V-S Day: A Novel of Alternate History (2 page)

“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.

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 . . .”

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 been 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?”

The two men regarded each for a moment. “I’m not trespassing,” the younger man said at last. “I was invited here.”

“By whom?”

“Dr. J. Jackson Jackson.”

“Why?”

“I . . . I’m a writer. My name’s Douglas Walker. I’m working on a book about the first American manned spaceflight.”

“The
Lucky Linda
mission.” A last drag from the cigar, then the old man dropped it on the ground and carefully ground it out beneath his shoe. “I assume you’ve already done much of your research, so you’re already aware of most of the facts, hmm?”

“Well . . . I’ve tried to do my best, but I need to learn more.”

The old man’s dark eyes locked on like a missile seeking a target. “Then you’ve come to the right place because, if you don’t recognize me, then you don’t know a damn thing.”

Walker’s face became ashen. For several moments he was unable to speak. “Oh my God,” he murmured at last. “Dr. Jackson, I’m so sorry, I . . .”

“I certainly hope so.” Jackson glared at the writer. “If you do this badly with someone who’s been waiting for you for the last half hour, my colleagues are going to chew you up and spit you out.”

“I’m sorry I’m late. I had to stop to get directions. And I didn’t recognize you at all.”

Jackson smiled slightly. “I can’t really fault you either way, I suppose. A bear would get lost in this neck of the woods. As for the other”—he sighed and shook his head—“well, astronauts make TV commercials while engineers get a fuzzy group photo. And since we’ve only been in touch with each other through e-mail . . .”

He didn’t finish the thought but instead picked up an onyx-headed walking stick resting against the bench and used it to slowly push himself to his feet. Walker rushed forward to help him, but Jackson waved him off. The old man was too proud to accept any assistance, but nonetheless he smiled and shook Walker’s hand.

“Well, c’mon then.” Jackson began shuffling toward the lodge’s back door. “Lunch will be starting soon. You’re in time for this, at least. Once we’ve chowed down, you can have that interview you came for.”

“Is the rest of the team here?” Walker fell in beside him, matching his slow pace.

“Yes . . . or what’s left of us, anyway.”

=====

The picnic table had been set by the time Walker and Dr. Jackson got there. Covered by checkered tablecloths, it seemed as if every spare inch was taken by platters of food: not just hamburgers and hot dogs, but also fried chicken, potato salad, corn on the cob, baked beans, turnip greens, corn bread, coleslaw . . . everything one might expect at a summer holiday feast. Sweating pitchers of homemade ice tea had been put out, with bowls of sugar cubes in easy reach if anyone cared to sweeten theirs. No one would walk away from the table hungry.

Although there was plenty of room for everyone, Walker soon discovered that it was not easy to find a seat. Little cardboard placards had been strategically set up at each place setting, identifying the person who’d be sitting there. When Walker looked closer, he noticed that beneath each name, printed in smaller letters, was another name: one of the ten men who belonged to the 390 Group. Since most of the people there were second- or third-generation descendants—children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, along with a few cousins or distant relatives—their surnames were often not the same as those of the team members.

Thus, when Walker finally located an unclaimed seat near the center of the table, he discovered that he was sitting across from David and Eileen Kisk; the second name on their cards was Robert H. Goddard, and once Walker began talking to them, he discovered that David Kisk was related to Goddard’s wife, Esther. Which made sense: the Goddards themselves never had children. To his left were Gerry Mander’s granddaughter and her fiancé, and to his right were Omar Bliss’s stepson Ronald and his children, with Ron Bliss nearly the oldest person at the table.

But not quite. Surrounded by their families, J. Jackson Jackson and Henry Morse occupied the seats of honor at opposite ends of the table. Both were in their nineties, and although they appeared to be in good health for men approaching their centennial years, Walker noted that their relatives took pains to make sure that they were comfortable. Beach umbrellas had been placed beside their chairs to shade them from the midday sun, and neither of them had to reach for food; platters magically appeared at their request.

Lloyd Kapman was nowhere in sight. When Walker asked where he was, Ron Bliss told him that the elderly chemist—the team member who’d spotted Silver Bird that fateful morning seventy years ago—was confined to a wheelchair and could no longer come down to the beach. He had his own table in the lodge, with his family keeping him company.

“Don’t worry,” Ron said quietly, “you’ll get to meet him later.” He shared a knowing look with the Kisks and Melanie Mander. “When they tell the Great and Secret Story.”

The others smiled, but no one explained what he meant by this remark.

As lunch went on, it became clear that everyone there knew everyone else. There was a lot of catching up, with news being traded about what they’d been doing lately. The conversation was light, with nothing being said about June 1, 1943. And yet Walker couldn’t help but notice that, from the opposite ends of the long table, J. Jackson Jackson and Henry Morse often glanced in each other’s direction. And when one man caught the other man’s eye, an enigmatic smile passed between them. It might have simply been the shared pleasure of two old men who’d lived long enough to be feted by their families, but Walker wondered if there was something deeper, a secret no one else was allowed to share.

The meal ended informally after ice cream was served, with people getting up and leaving the table to carry their paper plates and plastic utensils to trash barrels. Walker was surprised; he’d been expecting someone to stand and deliver a speech commemorating the historic events that brought them all here. But there was nothing of the sort. A handful of women start clearing the table. A volleyball materialized from somewhere and began to be batted back and forth among the kids, who were obviously itching to divide up on either side of the nearby net. Several people strolled down to the dock to have a smoke, courteously distancing themselves from those who didn’t share their habit. But no speeches, no ceremonies. Flag-waving and breast-beating had no place here.

Jackson and Morse were the last to leave the table. Escorted by their families, they slowly made their way toward the lodge. Still confused by all this, Walker approached Jackson again, just before his grandchildren helped him climb the short flight of steps leading to the back porch.

“Pardon me, Dr. Jackson?” The writer tried to be as polite as possible, but he was becoming anxious. “About the interview . . . is it possible I can speak with you and the others this afternoon before . . . ?”

“Come with me to the living room,” Jackson said. “You’ll get your interview there.”

The back porch ran the length of the lodge’s ground floor, its tall screen windows looking out over Lake Monomonac. A long oak table nearly as big as the one they’d just left stood in the middle of the porch, wooden benches on either side. Crock-Pots and empty trays showed that it had served as a way station between the kitchen and the picnic site, but at one end there was something else: the bent and waterlogged remains of a model rocket, its plastic nose cone open to reveal a small white parachute that had been removed from the casing.

Carl was seated at the table, studying an iPad. Its screen depicted a departure-angle view of the launch, footage captured by a tiny digital camera that had been aboard the rocket and downloaded into the tablet. Again and again, the beach fell away below the rocket during its brief flight, the lake becoming visible for a few seconds before the images came to an abrupt end. As Jackson and Morse walked by, Morse paused to gaze over the boy’s shoulder.