A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! (12 page)

“Ready whenever you say, Captain.”

“Fire it.”

When the head ganger pulled down the master switch a thin beam of burning ruby light lashed from -the laser and struck high up on the rusted steel panel that sealed the tunnel’s end. That this was no ordinary manner of light was manifest when the metal-began to glow and melt and run.

“Stand to one side,” Washington ordered. “The tunnel ahead is sealed off from the ocean but it is still full of water under tremendous pressure.

When the laser holes through we are going to have…”

The reality of the experience drowned out the descriptive words as the intense beam of coherent light penetrated the thick steel of the shield and on the instant a jet of water no thicker than a man’s finger shot out, hissing like a hundred demons, as solid as a bar of steel, under such great pressure that it burst straight back down the tunnel a hundred feet before it turned to spray and fell.

In the meantime Sapper had not been idle and his beam was now cutting out a circle of metal high‘ up on the top of the shield, a circle that was never completed because the pressure on the other side was so great that the disk of solid steel was bent forward and out to release a column of water that roared deafeningly in their ears as it hurtled by. Now the tunnel was chilled and dampened by the spray of the frigid water and a vaporous haze obscured their vision. But the burning beam of light cut on, making an oblong opening in the center of the shield that extended downward as the water level lowered.

When the halfway mark was reached Washington got on the phone and radio link to the men at the Grand Banks Station end of the tunnel.

Though they were no more than a tenth of a mile ahead there was no way to speak directly to them, his voice went by telephone back to Bridgehampton, from there by radio link across the ocean.

“Open her up,” Washington ordered. “The water is low enough now and everything is holding.”

“Too much for the pumps to handle,” Sapper said as he looked down gloomily at the dark water rising around their ankles, for the water here had to be pumped back eighty miles to the nearest artificial island with a ventilation tower.

“We won’t drown,” was the only answer he received and he twisted his elk’s tooth in the earring as he thought about it. But at the same time he worked the laser until he had driven the opening down to the level of the rising water around them, where the beam spluttered and hissed. Only then did he enlarge the opening‘ so a man could fit through.

“It won’t get any lower for a while,” said Gus, looking at the chill water that reached almost to his waist. “Let us go.”

In a single file they clambered through, with Washington leading, and forced their way against the swirling water beyond. An instant later they were soaked to the skin and in two instants chilled to the bone, yet there was not one mutter of complaint. They shone their bright electric torches about as they walked and the only conversation was technical comment about the state of the tunnel. The joints were sealed and not leaking, the work was almost done, the first section of the tunnel almost completed. All that lay in their way was eight feet of frozen mud that formed the great plug that sealed the end of this tunnel and joined it to the sections beyond.

All of the navvies carried shovels and now there was a use for them, for when the mud had been pumped in from the outside it had flowed part way back down the tube and was not congealed. They tackled this with a will, arms moving like pistons, working in absolute silence, and before this resolute attack the wet earth was eaten away, tossed to one side, penetrated. Their shovels could not dent the frosty frozen surface of the sealing plug but, even as they reached it, a continuous grinding could be heard—and then a burst of sound and a spatter of fragments as a shiny drill tip came thrusting out of the hard surface.

“Holed through!” Sapper called out and added an exuberant war cry that the others echoed. When the drill was withdrawn Gus clambered up to the hole and shouted through it, could see the light at the far end, and when he pressed his ear to the opening he could hear the answering voices.

“Holed through,” he echoed and there was a light in his eyes that had not been there before. Now the navvies stood about, leaning on their shovels and chattering like washerwomen as the machines and men on the other side enlarged the opening from a few inches to a foot to two feet

“Good enough,” Sapper shouted through the tunnel in the frozen mud.

“Let’s have a line through here.”

