Conquerors of the Sky (33 page)
Read Conquerors of the Sky Online
Authors: Thomas Fleming
In his split-level house in south Los Angeles, Cliff Morris was awakened by his three-year-old, Liz, giving him a big wet kiss. “You smell funny, Daddy,” she said.
“I feel funny too,” Cliff said. “They call it a hangover.”
He gulped aspirins and drove to the hospital, surprising Sarah. “I haven't even combed my hair,” she said.
Cliff was tempted to tell her that would not make much difference. Sarah had gained about thirty pounds with this latest baby. The trim brunette who filled out her WAAF uniform in all the right places at Thorpe Abbots Air Base had almost vanished in rolls of fat. She swore she was going to lose weightâa song Cliff had heard before. Sarah could not resist six ounces of heavy cream on her breakfast cereal and a half pound of butter on every slice of bread.
Fat or thin, Sarah still wanted to know everything that was happening at Buchanan Aircraft. What were they going to do if the Excalibur did not sell?
Was there a market for it abroad? Could they reduce it in size? Cliff's replies were curt. He did not know the answers. He was in an impromptu training program, supposedly learning the aircraft business, while the company tried to cope with its postwar poverty. Her executive-level questions only reminded him of his insignificance.
Was there a market for it abroad? Could they reduce it in size? Cliff's replies were curt. He did not know the answers. He was in an impromptu training program, supposedly learning the aircraft business, while the company tried to cope with its postwar poverty. Her executive-level questions only reminded him of his insignificance.
He took a look at the tiny creature sleeping on her stomach in the incubator and drove to the Buchanan plant in Santa Monica. He remembered the way the windowless sandstone buildings always took him by surprise in his boyhood. They suddenly appeared in the middle of a neat neighborhood of one-family stucco houses, as if they had been built there by mistake. The plant now sprawled over a dozen blocks, most of it a series of hangars only one story taller than the houses around it. In the center was a hexagonal six-story tower built during the war years, with a top-floor dining room enclosed in glass. The whole place was separated from the neighborhood by a high chain-link fence.
The retired LA cop at the desk in the bare main lobby gave him a cheery hello and signed him in. Cliff clipped a badge to the handkerchief pocket of his suit coat and strode down the dim central corridor. On the left behind a blue-painted brick wall was the factory. On the right was a maze of narrow corridors leading to offices.
In the engineering and design departments rows of men bent over desks and drawing boards. They all wore identical white shirts and solid-color ties. Artificial ceilings had been inserted to lower the hangar height of the building. Overhead fluorescent lights cast a cold silver glow on the desks and their occupants. The men were mostly silent, concentrating fiercely on their tasks. Cliff did not envy them. In spite of their expensive engineering educations, they were as expendable as the assembly line workers. Thousands of them had already been fired in the great postwar cutback.
Cliff finally reached the tower in the center of the building where several flights of stairs led to an office that had the same low-budget look. Tama Morris was sitting behind another secondhand desk, wearing the usual tight nylon blouse. She had a weight problem too but she controlled it by fierce dieting. The scars of a recent face-lift were visible at the edges of her carefully combed dark hair. Thanks to willpower and the doctors, she looked younger than Sarah.
“Hi,” Cliff said. “Anything I should know before I see the great man about our disaster in New York?”
“There's a big decision coming up on that goddamn plane Frank wants to build.”
Cliff had seen a drawing of the plane; it was bizarreâall wing and no tail or fuselage. “Does he really think that thing will fly?”
“I think he's trying to wreck the company. First the Excalibur, now this monstrosity.”
“The Excalibur was Adrian's idea.”
“I didn't hear you say that. I hope you don't say it again.”
As usual, Tama was playing Adrian's game for him, blaming his mistakes on other people.
“Incidentally,” Tama said. “Do you know anything about this?”
She pulled a letter from her desk drawer. It was written with words clipped from a newspaper or a magazine. For Tama's name separate letters from headlines were used.
