No Highway by Nevil Shute Page B

the end of the pressurised cabin and the concave dome of the rear wall. There was a perspex window in the dome and a switch that turned on an electric light for the inspection of the tailplane and the elevator mechanism in the space behind. He stood peering through the perspex, looking for trouble.
    Mr. Honey saw him go through into the luggage bay towards the tail, and smiled, a little bitterly. He got out of his seat and followed him, passing Miss Corder as she tended a saucepan of hot milk over the electric stove. She turned and saw him go through into the luggage bay, following the captain; she said, “Oh, damn!” and turned off the current of the hot plate, and went after him. It was one of her jobs to keep the passengers from wandering about the aircraft.
    In the luggage bay Mr. Honey came up behind Samuelson. “It’s no good looking at it,” he said a little bitterly. “You won’t find anything wrong.” Behind him the stewardess came up, but seeing that he was talking to the captain and that Samuelson was attending to what was being said, she did not intervene.
    “If what you say is right, there might be some preliminary sign,” Samuelson said. “But there’s nothing to be seen at all. No paint cracking or anything. It’s all perfectly all right. Have a look for yourself.”
    “I don’t need to,” Mr. Honey said. “The spar flanges areperfectly all right now, or we shouldn’t be here. In half a minute it may be a very different story. When it happens, it happens as suddenly as that.” Captain Samuelson’s brows wrinkled in a frown. “If you cut a section of the front spar top flanges now and etched it for a microscopical examination, ten to one you’d find the structure of the metal absolutely normal. But all the same, it may be due for failure in ten minutes. There’s nothing to be seen in the appearance of it that will tell you anything.”
    Samuelson stood in silence for a moment, cursing his own irresolution. This little insignificant man was getting terribly plausible. He had sent a radio signal to his Flight Control reporting briefly what Honey had said and stating his decision to go on; the signal had been acknowledged but not answered. He could hardly expect such guidance from his Flight Control in view of the difficulty of the technical points that were involved and the fact that it was then the middle of the night when all right-minded technicians would be in bed and sound asleep. The most that he could hope for would be guidance when they got to Gander, by which time it would be nine o’clock in the morning in England.
    “I’ve shut down the inboard engines,” he said at last.
    “That should help it,” Mr. Honey said. “But you ought to go back while there’s time. Really you should.”
    Samuelson smiled brightly and confidently, more for the benefit of the stewardess than for Mr. Honey. “Oh, I don’t think so,” he remarked. “I think we’re quite all right.”
    He ushered Mr. Honey forward out of the luggage bay, and went forward up the aisle himself to the flight deck. Mr. Honey stayed at the aft end of the cabin with Miss Corder, scrutinising the structure of the fuselage so far as could be seen by reason of the cabin furnishings; he opened the doors of the toilets and investigated the methods of staying the bulkheads, peering at everything through his thick glasses.
    He was behaving very oddly, Miss Corder decided. She came to him, and said, “I should go back to your seat, sir. I’ll bring you the Ovaltine in a few minutes.”
    “I’ll go in just one moment,” he said meekly. “Let me have a look at your stove first.” Thinking to humour him she showed him into the galley and began to explain the operation of the various switches and ovens to him, but she found he was not interested in that at all. He examined very carefully the methods of fixing the unit to the floor and the fuselage side; then he was through, and went back to his seat.She brought him a tray