A moment later the rope end was pushed through and seized and tied into a sturdy loop. Washington dropped it over his shoulders and settled it well under his arms, then bent to put his head into the opening. The faces at the other end saw this and cheered again and even while cheering pulled steadily and firmly on the rope so he slid forward bumping and catching and sliding until he emerged at the other end, out of breath and red-faced—but there. More hands seized him and practically lifted him onto the waiting car that instantly jumped forward. He wrestled free of the rope as they stopped then sprang for the elevator. It rose as he put foot to it, rattling up the shaft to emerge in the watery afternoon sunshine of the Grand Banks. Still more than a little out of breath he ran across to the level spot before the offices, brushing the dirt from him as he went, to the strange craft that was awaiting his arrival.

It is one thing to gather intelligence from the printed word and the reproduced photograph, to be deluded into the knowledge that one is acquainted with an object one has never seen in three-dimensional reality, yet it is another thing altogether to see the object itself in all the rotundity of its existence and realize at once that there is a universe of difference between the two. Gus had read enough to labor under the delusion that he knew what there was to know about a helicopter so that the reality that he was wrong J caused him to start and almost! stumble.

He slowed his run to a fast walk then and approached the great machine with more than a little awe manifest in his expression.

In the first place the machine was far bigger than he imagined, as large as a two-decker London omnibus standing on end. Egg shaped, oh definitely, as ovular as any natural product of the hen, perched on its big end with the smaller high in the air above, squatting on three long curved legs that sprang out of the body and that could be returned in flight to cunningly artificed niches carved from the sides. The upper third of the egg was transparent and from the very apex of this crystal canopy there jutted up a steel shaft that supported two immense four-bladed propellers separated, one above the other, by a bulge in the shaft. Gus had barely a moment to absorb these details before a door sprang open in the dome and a rope ladder unrolled and rattled down at his feet, a head appeared in the opening and a cheery voice called out.

“If you’ll join me, sir, we’ll be leaving.”

There was a lilt to the words that spoke of Merioneth or Caernarvon, and when Gus had clambered up to the entrance he was not surprised to see the dark hair and slight form of an R.A.F. officer who introduced himself as Lieutenant Jones.

“You sit there, sir, those straps for strapping in, sir.”

While he spoke, and even before Gus had dropped into the second chair in the tiny chamber, Jones’s fingers were flitting over the controls putting into operation this great flying engine.- There was a hissing rumble from somewhere beneath their feet, a sound that grew rapidly to a cavernous roar and, as it did so, the long-bladed rotors above their heads stirred to life and began to rotate in opposite directions. Soon they were just great shimmering disks and as they bit into the air the helicopter stirred and shook itself like a waking beast—then leaped straight up into the air. A touch on a button retracted their landing legs while the tiny artificial island dropped away beneath them and vanished, until nothing except ocean could be seen in all directions.

“Being an engineer yourself, Captain Washington, you can appreciate a machine such as this one. A turbine, she has, that puts out two thousand horsepower to turn the contra-rotating rotors for a maximum forward speed of two hundred seventeen miles in the hour. Navigation is by radio beam and right now we are locked onto the Gander signal and all I need do is keep that needle on that point and we’ll be going there directly.”

“Your fuel?”

“Butane gas, in the liquid form, very calorific.”

“Indeed it is.”

Within a matter of minutes the coast of Newfoundland Island was in sight and the city of St. John’s moved smoothly by beneath them. Their route took them along the coast and over the countless bays that fringed the shore. Jones looked out at the landscape then back to his controls and his hand reached out to touch a switch.

“Number One tank almost empty so I’ll switch to Number Two.”

He threw the switch and the turbine rumbled and promptly died.

“Now that is not the normal thing I’m sure,” said he with a slight frown. “But not to worry. I‘ can switch to tank Number Three.”

Which he did and still the engine remained silent and they began to fall.

“Well, well, tank Four.” Which proved to be as ineffective in propelling the ship as had its earlier mates. “But we cannot crash, bach, there is that.

We windmill down to a soft landing.”

“Wet landing,” Gus said pointing out at the ocean.

