V-S Day: A Novel of Alternate History

by Steele, Allen

  “Yep. Let’s get it on the road.”

  =====

  A half mile away from the launchpad, a voice blared from a loudspeaker outside a sun-bleached concrete igloo: “X minus fifteen minutes and counting . . . repeat, X minus fifteen and counting . . .”

  Within the blockhouse, nine men had gathered to shepherd Lucky Linda to her destiny. Six were seated at consoles arranged in a semicircle around the blockhouse’s windowless walls. Their view of the pad came from fuzzy, flickering images displayed on cathode-tube televisions above their stations, but for the moment they ignored the screens and instead focused their attention on the dials and meters arrayed before them. Loose-leaf notebooks lay open before them; every now and then, someone picked up a slide rule and double-checked the numbers on his console. They murmured to one another, speaking an arcane dialect of technicalia only they could understand. No one knew more about the distant spacecraft than these men, and for good reason: They’d designed and built it.

  An Army Air Force officer in full uniform quietly stood at the back of the room, arms folded across his chest, eyes regarding the men from beneath the bill of his cap. Colonel Omar Bliss had been Blue Horizon’s project director from the very beginning; for the last year and a half, his every waking moment had been spent bringing this scenario to reality. Though normally accustomed to leadership, he knew better than to interfere with what was going on around him. Events were now beyond his control; all he could do was watch, wait, and pray.

  Bliss’s gaze shifted to the center of the room, where a tall, thin man with a balding head and a trim grey mustache stood before a submarine-style periscope, peering at the distant pad. Although the most senior man in the room, he had a frail vulnerability that made him seem even older than sixty-two. Bliss had a sudden urge to walk over and stand beside him, if only to offer support, but he restrained himself. Just then, the distraction would be unwelcome.

  “X minus ten minutes and counting.” The pad talker sat at the center console. A lean, red-haired man in his twenties, Henry Morse was the team member tasked with maintaining contact between Lucky Linda and men in the blockhouse—the 390 Group, the classified name for this team. Henry switched off the loudspeaker and listened for a moment to his headphones, then turned to the man at the periscope. “Just heard from Jack at the tower. Skid has entered the cockpit.”

  “Radio check,” Dr. Robert H. Goddard said, not looking away from the eyepiece.

  Harry turned to the mike again. “Lucky Linda, this is Desert Bravo. Radio check, over.”

  A few moments passed, then Skid’s voice came over the blockhouse speakers: “Wilco, Desert Bravo. Radio check one, two, three, over.”

  “We receive you loud and clear, Lucky Linda. Stand by for checklist.”

  Henry glanced at the notebook in front of him, then looked over at a Chinese-American physicist sitting nearby. “Initiate liquid oxygen and nitrogen tank pressurization,” Harry Chung said, carefully watching the gauges on his console.

  “Initiate liquid oxygen and nitrogen tank pressurization,” Henry repeated.

  Another moment passed. “LOX and nitrogen pressurization, go,” Skid said.

  Goddard raised his eyes from the periscope and looked at the master clock on the wall above the consoles. “Clear the pad,” he quietly told Morse.

  =====

  Once again, Klaxons bellowed near the launchpad, followed by Henry’s voice: “X minus eight minutes and counting. All personnel, vacate the launchpad immediately. Repeat, X minus eight and counting . . .”

  Lucky Linda’s canopy was still open. Within the cramped cockpit, Rudy Sloman lay upon an overstuffed leather acceleration couch, feet above his head. His air hose had been connected to a valve at his feet, and his hands moved across the instrument panel before him, flipping toggle switches in sequence with the checklist printed in a small spiral notebook strapped to his left thigh. Jack Cube and a technician stood on the catwalk; the technician grasped the canopy’s recessed handles and started to slide it shut but stopped as Jackson reached into the cockpit and tapped his friend on the shoulder.

  “Good . . .”

  “Don’t say it!” Skid snapped.

  Jack Cube stopped himself before he spoke the words Skid considered to be ill omens. “Happy landings,” he said instead.

  Skid responded with a wink and a quick thumbs-up. “See you when I get back,” he replied. Like he was just going out for beer and a pack of smokes.

