November 15, 1911. 02:00 AM.
Igor Sikorsky's Private Office, Putilov Factory. Saint Petersburg.
The night in Saint Petersburg has an oppressive quality, especially in November, when humidity from the Gulf of Finland creeps through cobblestone streets and seeps through poorly sealed windows, chilling to the bone. But the frost Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky felt that early morning didn't come from the external atmosphere, but from the abyss that had opened in his own chest.
His office, a cubicle of glass and wood elevated above the assembly hangar's main floor, was in semi-darkness. The only illumination came from a desk lamp with a green shade, casting a cone of light on the disaster spread across his drawing table.
Rolled, slightly wrinkled blueprints. Numerical calculations crossed out with fury. And in the center, like a pagan idol to the God of failure, a fragment of bluish, deformed metal: the bearing from the Neva-3 crankshaft's third support.
Sikorsky, barely twenty-two years old, felt like a hundred-year-old man. He sat in his swivel chair, white shirt unbuttoned at the collar and sleeves rolled up, staring at the bottom of a tea glass that, in reality, contained cheap cognac.
"Hubris," he murmured to the hangar's empty darkness. "Pure and simple Greek arrogance."
He stood and walked toward the window overlooking the plant.
Below, in the shadows, rested the skeletons of his creations. The Ilya Muromets fuselage, stripped of its engines, looked like a beached whale's corpse. What yesterday seemed to him the pinnacle of aeronautical engineering, today seemed like a flying coffin.
The engine failure two days ago hadn't simply been a problem for Igor. It had been a moral sentence.
The sound of screeching metal, the smoke, Tsarevich Alexei's impassive gaze on the walkway... those images repeated in his mind in an infinite loop, torturing him. He had failed. He had taken the Romanovs' gold, had promised aviation miracles, and the only thing he had delivered was molten scrap.
Igor returned to the desk. He took his fountain pen. His hand trembled slightly, not from alcohol, but from shame. He dragged a sheet of official paper with the Neva Technical Solutions letterhead toward the light.
[Your Imperial Highness,
I hereby present my irrevocable resignation as Chief Engineer of the Aeronautical Division. Recent events have demonstrated, beyond all reasonable doubt, that I lack the technical capacity and industrial discipline necessary to meet the standards the Empire requires.
I have been a dreamer, Your Highness, when you needed a builder. I have flown too close to the sun with wax wings, and reality's heat has brought me down.
I recommend contacting Professor Zhukovsky or even Junkers designers in Germany to continue with your plans...]
The pen stopped. The ink formed a black stain on the paper, expanding like a malignant tumor.
'Coward,' he told himself.
Suddenly, the sound of boots resonated on the exterior metal staircase. Slow steps, Clang... pause... clang... pause.
Sikorsky tensed. 'The ISD?'
Were they coming to arrest him for embezzlement or sabotage... what would they accuse him of? After all, destroying a military prototype could be considered treason in the bureaucracy's paranoid mind.
The office door opened without knocking.
It wasn't the secret police. It was something much more disturbing.
Alexei Nikolaevich Romanov entered the office. He wore a gray wool civilian coat, too large for his childish shoulders, and a pulled-down cap. His face was pale, and there were deep shadows under his eyes.
The Tsarevich closed the door gently behind him, leaving his Cossack escort guards outside, in the walkway's darkness.
"The cognac smells like turpentine, Igor Ivanovich," Alexei said, wrinkling his nose as he walked toward the room's center. "I hope you don't use that to clean the injectors."
Sikorsky jumped to his feet, knocking over his chair in the process. He tried to hide the resignation letter under a blueprint, a clumsy, guilty movement.
"Your Highness... I... I wasn't expecting you at this hour. It's dangerous to leave the Palace without..."
"It's dangerous to fly in wood and fabric machines, and yet here we are," Alexei interrupted, ignoring protocol. He walked toward the desk and, with deliberate delicacy, moved aside the blueprint hiding the letter.
He read the text upside down, without touching the paper. His blue eyes scanned the lines of fresh ink. Sikorsky held his breath, expecting the outburst of anger, dismissal, aristocratic contempt.
