No Highway Read Free Page B

detailed one.”
    He flushed angrily, but did not speak. I had not meant to be offensive.
    I turned over the papers before me. “What does that mean to that tailplane out there?” I indicated the Reindeer tailupon the framework outside, booming and droning, filling the whole building with its noise. “When do you expect something to happen?”
    He said, “There should be some evidence of nuclear separation in about 1,440 hours—taking that value for U m .”
    “That’s till it breaks? It ought to break in 1,440 hours?”
    He hesitated. “I rather think that the material could be expected to suffer some change about that time,” he said, hedging. “Under the normal loads imposed upon it—yes, I think that failure would probably occur.” He shifted uneasily and said, as if in self-defence, “The isotope is probably crystalline.”
    “I see.” I stood for a moment looking at the test through his window. “How long has it been going on for now?”
    “About two months,” he said. “We started on the twenty-sixth of May. Up till this morning it had run four hundred and twenty-three hours. It only runs in the daytime—the Director wouldn’t allow it to run on night shift. It’s basic research, you see.”
    I calculated in my head. “So it’s got another four or five months to go?”
    He said, “Well—yes, about that time. I was expecting to learn something from it before Christmas, anyway.”
    I stood silent for a minute, deep in thought. “Well, that’s all very interesting, Mr. Honey,” I said at last. “May I take what you’ve re-written so far and glance it over in my office? It all takes a bit of absorbing, you know.”
    He sorted out a bunch of papers and gave them to me, and I tucked them under my arm, and walked back to my office in a brown study. Mr. Honey was experimenting on a Reindeer tail, and what Mr. Honey had lost sight of altogether was that Reindeer aircraft had come into service on the Atlantic route that summer. They were flying the Atlantic daily with full loads of passengers, from Heath Row to Gander, from Gander to New York or Montreal.
    Although he didn’t seem to realise it, Mr. Honey had now said that the Reindeer tail was quite unsafe, that in his opinion it would break, suddenly and without warning, after 1,440 hours of flying.
    It was the end of the morning. I left the paper in my office and walked up to the senior staff lunch-room. I found the Director there drinking a sherry; I waited for an opportunity when he was disengaged, and said, “Have you got a quarter of an hour free this afternoon, sir?”
    “I think so,” he replied. “What is it, Scott?”
    “It’s about Mr. Honey and his fatigue test,” I said. “I’d like you to be aware of what’s going on.”
    “Can’t help being aware of it,” he answered. “You can hear the damn thing at the other end of the factory—it’s worse than the wind tunnels. When is it coming to an end?”
    “He says it’s going on till Christmas,” I replied. “I think it ought to be accelerated. But if I can come along this afternoon I’ll tell you about it.”
    “Quarter-past three?”
    “I’ll be there, sir.”
    I turned away to go in to have lunch, but he detained me. “Has Honey been all right recently?”
    “All right? I think so, sir. I don’t think he’s had any time off.”
    “I’m glad to hear that.” There was a momentary pause. “You know,” he said, “there has been a little trouble in the past. He seems to hold very firm ideas on certain semi-religious subjects.” I glanced at him in inquiry. “About the lost ten tribes of Israel and their identity with Britain, and that sort of thing.”
    “I hadn’t heard that one,” I said. “What I heard was something to do with the Great Pyramid.”
    He laughed. “Oh, that’s another part of it—that comes in as well.” He spoke more seriously. “No, just before you came there was a procession of these people in Woking, and it got broken up by a