V-S Day: A Novel of Alternate History (25 page)

Somehow, he’d managed to maintain a suborbital trajectory that had carried him across the southern Soviet Union, Mongolia, northern China, and the Pacific Ocean to the shores of hated America. His last skip had been just east of the Rocky Mountains, somewhere above the Black Hills of South Dakota; he was beginning to make his final descent, the one that would take him into the atmosphere one last time, on his way to New York and victory.

According to his instruments, his altitude was approximately eighty kilometers, his velocity nearly 2,700 km per hour.
Silbervogel
’s prow was pitched downward, and although he couldn’t see straight ahead, his view through the side windows showed him the sunlit curve of the horizon slanting toward him at the desired angle. Through most of the flight, the stars had been his best means of checking his position. This close to Earth, though, at this time of day, he discovered to his dismay that the morning sun all but obliterated the stars, making all but the brightest difficult to see.

Leaning closer to his port-side window, Reinhardt peered outside, trying to get his bearings. Although he could barely make out Draco or Ursa Minor, far below was an enormous, finger-shaped swatch of blue, like an inland sea. Lake Erie, if he correctly remembered the geography of North America. He was over Cleveland, with Pennsylvania just ahead. And after Pennsylvania . . .

Something lanced the window’s thick glass, a bright glimmer of light that stabbed the corner of his eye and made him wince. Startled, Reinhardt cursed beneath his breath and reflexively looked away. Then the intuition of a Luftwaffe fighter pilot kicked in. The sun was above him, yet the gleam had come below. A sundevil. A stray beam of light, reflecting off . . .

Another spacecraft?

“Impossible,” he muttered. All the same, he peered through the window again. For a couple of seconds he saw nothing except Earth far below. And then, far away yet nonetheless distinct, a tiny silver shape moved into sight, catching the light.

As incredible as it might be, he was not alone.

=====

Radar picked up Silver Bird before Skid’s eyes did, just as he’d expected. Nonetheless, he was startled when it made a sharp
ping!
indicating that its waves had connected with a solid object. There had been a couple of those already, yet when they didn’t repeat, he knew that they’d been nothing more than small meteors passing through his range on their way to disintegration in the upper atmosphere. This time, he waited thirty seconds . . . and
ping!
there it was again.

Lucky Linda
was above the Midwest by then, still climbing at a shallow angle as it soared over the southern Great Lakes region. For the last fifteen minutes, Skid Sloman had searched the black and nearly starless sky, praying that Goddard’s bright boys hadn’t been wrong when they’d estimated
Silbervogel
’s likely flight path. He’d seen nothing, though, and was beginning to wonder if everyone was wrong and the damn Nazis had sent the thing over the Atlantic . . .

Then he looked up, and there it was, slightly to his right and almost directly overhead, a tiny winged shape that caught the sun as it coasted across the black sky.

“Hello, sweetheart,” he said, a predatory grin spreading across his face.

“
Lucky Linda
, this is Desert Bravo.”
Jack Cube’s voice sounded as if it were coming from Mars.
“Please repeat.”

“Desert Bravo, I’ve acquired Silver Bird.” Skid was surprised by how calm he was. “He’s at eleven o’clock, range”—he glanced at the radar again—“approximately seven miles.”

He heard a commotion somewhere in the background. Although he couldn’t make out what anyone was saying, it wasn’t hard to imagine what was going on in the blockhouse. Then Goddard’s voice came over the wireless.
“You’re still out of range,”
he said, his voice clear and sharp.
“Don’t fire until you’ve got a dead bead on him.”

“Affirmative, Bravo.” Like it or not, Doctor G was right. The missiles didn’t require a precise targeting, but nonetheless he had to time their release just right; once they were fired, there was no way to guide them. And he’d learned in the simulator that he needed to get within four miles of Silbervogel to have a chance of hitting it.

Even before he looked at his radar, he knew from the increasing repetition of each ping that he was getting closer. The scope told him that he was nearly five miles from target and closing. When he glanced up again, though, he saw that Silver Bird was no longer in sight. A second later, the pings abruptly ceased, and when he looked down again, he saw that the radar screen was suddenly empty.

