by Bill Schutt
“But he knows things, sir. Things he could not—”
“That will be all, Corporal,” Wolff said, with a dismissive wave of his own. “Please go to your bunk.”
At the far side of Nostromo Base stood the chemical preparations shed. Voorhees had moved his operations there for the night, during what Wolff promised would now become forty-eight- and even seventy-two-hour shifts.
Voorhees knew that, having made Wolff’s scheisse list, Schrödinger should have snapped him in two by now, if not for the fact that Sänger’s Silverbirds needed at least one more stage of thrust beyond the sleds. Thus the old man was able to buy Voorhees at least a brief respite against death, by convincing Wolff that the young engineer was still necessary.
“You must have been mad to tell him about nuclear rockets going to other planets,” Sänger had said, neglecting to mention that he had been the one who first mentioned it to the colonel. That, and a fear that Voorhees might be losing his focus on this mission. “Heisenberg’s atom bomb program has failed and with that failure we have rockets but no payload. How much faith do you think our colonel has that Kimura’s pathogens will prove to be an effective weapon? Personally, I have doubts. And then there you go, just like von Braun and the other dreamer, Heisenberg, talking about voyages to worlds other than our own.
“Madness!” Sänger cried, throwing his hands up in the air as he walked away. “How can I save you from your own madness?”
How, indeed, could anything be saved, anywhere, at this stage in the war? Voorhees knew that each Silverbird was an increasingly perfected marvel of scientific achievement, its full potential nearly indistinguishable from magic. And what is the very first thing we human creatures think to do with it? Voorhees thought. We figure out new ways of blowing ourselves up! Sänger himself had begun calling his Silverbirds “antipodal bombers.”
And yet, here Voorhees stood, toiling on the weapon anyway. Increasingly, though, it was looking like a one-way flight, in which each of the space-planes would be thrown away, in much the same manner his new strap-on “bottle rocket” boosters would be discarded, once they were used up, and in much the same manner he himself had nearly been thrown away, for the mere utterance of a few wrong words. Everything and everyone was expendable.
As the clock touched 5 A.M., Voorhees’s team was mixing and molding tube segments of aluminum powder and oxygen-rich resin for the strap-on boosters. They were just large enough and powerful enough to give each Silverbird an extra push toward space, kicking in after the monorail sled had served its purpose and before the main fuel tanks were employed.
Now, almost to a certainty, Voorhees could get each of Sänger’s space-planes to skip like a pebble off the surface of a pond, down from space and across the upper atmosphere, at least as far as the other side of the world—all of this in approximately forty-five minutes.
In his wildest moments of abstract fantasy, Voorhees wished he could pilot one of the Silverbirds himself, perhaps landing it on an American salt flat, where it would be saved, hopefully pointing the way toward a better world to come, after the war. But this was not to be. He looked around, and he knew: “I am in Hell.”
And always, at times like these, he asked himself, “Lisl, how did I ever get into something as horrible as this?”
CHAPTER 17
In the Shadow of Hydra
We were told that our lives were not to be considered in the destruction of this target.
—SERGEANT J. G. MCLAUGHLAN, 405TH SQUADRON, RAF
Christ almighty, boys! Just look at the fires—just look at the fires!
—SERGEANT K. G. FORESTER, 90TH SQUADRON, RAF
The European red deer had been in Peenemünde for roughly ten thousand years by the time the rocket men arrived. Both species were drawn in by the same features: calm waters, dense forests of ancient oaks and pines, warm summers, and solitude. During the twelfth century, the Germans used the natural deepwater harbor at Peenemünde to gain a foothold before driving out the Slavic tribes that had inhabited the region since the end of the Ice Age. Except for a seventy-year interval in the seventeenth century (when the Swedes had somehow taken over the peninsula), the harbor was used almost exclusively by German fishermen, and by ships supplying the village of Peenemünde. During the winter of 1936–37, fishermen, their families, and all the inhabitants of Peenemünde had received “requests” from the government “suggesting” that they should consider relocation. While some of the villagers understood immediately that a nod from that direction was as good as a shove, and decided to haul up stakes, others (fishermen, mostly) expressed a rather vocal defiance—at least among themselves. There had always been minor squabbles among these men, but they were united in their stance that their hard work put food on the plates of Germans, even those in Berlin. In an unprecedented show of solidarity, they voted a pair of their most articulate brethren to represent them on an appeal to the Chancellery: “We must be allowed to stay.”
