WesWorld

In a tavern outside an airfield in southern Norway, two men meet over dinner and the excellent house beer.

"So, seriously," one says. "Do you think that this crash is to be considered indicative?"

His name is Kjarval, and he works for the Nordish Navy's Admiralty. He is, despite his uniform and respectable rank, a bureaucrat, and he knows it. But he's a good one, who's obtained a solid understanding of the process it's his job to handle the paperwork for, even to the point of taking the time to learn to fly.

The man he's talking to is named Heinaluoma, and he is one of the ten best pilots in Nordmark. More importantly, he's the most senior, most experienced of the four men responsible for test-flying the three prototypes that the Nordish nation's naval aircraft manufacturer, Kongsberg, has produced to replace the now-aging Orkan fighter on their country's aircraft carriers.

Heinaluoma chews on a meatball for several moments, then swallows and says, "If it were to be a land-fighter, I wouldn't. Now that I've had a chance to learn the Gull's handling and quirks, I'm completely confident in its ability to keep up with anything in the air. But the way the nose stalls out first... It's hard to keep the nose at the right angle for landing, especially at speed. With a shoreside landing strip that's easy to manage, but landing on a deck..."

He shakes his head.

The airplane that he's just condemned to historical obscurity is known, formally, as Prototype Three. It has a sixteen-cylinder X85 Saab engine developing a little over twenty-five hundred horsepower and paired small-diameter counter-rotating propellors, which it needs because it's a pusher layout aircraft with a rear wing, forward canards, and a cockpit all the way at the front.

"But the Dart is viable?" Kjarval asks.

The 'Dart' - Prototype One - uses the same powerplant and the same wing as the 'Gull', but does it with a conventional layout with the engine in front of the pilot and the usual position for wings, tail, and the rest.

Heinaluoma doesn't hesitate. "Yes," he says, "Absolutely. There's just no comparison between it and the Hurricane, it's that much better. Visibility as well as speed and handling, though you know that I'm not a believer in that business about that being a factor aboard Orn."

Kjarval shrugs slightly. "Either way, it's been decided by better-paid heads than thee or me. Besides, it's not like it can hurt."

"True." The pilot waits until the bureaucrat's mouth is full before he says, "So it'll be the Trident."

Prototype Two has its nickname for the appearance presented by its two large engine nacelles, since its layout is also conventional - for a two-engined light bomber. Its 1900 horsepower V-12 X75 engines are individually less powerful than the plants in the other two competitors, but the overall power available is considerably more.

To his dissapointment, the other man doesn't do a spit take, simply swallows and says, "Oh? So it's good enough?"

Heinaluoma holds up a hand and wobbles it from side to side. "It doesn't turn quite as well," he says. "But we expected that. It's also thirty kph faster, climbs faster, and dives faster than that. It's more than good enough, it's at least as good."

Kjarval looks thoughtful. "Seven hundred and fifty kilometers per hour."

"Level flight."

"Then yes, I think that that settles it."