Castles in the Sky Page #4

Maybe we should start a sweep?

Come on.

Pace yourself, Taff.

You all right there, Taff?

What's he doing?

Bell! Bell!

Bell! Come on. Bell!

Our transmitters are 5,000 volts,

yeah? Aye.

It produces 350 kilowatts

of peak power? Aye.

I've never understood cricket.

We can't exceed that...

It blows the valves.

..cos it's constantly running,

it's constantly in use,

but if we do quick bursts,

like sprinting...

Recover. Sprint. Recover.

The valves have time

to recover, don't they?

Aye. Yes!

Oh, let's get to it!

The PM will

never spend enough to catch up.

We have to invest all our resources

in building a death-ray

and take the fight to them.

That's not going to happen while

Tizard's radio-locator

is being considered.

We may be able to push

for our own defence committee.

Above Tizard? Naturally.

Will Baldwin listen to you?

He will.

He certainly will when you tell him

what Tizard's merry band

of weathermen are actually doing.

I have a man on the inside, Winston,

one of the weatherman's team.

A saboteur?

No, he simply reports back

what developments they've made.

And?

Precious few, Winston.

I'll call Baldwin...

..and you keep talking to your mole.

Ah, Bell's secret recipe.

I call it Problem Solver.

It sparks the mind, you see.

It is strong that. It's got to be

strong to keep the chill off.

Well, if you just wear normal

clothes, like me.

Take it off him.

No more for you.

Mr Rowe?

Row, row, row your boat

Gently down the stream

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily

life is but a dream.

Mr Rowe, what are you doing here?

I've been sent to ensure that

everything will be in place

for the demonstration.

What, may I ask,

are you celebrating? Life!

Progress, Mr Rowe, progress!

So you've built the thing? It works?

Not exactly.

But we're well on the way.

Oh, yes. Any minute now.

And power. We've solved the power.

Although we've still got

the range to deal with.

So there's no improvement in how

far you can send your pulses?

There's quite a large team heading

up from Whitehall

who need convincing of the

worthiness of the radio locator.

If they don't have proof it works

they will pull the plug.

I think we should call it a night.

I agree. Gentlemen, good night.

Taff. Come on, big boy.

You can not let this Whitehall...

Here you go. I don't want it.

You cannot allow the Whitehall lot

to see this backstage nonsense,

the strings, the smoke and mirrors.

They need to be dazzled with magic.

Right.

MUSIC:
"Sing, Sing, Sing"

by Benny Goodman

Yes?

Robert, it's me.

Wha...?

Oh, are you in the middle of

something?

Er, yes, erm...

Is everything all right?

Yes, sorry I won't keep you.

I just wanted to talk to you about

the weekend. The weekend?

You are still planning

on coming home, aren't you?

Oh, I'm sorry, Mag, I can't.

Well...would you like me

to come to the hotel?

Look, I'm really tied up with work.

'I don't think it's, erm... I've got

some important people coming down'

to see a demonstration

of something I cannot do.

'What should I do, Mags?'

Look to the sky.

Isn't that what you always do,

when you're struggling?

Look to the sky, Robert.

I'd better go.

Yes.

Goodbye.

Bye.

I love you.

The ionosphere? It's a layer

of the Earth's atmosphere,

a band of charged electrons and...

I know what it is.

I named it, you know.

Yes, yes, what about it?

We're going to use it.

OK, imagine... Excuse me.

..that this is

the ionosphere, right...

And if you can you hold that.

..and my head is the Earth.

So instead of sending pulses

from the Earth that go up

and across the Earth, we're sending

pulses up from the Earth

and bouncing them off the ionosphere

back to Earth.

Ionosphere, Earth, ionosphere.

Bouncing makes our pulses

go further,

like skimming stones across water,

a water with a ceiling.

A swimming pool.

A swimming pool with a low ceiling or

throwing a bottle across wet grass

or a ping-pong ball.

Anyway, that, in a nutshell,

is what we're planning to do today.

Send a pulse up to the ionosphere?

We did it yesterday.

We bounced it off the ionosphere

60 miles.

60 miles! Can you imagine that?

And your pulse hit something?

You detected aircraft?

Not exactly, no. Exactly?

At all. Right.

But there may not have been anything

in the air at that particular

frequency at a particular time.

Don't worry, I've arranged

for an aeroplane to be flying

through our net today,

so fingers crossed this works.

Fingers crossed?

Er, gentlemen.

Apologies for the condition

of this hut.

We have built a new transmitter,

which has given us increased

power and efficiency,

and also increases our potential

of detecting aircraft

at greater distances.

We've also used our extensive

knowledge of weather systems

to send a radio pulse further than

science could ever have imagined,

all this on a shoestring budget.

So...

(Where's the plane?)

(I don't know.)

Any of your Oxbridge chums know

anything about weather systems?

God no!

They do know how to

mix a decent martini.

This bunch of barbarians think

a martini is a Greek island.

Funding, always a tricky thing.

I understand the pressures

but it's chicken...chicken and egg.

Chicken and egg. If we want more

eggs, we need more chickens...

..which is funding.

It's better not talking

about the chickens and the eggs.

So this is quite a thing. Erm...

(Just do something.)

(You do something!)

OK.

Erm, so...

Ah, ah, can you see this?

If I could just listen there.

Thank you, Higgy.

That is a bounce.

Yes, that... That is a bounce.

Thank you. That's a bounce.

We are detecting a bounce

of our pulse.

That is bouncing of the ionosphere

and back across the Earth!

How many miles away is that?

Err... 60 miles.

60 miles! 60 miles!

If that was an enemy aircraft,

that would give us

about a 20-minute warning.

So, there, as you can see...

Help me out.

This is astonishing!

Please, come.

Do, yes. Absolutely...

Higgy, punch it up on the

oscilloscope, will you?

Come for a closer look.

Punch it up?

It's not the most attractive

of set ups,

but there's a lot of substance,

a lot of sophistication...

Thank you.

They all seemed suitably impressed

with your theatrics.

So we'll get the money?

Getting money for this project

was hard enough

when MacDonald was Prime Minister.

And now Baldwin's PM?

What's going on, Henry?

I mean, something's going on

otherwise we wouldn't be having

this conversation.

Churchill's clawing his way

in from the back benches.

He's persuaded the PM to let him

chair a new research group

and has installed his main advisor,

Professor Lindemann,

on a sub-committee, above us.

Lindemann wants to direct

our funding to build

a strike force to hit Germany.

It's early days for Churchill and

Lindemann but they'll be waiting.

The slightest of hiccups, they'll

seize on it and shut us down.

Hello?

Yes.

The Air Ministry were impressed.

It would appear that Watson-Watt

has a cunning streak of his own.

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