“That’s the question I’ve been asking myself since we started the Ninety-one on paper, a dozen years ago. I’ve been asking it all my life in one form or another. I don’t have any answer, right now, but I’ll never build another airplane unless I find it.”
“But what are you going to do?” Montgomery insisted.
“I’ve saved my money,” said Gunderson. “I’ll do a little fishing, maybe quite a lot. And I think I may go to school.”
Montgomery’s hand seemed to remain suspended in midair for a small fraction of time. His eyes shot a glance of startled amazement toward Gunderson, and then he bent over the plate of spaghetti. “For a minute I thought you said you were going back to school,” he said with a laugh.
“There’s no law against a man getting some more education.”
“No, of course not — except that you could walk into any engineering school in the country and make their aeronautic staff look like hicks. I don’t get it. Who could teach you anything about plane design?”
Montgomery allowed himself to watch Gunderson more closely now as the engineer replied somewhat absently. “This isn’t an ordinary school I’m talking about. I started hearing stories concerning it about six months ago. Norcross, from Lockheed, was the first to mention it. He wrote that he’d quit his job and was doing some advanced study at this place. I thought he was crazy. Then I began hearing from some of the others, all inviting me down to join them.”
“What are they doing? Who runs the school? I never heard of anything like that.”
“That’s the peculiar part. I’ve asked, but they act almost cagey about details of what they’re doing. Yet they’re all overwhelmingly enthusiastic about it. A couple of men named Nagle and Berkeley are operating it privately. You may remember they got quite a bit of publicity a year or so ago because of a large rumpus they stirred up in regard to the patent situation. It was enough to get a Congressional investigation and it looks like there’ll be changes in the Patent Law.”
“I remember,” said Montgomery. “R&D people didn’t think much of their antics.”