  There was nothing left to say or do, so Jackson and the technician slid the canopy into position and locked it down, sealing the pilot within his craft. The technician stooped to pick up his toolbox, then both of them left the catwalk. Once they were off the platform, the technician bent down again and swiftly turned a wheel that withdrew the catwalk from the Lucky Linda. That done, he and Jackson headed for the stairs; the elevator was too slow, and they needed to get off the gantry as fast as possible.

  They were the last people to leave the pad. Everyone else was climbing into trucks and jeeps, and a diesel locomotive was already hooked up to the gantry. Jack Cube hopped into the back of a jeep; as it roared off, he looked back to watch the locomotive pull the gantry away from the launchpad. Lucky Linda stood gleaming in the morning sun, the clamps of its launch ring and the electrical umbilical leading from the nose to the adjacent launch tower its sole connections to Earth.

  “Good luck, Skid,” Jack Cube whispered beneath his breath.

  =====

  “X minus three minutes and counting.”

  Outside the blockhouse, technicians, infantrymen, and officers watched from behind a sandbag wall. Tripods rose above the barrier, supporting movie and still-image cameras; on a wooden platform, white-coated camera operators worked the enormous television projector whose images were being seen within the blockhouse. Emergency fire and medical personnel waited beside their vehicles, engines warmed up and idling.

  At the sandbag barricade, a master sergeant opened a matchbox and pulled out a pair of wax earplugs. A corporal beside him watched as he rolled them between his fingers, carefully shaping the plugs before fitting them into his ears.

  “Hey, Sarge,” he said, “is this thing gonna be loud when it goes up?”

  “Guess so. The others were.”

  The corporal nodded. He’d been transferred here only a couple of weeks ago and hadn’t seen any of the test rockets that were previously launched. “So they made a lot of noise, huh?”

  “Yeah, they did.” Sarge first plugged his left ear, then his right. “And then they blew up.”

  =====

  “Cabin pressure, check,” Henry said.

  “Cabin pressure 10 psi, check,” Rudy replied.

  The blockhouse door opened, and J. Jackson Jackson came in. Henry looked up as Jack Cube sat down beside him, then covered the microphone with his hand.

  “How’s he doing out there?” he quietly asked.

  “Great.” Jack reached for a pack of Camels on the table. “How’s it going here?”

  “Great.” Henry hesitated, then glanced over his shoulder at Goddard. “Except for Bob,” he quietly added.

  Jack Cube turned to look at Robert Goddard. The team leader continued to study the launchpad through the periscope. “Looks fine to me,” he murmured. “What makes you think something’s wrong?”

  “He hasn’t said much since he got here.” Henry uncovered the mike again. “Gyro check . . .”

  Jack Cube shook a cigarette from the pack, lit it, and tossed the spent match in the overflowing ashtray. All the other members of the 390 Group were busy at their stations: Taylor Brickell, Harry Chung, Michael Ferris, Hamilton Ballou, Gerry Mander. Only Lloyd Kapman was missing; the team’s other chemical engineer had volunteered to be stationed at McChord Field, to act as a spotter if and when the Office of Strategic Services received word that there had been a launch from somewhere in Germany.<
br />
  This left just Colonel Bliss and Bob Goddard. Bliss noticed Jackson when the lieutenant looked his way; the colonel gave him a brief nod, then returned his attention to the television screens. Goddard was more tense than he’d ever seen him. The knuckles of his hands were white as they gripped the periscope handles; despite the coolness of the blockhouse, there was a thin sheen of sweat on top of his head.

  “Checklist complete,” Henry said. “X minus two minutes, thirty seconds and counting. Lucky Linda, we’re about to poll the launch team. Stand by for final countdown.”

  “Roger that, Desert Bravo. Standing by.”

  Morse turned to Goddard again. “Bob?”

  Stepping away from the periscope, Goddard walked over to where Henry and Jack Cube were sitting. Standing behind Henry, he turned a couple of pages of the loose-leaf binder, then laid a finger at the top of a checklist.

  “Range,” he said.

  “Range clear,” Gerry Mander responded, his eyes on the radar screen. “Go.”

  “Fuel.”

  “Tanks pressurized at one hundred percent,” Ham Ballou said. “Go.”

