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22
The dawn chorus woke Danny. He felt Sally’s warm soft body snuggled up against him, and he gave the nape of her neck a kiss. She moaned softly and rolled away from him. He stood up and stepped over her, and pushed the door open into the kitchen. Dyer was snoring softly, still tied to his pipe. Danny stepped past him and out of the door into the early dawn light.
In the east the sun was just above the horizon, shining through the trees. In every direction, waves of birdsong lifted and faded, away and away to the distant hills and valleys, amongst the trees, under the pinky green early morning clouds.
He turned to the west. Low on the horizon, just above a distant line of trees, a bright diamond point of light sparkled in the reflected sunrise. A faint murmur, a sort of fluttering sound could just be heard over the song of the birds, which grew steadily louder as he stood there. The diamond pinprick grew larger and resolved itself into an iridescent ball, surrounded by an array of gossamer wings, glinting and seemingly waving in the light.
In a few minutes the strange craft was almost directly above him. He could make out a man inside the shiny ball of the cockpit and the source of the fluttering sound, a fan enclosed in a housing behind the cockpit. It looked more like an insect than a machine, with six wings extended, each of which seemed to be moving separately from the other. They were not flapping like a bird’s or an insect, but seemed to be responding to each shift of the craft from up and down drafts of air. Danny raised his arm and waved, but got no response from the pilot. The craft continued to fly due east, climbing steadily as it did so, until it disappeared in the light of the rising sun over the eastern horizon. Danny turned and went inside.
* * *
They reached the stronghold late in the morning. As they rode through the main gate, Danny saw the flutter standing on the open ground in the centre of the fort, the pilot standing beside it talking quietly to Bill Potter.
Danny and Sally led their horses and Dyer to the camp commandant’s office. Bill Potter’s deputy was sitting behind a desk writing on a pad. Behind him was a large wall map of East Anglia, with the border of the pale marked out with a dashed red line in crayon. The man looked up as they walked in.
“Good afternoon” said Danny and introduced himself and Sally. Bill’s deputy was called Sam Black. He looked tired and depressed.
“We’ve brought in a prisoner” said Danny pointing at Dyer still sitting on his horse outside the office. “He needs a doctor or some medical attention, he’s got an injured knee. Can you help?”
“Yes, of course” Sam replied. “You can take him over to the infirmary, it’s just across the square” and he pointed out a white washed building with a red cross painted on the wall.
“Would you like a report?” asked Danny.
“Take care of the prisoner first, and then come back and see me. Is he dangerous?”
“I don’t think so, and his injury seems pretty bad.”
“He might be faking it. I’ll get a guard just to be on the safe side.” Black shouted into a side office and a man of about Danny’s age came into the room. “Jim, please escort the prisoner to the infirmary and keep an eye on him. Get yourself a pair of handcuffs.”
Jim nodded at Danny and Sally and went out to Dyer. He asked him if he could walk, and when Dyer shook his head, he led his horse across to the infirmary. Danny turned back to Black.
“So what do you have to report?” Black asked. Danny told him briefly about the patrol and what they had been told by Dyer. Black made some notes and stood up and marked his map with a black circle around Needham Market and wrote “3K?” in the centre. Then he drew a blue dashed line from Lavenham up to Diss. Danny noticed there was already a black circle around Thetford with “1.5K?” written inside, and another around March, north of Ely with “2K?”, in each case with a dashed blue line extending 30 kilometres or so on each flank.
“Your patrol hasn’t returned yet, I guess they should be back sometime tomorrow. They may have managed to collar another prisoner. It would be good to get corroboration for your prisoner’s story.” Black sat down again, and looked questioningly at Danny. “Is that everything?”
“Yes, I think so.” Danny looked at Sally and she nodded agreement. “Can I ask, what has the aircraft out there managed to find out?”
“Not much, so far. With your information, and what the other patrols have managed to find out, we’re planning to send him out again to try and confirm just what these bases look like and if the numbers we’ve been given stack up.”
“I saw him flying east this morning” Danny said “at least I assume it was him.”
“It would have to be – we’ve only got one pilot, and only one aircraft”.
“Did he see nothing? How far east did he fly?”
“He got to the coast, Southwold I think. He said he saw a group of about fifty men on horses on the way back, driving cattle south, presumably heading back to Needham, but that was all. Go and have a chat to him if you like. He seems friendly enough.” Black started writing on his pad again, and Danny took that as a dismissal. With a look to Sally, he turned and went out into the sunshine, and headed across the parade ground towards the ‘plane and pilot.
