Alan stayed at Gatesbury for a different reason. The school happened to be short of instructors when his course had finished its training, and he had been near the top of the class—through hard work, certainly not through brilliance. When the remainder of the class had been posted to radar stations all over the British Isles, he and a few others had remained. Whether he liked it or not, he was a teacher from now on, already destined for the dizzy rank of acting corporal.
“Congratulations, Bishop,” Sergeant Lebrun had said when the news came through. “As Shaw puts it, ‘He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.’ Welcome to the ranks of the teachers.”
That was a remark to make one think, and Alan had never forgotten it, even when he had at last shaken the mud of Gatesbury from his feet and gone out to work on the radar chain. He wondered whether, in the months that lay ahead, he would Do as much as he would Teach.
But before he could attempt either, he had first to learn. And just what he was expected to learn on an airfield a few miles from Land’s End, he had not the faintest idea.
4
He’s at the Guardroom? Right—I’ll come and fetch him,” said Flight Lieutenant Deveraux. As he put the receiver down, he felt a pleased surprise that Group had acted so quickly. Of course, the fellow might be no damned use—though he thought this unlikely, since he had considerable faith in Steve’s judgment. They were old friends; at the beginning of the war they had been flying, officers together. Now Steve had jumped three steps to wingco—while he had gone up just one to flight looey.
The reason for this he knew perfectly well. If only he could keep his temper, and suffer fools gladly… especially when said fools were air commodores and upward. But he couldn’t, and hadn’t; so he was still Flight Lieutenant Deveraux.
His first sight of Alan was reassuring. The officer waiting for him at the Guardroom was a smart, not bad-looking youngster in his early twenties—rather thin, dark-haired, and obviously nervous. But that was understandable; everyone felt a little lost on a new posting.
In fact, Alan was not so much nervous as surprised; the contrast between the label “Basil Deveraux” and the reality was somewhat unexpected. The Flight Lieutenant was a rugged and battered six-foot-two, and his broken nose gave him the appearance of a retired prize fighter. All in all, he looked as if he would have been more at home in a combat unit than in the most highly technical of all professions.
They exchanged polite formalities as Deveraux drove the jeep away from the main gate, past Admin Blocks, Orderly Room, camp cinema, Officers’ Mess, Technical Stores, and hangar after hangar. If the radar stations he had known were villages, Alan told himself, this was a city. It would take him weeks to find his way around, and his first job must be to requisition a bike. That was the only form of transport you could always count on when you needed it.
Now they were out on the perimeter track—the great ring-road that linked the ends of the airfield’s three intersecting runways. They seemed to be heading away from the main camp and all its buildings; then, miles away on the horizon, Alan saw a group of low wooden huts.
“‘D’ Flight,” said Deveraux. “That’s where we live. But first I want to show you something.”
He cut off the track, drove for a few hundred yards across flat grass, and wound his way between massive embankments spattered with NO SMOKING and OUT OF BOUNDS TO ALL UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL signs. Alan guessed that these were bomb dumps; by the time they were in open territory again, he had quite lost his bearings. Before he could recover them, they were out in the middle of a sea of concrete that appeared to stretch indefinitely in all directions.
Deveraux glanced quickly around the sky, then brought the jeep to a halt.
“We shouldn’t be here,” he said, “but there’s no one in the circuit and we won’t stay for long. Do you know where we are?”
It was obviously one of the runways; but were they all this huge? Not wishing to show his ignorance, Alan shook his head.
“This is the biggest runway in the world,” Deveraux answered rather proudly. He stood up in the jeep and spread his arms, making a figure like an Old Testament prophet. “Four hundred and fifty feet wide—three times the normal width. In fact, it’s really three runways side by side. Damaged aircraft can come in on Number One strip—here on the left, and if they prang, the center strip goes into action until the bulldozers can clear away the mess. And if the second strip is blocked, then we move over to the third. Impressive, isn’t it?”
“It certainly is,” agreed Alan, wondering what this had to do with him.