  “Main engines.”

  “Go!” Michael Ferris snapped.

  “Electrical.”

  “Go,” said Harry Chung.

  “Guidance and telemetry.”

  “Guidance and telemetry are go,” Morse replied.

  “Pad safety.”

  “Pad secure,” Jackson said.

  The poll was complete, yet for a moment or two, Goddard said nothing. Noticing the silence, several team members looked over their shoulders at him. To Jack Cube, Bob Goddard suddenly seemed old and tired, as if a vast weight had settled upon shoulders that had lifted too much already. Valuable seconds ticked away as he gazed at the image of Lucky Linda on the nearest television monitor.

  “Dr. Goddard?” Henry asked. No answer; it was as if Blue Horizon’s scientific director hadn’t heard him. “Bob? Confirm launch readiness?”

  Goddard blinked, then looked away from the screen. “Yes,” he said, his voice low as he gave Henry a slow nod. “Launch status confirmed. Proceed with final countdown.”

  “Thank you.” Henry let out his breath, then bent to the microphone again. “Lucky Linda, you are cleared for launch.”

  “Wilco, Desert Bravo,” Skid said. “Lucky Linda standing by for final countdown.”

  “Final countdown commences on my mark.” Picking up a stopwatch, Goddard regarded the wall clock for a couple of seconds, then snapped the watch. “Mark, sixty seconds.”

  Henry pushed the mike button again. “X minus sixty seconds and counting.”

  “Detach umbilical,” Harry Chung said. “Switch to internal power.”

  Henry repeated the order for Rudy, and a couple of seconds later, the electrical cable extending from the launch tower to Lucky Linda fell away from the spacecraft.

  “X minus thirty seconds and counting,” Henry said.

  Robert Goddard returned to the periscope. Through its lenses, he could see Lucky Linda clearly. Its sleek white hull was washed by the desert sun, yet its base was shrouded by ghostly fumes rising from exhaust vents, making it seem as if it were floating on top of a cloud.

  “X minus twenty seconds and counting.”

  Goddard wiped his sweaty palms on the periscope handles. “Dear God,” he whispered, his voice unheard by anyone else in the room, “please help us.”

  “X minus ten seconds . . . nine . . . eight . . . seven . . .”

  REUNION

  JUNE 1, 2013

  “Six . . . five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . zero!”

  The twelve-year-old boy pushed a toggle switch on the launch controller in the palm of his hand, and an instant later, a yellow-white jet of flame erupted from the model rocket poised fifteen feet away. A loud fizzing sound, and the rocket—eighteen inches tall, hand-built from plastic and cardboard—leaped upward from the beach.

  Leaving behind a trail of brown smoke, the little rocket soared into the blue New Hampshire sky. The boy watched with anxious eyes as it arced out over a lake bordered by woodlands and summer cabins, all but oblivious to the applause of the adults gathered nearby. The only person whose opinion mattered to him was the old man standing beside him: his great-grandfather, who had encouraged him to take up model rocketry as a hobby.

  “Nice launch, good trajectory.” The old man’s voice was low, unheard by anyone except the boy. He lifted a Panama from his white-haired head to shield his eyes against the sun. “Fifty feet . . . seventy-five . . . a hundred . . .” A quiet chuckle. “Hey, Carl, I think it might reach escape velocity.”

  Carl didn’t smile. This was serious business. “C’mon, c’mon . . . where’s the parachute?”

  “Wait for it. Wait . . .”

  The rocket was a tiny white speck a little more than two hundred feet above the lake when its solid-fuel engine exhausted itself. Momentum kept the rocket going for a short distance after the smoke trail ended, but then it toppled over and began falling toward the lake. An inarticulate cry of dismay rose from deep within Carl’s throat.

  “Oh, darn it,” the old man said. “Parachute didn’t deploy.” The other grown-ups made remorseful noises—“what a shame” and “gee, that’s terrible” and so forth—but no one had more regrets than he and his great-grandson. They said nothing to each other as the rocket plummeted into the lake about seventy yards offshore. Two men in a nearby canoe immediately began paddling toward it.