The pilot was looking at a map, spread out over the perspex canopy. Danny introduced himself.
“Hello. I’m Fred by the way”, said the pilot, extending his hand.
“Can we talk?”
“Yes, of course. I’m just waiting for further instructions, but I don’t suppose I’ll be going anywhere today. You’ve been giving your news to Sam Black?”
“Yes, and looking at his map – it looks a bit frightening.” Sally said.
“How long has this been flying?” Danny asked.
“About two months” said Fred. “This is our first flying prototype. We’ve been designing different versions on the computers back at Cambridge, or rather, the computers have been evolving several different designs, and we built models of a few, but this seems to be the best so far. Our main problem has been to come up with an engine and a power source that was light enough and with enough range to make a practical aircraft. Some of the other designs the software evolved were much more radical and exciting but until we have more powerful and reliable motors they’ll have to stay virtual. As it is this engine is a one off, and took much longer to build than the aircraft itself. I’m just keeping my fingers crossed it’s as reliable as the engineering department say it is.”
“How did you learn to fly it?”
“We built a flight simulator initially, which was crude but gave us a general idea how the control surfaces functioned together and how to cope with turbulence and so on, and landings of course – the most important bit.” Fred laughed. “Then we built a glider version and launched it from a winch to fly it for real. That was pretty good, brilliant in fact, it makes an excellent glider and on a good day we’ve been able to keep it flying for several hours, so all in all, I’ve got quite a bit air time now. And there are a couple of other pilots as well.”
“But still only one aircraft?”
“Well apart from the glider, yes.”
“Are you building any more?” Sally asked.
“That’s the plan, at least until all this blew up. We wanted to really test out the design, see what could be improved, simplified, whatever, before starting to build any more – there’s a lot of scarce stuff in this, and some pretty high tech engineering, and we’re not exactly flush with raw materials or the sort of tools we need. And that’s the other part of the project – not just getting something into the air, but something sustainable, something we can build relatively easily and cheaply. But now we may just have to pull out all the stops and build some more of these.” Fred pointed at the flutter. “We’re very vulnerable with just this one.”
“Is it difficult to fly?” Danny asked.
“No, I don’t think so. You need to have a head for heights of course, and be happy moving and thinking in three dimensions; the controls are pretty intuitive, and the simulator’s a big help – I took about twenty hours on the simulator to get to the point where I felt confident flying the glider.”
Danny felt incredibly jealous, and realised that he was deep down desperate to get to fly one of these machines. To think that Fred had that morning flown from Cambridge to the sea and back to here, a journey that for all of Danny’s life, if possible at all, would have taken days or even weeks.
“So what was it like this morning? What did you see?” Danny asked.
“A bit depressing really – from Cambridge to here is quite lively, civilised I suppose – lots of signs of life, towns and villages and farms, fields, stock, roads that look usable. But east of here just seems completely deserted. Apart from that group of horsemen, I saw nothing. I had hoped to see something at the coast, boats maybe, but it seemed completely dead there too. It’ll be interesting tomorrow – I assume they’re going to get me to try and spot these camps they’ve been told about.”
“Aren’t you worried about being shot at?” asked Sally.
“Well, yes, of course. I’m going to go up as high as I can – say three thousand metres or so – this baby’s so quiet and small I think they’ll have real trouble even seeing me, never mind being able to shoot me down - I don’t think they’re likely to have any anti-aircraft guns” said Fred, grinning.
“But what will you be able to see from three thousand metres?” Danny asked.
“I’ve got an aerial camera with a high powered telephoto lens – provided I can find any of these camps I can take pictures of them and we can look at them in close-up back here. That should give us a fair idea. And I might risk turning the engine off and glide above the camps – I’m pretty sure they have no idea we have an aircraft, and you’d be surprised how little people notice what’s going on in the sky above them – they’re just not looking, or expecting to see anything there, apart from birds.”
“What’s the problem with turning the engine off?” Sally asked.
“It’s not always easy to start it up – pretty good when it’s running, but the last thing I want to do is lose our only aeroplane over enemy territory because I couldn’t get the motor running again.”
“I could do with a feed, and a drink” said Danny. “Would you like to join us?”
“Thanks but no. I think Bill Potter and Sam Black will want to talk to me soon about plans for tomorrow. But I’ll see you this evening I guess?”
“Sure. See you later then” and with that Danny and Sally walked off towards the mess hut.