Deveraux started up the jeep.
“Here endeth the First Lesson,” he said. “Now for Number Two.”
Lesson Number Two was a good deal smaller, but possibly even more expensive. It was a graveyard of smashed aircraft, just off the edge of the vast runway. Liberators and Wellingtons in the white livery of Coastal Command lay side by side with Blenheims, Ansons, Spitfires, and Hurricanes. Some seemed almost intact; others had wings and control surfaces pock-marked with the tiny, gaping craters of machine-gun bullets.
“This is where they get pushed by the bulldozers, until they can be repaired or carted away for scrap. At a guess, there’s a couple of million quid in this little lot, and perhaps a dozen lives. And the sad thing is that most of the damage isn’t due to Jerry. Half of these are just crashes in bad weather or at night.”
“But aren’t there radio aids to prevent that?” asked Alan.
“Oh, there are. But they don’t always work, and even at their best they’re not much good close to the ground, or in zero visibility. Especially to an exhausted pilot in a shot-up bomber, watching fifty needles at once and trying to tell whether he’s on the glide path by sorting out dots and dashes in his earphones.”
“I see,” said Alan, as a light began to dawn. “So you have something better.”
“A lot better—so they tell me. Not that I’ve seen it working yet,” Deveraux added gloomily.
As they continued their circuit of the airfield, he gave Alan a quick briefing.
“It’s an American project, called GCD, and it’s being run by the scientists who invented it. In fact, they built it. If it’s successful, we’ll take over from them and train RAF crews; that’s why we wanted someone with a Radio School background. But the problem at the moment is maintenance; this is an experimental prototype, and it doesn’t like the British climate. These damned Cornish mists have a wonderful time shorting out our twenty-thousand-volt power supply.”
“What does GCD stand for?” asked Alan.
“Oh, sorry—should have said that at the beginning. It means Ground Controlled Descent. The idea’s extremely simple, even if the equipment isn’t. What we have is a very precise radar set, capable of tracking an aircraft to within a few feet. A controller on the ground has this information presented to him, and he talks to the pilot over the radio, telling him what course to fly in order to keep on the glide path. If the pilot obeys orders, and everything’s working OK, he’ll find himself over the end of the runway. The Americans call it a ‘talk-down’ system, which is a good way of describing it.”
Alan was vaguely disappointed. This sounded clever, but not very interesting. Moreover, he knew even less about American radar than he did about Americans, and was not at all sure that he wanted to make the acquaintance of either.
“The beauty of the system,” Deveraux continued, “is that it puts all the equipment on the ground, where it can be as complicated as you like. The aircraft doesn’t need any special gear—only a radio, which it has already. We do all the work; the pilot simply has to obey orders. That’s the theory, anyhow.”
The jeep drew up at a typical wooden barracks hut; quite a comedown, thought Alan, after the country-house luxury of Elvesham Manor. The private barbed-wire fence and the two RAF Regiment guards patrolling with rifles at the ready added to the homely atmosphere.
Deveraux saw Alan’s expression, and grinned.
“Sorry about th
is,” he said. “The Station Adj keeps promising us a better billet, but it’s always ‘Next week, old chap.’ Besides, there’s a security problem; the boffins are talking shop all the time, so it’s best to keep them isolated.”
Effortlessly, using only one hand, he swung Alan’s luggage out of the vehicle.
“There are plenty of spare bunks—so make yourself at home. I’ll get over to the unit to see what luck they’ve had. We’ll be back here by lunchtime to drive you to the Mess.”
As the jeep roared away, Alan walked thoughtfully into his new home. The long hut with its bare rafters and all-too-familiar iron stove (on how many winter nights had he struggled to keep one of those monstrosities alive!) held some twenty beds and was completely empty at the moment. However, it had a distinctly lived-in appearance; RAF and civilian clothing shared the coat hangers indiscriminately, and the bedside lockers were stuffed with books, toilet gear, discarded radio tubes, soldering irons, electrical components, meters… This was no longer an anonymous hut, but a home for people who couldn’t care less about service discipline. My old Flight Sergeant, thought Alan, would have heart failure if he could see this.
