The New Men by C. P. Snow Page A

quite comfortable; he did not speak until we heard the crunch of bombs, probably some way the other side of the river. Pearson looked at me through glasses which magnified his calm eyes.
    ‘How old is this house?’
    That summer I had moved from the Dolphin block into a square close by. As I told Pearson, the houses must be about a hundred years old, run up when Pimlico was a new residential district, now left with the stucco peeling off the porticos.
    ‘A bit too old to stand up well,’ said Pearson.
    We heard the whine of a bomb, then the jar and rumble. The light bulbs swung, and flecks of plaster fell on to the carpet.
    ‘About a quarter of a mile away,’ said Pearson, after a second’s consideration. He picked a spicule of plaster off his lapel.
    I said I often wish that I had not moved from the steel and concrete of Dolphin Square.
    Twice we heard the whine of bombs.
    ‘What floor was yours?’ asked Pearson, with impassive interest.
    ‘The fourth.’
    ‘The factor of safety was about eight times what you’ve got here.’ I was frightened, as I was whenever bombs fell; I could not get used to it. I disliked being frightened in the presence of Pearson, who happened to be brave.
    Four bombs: one, Pearson guessed, nearer than a quarter of a mile: then the gunfire slackened overhead and we could hear it tailing away down the estuary.
    ‘If I were you,’ he remarked, ‘and they began to drop them near this house, I should get a bit nervous,’
    Soon he got up.
    ‘That’s all for tonight,’ he said.
    But even Pearson felt a touch of the elation which came to one after an air raid. He was not quite unaffected; because bombs had been dropping near us, he was a little warmer to me. When I suggested that I should walk part of the way to Victoria, he said, more considerately than I had heard him speak: ‘Of course, if you feel up to it.’
    In the square the night was misty, but illuminated across the river by a pillar of fire, rose and lilac round an inner tongue of gold, peacefully beautiful. It seemed to be near Nine Elms, but might have been a little farther off, perhaps at Battersea.
    ‘It’s silly, trying to knock towns out by high explosive,’ said Pearson, as we turned our backs to the blaze and walked towards Belgrave Road. ‘It just can’t be done,’ he said.
    I had never known him so communicative, and I took advantage of it.
    ‘What about the other bomb?’
    He turned his face towards me, and in the light of another, smaller fire, I saw his eyes, lazy, half suspicious.
    ‘What about it?’ he said.
    ‘What’s going to happen?’
    After a pause, he did not mind answering:
    ‘We’re going to get it.’
    ‘Who is?’
    ‘Who do you think?’ He meant, of course, the American party he was working in. As with most of the scientists, nationalism in its restricted sense touched him very little – when he said ‘we’, he thought of nothing but his own group.
    ‘You’re sure?’ I asked, but he was always sure.
    ‘It stands to reason.’
    Then I asked, expecting a flat answer: ‘So you don’t think anything will come of Luke’s affair?’ I was prepared for the flat answer; what I actually heard sounded too good to be true.
    ‘I shouldn’t like to go as far as that,’ he replied, looking in front of him indifferently.
    ‘You believe it might work?’ I said.
    ‘When he started talking about it, I thought he’d do himself a bit of no good.’ He gave a contented, contemptuous grin. ‘But it doesn’t seem to have been all hot air.’
    ‘You really think they’ll pull it off?’
    ‘I’m not a prophet.’
    I asked him again.
    ‘Oh, well,’ said Pearson, ‘in time Master Luke might show a bit of return for his money. Though’ – he gave the same contemptuous grin again – ‘he won’t do it as soon as he thinks he will.’
    I did not receive any greater assurance until the spring, when, in March, I received a note from Luke himself. It said:
     
    The balloon is due to go up on