A week later, a team of marine engineers arrived at the deserted fishing village to begin construction of the extensive dock system that soon stretched like fingers into the dark, deep waters near the mouth of the River Peene.
Along the Baltic Coast
SUMMER OF 1943
* * *
The feeling of deceleration had awakened Maurice Voorhees from a fitful nap, just before his mind registered the sound of a train’s whistle. He rubbed his eyes and yawned. When von Braun himself invited Voorhees to Peenemünde, he would never have believed his own mother if she had told him that the best day of his life and the worst day of his life could become the same day.
Looking out the window, he saw that the train was running on an elevated track. The hardwood forest he had been watching pass by when he dozed off was gone, replaced by marshland, partially obscured by a damp mist. The tang of salt in the air told him they were near the coast. There were buildings, scattered here and there, and the train slowed further as it passed a row of steep-roofed cottages. Voorhees read a weathered sign and the metallic squeal of brakes confirmed that “Zinnowitz” was a station stop. He yawned again but the sound of voices caused him to straighten up in his seat.
What on earth?
There were hundreds of people on the narrow station platform. Men and women. At first he had the absurd notion that it might be some kind of demonstration, but no, they were all jostling for position, waiting to board the train. Voorhees shifted to a window seat just before a crowd spilled into the passenger car. Within thirty seconds, they had filled every bench and staked claim to all of the available standing room. The riders seemed strangely subdued, speaking in hushed tones, if they spoke at all, but Voorhees was still able to identify half a dozen accents—northerners, Berliners. Someone was speaking Czech.
This is no ordinary commuter train, he thought, and almost immediately they were moving again.
A balding, middle-aged man had landed next to Voorhees with a grunt. He was clutching a lunch box, which he immediately opened. As the sharp scent of cheese rose from the box, the man unwrapped a hunk of sausage and bit off a sizable mouthful.
“Good morning,” Voorhees said to his seatmate, bowing his head slightly.
“Mmmmmmm,” he replied, rearranging the contents of the tin box.
“Zinnowitz is a beautiful village. Have you lived there long?”
The man looked at him for the first time. “You are new here,” he said, with a heavy Bavarian accent. It was not a question.
“I’m Maurice Voorhees. Pleased to meet you.”
The Bavarian stared at Voorhees’s extended hand but did not take it. Then he turned his attention back to the contents of the lunch box.
Voorhees lowered his hand and turned back toward the window. The train had left the village behind and he caught a glimpse of the Baltic Sea before it disappeared behind a blur of pine trees and sand dunes.
Yes, I am new here, he thought, suddenly feeling very much alone in a train car full of people, every one a stranger. I
am new here.
After several minutes, the train slowed again and Voorhees thought that they must be arriving in Peenemünde. Finally. He pressed his face to the glass, trying to get a look forward.
They were approaching something, moving progressively more slowly, and suddenly the apprentice rocket designer felt frozen in place, his excitement turning to confusion. The view was partly obstructed by a twenty-foot-tall fence topped with barbed wire. Within the seemingly endless, fenced-in enclosure stood row after row of squat, unpainted buildings, interspersed with guard towers.
This is Peenemünde? he wondered, feeling a churning deep in his abdomen.
Then, as the train’s deceleration continued, Voorhees saw men in ragged gray clothes, standing in a sandy yard. Or are they statues? But why would anyone put statues here? Why would—
One of the statues locked eyes with him. Save me!
Voorhees flinched as if stung by a wasp, and a part of his mind cried out, Turn away! Now!