There were more books scattered over the tables, and once he had dumped his belongings on the most comfortable of the spare beds, Alan walked over to investigate the literary tastes of his new companions. He found two dog-eared copies of Esquire, Terman’s Radio Engineering, Millman and Seely’s Electronics, four copies of the Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, James Hadley Chase’s No Orchids for Miss Blandish, Louis Untermeyer’s Albatross Book of Living Verse, Janke and Emde’s Tables of Functions, James Branch Cabell’s Jurgen, a dozen copies of Astounding Science Fiction and Wonder Stories, and a pile of miscellaneous westerns and thrillers.
This was all reassuringly normal; he might have been back at No. 7 Radio School. But he knew perfectly well that he was not, and he felt very lost and lonely. He returned to his bunk, kicked off his shoes, and lay on the coarse blankets, staring up at the ceiling.
For better or worse, he had come to a major turning point in his life—like that summer morning, long ago, when he had met Miss Hadley for the first time aboard the Channel Queen. His thoughts always went to her at crucial moments, when his destiny was being reshaped; for she had done so much to shape it in the past.
It was curious that so refined and aristocratic an elderly lady should be traveling on a pleasure steamer loaded with trippers. Alan was aware of the oddness now, but to a small boy of five the Channel Queen had all the glamour and romance of an Atlantic liner. Nor did it occur to him, in those innocent days, that a retired governess—even one who had taught princes—would not have enough money for more far-ranging cruises, and that this was the best substitute she could contrive for the adventures of her youth.
He had been leaning over the ship’s side, watching the foam spread out from the slowly churning paddle wheels. To get a better view, he had balanced himself on the rail, and was seesawing happily back and forth when a firm hand grasped him by the shoulder.
“Young man,” said a cultured voice (he could hear it still, every syllable precisely articulated), “if you fall in, we shall have to stop the ship to pick you up.”
Alan dropped back on the deck and twisted free from the restraining grip. “That’s all right,” he replied haughtily. “I can swim, and my father owns the Channel Queen.” It was the first and last time he had ever been impertinent to Miss Hadley; what he said was true enough, but the delivery lacked politeness.
He turned to face his would-be rescuer. She was very old, so it seemed to him—he realized now that she must have been in her late fifties—and leaned slightly on an intricately carved ebony stick. Even then, her silk dress appeared old-fashioned, her wide-brimmed hat with its ribbons and lace something that might have come from an Edwardian fashion plate. A huge cameo brooch was pinned to her breast, and below it dangled a pair of pince-nez on a black ribbon. They were the first that Alan had ever seen, and they fascinated him as they pendulumed to and fro with the roll of the ship. He wished that she would put them on, but it was a long time before that desire was granted, because she used them only to read the finest print. For all else, the vision of those keen, exceedingly blue eyes was as good as Alan’s.
They were staring at him now, most disconcertingly, and it occurred to Alan that she doubted his claim to be the Captain’s son.
“It’s true,” he said defensively. “Captain Bishop is my father.”
“I believe you,” she replied. There was a slight pause before she added, as neither a boast nor a threat, but merely as a statement of fact, “No one ever lies to me.”
That was the beginning of the intense yet curiously unemotional friendship between the lonely spinster and the lonely boy. To Alan, Miss Hadley provided a partial substitute for the mother whose memory was already lost beyond tears in a nightmare world of whispered conferences with solemn doctors, of prim, starched nurses dehumanized by carbolic, of black-clad uncles and aunts patting him on the head with commiserating clucks. And to Miss Hadley, Alan was, if not the son she might have had, then at least a successor to the royal pupils she had taught during her days in the East.
Alan grew to know them across the years, from the dark, hawk-faced features that stared out of the faded photographs in Miss Hadley’s scrapbooks. Most of them were dead now—not many through natural causes—but sometimes letters would come from strange places, bearing wonderful stamps; and then Miss Hadley would be very remote and abstracted for a few days, and Alan would know better than to bother her with questions.
