by Joe Poyer
He grabbed for the microphone, but von Braun leapt to his feet and shoved the major so hard he tripped and fell. Von Braun yanked him up. ‘I’ve wanted to do this for a long time,’ he grated, shaking the man like a rag doll. ‘You will not interfere again or I will kill you with my bare hands, do you understand? It is too late to stop now. Too late to stop the launching. Go telephone your boss Kammler for instructions.’
Von Braun flung him away and turned to the console as the major recovered his balance and clawed at his holstered pistol. A technician hit him with a wrench, relieved him of his pistol, and, grinning, dragged the inert body into a corner. Other technicians leapt for the SS guards posted around the room and took their weapons. Von Braun picked up the microphone.
‘Franz, what in hell do you think you are doing?’
Bethwig’s laugh floated from the speaker. ‘Care to change places with me, Wernher?’
‘You have to be mad. You are committing suicide!’
‘Of course. And how better? There is nothing left for me but this. Please, old friend, it’s much too late for recriminations. We both know there is nothing for it but to continue. There will be plenty of time to talk later.’
Someone pushed a note at von Braun and he spared a second to glance at it. ‘My God,’ he muttered, forgetting the live microphone. His voice bounced from the speaker, and everyone in the room turned to him.
‘Peenemunde is under attack,’ he announced, struggling to control his voice. ‘The fuel storage area in Peenemunde West has been blown up. An SS detachment was ambushed.’ This last brought a loud cheer, and the captured guards exchanged apprehensive glances.
Bethwig’s voice broke in on the babble in the control room. ‘Peenemunde is not under attack, at least not by the Russians. A friend is causing a diversion to keep the SS too busy to interfere with this launching. This is our last chance. Get on with it!’
For a single instant every eye was on the loudspeaker, then, as if of one mind, they set to work again; each technician present understood without explanation. Although he too understood and would gladly have traded places, von Braun shook his head in despair and announced the revised mission objective. Within minutes those of the launch crews whose tasks were completed began filtering into the empty VIP gallery, their excitement plain. A hoarse cheering broke out, all fear was forgotten.
The firing control officer announced T-minus-five minutes, and von Braun ticked the final entry in his log and relinquished control. His job was finished; the FCO had charge now. He watched the activity in the room with the detachment of someone far removed in time and space. For a moment he felt as if he had never had any part of the gruelling course that over the past fourteen years had led inevitably to this moment. And then the sensation was gone, and he realised they had done it. Now they would prove that man could travel to the moon. For just an instant there was a flood of bitter jealousy at the thought that he would never be first, but then he realised that for all his hopes and longing he had never really expected that he would be. Had Franz, he wondered, ever doubted? Had he ever thought, all those years ago, what this pact they had made with the Devil would cost? Had he suspected but gone ahead anyway, knowing that this was the only chance? Bethwig had given everything of value for this dream, far more than he, and now he was about to give his life.
The FCO’s voice broke in to announce T-minus-three minutes. Von Braun wished that he could talk to Franz now in these last few moments before the launching, but it was impossible. He could hear Bethwig’s calm, unemotional voice relaying an endless series of data readings to the FCO’s staff to confirm the telemetered readings. Already he could see the repeater dials on his console flickering. Telemetry had always been one of their biggest problems. Franz has chosen the correct course, he thought. Perhaps the Allies would want their services after this damned war ended. If they were still alive, that is, and the sight of the unconscious SS officer in the corner made him doubt that. Even so, no matter what, they would never again have the complete control they had here. If ever again they or anyone else was offered a similar opportunity, the bureaucrats would hound them to an extent that would make Heydrich’s and Himmler’s interference seem like child’s play.
There was so much to learn, to accomplish, so much that could be given back to humanity, but the fools and the bureaucrats would never understand that. Von Braun put his face in his hands and sobbed, as much for the loss of their dream as for his friend going willingly to his death.
