any wetter without becoming amphibious,” said another of the generals, who didn’t look a day over twenty-five and was covered with combat decorations. Buttoning up raincoats, the party squelched out to the dripping concrete. It was the first time, thought Alan, that he had ever seen generals wearing galoshes.
The bulk of the transmitter truck, looming above them in the humid night, gave some protection from the elements. They sheltered against the antenna housing, and stared toward the invisible runway a hundred yards away, and the first row of burners at just half that distance.
It seemed as if the sun were rising in the wrong quarter of the sky. The pulsing, yellow light spanned the entire field of vision, and the mounting roar of the flames, muffled though it was by the rain and fog, was something that could be felt as well as heard. The wall of fire was too far away in the mist for them to make out the individual jets; all that could be seen was the ill-defined curtain of light that marked its presence.
When the second line of burners ignited, it took the visitors completely by surprise. They had lost their orientation in the darkness, and had forgotten that the outer burners were behind them—and much closer than those in front. There was a sudden “woomph!” and within seconds the trucks were sandwiched between two sheets of fire. Both sides of the sky were burning; the ground shook with the sheer force of the pounding flames. The night was no longer cold and clammy; it was uncomfortably warm even at this point, eighty feet from the nearest burner.
One of the generals leaned across to Alan and shouted, raising his voice above the roar: “I’ve just worked it out from the fuel figures you gave me—this thing is generating ten million horsepower of pure heat!”
Alan had never thought of it that way and couldn’t check the calculation in his head. But it seemed a likely figure; it was certainly easy to believe it when one stood in the midst of the man-made inferno and felt its fury beating upon one’s face.
“If you want to follow me,” he shouted to his awestruck audience, “we’ll see what effect it’s had over at the runway.”
No one seemed in a hurry to accompany him toward what looked like instant immolation, but Alan had been well briefed and knew that it was not so dangerous as it looked. There were gaps in the fiery fence where the pipeline went underground, and if one did not linger to admire the view, it was possible to run the gauntlet in complete safety.
As the little party moved in Indian file through the luminescent mist, the roar of the approaching flames grew steadily louder and the diffused glare of light began to concentrate at ground level. They were less than forty feet away when the narrow gateway in the wall of fire became visible for the first time, and now that he had fixed his position accurately, Alan broke into a jog trot. He did not look back to see if his charges were still with him; he was quite certain that none of them would be left behind.
The hissing roar rose to a crescendo; the heat from the blazing jets battered for a moment with terrifying violence against his exposed skin. Then he was through, and the fire and fury subsided behind him. The open runway was ahead.
Mopping their brows, and looking slightly singed, the generals joined Alan on the vast acreage of concrete. And there they fell silent, beholding a miracle.
Like most miracles, it was a very simple one. Overhead, the stars were shining.
On either side the fog still rolled, moving sluggishly through the night. But here, in a narrow band scarcely more than a hundred yards wide, a swath had been cut clear from ground level up to the open sky. As long as the burners pumped their millions of calories into the night, Runway 320—perhaps alone in the whole of England—would have good weather. Alan was witnessing the crude beginnings of meteorological engineering, and the sight was unforgettably impressive.
“It’s magnificent,” muttered one awe-struck watcher. “But is it practical?”
Alan was about to point out that if FIDO saved a single bomber, it would have paid for many hours of continuous operation when one of his radar mechanics emerged from the surrounding fog, gave a startled look at the strip of starry sky overhead, and then homed on the group of spectators. He seemed in a hurry, and this usually meant bad news.
“Excuse me,” said Alan, and went to meet the airman. “What’s the trouble, Hart?”
“They’d like you to go over to ‘D’ Flight, sir. Mr. Collins wants to take off as soon as you say it’s OK.”
Shaken to the core by this unlikely news, Alan stared at the familiar face of Corporal Hart as if he were seeing him for the first time in his life.
“Are you sure?” he gasped.
“Yes, sir. The Station Commander’s over there, too. They said something about this being too good a chance to miss.”
As Alan shepherded his charges back to the trucks, he wondered what on earth Dennis thought he was doing. True, he was the blind-flying expert—but on a night like this one would almost need instruments calibrated in Braille.
Parking the generals in the control van, where they wouldn’t catch cold and could follow any further developments, Alan grabbed his bike and headed for “D” Flight. In this weather, that was much the quickest form of locomotion; there was no peering through misty windshields.
There was quite a crowd at “D” Flight
when he arrived after taking a short cut along the flame-fringed runway. Not only the Station Commander, but the Senior Flying Control Officer was there—also the Met Officer, with his synoptic charts and his habitual worried look. Alan’s intended opening—“Whose crazy idea is it to take off in this muck?”—accordingly died unuttered on his lips.
“Glad you found your way, Bishop,” boomed the Station Commander. “Good thing you’ve got radar on that bike of yours, haw haw. Well, are you all set to go?”
“Er—yes, sir. The GCD’s lined up on the runway. But we didn’t think anyone would be flying in this.”
“Well, it is a bit dicey, but Collins here wants to be the first man to make a GCD-FIDO landing, and he’s sure there’ll be no trouble. And if we miss tonight, heaven knows when we’ll have another chance like this.”
“I understand that, sir. But you realize that this is an experimental unit, and it’s nearly on its last legs. We can never be sure of staying on the air. Mr. Collins knows that as well as anybody.”
“But it’s been working fine all week,” interrupted Dennis.
“All the more reason,” Alan answered with the wisdom of bitter experience, “for thinking that it’s too good to last. If anything goes wrong when you’re up there, how will you get down? Remember, the Yanks have just written off our beacon.”
“I’m pretty sure I can home on the FIDO glare. Anyway, Flying Control can give me an alternate airfield that isn’t closed in. All we want to know is whether you can organize your side of the business.”
Alan did not like the tone in which this was said, and could not resist snapping back: “Barring breakdown, of course we can; the trucks are ready to operate now. Anyway, it’s your neck.”
Dennis gave him a peculiarly humorless smile.
“That’s the other matter we wanted to speak to you about. The Group Captain thinks we ought to have an expert observer up with me. I’ll be too busy, of course, to do everything, and I pointed out that you were absolutely the best man for the job—you know the system and the runway layout. And he agrees with me—don’t you, sir?”