There was a pause and Montgomery heard the colonel’s sigh of irritation.
“I’ll make it as quickly as I can, but it may be three days at least, before I arrive. Keep in touch with the doctor. Don’t take any unnecessary risks.”
It probably would look bad, Montgomery thought, if he had to be committed to an institution, and word got out that it had resulted from an assignment the colonel had made. Dodge had reason to worry, he supposed. At least, he thought he did.
Montgomery ate quickly in the coffee shop of the hotel. It was still early enough to get in another three or four hours at the Institute. The place seemed to be open most hours of the day or night.
He met Wolfe as he passed along the loggia.
“I’m afraid I can’t allow you any more work for at least a couple of days,” said the counselor. “I just looked over the Mirror tapes you turned out today —”
“That’s all right,” said Montgomery. “I wasn’t headed for the Mirror. Now that I’ve gotten rid of a big chunk of my education I want to do some learning! It will be O.K. for me to work with the shadow boxes, won’t it?”
Wolfe nodded dubiously. “Don’t keep at it too long. You can say you’ve really had it!”
Montgomery found an empty learning room and sat down before the cube of the small shadow box there. Gingerly, he put on the headpiece. It was the first time he’d tried it — and even now he was glad he was alone.
The soft glow came on in the interior of the cube. Montgomery hesitated and drew a deep breath. Then he projected an image of the Ninety-one.
He almost cried at the result. A fuselage that looked somewhat like a contorted carrot sprang into being — minus wings and engines. He tried to straighten out the shape and the tail disappeared. He let it go and attempted a wing. The whole fuselage vanished and one wing, with a single engine flaming, turned slowly end over end in the cube.
Montgomery leaned back in sick discouragement, and removed the headpiece. He had thought it would be so easy once his pattern of action ceased to inhibit his creativeness. The lesson of his pre-natal threat of miscarriage was gone. The lessons of Mr. Carling, who had taught him to hate beautiful geometric forms, were gone.
Professor Adams, who permitted standard engineering practices only — and those no more recent than 1908 —
They were all gone, and he was like a child, crawling on the floor, stacking his first blocks. He had to learn skills with the unused faculties and in that there was agony.
He tried again, building a wobbly plane with melting wings and twisted fuselage. But no panic swept him as he persisted. He was free to learn and create for the first time in his life. He forgot time, and the sun was tinting the beach when he finally looked up from the cube with a small degree of satisfaction with what he had produced. The plane was recognizably a miniature of the XB-91, and it didn’t melt and wobble as he tried to maintain its image.
But he had been wrong in his statement to Spindem. Today was not the day he would create a revolutionary new airfoil. He could put it on paper, of course, but that would be a last resort. He wanted to provide a solid model that could be checked in a wind tunnel.
He went to the hotel and caught a few hours sleep. Then he came back to the Institute and resumed work to improve the accuracy of his visualization. For another forty-eight hours he sweat over the project, breaking up the long sessions with the shadow box for only brief intervals of eating and sleeping.
But at the end of that time he was satisfied with his achievement. He had a foot-long model of the Ninety-one with a wing such as no one had ever seen before. He solidified it in plastic.
He called in Gunderson, who was looking much better, as if some of his own problems had been solved. Montgomery didn’t ask what kind of experiences he’d been having with the Mirror, however. His time was almost gone.
“I’ve got to have some wind-tunnel tests by tomorrow afternoon," he said. “Firestone’s little variable-pressure tunnel is the only one that will do. I’m completely bushed. Will you fly up there and run the tests and get them back by tomorrow?"
Gunderson picked up the model, keeping his face straight. He ran a finger over the contour of the wing. “Is this the thing you talked to me about when we built the Ninety-one’s wing?”
Montgomery nodded. “I know it looks nuts, but I haven’t got time to argue it now. If I’m wrong about it, the Nagle-Berkeley Institute closes as of tomorrow night, and ten years of litigation will probably not get it open again.”
“What are you talking about? Who’s going to close up the Institute?"
Quickly, Montgomery told the engineer why he’d come there in the first place. He told of the country-wide suspicions of the motives behind the Institute, of the approaching visit of Colonel Dodge.
“Dodge will obtain an injunction to close them up. He’ll string out an investigation forever. Nagle and Berkeley will struggle for the rest of their lives to get into operation again, but they won’t have a chance. Opinion will be wholly against them in all quarters of conventional authority.
“On the other hand, if we can swing Dodge to our side when he comes —”
Gunderson shook his head slowly as he looked at the model plane once more. “You think this will do it?”
“Look.” Montgomery turned back to the shadow box. He turned it on and created another image of the Ninety-one. Then he provided a visible air stream. “I’ll vary it now to simulate flight between eighty and a hundred thousand feet.”
Gunderson watched as the luminous streamlines thinned. The model rose at a scale speed that was fantastic. “But you're doing that!” he exclaimed.
Montgomery nodded and turned it off. “That’s why I have to have the wind-tunnel report to convince Dodge. But the model will behave exactly that way in the tunnel. The lift of the wing is about ten per cent less than conventional shapes at sea level. At the flight altitude for which it is designed, however, the lift actually increases with rarefaction of the atmosphere.”
Gunderson’s face still showed disbelief, but he picked up the model. “I’ll get the tests for you. As for Dodge, aren’t you going to tell Nagle and Berkeley? And haven’t they anticipated something of this kind?”
“Yes,” said Montgomery. “I’m quite sure they’ve anticipated it. They’ll know why Dodge is here.”
Montgomery went to his hotel to rest. He had done all he could. Maybe it wasn’t enough. Maybe Nagle and Berkeley would have come out better with somebody else in his place. But it had to be played now the way it lay.
He called Dr. Nagle and talked with him for fifteen minutes in regard to Dodge’s visit. As he suspected, the only thing that was news to Nagle was the time and the person who would initiate the investigation. It was agreed that Montgomery would bring the colonel over and introduce him and take part in the demonstration that would be given.
With this in hand, Montgomery went to sleep for the rest of the day.
Gunderson returned to Casa Buena the following day, an hour before Dodge’s shuttle plane from Oakland was due. The engineer went directly to Montgomery’s hotel. His hands were trembling faintly as he unfastened the brief case and handed Montgomery the sheaf of papers reporting the wind-tunnel performance of the model plane.
“This is the biggest thing since jet engines!” he said. “If a full scale design would give the same performance — You should have seen Evans and the rest of the wind-tunnel gang standing around with their mouths open as lift increased while pressure went down. Here’s the curve we got.”
Montgomery scanned it with satisfaction. It was just about as he predicted. There was the normal rate of loss from sea level to fifty thousand. It began to pick up a trifle there, and at eighty thousand the sharp, useful rise began. At a hundred thousand it plummeted again.