  Carl gnawed his lower lip as he turned to the old man. Planting the hat back on his head, Henry Morse leaned heavily on his walking stick as he regarded Carl with sympathetic eyes. “Well . . . you had a good launch, and I think it went a bit higher this time.”

  “Not much. I was hoping it’d get to three hundred feet, at least. And the parachute . . .”

  “Yeah, not having the chute open is a real letdown.” Henry shook his head in commiseration. “I didn’t see the nose cone open, did you?” Carl shook his head. “So . . . any idea what went wrong?”

  Carl hesitated. He hated admitting mistakes, particularly to his great-grandfather. “I dunno . . .” he began, then stopped himself; I don’t know wasn’t an excuse Grandpa Henry would accept. “I guess I didn’t pack the parachute right. And maybe I should have used a bigger engine, too.”

  “I’d say that’s a good hypothesis.” Henry looked out at the lake. The canoe had reached the place where the rocket went down. The man in the bow reached over the side with a fishing net, thrust it into the water, then raised it over his head and shouted something they couldn’t quite hear. “Well, cheer up,” Morse said, pointing toward the canoe. “Looks like your recovery team is on the job.” He clapped a hand on his great-grandson’s shoulder. “Well, c’mon . . . let’s go back to the lodge, and I’ll buy you a beer.”

  “Grandpa!” Unnoticed until now, a tall blond woman in her thirties had come up behind them. “He’s not old enough, and you know it!”

  “Ellen, it’s a tradition,” Henry replied.

  “Not for nine more years it isn’t!”

  Her grandfather glared at her. “Rocketmen are exempt.”

  “Not in my space program.” Yet she was forcing herself not to smile as she ruffled Carl’s hair. “All right, enough of that. Put your stuff away, then come over here and help me set the table for lunch.”

  “Okay. Sure.” Carl closed the controller’s safety cover, then glanced at his great-grandfather. Later, Henry silently mouthed, giving him a conspiratorial wink. The boy grinned. It wouldn’t be the first time Grandpa Henry slipped him a can of Budweiser when no one was looking.

  Near the beach, tucked in among the pines and red oaks, was an old hunting lodge. Two stories tall, sturdily constructed of native oak and pine, its brick chimneys, Victorian gables, and screened-in lake-view porch hinted that it had bee
n built about a century ago. A couple of dozen people were gathered on the shaded lawn next to the house: mainly adults in their thirties, forties, and fifties, but also a handful of children and teenagers. Ice coolers lay open, packed with cans of soda and beer, and charcoal smoke drifted up from a barbecue pit, where burgers and wieners were being cooked on the grill. Four picnic tables had been pushed together to form a long, single bench, and a volleyball net had been set up near the floating dock in expectation of afternoon games later on. An American flag, raised at sunrise that morning, hung from a tall metal pole rising from the beach.

  Along the narrow dirt road leading through the woods, a Toyota Celica approached the lodge. Passing a sign—PRIVATE PROPERTY NO TRESPASSING—the car slowed down as it reached the end of the road. A dozen or more other vehicles were parked close together behind the lodge; the driver carefully slid his Toyota between an SUV and a maple tree.

  A young man in his midtwenties climbed out, casually dressed in chinos and a polo shirt. He reached into his car to retrieve a canvas shoulder bag from the passenger seat, then shut the door. Hearing the children, he started to head toward the beach.

  “May I help you?”

  The young man stopped to look around. An old black man—hair frosted white, face heavy with age—sat alone on a bench beneath a pine tree, a half-smoked cheroot dangling between the gnarled fingers of his right hand.

  “That’s okay, thanks.” The visitor started to walk off. “I think I can find my way.”

  “That’s not what I asked,” the old man said.

  The young man turned around again. “Excuse me?”

  “Should I?”

  “What? I don’t . . . I’m sorry, but I don’t . . .”

  “Excuse you.” The old man puffed at his cigar, exhaling without taking any smoke into his lungs. “In case you missed seeing it, there’s a sign over there that says, ‘Private Property, No Trespassing.’ Since this is a family gathering, so to speak, and I don’t recognize you as being a family member, that means you’re a trespasser. Furthermore, you’ve just stated you can find your way, which is a falsehood considering your status. So I’ll ask again . . . may I help you?”