“A well made point. But there, should be enough fuel left in tank One to enable us to reach the shore.”

The flying officer seemed cheered by these final words because they were the first true prediction he had made in some time, for when he switched back to the first tank the turbine rumbled to life instantly and the helicopter surged with power. As he curved their course towards the shore he tapped, each in its turn, the dials set above the switch, then shook his head.

“They all read full, I cannot understand it.”

“Might I suggest you radio the base at Gander about our situation.”

“A fine idea, sir, would I could. No radio. Experimental ship you know.

But there, beyond that field, a farmhouse sure, perhaps a telephone, contact reestablished.”

As though to defy his words the turbine coughed and stopped again and their forward flight changed to an easy descent. Jones hurriedly lowered the landing legs and they had no sooner locked into position than the craft touched the ground in the center of a plowed field. Instants later the pilot had thrown open a door in the floor and had dived down into the maze of machinery below.

“That is very interesting,” he said, spanner in hand and banging on the cylindrical tanks below him. “They are empty, all of them.”

“Interesting indeed, and I shall report their condition if I can find a telephone at that farmhouse.”

The hatch release was easy to locate and Gus pushed it open and threw the rope ladder out and was on it and down it even before the lower end had touched the ground. At a quick trot he crossed the field, angling towards the patch of woods behind which the farmhouse was located, running as quickly as he could across the stubble, running his thoughts no less quickly over the hours remaining before the train left London, the darkening sky above a dire portent of their vanishing number. Nine a.m.

the train departed, nine in the morning and here he was on the other side of the Atlantic the evening before, running, which was not the most efficient form of ocean crossing imaginable. For the very first time he felt that he might not make it in time, that all the effort had been in vain—but still he kept on running.
Giving up
were two words he simply did not know.

A farm track, a wooden fence and finally, reluctantly, the trees thinned out to permit a wood framed farmhouse to come into view. The door was closed, no one in sight, the shutters drawn. Deserted? It could not be.

With raised fist he hammered loudly on the door, again and again, and almost abandoned hope before there was the rattle of a moving bolt and it opened a crack to reveal a suspicious eye set in an even more suspicious face and, if a beard can be said to be suspicious, wrapped around about by a full and suspicious graying beard.

“Aye?” a suspicious voice muttered, nothing more.

“My name is Washington, sir, and I am in some distress. My flying vehicle has been forced down in your field and I would like very much to make a call with your telephone, for which you will be reimbursed.”

“No telephone.” The door closed far quicker than it had opened and Washington instantly pounded upon it until it reluctantly opened for a second time.

“Perhaps you could tell me where the nearest neighbor with a phone—”

“No neighbors.”

“Or the nearest town- where a phone—”

“No towns.”

“Then perhaps you could allow me into your house so we could discuss where I could find a telephone,” Washington roared in a voice accustomed to giving orders over the loudest of background clamor. Where good manners had not prevailed this issuing of a command had, for the door opened wider, though still reluctantly, and he stamped after the owner into the house. They entered a modest kitchen, lit by glowing yellow lights, and Washington strode back and forth the length of it, his hands clasped tightly behind his back, while he attempted to discover from the reluctant rustic what his next step would be. A good five minutes of questioning managed to worm out the tightly held information that nothing could possibly be done in any reasonable. length of time. The nearest town, far distant, the neighbors, nonexistent, transportation in fine, only equine.

“Nothing can be done then. I have lost.”

With these sad words Gus smacked his fist into his palm with great force, then held his wristwatch towards the lamp so he could tell the time.

Six in the evening. He should have been at the air base by now, boarding the Super Wellington for the jet flight to England, instead he was in this primitive kitchen. Six, now, eleven at night in London and the train departed at nine in the morning. The light hissed and flickered slightly and the hands on the watch irrevocably told the lateness of the hour. The light flickered again and Gus slowly raised his vision to the shade, the transparent globe, the glowing hot mantle within.