by Joe Poyer
Von Braun started to protest, then stopped. Even though he was troubled by the dreamy quality of Franz’s voice, he realised that as the pilot Bethwig must be the final authority. From nearly seven hundred kilometres’ altitude he could measure his speed quite accurately with the aid of a sextant.
‘The next time,’ he had said, and von Braun shook his head in despair. The needles flickered and then began to move across their dials indicating that ignition had begun. He watched them mount, aware of the tension growing in him. On both this final performance of the second stage and Bethwig’s abilities as a pilot depended his fate. Unless the rocket gained a specific speed within very defined limits, it would either crash back to Earth when its orbit decayed or bypass the moon and fall into orbit around the sun. He stared fixedly at the dials, which provided his only connection to the mote speeding away from the planet, conscious also of the intense silence in the command centre as the crews watched with him. A needle jumped on the telemetry signal strength link, steadied, then fell to zero.
Von Braun continued to stare at the dial, willing the needle to move, but it never did.
The explosion had damaged the instrument bay, Bethwig decided. Half of the system board was blank, and here and there on the control panel dead gauges and signal lights told the rest of the story. At least one engine had exploded on ignition, but the damage must not have been extensive, as the other four had continued to fire. He moved the switch that caused the gyros to speed up. For a moment nothing happened and he thought they had failed as well, but then a star slipped past and a moment later Earth swam into view. He was somewhere over Central America, he decided as he shot a series of bearings. A few moments of figuring gave him his speed, now barely at the lower edge of the margin. Another decimal point or so ... He concentrated on doing what he could to repair the damage.
After an hour’s extensive work Bethwig knew that while the craft was continuing to operate, its performance was disintegrating steadily. From what he could calculate based on oxygen consumption, fragments of the engine must have ripped at least one pinhole somewhere below, or perhaps started a seam. The loss was not great, but it was steady, and at this rate the tanks would be exhausted in less than fifty hours. The fuel tanks had apparently escaped injury, as had his food and water stores. But the telemetry systems and the linked radio were out for good, as were the twin radar units he needed to perform the landing seventy-three hours away.
Bethwig chuckled to himself, and the sound was grim inside his helmet. He could be out of air before then, so it might make little difference. What he regretted most was the loss of the radio. Wernher would never know how far he had got, or that the rocket would reach the moon, whether he was dead or alive.
There was a choice; by shutting off the cabin atmosphere and feeding the oxygen into his suit, he could assure himself sufficient for another six days, three beyond what was needed to attempt the lunar landing but not enough to wait for re-supply. And he laughed aloud at the thought. Re-supply? he asked himself. There would be no re-supply. How in God’s name would they ever accomplish that? The SS would swarm all over Peenemunde, if they weren’t already there. In his arrogance he had calculated for everything but failure, and now von Braun and the rest would be lucky to escape with their lives. And with the radio gone, he could not even let them know that it hadn’t all been in vain. He smiled then at the punishments the gods were capable of inflicting upon man.
Bethwig made the decision and shut down the cabin pressurisation. He loosened the restraints so that he was floating, weightless, a few centimetres above the cushions and turned carefully, letting the friction of the straps hold him in position as he stared at the slowly receding planet beyond the view port. He would land on the moon if at all possible. Radar or not, he still had his eyes, damn it. Earth hung against a velvet blackness of incomparable richness, an amazing jewel. He was finally at peace with himself.
Peenemunde 31 January 1945
‘Don’t switch on the light, Wernher.’
Von Braun froze, arm partly extended.
‘Is anyone with you?’
Von Braun tried to speak, but his throat was suddenly dry and he had to swallow hard.
‘Well?’ the voice prompted.
‘No. No one. I... who are you?’
A table lamp went on, and von Braun blinked in the sudden glare before he made out the figure sitting on his couch, holding a machine pistol. The man was dressed in a uniform so ragged that he did not immediately recognise it as SS battledress. The face was stubbled and as dirty as the clothes, but the eyes drew von Braun the most. Pale green in the yellowish lamplight, they were steady and implacable. Von Braun had a feeling the man would kill him at the slightest sign of disobedience.