For more than half his life she had been his window on the world, widening his horizons beyond the circle of ports around which the Channel Queen thumped her impecunious way, losing a little more money every season. Miss Hadley had given him a glimpse of art and culture, as well as of geography; she had tried, not with complete success, to make him speak and behave like a gentleman, even though this had led to endless fights with the fisher-boys, tradesmen’s sons, and farm lads who made up the majority of his schoolmates. She had, indeed, been a much greater influence than the Captain—who, though Alan did not know it then, was slowly going down before his ship.
It was a pity that there was no radar to guide one across the trackless seas of life. Every man had to find his own way, steered by some secret compass of the soul. And sometimes, late or early, the compass lost its power and spun aimlessly on its bearings.
So it had been with the Captain. He had begun to drink soon after his wife had died, and though Alan had never seen him intoxicated, he could remember him wholly sober only once in the last ten years.
That was when he had taken the Channel Queen to Dunkirk, to meet the last shared hour of glory. The Captain alone had returned, untouched by bombs or bullets.
But all the love that had not followed his wife to the churchyard had gone with his lost ship. There was nothing left for his son.
5
The origin of the word “boffin” has never been satisfactorily explained. One farfetched theory connects it with the puffin—a marine bird whose ellipsoidal eggs, it is said, always roll back to the original spot when an attempt is made to push them away. As many disgruntled air marshals can testify, this is highly typical of ideas put forward by boffins.
Dr. Theodore Hatton was a King Boffin, in constant communion with such Olympian entities as Watson-Watt, Bernal, Blackett, and the other scientists who were rapidly changing the whole nature of warfare. But unlike most of them, he was not a physicist; he was a biologist with a flair for math. He could see the things that had to be done, and could evaluate their results; it was up to the engineers to produce the necessary hardware.
At the moment, he thought gloomily, the engineers were not doing too well. Perhaps it was all his fault; for once, he had been unscientific, and had let his emotions overrule his intellect. But when he had seen Professor Schuster and his team at work on that airfield outside Boston, calling down aircraft from the
sky with uncanny accuracy, it had been like a religious revelation. He had known at once that this was the answer to the blind-landing problem; it could save countless lives and aircraft—perhaps even change the course of the war.
So he had bullied and pleaded, had made promises and told flat lies, had written MOST SECRET reports and lectured eloquently to generals and air marshals. At first no one had taken much notice; then things had started to happen with surprising speed. The still experimental and unproved GCD prototype, plus the scientists who had built it, had been loaded on an aircraft carrier and shipped across the Atlantic.
“What you want,” Hatton had told the somewhat reluctant Schuster, “is an operational airfield where you can see exactly what we’re up against. We know that the system works; now it has to be integrated into Flying Control and sold to the pilots. We’ve just the place for you.”
Well, here they all were, while the rain poured down in buckets, and over in the hangar Deveraux and the Americans wrestled with the recalcitrant Mark I. (At this rate, there would never be a Mark II.) As he had no electronic training or skill, there was nothing that he could do to help them; he could only sit here in the hut, sending off a daily no-progress report to his anxious colleagues at the Air Ministry, and answering F/O Bishop’s questions.
Alan was now sitting at the hut’s solitary table, which was completely covered with large circuit diagrams, all labeled SECRET. He was carefully copying them into a foolscap-sized notebook, as he tried to reduce the Mark I’s five hundred radio tubes to some sort of order; already he had learned to call them “tubes,” not “valves.”
He glanced up when he saw that Dr. Hatton’s eye was on him. When he first arrived, he had been overawed by the massed talent surrounding him, but he had quickly discovered that scientists are indistinguishable from other human beings. Though he had not yet met Professor Schuster, he was already on first-name terms with his plump, bearded deputy, Dr. Wendt, and the three absurdly young graduate engineers who had helped to design and build the gear.