Thereafter, I kept a weather eye on the antigravity scene, but the receiver I had rigged for the slightest trace of life out there remained silent. In the end, I switched it off.
During the mid-1990s, BAe kept its toes in the gravity field by plac ing a few small-scale contracts with a number of British universities, principally to see if there might be a provable relationship between gravity and heat; a link first postulated by Michael Faraday in 1849. Like me, the company was clearly reaching, but getting nowhere. Then, in 1996, NASA — the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration — began questioning some of the perceived limits to the advancement of air and space travel in two notable areas. One related to the unbreachability of the light-speed barrier — a throwback to Einstein, whose Theory of Relativity said that the velocity of light was a fixed constant never to be exceeded.
The other questioned the heretical notion that, somewhere in the universe, there might be an antigravity force; one that could be exploited for air and space travel.
The resultant NASA program, wrapped within something called ASTP — the Advanced Space Transportation Program — prompted BAe to resurrect its antigravity work. It has since been rebranded "Project Greenglow," a "speculative research program … the beginning of an adventure which other enthusiastic scientists might like to join, particularly those who believe that the gravitational field is not restricted to passivity."
Decoded, Greenglow involved little more than reseeding small amounts of company R&D money to more British universities, funding a few more experiments of the Kidd kind, and acting as a European feedin to the NASA effort.
It was, to say the least, depressing news. I thought back to George S.Trimble, the man who had been too afraid to talk to me after Dani Abelman of Lockheed Martin had approached him on my behalf. If Trimble had cracked the gravity code back in 1956, why were BAe and NASA, with their immense know-how and resources, still struggling with the gravity conundrum today? It didn't make any sense. And that should have been where the matter ended. But long months after I had consigned the antigravity story to the graveyard, I got a phone call. The man at the other end of the line was bluff and unapologetic, verging on the rude. Dr. Marckus had finally gotten in touch.
Chapter 8
The sunlight reflected brightly off the thin carpet of snow that had fallen along the east coast overnight. I kept the estuary on my right and the sea defenses on my left, edging the car along the narrow road, navigating by the instructions I had been given over the phone. There was something almost primeval about the combination of the pine forest, the limbs of the trees twisted into impossible shapes by the wind, the open sky and the stillness.
The trees parted briefly and I saw the radar mast that I'd been told to look for. Around another bend and the tiny haven swung into view.
I pulled up in the parking lot beside a wooden jetty that jutted into the green, fast-flowing current toward a small settlement on the far bank. The buildings seemed run-down and dirty compared to the crisp scenery through which I'd just driven.
There were two other cars parked beside mine and both were empty. I got out, stretched my legs and shivered as the still-freezing temperature blew away the fug of the hour-and-a-half-long journey from London. Suffolk. The East Anglian coast and the cold waters of the North Sea. I was in a part of the country I didn't know.
A light breeze tugged at the rigging of a row of yachts dragged onto a thin stretch of stony beach nearby. Seabirds picked along the jetsam and detritus of the shoreline. Above the gentle pinging of the mast ropes, I heard children's voices. There were four people on the jetty. A woman sat on the far side, wrapped warmly against the cold, reading a book as her two small children line-fished for crabs. The father, standing farther off, his back to me, was tracking an open motorboat chugging hard against the fast-flowing water, its helmsman preparing to tie up alongside the jetty's end.
As the boat bumped against the tire buffers, the man stepped on board and settled onto one of the bench seats.
I waited for the woman and the two children to get up and join him, but they never so much as glanced his way.
It was then that I realized the man in the boat was Marckus. He looked up and waved me aboard. I hesitated. Taking a ride on a boat had not figured in our brief phone conversation. Until then, I'd not considered the possibility that Marckus was anything other than the person he claimed to be. But what did I know about him? That he was plugged firmly into Britain's aerospace and defense community, that he didn't make a habit of talking to journalists, and that he was taking a risk by talking to me. The ferry was preparing to leave. I ran along the jetty and dropped down into the boat. Marckus paid for both of us and the ferryman cast off. I found myself apologizing for the mix-up; how I'd thought Marckus was with the woman and her children on the jetty. Silly, nervous jabbering.
Dr. Marckus cut me short. "Does the significance of this site mean anything to you?" he asked, his arm almost hitting my face as he waved in the direction of the road.
I shrugged and he gave a mild snort of derision. "I thought you said you were a Jane's man."
"I'm sorry," I said, "it looks like a small yacht club and a fishing village." I neglected to tell him, because I couldn't see the point, that history wasn't my bag. My work was high technology of the 21st-century kind.
Once, Dan Marckus must have been lean and ascetic-looking; the thinning hair and high forehead still gave a hint of it. With age, however, he had put on some padding, making him look a lot less severe than he sounded. A dark, scratchy beard, flecked with gray, distracted the eye on first meeting from a thick pair of lenses in tortoiseshell frames.
Behind them, Marckus' brown, beady eyes watched me intently and with a hint of irritation.
He was dressed sharply in a thick blue polo-neck, a trendier version of the kind fishermen wear, and a brown leather jacket. His voice said he was around 65, but he looked younger.
"What you saw when you drove through those trees was one of the orginal antenna masts of Bawdsey Manor. Before the Second World War broke out, the Germans sent an airship, the Graf Zeppelin, up and down this coastline trying to figure out what we were up to — what those tall steel lattice towers meant." "And what did they learn?" I asked. "They'd packed the Graf Zeppelin with electronics — listening gear. But the old man was so much smarter than them, thank God." Marckus registered my bewilderment. "Robert Watson-Watt. The man who gave the British the secret of radar. It all happened here. I thought you'd know that."
Once on the other side, we jumped down onto the beach and strolled along the shoreline, past a lonely cafe, in the direction of the point.
"So how did Watson-Watt outwit the Germans?" I asked, to fill the silence more than anything else.
"They saw the Graf Zeppelin on their scopes when it was way out over the North Sea, realized what it was up to and switched off the radars. The Germans went away believing that they were radio masts, that Germany was the only nation that had successfully developed radar detection. A month later, they invaded Poland."
"That's interesting. Did you work for him?" The term he'd used, "old man," denoted more than a passing familiarity. "Watson-Watt, I mean."
Marckus never answered. He walked on in silence, watching the gulls soaring on the cold currents above our heads. Then, without looking at me, he said: "It's been a while since you've written about my favorite subject. I was beginning to worry that you'd lost interest in it."
"It's like Professor Young said in his speech. I have come to the conclusion — a little late in the day, perhaps — that antigravity is for the birds." "I see," he said. "Are you hungry?" I looked at my watch. It was close to midday and I hadn't had any breakfast. Marckus, registering my hesitation, doubled back toward the cafe.