Silver Bird had vanished.

Startled, he anxiously swung his head back and forth, trying to spot the German spacecraft, before he realized what was going on and checked his periscope. Yes, there it was, above and behind him at one o’clock.
Lucky Linda
must be traveling faster than
Silbervogel
; within seconds, it had passed the other spacecraft from underneath.

Yet his trajectory was still angled upward as opposed to Silver Bird’s descent angle. If he wasn’t careful, he’d overshoot the other craft entirely and lose the chance to target it.

“Now or never,” he muttered.

“
Lucky Linda
, please repeat.”
Jack Cube had taken the mike back from Goddard.

Skid ignored his friend. Keeping a close eye on his periscope, he carefully nudged his stick to the left. The starboard RCRs fired, and in the eyepiece he watched Silver Bird move toward the center of the eyepiece. When it was where he wanted it to be, he braked his sidewise momentum by moving the stick back to the right, firing the thrusters on his port side.

Silver Bird was directly above and behind him. He could see the Nazi spacecraft clearly now; it looked like a little metal toy he might find in a Woolworth’s back home. He couldn’t tell for sure, but he was almost certain that it was just within four miles of his own ship.

He had two missiles, but he realized that there was no point in keeping one in reserve. If he missed the first time, there was no way he’d be able to perform the complex maneuver he’d need to retarget Silver Bird before it left his range and entered the atmosphere. Both missiles had to be fired at once.

“Target acquired,” Skid said as he reached forward to two bright red toggle switches positioned just above the radar screen. “Firing missiles.”

And then he snapped the two switches.

=====

Horst Reinhardt watched helplessly as the other spacecraft—it had to be American; there was no other explanation for its existence—approached
Silbervogel
from below, coming closer with each passing second.

Frustrated, he slammed his hands against the yoke. With no fuel for his engines, he was unable to maneuver; with no guns, he was unable to fight. The Americans would have no ability to strike at him before he completed his mission, so weapons and countermeasures were unnecessary—that was what he’d been told all along. Well, someone was wrong, wasn’t he?

Reinhardt wasn’t even able to tell that particular someone how badly he’d underestimated the enemy. He was out of radio range of the U-boat standing by in the North Atlantic. If he died today, no one would know how . . . except the pilot who killed him.

The American spacecraft disappeared as it passed beneath him. A few seconds later,
Silbervogel
’s forward radar array began to echo. Looking down Reinhardt saw a small blot appear on his scope. The American was closer now, yes, but it also appeared to be moving ahead of him.

A smile slowly crept to his lips. Was it possible that the American pilot had made a mistake? Reinhardt couldn’t tell what sort of armaments the other ship might have, but he sincerely doubted that they could be fired backward. And if the enemy craft continued to fly upward as he continued to descend,
Silbervogel
would pass behind the American and begin its final atmospheric entry untouched.

Reinhardt intently watched the scope. The American was still below him, just a little more than six kilometers away. He couldn’t see it through either of his side windows, but it appeared to be . . .

Suddenly, the radar pinged three times in rapid succession, and Reinhardt looked down to see two more blotches on the scope, smaller than the first one and quickly moving away.

Damn it! Missiles!

But then he saw that the blotches were moving away from him, and laughed out loud. “You idiot!” he shouted at the unseen American pilot. “There’s nothing in front of you! You missed me!”

Still laughing, he watched as the two small blotches continued to move away from him, angling upward so that they would cut across his angle of descent . . . and then they suddenly blossomed, becoming a pair of large, irregular patches directly in front of him.

The missiles had detonated less than two kilometers from his ship, and they’d left something behind.

Looking up, Reinhardt turned his head to peer through the left-side window. His breath caught in his lungs as he saw what appeared to be a translucent black mist spreading before him, one that sparkled in the sunlight as it came closer.

He was still wondering what it was when he heard a dull tap against the prow. Then there was another, louder this time, against the hull just in front of his window, and he caught a glimpse of a small object as it bounced away.

