How Beer Saved the World

A Wartime Draught ^{G. David Nordley}

I’m not going to describe where the White Horse is; one American finding the place, despite the jukebox the owners mistakenly placed in the public bar in hope of attracting them, was quite enough. He was an American military man who liked real ale. And, in retrospect, that was our first clue.

I was a bit late for getting a couple of pints in before closing, and trotting down to the Embankment from Fleet had left me a bit breathless. In spite of my haste, Mr. D. was getting a pint of Fuller’s London Pride ready for me by the time I’d gotten from the door to the Saloon bar.

He was standing there, in his American Army Major’s uniform, his long dirty-blond hair almost reaching his eyebrows, looking critically at what was likely a pint of Young’s stout.

“We don’t get Dunkel like this in Ulm,” he said.

A dozen eyes turned his way. There was a war on, of course. And he pronounced “Dunkel” as if it were spelled doon-kil.

“Oh. New Ulm, Minnesota. We sometimes drop the ‘new.’ I’m Wally, Wally Petersen.” He stuck out a beefy palm toward me as the most convenient British victim. “The place was settled by Germans, but I come from Minneapolis now. I’m an engineer. Valves, current, that kind of thing.”

Arthur’s head came up at the mention of valves. He and his brother Fred sat near the dartboard—but not too near, given that Harry was there and had a tendency to mix darts and draughts. Wally happened to be looking in Arthur’s direction, and his eyes narrowed at Arthur’s reaction. A couple of other heads turned and the chatter faded away.

We generally knew what Arthur was working on, and generally did not discuss it aloud, in public, ever. But high power amplification valves were an important part of it.

“Hydraulics, pumps, that kind of thing,” Wally said, as if he had to divert attention from electrical valves.

“You like the Young’s?” Mr. D. asked into the silence.

“Ah, it’s not quite Hamm’s,” he said, “but good, very good.”

That brought a quick smile from John Sims, our occasional Sunday Times astronomy columnist. John had actually been to Minnesota before the war.

“Greetings, Wally,” John said. “I know a man in Minneapolis. Bill Luyten, astronomer, science writer. Ever run into him?”

Wally pursed his lips and looked up as if trying to remember. “No, don’t recall the name. Is he involved in the war effort?”

A brief frown passed over John’s face. “Not that I know of. He’s more the academic type.”

Wally nodded and looked over to Arthur. “You’re interested in valves.”

Arthur smiled nervously. “Not that I’m free to discuss now, am I?”

Wally grinned. “Of course not. You barely know me. Barkeep…”

“Our barman is Mr. D,” John said.

“Yes, of course. Mr. D., I would like to purchase a round for the group. Are there any rules for that here?”

“There are tonight. It must be consumed in the next fifteen minutes. Then out the door. Closing time approaches.”

Nonetheless, pints were passed around, not the first such ritual as last orders approached.

I took the barstool next to Wally. “Arthur is into spaceships, you know.”

“Spaceships?” asked Wally.

Harry nodded. “Rockets, except with people inside of them.”

“That would hurt coming down.”

“Spaceships don’t come down. Or rather, they come down softly, on their tails, wherever you want them to. There are some engineering details to work out, of course, but the main thing is propulsion.”

Wally looked interested. “Could they come down in America, or Germany, for instance?”

“I think Arthur is more interested in the Moon. But yes, in Germany, if one wanted.”

Wally’s smile flicked off for an instant. “Very interesting,” he said. Then the smile was back on. “You betcha.”

Mr. D turned the light off, then on again, as Wally waddled along the Embankment into the mist. After he was gone, we all re-entered, guarded by the “closed” sign. Should anyone have asked, we were the volunteer cleanup crew; many places depended on such with all the help off on the war effort.

“German,” Mr. D said. “Or I’ve not been doing this for thirty years.”

“He hasn’t been to Minnesota, I should think, John added. “Hamm’s, indeed. That gave him away.”

“I rather thought that was an American beer of that region,” Harry said.

John nodded. “Indeed. And nobody who likes real beer will drink it.”