Alexei finished reading. He looked up. There was no anger, not at all.
"'Wax wings,'" Alexei quoted. "Very poetic of you. You have a writer's soul, Igor. It's a shame I need an engineer."
"It's the truth, Your Highness," Sikorsky said, his voice breaking. "I've failed. The crankshaft was my responsibility. I approved the blueprints. I supervised assembly. I didn't verify tolerances. My arrogance has cost thousands of rubles and months of work. I'm not worthy of your trust."
Alexei sighed and sat in the chair Sikorsky had knocked over, turning it to face the inventor.
"Sit down, Igor. On the floor if necessary, or on the blueprint box. But stop trembling. You're making me nervous."
Sikorsky obeyed, sitting on the edge of a drawing table, head bowed.
"Tell me," Alexei asked, playing with the molten metal piece on the table, "how many prototypes did the Wright brothers crash before flying at Kitty Hawk?"
"Dozens, I suppose."
"And Mr. Edison... how many light bulbs did he burn out before finding the carbon filament?"
"Thousands."
"Then why are you so special?" The question was thrown like a dart. "Why do you think you, Igor Sikorsky, have the divine right to get it right the first time? Do you think physics owes you obedience? Do you think metal will bow before your genius just because you have a noble surname and a university degree? The answer... you know it."
Sikorsky raised his head, pricked in his pride.
"It's not that, Your Highness. It's that... this isn't an academic experiment. We're playing with Russia's fate. You told me. 'Zero Tolerance.' And I failed in tolerance."
"Yes, you failed," Alexei admitted brutally. "And the engine died; it hurt to see it, smell it."
The child leaned forward, the lamp's green light illuminating his face, giving him a spectral appearance.
"But there's a difference between failure from incompetence and failure from exploration, Igor. The incompetent doesn't know why he failed. You do. You know now. You know that eight hundredths of a millimeter is the difference between an eagle and a brick. That lesson cost us an engine. It's a cheap price."
"Cheap?" Sikorsky looked at the molten metal. "That engine block cost more than a worker earns in ten years."
"Money is paper. Metal is earth. Both are renewable," Alexei said disdainfully. "Time, Igor, time is the only resource I can't print or mine. And you want to make me waste time looking for another engineer, training him, waiting for him to make his own mistakes, just to satisfy your wounded ego."
Alexei took the resignation letter. He lifted it to the light.
"This letter isn't humility. It's vanity. It's a childish tantrum... you're saying: 'Since I'm not perfect, I won't play.'"
Sikorsky felt as if he'd been slapped in the face. And so, blood rose to his cheeks.
"I want to build perfect machines!" the engineer exploded. "I want Russia to be the world's envy, not the laughingstock with exploding engines!"
"And it will be," Alexei said, lowering his voice to an intense murmur. "But not today. And not tomorrow. Listen well."
Alexei stood and walked toward the window, looking into the hangar's darkness.
"People think engineering is mathematics. They're wrong. Engineering is pain. It's a recurring struggle against a universe that tends toward chaos. Iron wants to rust, we know that quite well. Oil wants to burn. Gravity wants to crush us against the ground. Every machine we build is an act of rebellion against the natural laws God has imposed on us."
He turned toward Sikorsky.
"That seized engine isn't a disgrace. It's a martyr; it's the beginning of something much greater. It died to teach us where the limit is. Now we know Putilov standard steel doesn't work. We know that eyeball measurements won't serve us either, continuing with that type of practice won't make us improve. We've found the wall, and now, thanks to that failure, we know we have to jump over it, or dig under it, or blow it up with dynamite. Or create a ladder every time we find a new failure. That's how science works."
Alexei pointed to the crankshaft fragment.
"Keep that. Put it in a display case. Not to punish yourself, but to remind yourself of what you're doing."
Sikorsky looked at the metal. Anger and shame began to dissipate, replaced by a cold, clear sense of purpose. The child was right. He had been treating engineering like an art, waiting for inspiration, waiting for the longed-for motivation, when in reality it was only an internal struggle.