‘Who are you?’ he managed to croak.
‘Jan Memling.’
Von Braun sagged. ‘Good God in heaven, you scared the hell out of me.’ He straightened and motioned to a cabinet. ‘I need a drink.’
Memling nodded, and von Braun walked carefully across the room. He paused before he opened the door. ‘Do you wish to check first? There may be a gun.’
‘I have already.’
‘Yes.’ Von Braun rubbed his lower lip. ‘You would have.’ He poured two glasses of cognac and brought them across to the coffee table. He was stumbling with the fatigue of three days spent in the command centre, working until it was clear they could do no more.
‘What happened?’
He took a swallow, and then another, letting the liquid dissolve the cold in the pit of his stomach before he answered. Memling waited.
‘We don’t know.’
‘What are you talking about!’
‘We lost contact after second-stage ignition, as the engines were being fired to shift the rocket out of Earth orbit. We know the engines ignited, but after that...’ He shrugged.
‘It’s been three days …’
Von Braun shrugged again. ‘We just have no idea what happened. Radio contact was lost. This morning we tried to find him with radar as Earth rotated so that our antennas had a clear view, but we could not achieve a signal. If he had continued on the course prescribed, Franz would have . . .’ Von Braun’s voice broke, and he had to take a deep breath, then ‘. . . would have landed two hours ago.’
Memling took the glass and drank most of the cognac in a single gulp. He leaned back on the couch and closed his eyes. ‘So it’s over,’ he said after a moment, and von Braun was struck by the sadness, the sense of loss, in the Englishman’s voice.
‘Yes.’
‘What happens next?’
Von Braun walked to the window and stood looking out into the darkness. He was conscious of the beginning of a strange alliance that would have been unthinkable six months ago but which now seemed perfectly logical, the culmination of the random insanity that had held the world in thrall for seven years.
‘SS General Doktor Hans Kammler has given orders to evacuate immediately,’ he said. ‘The Soviets are less than fifty kilometres away. He is convinced that Russian commandos were responsible for the damage caused the night of the launching. There was a submarine sighted off the coast that night.’ Von Braun turned back into the room to study the gaunt Englishman, so different from the boy he had known before the war. ‘Franz told me you agreed to help. Were you responsible for the damage?’
Memling ignored the question. ‘Will you go?’
‘I have no choice.’ Von Braun shrugged. ‘We are ordered to make our way to Nordhausen, in the Harz Mountains, where the SS can protect us ... or kill us if necessary.’ Von Braun paused. ‘I understand that you may have brought us an alternative.’
‘I did.’ Memling described SHAEF’s offer of employment following the war, providing the Peenemunde scientists surrendered to the Western powers. ‘On no account will the offer hold,’ he warned, ‘if your surrender is made to the Russians.’
‘I assume there are both political and practical implications to that statement,’ von Braun observe
d dryly, and Memling nodded.
‘Then you need have little fear on that score. No one wishes to disappear into Russia. Most of us are fighting the war to prevent the spread of communism to ...’
Memling held up a hand. ‘Your motives do not concern me. ‘I’m just the messenger. Arrangements were made to take some of you out immediately, but I doubt if they hold any longer. You will have to find another way to make contact.’ Memling nursed his drink for a long moment while staring into the shadows. ‘What will you tell them about the V-Ten?’
Von Braun sighed as he replenished his glass. ‘Nothing. The dangers of such a weapon, the temptation to use - ‘
‘No one has,’ Memling interrupted, ‘and I doubt anyone ever will, resist the temptation to use any weapon, no matter how deadly, if it will ensure his survival. It may sound naive after what we’ve been through, but perhaps we should make damned certain the next time that the correct side has the V-Ten. And there will be a next time.’