“What’s he doing in an American uniform? All this talk about pumps and the like,” Harry asked. “We’re building the…”

I put a hand on his arm. “There’s not a little mingling of forces; Yanks in the RAF, RAF chaps flying Yank bombers, and so on. I imagine someone with credible looking papers could get himself involved as an exchange officer, and as such, he could be a little different without being too obvious.”

“He’d be in on the whole bloody thing,” Mr. D said. “We should talk to someone.”

“Or he could be what he says he is,” Fred said.

“An American wouldn’t connect valves with electronics,” Harry said, now quite sober, “and then correct himself so clumsily.”

“An American who likes beer wouldn’t have a good word for Hamm’s,” John added.

“If he is a spy,” Arthur said, “he would need to communicate with his handlers. Perhaps a clandestine radio.”

“I hazard certain parties could pick that up rather quickly,” John said.

Harry nodded. “Yes. And other things. We are being watched.”

Arthur got a faraway look in his eyes. At twenty-seven, his imagination was a little less hindered than ours, and we were a not unimaginative group. “Watched. Hmmm. Yes, well, I imagine such a transmission would have to be a one-shot sort of thing. Send it, then get out if you can.”

I nodded, with a slight feeling of compassion. In all likelihood, we were going to trick Wally into sacrificing his life for the wrong reason. On the other hand, he was going to sacrifice it anyway.

“Perhaps we could get him to use that one shot for something other than my work or whatever else is a-building. I may, inadvertently, have already laid the groundwork. John, you have a fairly large telescope.”

He nodded. Rooted firmly in his garden, John had made a half-scale working model of Herschel’s largest telescope, which he took delight in showing off to the occasional grammar school class.

“It would work in reverse, would it not? If one were to replace the eyepiece with a powerful lamp and place an aircraft-shaped mask at the prime focus…”

A couple of weeks later, we were ready to spring our trap.

Wally came into the bar at his now-usual time and Mr. D. started pouring his now-usual stout. Once he was with beer, he turned to Arthur.

“How fast does your rocket go?” he asked. “As fast as sound?”

“I don’t recall saying that I had a rocket,” Arthur said. “But if I were to design one to travel through space, it would go many times the speed of sound here on Earth. Of course, it would not be proper to say that it went faster than sound in space, where there is no air to carry the sound.”

“Yeah, yeah. Okay. It could get to Berlin, or Washington, in a few minutes.”

Arthur stared across the room, saying nothing, which I knew to mean his mind was elsewhere. Then he came back. “At orbital speed, it would be about three minutes to Berlin.”

“Or the Moon in a couple of days,” John said.

“I’d like to see something like that,” Fred said.

“Me too,” Wally added.

“Perhaps something can be arranged,” Harry said, then took a long slow drink of his Pride.

Arthur looked upset. “Really, we shouldn’t be talking about something that could get someone to one of Dr. Luyten’s stars in a lifetime. If someone wanted to weaponize that…”

“Wally’s okay,” Harry said. “The Yanks are on our side, this century.”

Everyone chuckled at that.

“Now, I’ve talked to Mr. Bray at the Met Office…”

“Group Captain Stagg’s aide?” Wally interjected.

“The very man, yes. You do get around, Wally,” Harry said.

“Ike expects his exchange officers to be up on stuff.”

“Ah, quite. Well, Bray thinks conditions should be just about right tomorrow night for, shall we say, an unusual event.”

“Are you sure, Harry?” Fred asked, alarm written on his face.

“I think we can trust Wally to do the right thing.”

Mr. D quickly put a bar rag in front of his mouth and coughed slightly. Wally, with a big grin on his face, appeared not to notice.

I didn’t smirk. Everything had gone smoothly so far, but if we made a mess of this, it could be at best very embarrassing. At worst, lives would be lost.

As expected, there was a dark low cloud deck over clear air that night. We arrived early in Fred’s car on the south side of Albany Road near the end of Bagshot Street, where one could get a relatively unobstructed view over the lake. It was not far from where John lived on Mina Road; though, of course, John had sent his regrets for this expedition. Trouble struck immediately.

“You’re here early, Wally,” Fred remarked.