But even as the train continued to draw slowly away, the statue man’s eyes did not let him turn away, and they held each other’s gaze, until the last possible second.
“What is this place?” he said to the Bavarian, in a low whisper. The man gave no answer, and made no eye contact. He simply sat silently, looking down at his own folded hands. He had already given the only answer he could: You are new here.
By sundown of that first day, Voorhees was buried deeply enough in his work that he was able to forget that the statue man—and anything else outside his little world of rockets—really existed. This is a good way to be, at this kind of time, he decided. There had been no tour of the facility and no formal introduction to his colleagues, and this, too, was good. Within minutes of stepping off the train, he was brought to the Peenemünde Propulsion Development Laboratory, where he was allowed to bury all of his thoughts in the new rocket engines—which had begun to develop problems, big problems. The reports revealed that the engines were developing an alarming tendency to melt through during flight. A week earlier one of the V-2s had spun out of control, crashing into a Luftwaffe airfield, and although no one was killed, four planes were destroyed and the explosion had left a large hole in the ground. Even more unfortunate was the presence of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, who had come to Peenemünde to watch the test. According to one of his new coworkers, after the explosion Himmler twisted his face into a smile and commented, “Now I can return to Berlin and order the production of close-combat weapons with an easy conscience.”
Maurice Voorhees sat in a deserted corner of the mess hall contemplating the V-2 launch failure. To a passerby, it might have seemed that he was focused, to a strangely intense degree, on a thin crack that ran along the inner rim of his empty coffee cup. But the rocket man’s imagination was actually walking around in his own internal 3-D picture of the engine’s combustion chamber, reenacting its destruction from within the engine itself.
It was a perplexing problem. Recent successes at increasing thrust and fuel efficiency were being mirrored by an as yet untamed increase in temperature—rising quickly above twenty-four times the boiling point of water, and above the melting point of the combustion chamber itself.
The obvious solution was to build the engine parts out of more resilient alloys, but with proper metals in short supply, the Peenemünders had been ordered to rely on steel. How can we stop the steel from cracking, and eroding, and melting? Voorhees wondered. How can we—
Voorhees ran his right index finger over a slice of buttered toast, then held the digit up in front of his face. As he watched, butter began to run down his finger—coating it. Using his other hand, Voorhees picked up the cracked coffee cup and ran his butter-coated finger along the inside. Peering into the cup, he could no longer see the contours of the tiny fissure. Voorhees smiled to himself and looked up, into the eyes of a beautiful, bespectacled face.
“May I join you, Dr. Voorhees?” she asked. The woman had already been sitting across the table, in front of him—for how long, he had no idea.
“Oh . . . ah . . . yes,” he said, setting down the cup. Noticing his butter-coated finger, he rested his hand stiffly on the table.
“That’s a unique way to take your coffee.”
“Yes . . . I mean, no. I . . . I was working.”
“I see,” she said brightly. “I’m Lisl.”
“The pleasure is mine,” he said, automatically extending his hand to shake hers, before remembering his buttered finger.
She handed him a napkin.
“Thank you, Lisl,” he said, wiping his hand. “But how did you know my name?”
“Why, everyone knows who you are,” the woman said. “Don’t they?”
Voorhees sat up a bit straighter. Hadn’t he recently overheard a colleague at the university refer to him as “the next von Braun”?
“Well I—”
The girl started to laugh, and seeing this, Voorhees made an uneasy transition from boastful to puzzled.
“What?”
“It’s written on your lab coat, you silly duck.”
Voorhees looked down at the neatly stamped signature on his pocket protector, then hid his face in his hands.
“You’re new here, aren’t you?” Lisl asked. It was the second time that day he’d been reminded of this fact, but this time, he responded with a laugh.
Early the next morning, he took Lisl Mueller on their first date. It started out well enough. Lisl had clearly impressed Voorhees with her lifelong dream to become a physician, and she had further impressed him with her feat of having talked her way into her current job of medical assistant. Yes, it had all been going so clearly well, until he suggested that they take a walk through a nearby field. “I want you to see something special,” he had said.