Bethwig was relaxed in the couch, ignoring for the moment the constant stream of chatter flowing from the earphones, and hugging the idea to himself as the elapsed mission time chronometer hand wound down. With less than two minutes remaining, there was no way to stop him. Everything necessary to launch the rocket was under his control. He glanced again at the control panel; all lights were glowing green except for the launch sequencer and the first-stage turbine pumps. In another thirty seconds they would be started and those lights would turn from amber to green.
His thoughts turned to the Englishman Memling. He too had agreed to give his life for one final chance at a dream. Why? Was it the same demon that drove him? But how could it be? he wondered. Memling had experimented with rockets in an amateurish way, as they all had, but certainly such limited experience could not ... or could it? For a moment the frustration and hope, the lack of money and food, and the camaraderie he had experienced as a member of the VfR during the primitive Rakentenflugplatz days were more real than the smell of the pressure suit or the glowing control panel above him. And he understood. The demon was the same.
Had they made a pact with the Devil as they so often joked, or had they merely recognised its existence in themselves? Was there any difference between Hitler and Himmler with their dreams of a world empire led by the Aryan race, or between himself and Himmler? He had his own dream as well. And each of them damned the cost, both human and economic, while citing the greater good that would result.
Intentionally or not, he had sold his father and Inge, Memling, Prager, and all the rest, even Wernher, to fulfil his ambition. Bethwig struggled to turn his mind from that line of thought as his elation faded and he realised that he was no better than Himmler or Heydrich after all.
The grinding vibration of the first-stage turbine pumps whining into operation far below brought him back to present awareness. Automatically his gloved hand went to the arming switch, lifted the protective tab, and pressed down. A voice sounded in his earphones, but he did not understand the words.
The chronometer stood at exactly T-minus-sixty seconds. Deep in the instrument bay among the tangle of painfully assembled resistors and transformers and wires and meters, a series of rotary switches were turning in final sequence. Franz watched their progress as lights changed from red to green on the status board to his left; the hydrogen peroxide generator tanks being charged, the auxiliary valves snapping open and the turbine pumps whirring to provide on-board power and pump the metric tons of liquid oxygen and alcohol towards the twenty-one engines of the first stage. Other valves flew open as the fuel and LOX coursed through an intricate net of piping which frosted instantly as damp night air condensed on frigid metal. The same rotary switches sent signals coursing through kilometres of copper cable to the command centre where technicians pressed buttons and turned switches as lights winked from red to green and the umbilical cables that were Bethwig’s last connection with Earth fell away and the spider-work gantries pulled back. Another light prompted a technician to start the massive pumps that pulled sea water through an inlet fifty metres under the Baltic and five kilometres of pipes before emerging in high-pressure sprays to cool and protect the tunnel and flame baffles channelling the near plasma blast of the twenty-one rocket engines into the sky half a kilometre away.
The vibration was growing, and Bethwig was frightened, not of his own death but of what he might have paid to achieve it.
Jan Memling found the path leading to the ridge, which, though less than
ten metres high, offered a clear, uninterrupted view of the launching site. He sat down and laid the machine pistol across his knees, too exhausted to run farther. He found the crumpled packet of cigarettes Bethwig had given him. There was one left, and he lit it, shielding the match with both hands.
Memling, forgetting how cold, exhausted and hungry he was, stared at the floodlit space - it was as large as a dozen football grounds - a kilometre away. The gantries had been pulled aside, and the rocket towered against the sky in the full glare of massed searchlights. Its polished fuselage, painted with red stripes, gleamed and scintillated through some atmospheric trick. He wondered if Bethwig had been able to carry through with his plan to board the rocket in place of the pilot, but he did not wonder why.
Something flickered along the rocket’s side, and he found himself wishing for a pair of field glasses. A red flare arced above the area, and he guessed the launching was imminent. He glanced at the dead SS guard’s watch, but somewhere in the past hour the crystal had smashed. The hands were stopped at 11.25, about the time he had shot the SS people in the barracks. It had all been wasted effort in any event as he had been unable to contact the submarine.
