Slide Rule by Nevil Shute

office at Crayford in Kent where I was getting my staff of calculators together. I built a five-valve wireless set for my parents in those months, and I started on a third novel, entitled
Marazan
, which was to be my first book to be published, by Cassell. I had evidently learned from my previous efforts, because I wrote
Marazan
twice through from start to finish and large portions of the book were written a third time; I was evidently resolved to spare no effort. It probably took me about eighteen months of my spare time to write, working on it in the evenings as a relaxation from my airship work.
    I must have had a good deal of energy in those days,because on summer mornings I used to get up at about half past five, drive six or seven miles to Chislehurst where there was a livery stables, ride for an hour on Chislehurst Common, and get back in time to bathe, breakfast, and catch my train to Crayford. I think I felt that my surroundings at that time were so drab that it was necessary to regain contact with the country and do something different from all the other daily-breaders; I think the airship calculations benefited from these early morning rides, and perhaps they benefited from the novel, too. I have always liked to do two jobs at the same time; one helps you to rest from the other and the fact that in the evenings my mind was fully occupied upon the novel gave me a clearer view of the airship problems next morning, I think, than some of my colleagues could achieve.
    By the spring of 1926 most of the preliminary work was over and we were ready to commence the design of the actual airship, and at that time we all moved up to Howden. The little town stands in dead flat country unrelieved by hills, and clings desperately to its ancient status of a town among the villages of the district. Modern times have not dealt kindly with the place. It was a centre of learning in pre-Reformation days and a fine avenue of trees still leads beside the ancient fish ponds to the site of the college, but the roof of the great church fell in about the time of the Armada, and ruins surround the portion still in use. In the last century Howden was an export centre for the Yorkshire horse trade, shipping horses to the Continent. There are large houses in the town, the homes of prosperous dealers in the past, now fallen in to decay. The presence of the airship station during the first war did something to restore prosperity for that brief time, and it may be that we, too, did something for the town while we were there. I hope we did.
    The air station was some three miles from the town, setin the middle of flat farming land. About a thousand acres had been cleared of hedges but not levelled; in the centre of this desolate heath stood one enormous shed surrounded by the ruins of what had been other sheds. This great building was built of corrugated iron on a steel framework; it consisted of two bays internally like two great cathedrals side by side though bigger than any cathedral ever was. Each bay was capable of housing an airship seven hundred and fifty feet long and a hundred and forty feet in diameter; a row of brick annexes which were to be offices and workshops ran along one side of the shed. The floor area of the two bays was seven and a half acres. Already in those early days the building had suffered from neglect; towards the completion of the ship the rain streamed through the roof upon the work with every storm.
    In 1925 we sent a little party up from London to put this derelict air station into some sort of order for manufacturing. They found the floor of the great shed littered at one end with the feathers and remains of many hens; a vixen had had her lair for years in the covered concrete trench beneath the floor that housed the hydrogen and water mains. The rough shooting was quite good. Rabbits infested the enormous piles of steel and concrete débris formed by the demolition of the other hangars; partridge, hares, and duck were