A nail, a few centimeters long. Reinhardt chuckled. Just a common nail . . .

And then
Silbervogel
flew into a cloud of thousands of them, and he barely had a chance to scream before they ripped his ship apart.

=====

Through the periscope, Skid watched as Silver Bird disintegrated.

The German spacecraft never had a chance. It was probably traveling several thousand feet per second when it entered the swarm of roofing nails the missiles had carried as their payloads. At that speed, the result couldn’t be anything except lethal. The German spacecraft came apart as if it had been thrown into a shredder, pieces of it flying away in all directions, oxygen spewing from what was left of its cockpit. Skid hoped that the guy flying the thing was dead by then; he almost felt sorry for him.

And then something must have short-circuited the electrical system controlling the bombs in the payload bay, for what remained of the ship was lost in a massive yet completely silent explosion. Skid winced as he saw this, but it was too far away for it to pose any threat to him. He’d veered away just after firing the missiles, to avoid running into the nail cloud himself.

That was it. Silver Bird was gone.

“Desert Bravo to
Lucky Linda
. Do you read? Please respond.”

Skid let out his breath. It had probably been only a few seconds since he’d fired his missiles, but he had no doubt that Jack Cube, Doctor G, and everyone else in Alamogordo were ready to faint. Time to let them know how things stood.

“
Lucky Linda
to Desert Bravo.” Skid grinned; he’d been waiting to say this for months. “Silver Bird is nailed. Repeat, Silver Bird is nailed. And I’m coming home.”

JUNE 1, 2013

“The news broke even before
Lucky Linda
got home,” Henry said. “The colonel was right about Skid’s transmitting in the clear. Every ham operator in the country picked up his ground communications, and it didn’t take long for some of them to figure out what was going on.”

“A lot of people saw Skid when he . . . came in for reentry.” Lloyd accepted another glass of water his nephew had fetched from the kitchen; Henry and Jack waited patiently while he took a drink. “No one had ever heard a sonic boom before, so . . . when he flew in over New Jersey . . . it was hardly a secret.”

“Uh-huh.” Jack Cube nodded. “Rudy told me that the last thing he expected was to find a crowd waiting for him. But there were probably a couple of thousand folks on hand when he touched down at Lakehurst Naval Air Station.”

“Wasn’t Linda there?” Doug Walker asked. “His girlfriend, I mean.”

“No, that’s just a legend . . . one of many, I’m sure you know. That shot of him kissing his girl at Lakehurst wasn’t taken until a couple of days later, when a
Life
photographer asked him to restage his climbing down from the cockpit.” Jack shrugged. “Like the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima, it’s a picture everyone remembers even though it’s not as spontaneous as it seems.”

He stood up to stretch his legs. It was late in the afternoon. Although sunset was still several hours away, the shadows on the den floor had become long. “All the same, Skid was proud of that picture. He autographed copies of it for the rest of his life, and long after he retired from the Air Force and took a job as a civilian consultant, he made a sideline telling his story on the lecture circuit.” He shook his head sadly. “Rudy passed away about fifteen years ago, and I still miss him. He was a great friend.”

“And everyone else?” Doug asked. “I know what happened to the three of you and Dr. Goddard, but the rest of the 390 Group . . . ?”

“Scattered hither and yon.” Jack walked across the den. “Like leaves on the wind.” He found a framed photo on the wall and took it down. “We came back out here again after the war for a little get-together,” he said as he carried the photo to the journalist. “That’s from the reunion.”

Walker studied the black-and-white photo. Everyone who’d belonged to the rocket team was standing at the lodge’s side door, with the notable exception of Goddard and Bliss. “This was the first time I saw this place,” Jack said. “I know the others weren’t crazy about it, but I kinda liked it . . .”

“Oh, so did we,” Henry said. “Just not after it got cold, that’s all.”

“The government bought the lodge and . . . gave it to us,” Lloyd said. “Sort of a . . . goodwill gesture. We’ve kept it . . . in our families ever since . . .”

