“You mean,” McHenry began, “they could change the ending to Casablanca to where the Germans win?”
“Yes, they can, although it sounds like one they would have simply erased. They can do that even in your time.”
*
Chapter 15
“When the moon is full it throws its swath of gold across the lovely Mediterranean, and sometimes the nights are so calm and moontinged and gentle that you cannot remember or believe that the purpose of everything around you is death.”
— Ernie Pyle, war correspondent, (April 19, 1944)
Wednesday, April 19, 1944
McHenry met Dale for breakfast the next day. He was upbeat, having decided that the Führer probably had more things to worry about than Parker. If true, the decision would be put squarely into the realm of science. That could still be a problem, he thought, but Parker would get a fair chance by the SS. His friends in the Luftwaffe would then do their very best to save his life.
The sad expression on Dale's face gave him the news before she could even say the words. “I'm so sorry, Sam.”
He sat at the table and slumped. Any pretense of defiance as a P.O.W. had disappeared from his mind days ago. Now he was giving up the pride he had felt as a man who had risen to the most unusual of situations. He had so much looked forward to sharing this experience with Parker, showing him the future, the Earth from 22,000 miles above, and then teaching him to fly through space.
She held her long fingers over his hand. “Let's talk over lunch.”
“I'm not hungry.”
“You still need to eat,” she said warmly. She then instructed the machine to give them both the same meals they had the last time they breakfasted together.
“I didn't know you could do that,” he said.
“It remembers everything.”
He didn't eat right away, but he did take a sip from his soda. The cold drink was refreshing. He never guessed the effect was designed to subtly ease the stress on his nervous system. In that respect, the meal was not entirely the same one he had the day before.
“I was looking forward to showing him the wonders you have. He would have loved the food.”
“Do you really believe he would have liked being here?” she asked gently.
“It's better than dying,” he said.
“I don't think you felt that way at first. He may never.” She looked for any response and then continued. “The things that are important to you might not be important to him.”
“He's still better off here than dying in the water.”
“I'm sorry, Sam. I wish we could have done it. All of us do. But we also have to think about the security of the Reich.”
“I don't expect anyone to take risks for me or my friend. All I wanted was a fair shake.”
“We did that,” she insisted. “We tried everything. I'm just so sorry that we couldn't find a way.”
McHenry heard the desperation in her voice and believed her. “No,” he said. “I should apologize. I knew this could happen. I should really thank you for trying. Everyone. Please tell all the SS people that I thank them, too.”
She seemed pleased, or at least relieved, at his thoughtful words. “Sam,” she said after a pause, “We of the SS are calling the regiment to parade. It's a function to celebrate Adolf Hitler's birthday. The main watch room will be converted into a temporary review field. A few of the senior Luftwaffe staff will be there, too. I know that you may not appreciate our first Führer the way that we do but I do think you should attend. You might enjoy it.”
He wasn't in the mood to celebrate Hitler's birthday but he nodded his head. “Yes, I'll be there,” he said.
“Good! It's a formal military event. You'll do me the courtesy of standing at attention when we're in formation, won't you?”
“I always stand for the Kommandant,” he noted. “You've seen it yourself whenever somebody around here shouts ‘Achtung!’ The Geneva Convention demands prisoners respect proper military formality. Heck, I even get up when everyone else is standing for those ridiculous morning Führer speeches — including by Hitler himself — and you know I hate that. I'm not going to Heil Hitler but I won't embarrass you either.”
She smiled tenderly, then looked down at his garment. “Rechner, Herr McHenry will need special attire for the Führertag event. Give him a dark blue civilian suit when he gets ready for it. And give it some yellow trim.” She looked back into his eyes and smiled. “You'll look good in that. It's very stylish in our time.”
“When is Hitler's birthday?”
“Oh Sam!” she said, raising her voice just a bit. “That's the first thing we should have taught you. It's the twentieth of April. That's tomorrow.”
*
Barr swung the Tiger gently to the east, heading to the last satellite on the recall list.
“Fifty seconds,” he reported to Mallory, the SS man beside him. At their present velocity, relative to orbit, they could have every satellite on the recall list inside the ship in record time. Anxious to complete the mission, Barr already had his finger on the satellite trap control.
This probe was a small one, an SB-27. Like all satellites on this mission, it was black as night, wrapped in an unterkarbon net, and virtually undetectable. Even active sensors would require a distance of less than fifty meters. They would have to rely almost entirely on the position recorded in the manifest and hope it hadn't drifted too far. Barr set the trap to snag the probe. They were closing in. He tweaked the stick one more time and programmed a final breaking maneuver.
The field wake alarm startled them. Far below them, a Grauen ship was lighting up its interstellar drive while leaving Earth's atmosphere. Barr released the throttle and the shuttle coasted. Maybe they wouldn't be seen. Mallory targeted the main guns dead center on the enemy ship, just in case.
Rules of engagement were complicated. If they destroyed a Grauen ship here, one thousand years in their past, history would be changed. But simply being noticed by a Grauen ship could do that as well. The SS man would make the decision whether to fire.