"What do we do about bearings, Your Highness?" Sikorsky asked, his voice firmer. "They've already blocked our imports... we can't get the precision we need. My designs depend on high revolutions. Without ball bearings, the Ilya Muromets will never have the power to lift its payload."
Alexei smiled. It was a tired smile, but there was a flash of cunning in it.
"If they close the door on us, we'll enter through the chimney. You're right, Igor. We can't manufacture perfect steel balls today. We don't have the machines for that. So we'll change the problem."
Alexei took a pencil and drew a quick diagram on the back of the resignation letter.
"Have you heard of Babbitt metal bearings?"
"That white metal, composed of tin, antimony, and copper alloys?" Sikorsky asked. "I understand it's old technology. It's generally used in train car axles. Its main function is to lower friction, but they wear out too quickly and don't withstand extreme pressures."
"They don't withstand extreme pressures in direct contact," Alexei corrected. "But what if we inject oil under pressure? Not by drip format, Igor. But using an injection method that introduces a torrent. That is, inserting a high-pressure pump that forces an oil wedge between the shaft and bearing. This would theoretically make metal never actually touch metal. The shaft would float on a layer of indestructible fluid."
Sikorsky looked at the drawing. His mind began spinning, calculating viscosities, pressures, surface areas.
"It would be something like forced high-pressure lubrication..." he murmured. "But this... would require a much more powerful pump than we have. And also larger oil radiators to dissipate fluid heat. This engine would be heavier than current ones. Something more complex in plumbing terms."
"But it would work without German bearings, which is what's important. Right?" Alexei finished. "It would be a Russian engine. Obviously it would be heavy and ugly. Maybe it loses 10% thermal efficiency. But it will fulfill the important function, which is that it will roll, and also, it will fly. And when winter comes, and German oil freezes in Krupp engines, our engines, hot and bathed in fluid, will keep roaring, which would be an advantage in winter."
Sikorsky closed his eyes, visualizing the redesign. He could see it. It wasn't the elegant solution he wanted. But it was viable.
"I see. I'll have to redesign the entire crankcase," Sikorsky said, opening his eyes. "And the lubrication ducts will have to be machined inside the block."
"Then start," Alexei said. "You have Stanislav for oil chemistry. You have Vasily and the workers for casting. And you have me to get you the money."
Alexei took the resignation letter from the table. With slow, deliberate movements, he tore it in half. Then he joined the halves and tore them again, until only paper confetti remained.
He let the pieces fall on the broken crankshaft.
"Don't write me a letter like that again, Igor Ivanovich," Alexei said, his tone becoming icy for an instant. "I've given you permission to fail. I've given you permission to break machines. But I don't give you permission to give up. Russia is on the edge of a precipice, and you're the man who has to build us wings before we fall."
"Yes, Your Highness," Sikorsky murmured.
"Good. Now, serve me some of that horrible tea you have there. It's cold and I have to return to the Palace before my mother notices I've escaped through the window."
Sikorsky looked for another glass, cleaning it with his shirttail. He poured the cognac.
They toasted in the hangar's semi-darkness.
"To friction," Alexei said.
"To friction," Sikorsky responded.
The amber liquid burned the man's throat, but it also burned the melancholy that had taken hold in his being. The artist's depression had disappeared, replaced by the problem-solver's obsession. Tomorrow would be hell, he knew that quite well. He would have to shout at foremen, redesign blueprints, and fight against the physics he had proposed in theory.
But he was no longer alone. He had a mission. And he had an engine to build, one that didn't need Europe's perfection to function, but survived with the tenacity that Great Russia has always had to endure.
When Alexei left, disappearing into the night surrounded by his Cossack shadows, Sikorsky didn't look at the bottle again. He turned on all the office lights, took a sheet of clean paper, and began drawing a gear oil pump.
. . . . . . . . . . .
A/N: If you've enjoyed this story and want to read ahead, I have more chapters available on my patreon.com/Nemryz. Your support helps me continue writing this novel and AU. Thank you for reading!