Memling’s eyes were hollowed by fear and privation, and von Braun shuddered. This man is war, he thought, a war which I had no idea existed. ‘Perhaps,’ he said then. ‘In any event, the SS collected all project films for destruction, so there is nothing to discuss. In addition, the Führer is said to have given orders to resist to the last man, woman, and child. This is clearly nonsense, yet how many will and thus prolong the fighting? What will be the attitude towards Germany then? As it was the last time? Or will forbearance be shown? What inroads will the communists make?’ He sat down abruptly. ‘I am tired to death. For now, let us agree to say nothing until we see the shape of the future. We do not know what happened to . . . Franz. Perhaps he died when the rocket motors exploded. Perhaps he did land on the moon. God in heaven only knows.’
On 2 May 1945 Magnus von Braun rode an old bicycle down a mountain road to make contact with a leading element of the American Army, the 324th Infantry Regiment, 44th Infantry Division, in the village of Schattwald, near the Austrian border. A few hours later a party including, among others, Magnus, Wernher von Braun, Major General Walter Dornberger and Jan Memling - disguised as a German technician - surrendered to First Lieutenant Charles L. Stewart, an intelligence officer assigned to the 44th Infantry. Memling was flown to London the following day.
Jan Memling and Wernher von Braun met for the next and last time on 15 July 1969 in a Cocoa Beach, Florida, motel room, and the following day, the two greying, middle-aged men stood beside one another in the VIP gallery as Apollo 11 began its historic journey to the moon. The photograph taken after the launch shows them standing arm in arm, tears clearly visible in their eyes.
Author’s Note
I have taken some liberties with events in Germany between 1935 and 1945 and with the characters in my story. Some - the obvious ones - were real people. Others are composites or else made up out of whole cloth. In either event, I trust I have treated those well who deserved it, and ill those who deserved that.
In 1960, President John F. Kennedy announced before the United Nations General Assembly that the United States of America would land a man on the moon before the end of the decade. It was not, as many critics charged, a publicity stunt but rather a notice to the world that the future of man lay beyond this planet. Over the past twenty years, the money, time and effort expended to land Apollo 11 on the moon has been returned a thousand-fold in new technology, business opportunities, and scientific and medical advances. Just as Wernher von Braun predicted in 1939.
It is a tribute to the men of Peenemunde who, although they built war weapons, never lost sight of the ultimate goal, space travel. The American lunar landing programme was solidly based on technology developed first at the Raketenflugplatz, at Kummersdorf and Peenemunde in Germany and later refined at White Sands, Huntsville, and Cape Kennedy.
It is more than possible - given logical decisions at the right times, efficient organisation of industry, military, and science, and a coherent leadership in Berlin - that Germany might well have sent the first human being to the moon. It had always been the intention of Wernher von Braun and his closest associates to do so, as his arrest in 1944 showed.
Twenty-four years later they proved it.
Joe Poyer
Orange, California
1980
By his own admission, Joe Poyer has been fascinated with the possibilities of space travel since he was a small child. The late Wernher von Braun, with whom he corresponded, was a personal hero, and the idea for Vengeance 10 was suggested by something Dr von Braun once told him. Mr Poyer brings personal experience to Vengeance 10, having worked during most of the 1960s on various phases of the Apollo Space Programme. He is the author of twelve novels including North Cape, of which Alistair MacLean said, it’s the ‘best adventure story I have read for years’. The Washington Post called Tunnel War, his previous book, ‘a marvellously detailed and suspenseful fiction’, and the London Financial Times described it as ‘a really excellent example of an action novel. . . exciting and intelligent all the way through ‘.
Table of Contents
Vengeance 10
Prologue
Lunar Apennines 6 May 2009
Four Horsemen
Germany-England February 1938
Germany August 1939
Occupied Belgium December 1940
Peenemunde-Prague September 1941
Norway-England April 1942
Peenemunde-Prague-Berlin April-June 1942
Retrenchment
England-Germany July 1942-March 1943
Passage at Arms
Germany August 1943
Sweden September 1943
Peenemunde August-October 1943
London October 1943
Berlin March 1944
Scotland-Germany-Poland June 1944
Descent and Resurrection
Holland-Germany December 1944
Peenemunde January 1945
Peenemunde 31 January 1945
Author’s Note