Beloved TAMA do not despair. You will be freed from your bondage soon. CALIFIA
.
Beloved TAMA do not despair. You will be freed from your bondage soon. CALIFIA
.
“Did Sarah send this? Is it her idea of a joke?” Tama said.
“It's some nut. Buzz got one a couple of days ago from the same dame.”
“You're sure it's not Sarah?”
The hostility between Tama and Sarah was one more irritation in his life. Women! Cliff retreated to his office where he found a stack of phone messages from local airlines in search of replacement parts for their fifteen-year-old SkyRangers. As he returned the calls, he could hear Jim Redwood in the next office, trying to sell the Excalibur to Pan American for their South American routes.
Another callâthis one not so routine. Dick Stone was on the line asking Cliff to get him a job at Buchanan. Could he do it? Did he want him around? Old Shylock could be a difficult character. But he could be an ally. Sarah was always telling him to build alliances with people his own age. “I'll see what I can do, Dick. I'll call you back tomorrow.”
At twelve o'clock a whistle gave a long low hoot and the assembly line went to lunch. The executives headed for their dining room on the top floor of the tower. As Cliff and Jim Redwood strolled in, a new Excalibur took off from the company field, the roar of its motors rattling the glasses in the well-stocked bar.
About a dozen men in rumpled dark business suits were standing in two clusters on the other side of the room, drinks in their hands. One group were designers, the other engineers. As usual they were not speaking to each other.
Cliff and Jim each ordered a glass of the house single-malt Scotch, Inverness. Most people thought it tasted like week-old rainwater but Buzz McCall said it was a man's drink. Adrian backed him because it was cheapâand he never drank it. Cliff and Jim headed for the engineers, who were grouped around Buzz.
“Where the hell did you go last night?” Buzz said. “When I came back from the pool Cassie was horny as hell. I had to satisfy her and Barbara.”
“He's full of shit,” Jim Redwood said. “He passed out in the pool and almost drowned. Barbara had to rescue him. She called me this morning and told me all about it.”
Buzz threatened to slug him but Redwood just grinned. He had been an all-American tackle for UCLA in the twenties. “I thought we were going to talk to Adrian,” he said.
“I talked to him by myself. I told him what I thought of wasting my time trying to sell a plane we never should have built in the first place. We ought to be concentrating on military stuff based on that jet Billy is testing at Muroc. If we get something like that into the Air Force we'll have enough money to
develop two new airliners. But first we gotta get our resident genius to cooperate.”
develop two new airliners. But first we gotta get our resident genius to cooperate.”
He glowered toward the bar. “Frank wants to talk to Cliff about that goddamn flying nightmare he's trying to build.”
At the bar, Pat was surrounded by six of seven of his favorite designers. In contrast to the prevailing crew cuts, his reddish brown hair flowed over his ears and partway down his neck. Instead of a business suit, he wore an ancient leather flight jacket, which was cracking in a half-dozen places.
“Cliff,” Frank said. “I heard about your latest frustration in New York. Since we don't have a plane to sellâand you're in a sort of training programâwould you be interested in working with me as project manager of a new plane we hope to get into production? It's called the Talus.”
“I might be,” Cliff said warily.
“This plane could change the history of aviation. It's completely different from the planes you flew during the war. They used most of their engine power to overcome the drag of their fuselages and tails.”
“Sounds like you're going to break the sound barrier and then some,” Cliff said.
“There's no such a thing as a sound barrier,” Frank said. “There are only underpowered, badly designed planes that can't survive the buffeting they take at very high speeds.”
“That's verbiage, Buchanan, and you know it,” roared Buzz McCall from his cluster of followers.
“No, it's intuition. Something an engineer doesn't believe in, until the facts hit him between the eyes.”
“Intuition,” Buzz growled, striding toward them, backed by his entourage. “That's a designer's name for something that can't fly until an engineer tells him how to make it work.”
