Honey is sent to Canada to examine the debris of the crash, travelling onboard a Reindeer aircraft on which he meets the two heroines of the novel, Corder and Teasdale. The crash report, including photographs, is inconclusive, and Scott feels that the remains of the aircraft must be physically examined. Honey's prediction becomes all the more alarming when Scott links it with the recent crash of a Reindeer carrying the Soviet ambassador, which had total flying hours close to Honey's estimate, and which crashed in northeastern Quebec. For Honey this seems merely to be an esoteric and engaging problem in pure science for Scott it is a concern of the first magnitude, as Reindeers are crossing the North Atlantic daily, carrying hundreds of passengers. Honey's theory predicts that the metal at the root of the tailplane will fatigue and fail with a crystalline fracture. He is using a spare tailplane from a Reindeer aircraft in a fatigue test. Honey has predicted, by a (fictional) theory supposedly related to quantum mechanics, that it is possible for an alloy structure to fail long before the design life customarily predicted by design standards. Throughout the story, people judge him by that appearance, or by his varied and unconventional outside interests, such as pyramidology - the study of possible esoteric interpretations of the Pyramids.
Honey is unimpressive in appearance and is so intensely focused on his work that his relations with the outside world-never that good to begin with-suffer badly. The events are narrated by Scott in the first person. Honey, a widower, in addition to his work, must bring up his young daughter, Elspeth. Dennis Scott, is to investigate possible failure in the high aspect ratio tailplane of a new airliner, the fictional Rutland Reindeer. The anti-hero of the story, Theodore Honey, is engaged in research on the fatigue of aluminium airframes. Monica Teasdale, a middle-echelon Hollywood actress.Marjorie Corder Airline stewardess with the fictional C.A.T.O (Commonwealth Atlantic Transport Organisation).Dennis Scott: Recently appointed head of the structural department at the RAE, a young aeronauticist
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