“Yeah, your British cabs are efficient.”

I had an essential piece of setup to do, that we didn’t want Wally to see. While I was trying to think of a diversion, Fred took charge.

“Quite. Now, Wally, what we are looking for should show up over there,” Fred pointed toward the western side of the lake, “and proceed east, rather rapidly. You see the oaks across the lake? It should pass…”

While Fred had Wally’s attention, I pulled a big box from the boot and lugged it over a few yards right of our vantage point. I came back unobtrusively trailing a wire, attached to a button.

“Look carefully. It will be very subtle,” I said. “There will be a glow, somewhat like a searchlight beam. Something to do with ionizing the air to lower friction, I should think. Mind you, I don’t know anything about this. Nor does anyone else here.”

Wally bobbed his head.

We waited, and waited. Half an hour passed. Conditions were just right now, but might not be in another hour. John was having fun with us, I thought, or maybe playing a psychological trick; information gained too easily might not feel as important to a spy.

“There!” Fred said.

It was very subtle, only a patch of distant searchlit cloud scudding rapidly over the lake. I looked through my binoculars and smiled. A deep black triangle lay in the center of the glowing spot, wavering slightly as the clouds whipped by. And then it was gone. I had almost forgotten my button, which I then pressed, only microseconds after the tardy thought had entered my mind.

A soft distant-sounding boom echoed from our right, long after the triangle had passed.

“Much faster than sound,” Harry covered. “Like lightening. It takes the sound a while to catch up.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Wally said.

I could detect no suspicion in his voice.

“Mind you, this didn’t happen,” Fred added.

“I saw nothing,” Wally said, and I imagined the “o” in his nothing had more of an “oh” sound to it than an “uh,” but I might have been mistaken.

“Two minutes 48 seconds,” Arthur said. From the look on Wally’s face, he didn’t have to add “to Berlin.”

We had played our roles to perfection. The hook was set. The only question now was whether he would run with it and Section 5 could reel him in. But that was out of our hands.

Wally wasn’t with us on the fifth of June.

I arrived last and got my pint from Mr. D. Harry already had a nice cluster around the bullseye, and Fred, in his usual place, had an eye on him. Arthur had his head in a book; not totally unusual.

John was at a side table staring at the foam of an as-yet untouched stout.

“Anything from five?” I asked Harry, pint in hand. He frowned at my use of the number, but one had to call those people something.

Harry nodded, and the room fell silent.

“They homed right in on him. Walter Petersohn.” He pronounced the “W” as a “V” and dragged it out into a buzz. “They waited until he got off everything about Arthur’s supersonic spaceship, then nicked him right proper, clean as a whistle. “He didn’t get a word out about the invasion.”

“German! I knew it. Cut it a wee bit fine, if you ask me,” Mr. D. said with just the hint of a smile.

Harry shook his head. “Bray says it’s all up to the weather, and the weather isn’t talking very clearly to us or the Gerries right now. Wally couldn’t have compromised anything. And their intelligence should now be thoroughly confused as to Arthur’s activities.”

Arthur looked up from his book and gave a quick smile.

John also looked up, as if confused about something. “It worked, then?”

“Perfectly. Exactly as planned. You know, if you had whipped that beam across the face of the moon in a hundredth of a second, its apparent velocity would have been roughly the speed of light.”

“Do you think we’ll ever go that fast for real, Arthur?” John asked.

“Given enough time. Given we don’t kill ourselves in wars. Or maybe something else will find us that already goes nearer light speed.”

“In this case, faster than sound was more than sufficient,” Harry said. “Another pint. Mr. D. Make it the Young’s Stout; as it betrayed Wally and helped secure our invasion’s success. Is something wrong, John?”

John looked around, with the oddest sort of look on his face. “I was going to apologize. The operation was all a complete flop on my end. The power supply for the lamp burned out and I couldn’t get the light on at all. There was no projection.”

Then what was there?

After a decent interval, Harry said, “To reiterate, we are being watched. Another pint, Mr. D.” He lifted his glass with the kind of manic smile with which a man greets his dentist. “Cheers. Shouldn’t be long now, should it?”