“He doesn't see us,” said Mallory, watching the blip on the dome.
“Ja.” Barr agreed. It seemed like the Grauen would leave them alone. No one really knew the limits of Grauen technology. Weren't they millions of years ahead of the Reich? But then how could they not be aware of the Tiger's presence? If they were, they didn't act like it. Or maybe they just didn't want to fight. It looked to Barr as though Mallory certainly didn't. He decided to just let the Tiger coast until the Grauen ship was long gone.
They would miss the satellite but that was okay. A firefight with a Grauen here had to be avoided at all costs.
It might take almost an hour for Barr to return to position. This would normally be a fifteen-second maneuver but time was no longer the priority. He carefully plotted a course that would veer away from their original direction, all the while minimizing the energy use that might expose their position.
It would require another orbit. Maybe two. For Barr, the only good thing about the trip was that the SS man beside him kept quiet for now.
*
“You would have enjoyed meeting him,” McHenry told Vinson. They sat alone in the Tiger discussing his disappointment.
“In some ways, I feel that I did meet him,” said Vinson. “He was the one who followed you down into the water, wasn't he? I was listening from below.”
“He's the one.”
“I remember listening to his steady voice. He personally called that ship they sent after you. I am sure they worked faster because of his presence. Kathy — I mean Sturmbannführer Dale — was laughing because he ranked lower than the ship's captain. But he never identified his rank, and they were so very deferential to him.”
That provoked McHenry to smile. “They probably thought he was white.” It had happened before, he remembered. Almost all military officers were white, so it's easy to make that assumption. Even a Tuskegee airman could fall victim to it.
“You never talk about your experience living under racism,” Vinson observed.
“What is there to talk about? It's lousy.” It was not so much that McHenry didn't want to discuss it. As much as he liked Vinson, he didn't want to degrade his own country to a man who was, in effect, a soldier of a country the United States was at war with.
“Well, then,” Vinson said, eager to get back to the subject of flying. “We will set up for another descent exercise. Even with unterkarbon around you, you will need a lot more practice before you can evade the Grauen.”
*
“Two minutes,” Barr reported.
“Ja,” was the simple reply.
He looked over at Mallory, saw him studying the manifest, and then turned his attention to the satellite.
They would be coming in slowly this time. It was a risk to return to the same area as before, but a necessary one. The Grauen's field wake had come too close to the satellite. It certainly would have drifted. The longer they wait, the further it might stray. But how far had it gone? The machine would plot the best guess but there was no way to expect accuracy out of these measurements. A field wake was not a phenomenon of normal space, and therefore its influence could not be in the realm of normal physics.
“Sixty seconds.” Barr applied more braking and extended the trap. They were practically crawling now. He switched the display mode to a tactical view and the dome washed out the continents on the Earth below. The flight path projected on the dome began to split. The rechner could no longer compute the expected position as one straight line.
“Why so slow?” asked Mallory.
“That Grauen field wake jarred the satellite's orbit,” Barr explained. “We cannot have a fix unless we get really close. We may have to make several passes or wait for it to realign.”
“Why are you only finding out now?”
Barr took a deep breath. “We knew there would be a deviation when the Grauen passed us.”
“I did not know that.”
“Well, why did you think we were coming in so slowly?”
Mallory didn't have time for an answer, even if he had one. An alarm sounded again, only this time it was a damage alarm. They had just hit the satellite.
“Scheiss!” shouted Barr. But it was worse than that. The satellite's unterkarbon net tore loose from its mount and a few of its fibers touched inside the Tiger's open cargo hold. Barr's status display lit up in a way he had only seen in a simulation. The unterkarbon was reacting to the normal matter. He jettisoned the cargo, a rack of satellites they'd taken in before. But it wasn't enough.
“What do I do?” asked Mallory.
“Just man the guns,” Barr said angrily. Seconds ticked by and the display indicated more trouble was brewing. The Tiger's engines were affected, which Barr took to mean a failure of the power system. Or was it? Three percent of the engines were out. Then four percent, and then five. What was going on?
Like most modern systems, the unterkarbon was linked using nanotechnology structures — tiny machines created at the molecular level. These satellites were programmed to self-destruct in the event of an emergency. Did that programming extend to fragments in the net? Barr couldn't know, but it made sense and it was all he had to go on.
“Hold on!” he shouted. Without waiting for an okay from Mallory, he powered up the engines near the affected area. They were pushed against the left sides of their seats. This was unusual. These engines were designed to provide propulsion without a reaction. It was never supposed to feel like they were moving.
“What's happening?” asked Mallory — more shouting than asking.
Gee forces pushed hard but Barr spoke calmly. “I am running the engines out of phase. I believe the unterkarbon contaminants have reached the engines aft of the cargo hold. I am trying to overload that section.”
“What good would that do? That is only a chemical reaction. You need a nuclear one to destroy the unterkarbon.”