A mist rose around the base of the rocket, and he drew on the cigarette, watching with narrowed eyes as if that would help him to see better.
Wernher von Braun watched the clock hand begin its final sweep. The babble in the command centre had risen to its highest level, as always in these final seconds - the result both of excitement and a last torrent of reports. He saw several lights change from green to red indicating problems and just as quickly switch back again. Bethwig was overriding them as they occurred, and he closed his eyes a moment in fear. One light had remained red for several seconds now. It flamed beneath the gauge indicating that pressure in the oxidiser system had failed. The flight control officer was calling over and over into the microphone, trying to bring that fault to his attention, but either Bethwig was ignoring him or the communications link had failed. Then he realised that Bethwig could not have missed the indicator on his own board. He was simply overriding the system to stop the FOC from calling a launch hold.
Von Braun pressed the transmit bar on his microphone and broke into the FCO’s increasingly frantic calls. He struggled to keep his own voice under control.
‘Franz, can you hear me?’ He paused a moment, hoping that Bethwig would respond to his voice. The sweep-second touched the numeral twenty.
‘We have a light on the board indicating a LOX turbine pump failure. Do you have the same?’
He released the transmit button and held his breath.
‘Yes. I think it’s nothing more than a short in the sensor.’ Bethwig’s voice seemed crisp enough.
‘It should be checked. It might be a true report.’
‘It might,’ Bethwig agreed, ‘but it would take three days to stand down and restart. We could all be dead by then.’
The second hand was passing forty. ‘You could be dead in seconds if the pump has failed.’
‘Maybe. But the amount of vibration here suggests both turbines are working properly. We’ll soon find out in any …’
A thunderous roar began to grow as the second hand touched sixty, and white light from twenty-one screaming rocket engines flooded the command centre.
The explosion deafened him, and the monstrous rocket shook him like a mouse in the teeth of a cat. Lights blinked on the board, green to red and red to green again, and he closed his eyes, waiting for extinction. The shaking grew as the bellowing was transmitted through the rocket’s fabric until it had become physical pain. He was being crushed; he could not breathe, and he opened his mouth to scream and realised in that instant that the pressure was gravity crushing him as acceleration mounted. He was blind and deaf, wrapped in a cocoon of his own terror, unintelligible voices in his earphones screaming in defiance of the roaring that was filling his head with pain as he lapsed into unconsciousness.
The noise was greater than anything Memling had ever dreamed possible. He pressed his hands to his ears and bowed forward, mouth open in a soundless scream to ease the pain. The rocket engines roared and bellowed and thundered and screamed in every conceivable register, and slowly, gently, the squat tower began to rise on a white column of flame brighter than a welder’s torch. For an instant he had an impression - one that would remain with him for the rest of his life - of the V-10 balancing on a column of pure flame, screaming like all the banshees of hell, rotating slowly about its axis so that one delta-shaped wing appeared from the darkness, shuddered for the merest instant, and was gone. He blinked at the after-image and tilted his head back, but the rocket was already a point of flame in the night sky fleeing through the cloud rack. He lay back flat on the ground then and stared hungrily as the flame grew longer and longer, tipped towards the south-west, and continued to lengthen, flaring into a widening cone that surprised him until he remembered that the gases would expand as the air thinned.
Memling watched the point of flame until it vanished in the thickening cloud and his own tears.
The silence was blessed. As was the absence of vibration and the sensation of motion. Bethwig lay in the couch, mind drifting aimlessly, body exhausted to the point of collapse. His eyes drifted to the chronometer hand, and he groaned as he saw it sweep inexorably to the point marking second-stage ignition. He tensed as the hand passed across the point, and deep in the bowels of the rocket the vibration began again, sound and fury exploding to press him deep against the couch with a huge, padded, smothering hand. The raving went on and on, but the vibration and the screaming were less severe this time and the acceleration was bearable. As he waited for the trial to end he turned his head with difficulty to the tiny view port.