“And held reunions out here every few years or so,” Jack finished. “After a while, it was just about the only time any of us saw each other again.” He shrugged. “And no one knew about what we did, really, except our families.”

“Once Silver Bird was shot down,” Henry said, “there really wasn’t much point in the 390 Group’s staying together.
Lucky Linda
went into a hangar until it finally got put in the National Air and Space Museum, and Skid became as famous as Lindbergh, but as for the people who designed and built it . . . ?”

“Classified,” Lloyd rasped. “Top secret. Couldn’t talk about . . . what we did.”

“Except for Bob,” Henry said, nodding. “When the press came searching for answers about who built
Lucky Linda
, the Army pushed Colonel Bliss and Bob forward as being the masterminds. I don’t think Omar minded very much . . . especially not after he was promoted to general and, after the war, put in charge of the new U.S. Space Force . . . but Bob wasn’t crazy about the attention. However . . .”

His voice trailed off, and he looked down at the floor. “He died only a couple of years later,” Walker said quietly, finishing what he might have said.

“Yes,” Lloyd said. “At the ranch . . . with Esther by his side.”

“Returning to New England wasn’t good for his health,” Henry said, “and all those cigars didn’t help either. That and the stress he went through did a number on him. He came down with throat cancer. A few months before he passed away, he lost the ability to speak. I went to see him, and all he could do was write notes to me.”

“So he never met Wernher von Braun, did he?” Walker asked.

“No, they never met,” Jack said. “Bob was already on his deathbed by the time von Braun was brought to the United States along with the rest of the German rocket team.” He shook his head in dismay. “I’m not sure the two of them would’ve gotten along, anyway.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” Henry looked at him sharply. “I was there when von Braun delivered the dedication speech at the Goddard Space Flight Center. He said that Bob was a lifelong inspiration for him, and that manned space exploration wouldn’t have progressed as quickly as it did if it hadn’t been for him.”

“Don’t forget that he . . . was arrested and . . . put in prison,” Lloyd added.

“Yes, that’s right,” Walker said. “As soon as the High Command heard that the
Silbervogel
had been destroyed, Himmler ordered the S.S. to arrest von Braun on suspicion of sabotage. He spent several weeks in prison and just barely escaped being executed before Speer talked Hitler into releasing him.”

“They let him go only because the Nazis still needed him,” Jack said. “They tried to get the A-4 program going again, but by then it was too late. They’d spent too much time and resources on Silver Bird, and so their long-range-ballistic-missile research suffered as a result. The only thing they ever got off the ground were the buzz bombs, and the Brits soon learned how to shoot them down.”

“Von Braun surrendered to the Allies as soon as he heard that the Third Reich had fallen,” Henry said. “He and Dornberger managed to talk Army intelligence into bringing him and the rest of the Peenemünde scientists to the U.S., where Bliss put them to work for the U.S. Space Force.”

“But you didn’t join them?”

“No.” Henry sighed, shook his head. “By then, I’d gone back to Worcester and found Doris . . .”

“That’s a great story,” Ellen interrupted, looking over at Walker. “Family legend has it that when Grandpa tracked down Grandma and started to explain what he’d been doing, she just said, ‘Oh, I know. You were building a spaceship.’”

“She wasn’t surprised a bit.” Henry was smiling at the memory. “In fact, I was the one who got taken by surprise when she said she’d be happy to marry me even before I asked.” The smile faded, and his expression darkened. “Anyway, I was like Bob . . . I didn’t decide to devote my life to space travel just to find new ways of killing people. When it became clear that the Space Force’s priorities were almost entirely military, I dropped out and became a science fiction writer instead.”

“Hey, don’t knock the Space Force.” Jack glared at him. “They got us to the Moon, didn’t they?” He turned to Walker again. “Anyway, everyone in the 390 Group pretty much went his own way after the war. After I went back to school and earned my doctorate, I joined up with the Space Force and was with them all the way through the Ares program, then retired after we got someone on Mars. Taylor went to work for Lockheed and became a systems engineer for their Skunk Works operation. Ham moved to St. Louis and went to work for Monsanto. Harry returned to Caltech. Mike landed a desk job at NASA after it got started and eventually became its Chief Administrator during Bobby Kennedy’s administration . . .”