“I am not trying to destroy it,” Barr said, still able to maintain his calm even though they were now tumbling wildly fast. “It is creating a slow reaction on its own. I only want to fuse the nano units so they stop working against me.” He had been watching the engine power systems. Failures had risen to eight percent but they stopped climbing for long enough to be sure that the danger had passed. Barr shut down the engines again.
“We should have self-destructed,” said Mallory, recovering from his dizziness. “You emitted too much energy with that maneuver of yours. We could have been detected.”
“Our people need to be told about that Grauen. When I die for the Reich, it will not be for a stupid reason.”
“Don't you think they've seen it, too?”
“We are on the other side of the planet,” said Barr angrily. “And they need to see these field wake numbers.” That was technically correct, he realized, but it was a convenient excuse nevertheless. He thought about McHenry, the bird that almost killed him in that old airplane, and the enormous odds against that happening. If a man had to meet death on a mission, it should be while fighting and not as the victim of a freak accident.
He took a moment to make plans to retrieve the satellites he had ejected. They were going to be very late getting back.
*
McHenry and Vinson left the Tiger after an hour, pausing at the hatch. The hangar was empty. One of the Tigers was still missing but the second one was shut down.
“There should be someone here,” said Vinson. “A second Tiger is supposed to be ready to launch.”
“Something must have gone wrong,” suggested McHenry.
“Let's go see where everybody is.” Vinson made his way along the handholds on the railing and called to the rechner. He asked it a question in German while McHenry worked furiously to keep up with his fast movements.
They found Sanchez at a second hatch, still in the null-gravity section of the ship. McHenry had never been in this section before, although it wasn't far from the hangar area. Some of the exterior hatches could be accessed here. Sanchez was looking at a display panel on the wall.
“The unterkarbon will not retract,” she explained. “It was damaged and they had to dock outside”
“Damaged? How?”
“That is the interesting part.” She looked to McHenry. “They saw your Geier. It did not see them but its field wake moved the satellite. The Tiger ran into it.”
“And that damaged the Tiger?” asked McHenry.
“Unterkarbon nets are fragile at certain points,” said Sanchez. “Not as fragile as your P-40 but it is fairly sensitive. It is possible, although still unlikely, that they know we are here.”
Vinson put his hand on a panel, activating a screen on the wall. “Why are we still in condition three? We should be preparing to leave orbit.”
Sanchez snickered. “Maybe you should tell that to the Kommandant.”
“Who was piloting?” asked McHenry.
“It was Barr,” said Sanchez. “He is in debrief with the SS.”
“About a mechanical problem?” he asked.
“From the mouths of babes,” she laughed.
The men and women of the inspection team eventually came through the second outside hatch, still wearing space suits. McHenry recognized them, once they'd opened their helmets, having spoken with them before.
“The unterkarbon contaminated the drive system,” one reported to Sanchez, but speaking in English for McHenry's benefit.
“The entire underside was ripped but still functional,” said a woman beside him. “We just did a repair to strengthen it.”
“Is the passage secure?” asked Sanchez. “Can we go in?”
“Yes, everything is clear,” replied the first man. “There is already somebody in there now.”
“The passage is locked to Lieutenant McHenry,” warned a harsh voice. It was the rechner.
“Jawohl!” Sanchez replied. She turned to McHenry, smiling. “See? The rechner understands you are already a good enough pilot to st
eal a Tiger.”
The others laughed, as did McHenry. He felt some pride, but he also felt sad. It was another reminder that escape was impossible. The rechner would make certain of that.
“Not to worry,” said the spacesuited woman. “We might be doing an overhaul. The rechner will probably let you in while the Tiger is down for maintenance.”
The hatch opened just as they were about to leave. It was an SS officer carrying a tablet. He nodded in acknowledgment to them as he rushed through past them. There was something on his face that McHenry hadn't seen since his arrival. He didn't show the confidence that the others always had.
It almost looked like fear.
*
Chapter 16
NAZIS AND HOLY PLACES
Once more the President has spelled out American policy regarding the bombing of Rome. It is unfortunate that this explanation must be repeated again and again, but enemy propaganda makes that necessary.
...
The current Gallup Poll of American public opinion — covering Protestants, Catholics and non-church members — shows that only 19 per cent disapprove the bombing of European religious places when it is considered necessary by our military leaders. That minority should study prayerfully the President's statement.
— The Pittsburgh Press, (April 20, 1944)
Thursday, April 20, 1944
McHenry returned to his room and dropped himself into his chair. It was after midnight, but he didn't feel tired at all. He stared out at the Earth and studied the weather patterns. He desperately wanted to forget Parker. It would have been bad enough if Parker had been killed unexpectedly, but McHenry already knew the place and the time.
“Rechner, what can you tell me about the men that the SS wants to bring back?”
“Information on fifteen men on the retrieval schedule is available from public historical sources.”
He heard the words and remembered that the machine sometimes takes things literally. “I meant men and women.”
“Information on twenty-five men and women on the retrieval schedule is available from public historical sources.”
One Thousand Years Page 12