At first he saw nothing but the window itself, and then a brilliant diamond drifted into view. It was a moment before his mind grasped the implication. He was the first human to see a star without the interfering blanket of earth’s atmosphere.
An endless time later something shot past and a bluish haze filled the port while Bethwig’s mind grappled with too many unexpected inputs. It has to be Earth, he thought, has to be; but it was so different from the way he had always pictured it. Where were the continents, the oceans, the clouds? It was all run together in a sapphire mist. He struggled against the restraints, trying to get closer, to see more, before he remembered the buckles, and that recalled him to his senses. Where in hell was he? What had happened? Was he in orbit? These and a thousand other questions nearly overwhelmed him. He closed his eyes to force his mind blank. When he opened them again, the transmission light was winking and someone, von Braun, was shouting into his earphones. He pressed the chin switch and acknowledged.
Memling stubbed his cigarette and carefully buried it in the sand. Old habits, he thought. He stared once more at the launch area, now curiously empty. Water fountained above the launch stand, and steam rose in rolling clouds to the west. The area was still flooded with light, but it seemed as if the entire island had been abandoned. When he turned to the north, he saw that even the dull reddish glow on the horizon from the burning tank farm had died away.
He slung the machine pistol over his shoulder and hesitated. Mankind had, in the midst of its most destructive war, taken its most civilised step towards the future - he hoped to God. Whether Bethwig survived or not made little difference in the long run. The step had been taken, and it could not be denied. Where one man had gone, others had to follow. He glanced upwards, searching for a tiny pinpoint of flame, but the cloud cover was solid to the west. He started to salute, then laughed at himself, turned, and went down the ridge towards the marshes to the south.
Von Braun walled himself off from the clamouring, cheering people by sitting quietly at his desk and staring at the dials and gauges that registered the condition and progress of the rocket. No one dared intrude; he had become an island of despair in the midst of celebration. Even Magnus was standing quietly to the side, watching his brother, not wanting to infri
nge on a private grief.
Dawn slid silently, inexorably out of the South China Sea and began to slip across the Indochina landmass. Borneo, a faint mixture of browns and greens, was in view on the horizon, and soon the second (stage would fire a final time before being left behind. Australia could have witnessed the event, Franz thought, if anyone had known to look. He had finished the final computations that would regulate the firing, and had pinned the several sheets to the control panel where he could see them, even though the results were as logical and obvious to him as street signs.
He had been sick for a while, but the Dramamine tablets had helped to settle the nausea, even if they had left him drowsy and content to wait and watch the Earth turn beneath. From six hundred and seventy-three kilometres’ altitude, there was no sign that two-thirds of the globe had been mobilised into competing killing machines of which he had, until lately, been a part. His mind shied away from that thought; he had made a pact with himself not to dwell on such subjects. Instead, he watched the splendour of the blue world beyond the port.
Von Braun’s voice woke him. He acknowledged and laughed at the concern in his friend’s voice.
‘Just resting, Wernher, while I still have a few moments. I’ve set the chronometer alarm, and there are two minutes to engine ignition.’
‘Franz, our calculations show you have three minutes twenty-three seconds on my mark ... mark! I suggest you recheck your calculations.’
Bethwig chuckled. ‘Have you ever known me to make an arithmetic mistake? What relative speed do you show?’
Von Braun relayed up the information, and Bethwig acknowledged. ‘You see, Wernher, that is the problem. You give me seventy-eight kilometres more than I have. Fifteen minutes ago I took a series of triangulations to measure my actual relative speed, whereas yours are only estimates. The next time, a chain of radar stations with the capability of detecting a spacecraft at several thousand kilometres would be very helpful ... we are coming up to the ignition sequence, Wernher. Pardon me for a moment.’