“Gerry was the one who went the furthest,” Henry said. “He joined the Space Force, too, but only because that was the quickest way to get into space. Somewhere along the line, he decided that he wasn’t content just to be an engineer . . . he actually wanted to go out there. So he entered astronaut training, got picked for the space station project, and after that made his way into the lunar exploration program.” He grinned. “I’ve still got a moon rock on my desk that he sent me as a souvenir.”

“We saw each other . . . from time to time . . . over the years,” Lloyd said. “Sometimes here, and also at . . . space conferences and places like that.”

“But no one except our immediate families knew about our involvement in Blue Horizon.” Henry sighed. “It wasn’t fun, knowing that we had a place in history that we couldn’t claim. But the Pentagon wanted to make sure that the Soviets wouldn’t get to us and . . . I dunno, kidnap us to Russia and force us to build a moonship for them . . . so the 390 Group wasn’t publicly identified until just a few years ago. By then, no one cared anymore.”

“Well . . . maybe my book will change all that.” Walker glanced at his watch. He didn’t need to make mention of the time. It was getting late, and the story had come to a close. He let out his breath, then picked up his recorder and switched it off. “Gentlemen, thank you for . . .”

“There’s one thing you haven’t asked us,” Jack Cube said.

“I’m sorry?” Walker looked up at him again. “What did I forget?”

“Was it worth it?” Jack asked.

Walker blinked. “Umm . . . well, of course it was. If you hadn’t built
Lucky Linda
, Silver Bird would’ve bombed New York, and that could have changed the course of the war.”

“Oh, that’s obvious.” J. Jackson Jackson brushed it off. “I mean everything that happened since then . . . people going into space, landing on the Moon, heading on to Mars, all that. Did Blue Horizon push us into doing all that, or . . . ?”

“Don’t listen to him.” Henry picked up his cane, slowly pushed himself to his feet. “Jack’s been carrying on like that for years, trying to take credit for something he didn’t do. It was inevitable, and he knows it . . . we would’ve made it to Mars eventually, Blue Horizon or not.”

“Old business,” Lloyd wheezed as his nephew began to push his wheelchair from the room. “Save it for . . . another time.”

Jack started to object, but Henry ignored him. Instead, he beckoned for his great-grandson. “C’mon, Carl. Let’s take another look at your rocket, see if we can figure out what went wrong.”

“Sure.” As Ellen came forward to help Henry shuffle out of the den, Carl bent over to pick up his iPad. Waking it up, he noticed that the message light was blinking. “Hold on,” he said to his mother. “I think I got something from Dad.”

“All right, go ahead and check it. We’ll be out on the porch.”

Carl nodded, then sat down again. As the adults around him continued to follow one another from the den, he ran his finger across the screen to open the video app. As he’d expected, the menu told him that his father had called just a couple of hours earlier and left a message.

Carl touched the menu again, and his father appeared on the screen. He was seated in what appeared to be a departure lounge; behind him was a ticket counter and a gate, with several other travelers visible in the background. As usual, his father was using a public phone, and there was a rueful look on his face as he addressed the camera.

“Carl, hi, it’s me. Hey, I’m sorry, but it looks like I’m not going to make it to the reunion. My connecting flight from the Moon got delayed and . . . well, I’m stuck in orbit again. Tell your mother I’m sorry, and give Grandpa Henry my best. Hope you enjoy the weekend. Love you, son . . . see you later.”

The image froze, the replay arrow transposed over his father’s face. Carl was about to close the app when he noticed something else in the background: the flight schedule on the wallscreen behind the ticket counter. Curious, he used his fingertips to expand the image, and now he was able to read the board clearly:

TWA Translunar Service
Tranquility Station to New York LaGuardia Flight 902
DELAYED New Departure Time 1230 GMT
Shuttle: Robert H. Goddard

Smiling to himself, Carl closed his iPad. He had an answer to Jack Cube’s question.