Gunderson smiled. “I don’t imagine they would!”
“I know Norcross,” said Montgomery. “He’s very good. I can’t imagine any kind of school that could teach him or you anything at all about aircraft engineering.”
“Neither can I. But I want to find out. I’ve reached a dead end. The whole industry has. The engineers know it and continue to whistle in the dark, hoping for some miracle to pull them out of the hole — atomic engines small enough to go in a fighter ship, at a price not more than twice that of a jet — some way to reduce the fantastic spread of components we have to jam in —
“There won’t be any miracle. There’ll have to be a change in the basic kind of thinking we’re doing. Less of the six million dollar wind tunnel brand, and more of the little cardboard box variety!”
Montgomery returned to the plant with Gunderson, in a state of excitement he tried not to show. But it was tinged with regret, too, because he and Gunderson had become very good friends during the time of building the mammoth bomber. He left the engineer at the entrance to the giant hangar where the Ninety-one had been pulled in for postflight checking. He hurried to his own office on the ground floor of the plant administration building and closed the door, locking it carefully.
Then he sat down at his desk and put in a call to his Washington superior, Colonel Dodge. It took twenty minutes to locate the colonel, but at last Montgomery heard his distant, rough voice.
“I have some information,” said Montgomery. “It would be best to scramble.”
“All right. Code twelve,” said Dodge.
Montgomery pressed a sequence of switches on the little box through which the phone wire ran. His voice thinned out as he spoke again. “It’s that matter you told me to be on the lookout for six months ago. It’s finally happened here. Soren Gunderson is resigning. He says he’s going back to school.”
“Not Gunderson, too!” said Dodge bitterly. “It’s an epidemic. To date, almost two hundred men have resigned from highest priority military projects — all giving the excuse of wanting to attend this mysterious school. It has bogged down over thirty big projects, because they weren’t just run-of-the-mill engineers. They were chief engineers and project engineers and top designers. The whole military program of the nation has been slowed measurably by this draining away of key personnel.