Unfortunately, though, among the adjectives Lisl might have used to describe sitting beside a hole in the ground, special was not on the list. The crater, Voorhees explained, had been formed by yet another failed rocket launch. Her feet dangled over the crater rim as she watched Voorhees crawling through clumps of dirt and twisted metal in the bottom of the pit.
“You sure know how to show a girl a good time,” she said, checking her watch, for what he would have noticed, had he been paying attention, was the tenth time. Finally, she picked up a pebble and bounced it off the back of his head.
“Ouch!” he cried, and stood up. Shielding his eyes from the sun, he squinted up toward where she was sitting. “Why did you do that?”
“Sorry. The ground’s a bit shaky up here. I think this whole thing could let go at any second.”
“That’s impossible,” he called back. “These crater walls aren’t steep. I’d say the whole thing is completely stable.”
“Well, maybe it’s not the crater that’s getting unstable.”
“But look at this,” he said, standing up excitedly. He held up a jagged piece of dark green–painted metal, about the size of a dessert dish.
“That’s really nice, Maurice, but I think I just saw a wild dog.”
“It’s part of the V-2’s thrust director assembly.”
“The what?”
“Wait a moment, I’ll bring it up.”
“Please Maurice, don’t—” Lisl stopped. Voorhees had already scrambled halfway up the wall of the crater and a few seconds later he’d hauled himself over the rim.
“—bother.”
“It’s no bother, really. Just look at this!” he said, presenting the metallic scrap to her as if it were a Fabergé egg. He was covered with dirt and smelled as if he had spent the whole morning rolling around in a campfire pit.
“That’s . . . really interesting,” she said, but he knew, all these months later, that she had probably thought of saying, That’s a jagged piece of shrapnel.
“You can touch it if you want,” he offered.
Lisl frowned at him.
“Go ahead. Please—touch it.”
Afterward, her diary had recorded, “Definitely weird, but still cute.
”
She pressed an index finger to the cold metal, then forced a smile. “And getting more weird by the moment,” she had written.
“You’re touching something that was almost out there,” he tried to explain.
Lisl sighed. “You’re already out there, Maurice.”
“No, wait. We take metal and silicon out of the earth and evolve it into something more than it was. We give it a part of our consciousness—the soul in the new machine, bound for the new wilderness. Do you understand what this means?”
“Try making me understand, Maurice.”
“In a hundred years, we’ll have known the moon and the planets and I’m sure we’ll be reaching toward the stars and the unexplored deeps of space. Gazing back upon Earth from so far away, it will become all but invisible.”
Lisl shook her head, very slowly. At first Voorhees merely believed she had reached a kind of saturation point on the subject. But there he had underestimated her. “Look around us,” she said. “You, von Braun—you point your eyes at the moon and the stars, but that’s not where your rockets will be aimed. Think about the cities these weapons will hit.” She gazed into the pit forlornly. “Once you finish working out the kinks.”
Voorhees had flinched at the word weapons. “Yes, well, the military will use the rockets at first, against military targets.” Then he whispered, “But who knows how much longer this war can last? And after that—one day rockets will orbit the earth, landing on runways as far away as America and China.”
She uttered a cry of frustration and stood, dusting herself off. “But we are at war with America and China. Have you forgotten that?”
Voorhees had no reply.
Lisl shook her head again and turned from him. “Your far frontiers,” she said, walking away from the crater. “One day you’ll go too far. If you haven’t already.”
Thinking back, Voorhees could not recall how many weeks had passed between his “first date” with Lisl and the afternoon that von Braun let out the words that confirmed Lisl’s worry that he was already in deeper than he understood. He had arrived early to a staff meeting with Dr. von Braun and the members of the Propulsion Lab. As he turned a corner, there in the hallway was the leader of the rocket men, speaking to General Dornberger, the Wehrmacht officer who ran Peenemünde.