“You're telling me, I suppose, that the Talus won't fly?”
“Not without killing a lot of people.”
“We'll see who's right in a month or two,” Frank said.
“If I have anything to say about it, nobody'll see a goddamn thing!” Buzz roared. “We've got enough problems with the plane that could save our asses, if you'd only get to work on it. Billy's risking his neck every day flying it and you're ignoring him to work on your crazy castrated gooney bird.”
“White Lightning is a research tool, not a production model. We're learning a lot about flying in the ionosphere.”
“While we go broke on the ground,” Buzz said.
“If we'd built the Talus instead of the Excalibur, we'd be ten years ahead of everyone else,” Frank said.
“Bullshit,” Buzz bellowed.
“Even if we fail, we'll go down gloriously, contributing to the advance of flight.”
“Fuck glorious failure,” Buzz said. “I'm for staying in business first, last, and forever.”
“âSacrifices must be expected,'” Frank said. “Do you recognize those words, Cliff?”
Cliff shook his head.
“Otto Lilienthal said them in 1896, shortly before he died of a broken neck trying to demonstrate his erroneous principles of aerodynamics. Without his two thousand glider flights the Wright Brothers would probably still be trying to get off their sand dune at Kitty Hawk. Otto was a brave man, even if he was a German.”
By this time a waitress in a tight black cocktail dress had served everyone another round of Inverness. Cliff told himself he had to learn to pace his drinks to get through these lunches. Frank was only warming up. They drank to the Talus. In spite of Buzz's refusal to toast a “dead kraut,” the designers downed another round to Otto Lilienthal.
“Gentlemen. I'm sorry I'm late,” Adrian Van Ness said, somewhere on the outer fringes of the crowd.
“You're always late,” Frank said. “Is it a way of reminding us of your importance?”
Antagonism flickered between Frank and Adrian every time they met. By this time everyone knew why. It was the company's dirty secret, never mentioned above a whisper. Giving up Amanda Van Ness had filled Frank with bitterness. It came out in unexpected explosions of temper and in a reckless insistence on the right to experiment with radical new designs like the Talus.
Everyone sat down at a long table in front of the window overlooking the airfield. Two waitresses began serving hot dogs and baked beans. Gone were the war days when they feasted on black market lamb and steak. Everyone except Adrian Van Ness drank more Inverness. A waitress served him red wine.
More drunken arguments broke out at various points between engineers and designers. Jim Redwood said Pan American still might buy twenty Excaliburs. Everyone sneered. Jim had given them too many blue-sky promises.
“I want to take Cliff out of sales for a while to keep things organized on the Talus prototype,” Frank said.
“Who said we're going to build that?” Adrian said.
“I did,” Frank said.
“Do you have any idea how much we're losing on the Excalibur? Lockheed is killing us with this talk of a Super Constellation. Douglas, Boeing are both bringing out hundred-seat models.”
“All the more reason to gamble on something radical,” Frank said. “Something those play-it-safe boys wouldn't try in a million years.”
“How much will it cost?”
“Fourâfive millionâfor the prototype. Overall development shouldn't go beyond twenty million.”
“What do you think, Jim?” Adrian said, turning to their sales director.
“I vote no. It may fly but it won't sell,” Redwood said, avoiding Frank's eyes. They were good friends. “It's too experimental. It looks like a fucking
boomerang. People are scared to death of jet engines. The goddamn things don't have propellers.”
boomerang. People are scared to death of jet engines. The goddamn things don't have propellers.”
“It won't be experimental when it breaks the speed record from here to New York,” Frank shouted, bringing his fist down on the table with a crash that sent Inverness cascading toward the ceiling. “I guarantee you this plane will outclimb and outfly every commercial airliner in the sky.”
“We don't have five million dollars to spend on a fantasy,” Adrian said.
“Borrow it!” Frank roared. “High finance is what you're good at, isn't it? Call up one of your Wall Street friends.”
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