Millie shrugged. “I can’t be certain. Two hours max, I hope.”
“Fine. I’ll wander back to the aircraft and make sure we’re ready to depart in an hour and a half or so.” He paused before leaving. “Good luck.”
“Thank you.”
After a few minutes, a corporal appeared in front of him.
“Squadron Leader Milford? Your chariot awaits, sir.”
MILLIE WAS DRIVEN through the Abingdon main gate. It was decidedly more relaxed than West Porton’s.
The driver had noted the professor’s address in his vehicle logbook and Millie again realised he had not thought this through. Everything he was doing was traceable.
Save for a hundred bicycles, the traffic in Oxford was light. The driver dropped him in front of the cottage and Millie confirmed he would arrange his own taxi back.
As soon as the corporal’s black saloon disappeared back onto the main road, Millie knocked and waited.
The door creaked open, and Mrs Lazenby ushered him in.
The professor, his saviour in an increasingly fraught and dangerous endeavour, wore a green cardigan with a pair of silver-rimmed spectacles hanging from a chain around his neck.
Millie piled the tapes on the kitchen table. Each sleeve was labelled meticulously to reflect the order in which he had gathered the readings.
Next to the tapes, he set down a piece of paper with the annotated fields as requested.
“It took me a while to work it out, but I am fairly certain that what we have here is the time in seconds, which counts up from the moment the laser is switched from standby to on. That happens before I record, so you’ll never see zero on the reels. Does that make sense to you?”
“It does. And I see the next field is the position in latitude and longitude.”
“That’s correct, with a ‘1’ or a ‘0’ replacing the hemisphere letter. ‘1’ in front of the latitude for north, ‘0’ for south. Not that we’ve been south of the equator, of course. And ‘1’ in front of the longitude for west, ‘0’ for east. I believe we drifted across the Greenwich meridian on at least one flight.”
“Excellent work, Mr Milford.”
With that, the professor sat down and Mrs Lazenby tapped at the door.
“Yes?”
She popped her head into the room.
“Would you like me to make a cup of tea, Professor?”
Millie glanced at the pile of secret tapes and material on the table.
Belkin shot him a reassuring look. “Yes please, Mrs Lazenby.”
They sat in silence for a moment.
After the kettle reached screaming point, Mrs Lazenby poured the water into the teapot and set it down on a tray on the table, along with four Rich Tea biscuits.
She left the room. The door closed with a clunk.
“So,” said the professor, “I have a young man ready to cut his teeth on the routining effort required to interrogate this data. Excuse the word ‘routining’. It is apparently correct in this circumstance.”
“Thank you.”
“However, I think we need to know a little more about what we are looking for.”
“I’ve been careful not to say too much for a variety of good reasons—”
“If it helps, I believe you may already have let the cat out of the bag.”
“I have?”
“Just a moment ago, you referred to switching on the ‘laser’. I’m sure it was inadvertent, but am I to gather that you are testing a laser range-finding device?”
“Oh, dear me. Yes. I didn’t even notice.” Millie sighed and toyed with a biscuit. “The atmosphere where I work is now at fever pitch and here I am spilling our deepest secrets.”
“I think it’s something we cannot avoid, I’m afraid.”
Millie took a breath.
“I suppose you need to know,” he said and laughed.
“I do, I think. Is that funny?”
“Just a private joke, sorry. Well, if I explain the system to you, perhaps we can then devise a way of you explaining it to your student without giving the game away?”
The professor nodded. “It sounds like a starting point.”
Millie pointed at the data sheet.
“So, as I’ve already given away, this all comes from a laser beam. The laser is mounted in the front underside of the aircraft. A rather beautifully engineered mirror on a small gimbal directs the beam in an oval pattern. Quickly, repeatedly. The laser measures the distance to the ground at twenty-seven pre-set positions during each scan. And it does this around three times a second.”
“Gosh,” said the professor, clearly impressed.
“This is the clever bit, though. A box of microelectronics sits between the laser and a new flight control system which in turn talks to the rather older autopilot. The result is that the computer flies the aircraft at low-level, avoiding the ground while moving the aircraft in as straight a line as possible to the next waypoint.”
The professor nodded. “I see. So, an aircraft can fly automatically at low-level to its target. But what is the advantage over a human performing this task?”
Millie sat back. “Humans are frail and make mistakes. At least that’s the theory. The boffins are doing everything they can to write the crews out of the equation when it comes to flying these days. The real question is, why use a laser instead of a radar? Terrain-following radar is already developed and was to be deployed in the TSR-2. But it has a drawback. It makes a noise.”
The professor raised an eyebrow. “Radar makes a noise?”
“Not an audible noise, but it gives off energy. The exact type of energy the enemy’s aircraft defence system is looking for. Initially, we believed it would be too weak to be picked up. But it turns out the Soviets are rather good at this aspect of modern warfare.”
“So, this laser system solves a rather big problem for the RAF?”
Millie took a sip of tea. “Not just the RAF. If it works, this system will go into virtually every United States attack aircraft as well.”
“I see. And why do you need my help?”
“It’s flawed. We suffered a sudden height drop a couple of weeks back.”
“The sort of thing you’re testing it for? Why hasn’t it gone through the usual channels at Boscombe Down?”
“If this project was at Boscombe Down, I’m convinced it would have been grounded. But I now work at a new unit, cloaked in secrecy, somewhat autonomous from the rest of the RAF and it’s… not the same, shall we say. It’s almost as if it’s gone too far to fail. There’s so much riding on it. A massive export order for the UK, for one. And I have a boss who places human life further down the list of priorities when it comes to fighting the Soviets. So he’s prepared to press on.”
“Even so, won’t it be noticed if it goes into production? What happens when an aircraft crashes?”
“I might be wrong but my hunch is, they know it’s flawed. I think they would find a way of covering it up. The manufacturer is the sole expert on the system and will likely be consulted by any Board of Inquiry. As I found out, only they can analyse the height readings.” He looked at the pile of cardboard sleeves. “Until now.”
The professor sat up, grabbed a pen and started writing.
“Righty-ho. Let us sketch what we’re looking for. Firstly, height readings that vary significantly, and implausibly, from the previous and subsequent readings. Secondly, we should look at these… events and extrapolate the frequency. Of course, that depends on whether we see more than two or three events. We can’t extrapolate from fewer than three and, even then, the reliability of the extrapolation will be down to the sample size.”
“The more data, the more reliable the conclusion?”