Джон Болл - Phase Three Alert

His Canadian counterpart lifted a hand. “Let’s finish our coffee first,” he said.

In two weeks’ time The Passionate Penguin stood in Hangar 8 on her own landing gear, her three brand-new tires filling the whole area with an aroma of freshness. Once more her wings reached out over a hundred feet in span and it is doubtful that they ever shone as brilliantly as they did then. On the flight bridge the overhauled control yokes had been reinstalled. They moved easily with the precision of fine machinery, and as they did, the control surfaces responded with microscopic accuracy.

Colonel Kleckner himself tried them out personally and could not restrain a wide smile. “That’s a remarkable job,” he declared. “It would pass any inspection anywhere.”

Lieutenant Ferguson, who was his guide at that moment, responded. “We know it, sir. We want you to be fully aware that nothing is being done casually. Everything is being checked three times, at least, and the final inspection team is demanding perfection. This is going to be the best B-17 that ever took to the air.”

“You aren’t writing home about this are you?” the colonel asked.

“No, sir!”

“Well don’t; it might be better to keep this entirely to ourselves. In fact, Captain Tilton got an inquiry through the PR office in the head shed asking about the B-17 we were building up here.”

Ferguson felt a sudden taste of shock. “How did he handle that, sir?”

“I believe that he reported something about a model building project that someone had dreamed up. The size of the model was not specified.”

“Sir, he’s a helluva good man.”

“I’m fully aware of that, Scotty. How about the instruments? If they can be salvaged, they’ll need complete overhauls.”

“The guys up at J Site offered to do that for us, sir; they have full facilities. In fact, the artificial horizon’s back already. The vacuum system hasn’t been overhauled yet, so it’s still out on the bench — under cover, of course.”

“Batteries?”

“Supply has them.”

“How about the wiring?”

“Every bit of it is being replaced, sir, and we have new bulbs for all of the lights. Using an outside power cart, we’ve cycled the landing gear more than fifty times without any trace of a malfunction.”

The colonel looked around him. “You’re going to end up with a virtually new airplane.”

“That’s exactly what we have in mind, sir. She will have zero time on everything.”

“I’ll drop in again,” the colonel promised.

“Do that, sir — we’d like to have you.” He would have said more, but his mind was fully occupied with the fuel-cell tests that were the next thing on the program.

For the next three weeks the normal work of Thule Air Base went forward. Ferguson made several trips out to Camp Century, both with his own crew and with Boyd’s to be sure that everyone was fully checked out on ice cap operations. Otherwise, he spent each spare minute in Hangar 8, following every step of the operation and doing as much himself as he could possibly manage to fit in.

The biggest single event, at the end of that time, was the remounting of the number three engine. The crane lifted it easily into position and the actual installation work, in the relative comfort of the hangar, was comparatively simple. All of the controls were hooked up and all of the plumbing was meticulously recoupled. By all reasonable theory, the engine should run. It would have been well to try it out on a test stand first, but that had presented too many problems and the decision had been made to run it in, if possible, in position on the airframe.

The propeller that went onto the end of the shaft appeared to be brand-new. It was far from an easy job to reinstall all of the prop controls, but the work was done with the same enthusiasm and care that had characterized every accomplishment along the way. When at last the job was finished, it was past 2400 hours and everyone was exhausted.

The following morning was Saturday, which meant that most of the personnel would be off work; by 1000 hours the grapevine had produced an audience of more than two hundred gathered around the closed door of Hangar 8. At 1012 hours the main door was opened and the Penguin was pushed out. With her single restored engine once more facing a point somewhere above the horizon, she was grotesquely incomplete, but to the men who had been working on her for so many weeks, she was the most beautiful aircraft that had ever challenged the sky.

His palms wet with perspiration, Ferguson sat in the left-hand seat, using the original cushion that had been the first thing he had personally recovered from the hopeless wreck on the ice cap. When the twenty-man ground crew had pushed the plane into the position that he wanted, he pushed against the brakes and got an immediate response. He tested the controls for the hundredth time, just for the joy of feeling them move so smoothly. Then he sat still while the battery cart was wheeled up and plugged in.

Andy Holcomb appeared on the ramp in front of the nose. “Anytime,” he called up.

Ferguson heard him through the open window. In response he checked visually and then called out, “Clear!”

He pumped the prime and then activated the starter. The freshly rebuilt unit responded immediately; for the first time in three decades the heavy propeller began to turn. The crowd on the ground was still — waiting to see what, if anything, was going to happen. When he judged that the time was right, Ferguson turned the ignition switch to BOTH and held a deep breath in his lungs.

The propeller continued to turn slowly under the impetus of the starter; the engine remained dead and still. Then there was a sharp retort — almost like a pistol shot-and a burst of smoke came out of the exhaust. In four seconds there was another, then several. Ferguson cut off the starter, but after a few more erratic bursts, the engine came to a halt.

“Again!” he shouted to the ground crew. In response, Holcomb drew a circle in the air with his right hand. Ferguson reengaged the starter, counted six passes of a propeller blade through the copilot’s window, and then turned on the ignition once again.

He was answered almost at once by a staccato burst of sound. There were sharp gaps, but the propeller began to spin far faster. With his hand holding the throttle from underneath, which he had found to be the only feasible position, he nursed fuel to the struggling power plant, giving it more when it needed it, cutting back at once when it threatened to flood. He was more used to turbine engines, but he understood this one and he had put in long hours of work helping to clean every component and put it all back together in correct sequence.

The roughness peaked and then fell away; through the open window there came the almost steady beat of the 1,200-horsepower power plant that was spinning its propeller into a silver disc. Ferguson felt the airframe vibrate and knew that life had returned to it. He mind-vaulted back to the bitterly cold morning when he had first explored the flight deck of The Passionate Penguin and had found the controls as cold and rigid as stone monuments in the dead of winter.

Now they moved.

He heard the cheer outside, but it meant little to him. It was the engine that he heard as it settled down into smoothness. He let it run for five minutes before he tried the propeller pitch control. The blades responded — he could feel it. By gradual stages he tested the propeller all of the way up to full feather and back; as far as he could tell, everything was perfect. He ran the engine in for a full hour at slow speed; during that time almost everyone at Thule came by to have a look. A number of vehicles came down from J Site and one from the incredibly isolated P Mountain station. Several times more Ferguson cycled the propeller and each time it responded — apparently flawlessly.