Space: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  ‘I can fix things,’ Kolff said.

  ‘Education?’

  ‘I worked in a factory. Fixing things.’

  ‘Family?’

  ‘Farmers.’

  Breutzl frowned, then asked brightly, ‘Big landowners?’

  ‘No. A little chicken farm.’

  ‘How did you become … well, an officer?’

  ‘In Russia. I knew how to fix tanks. General von Kleist … a field commission.’

  ‘You think you can fix the things we’re making?’

  ‘I can.’

  ‘Do you know what they are?’

  ‘The men say they’re rockets. For hitting London.’

  ‘Do you know anything about rockets?’

  ‘From what I’ve seen, I can fix certain things.’

  That had been almost two years ago, and now Lieutenant Kolff was one of General Breutzl’s most valuable men. The general, an engineer and not a scientist, was in charge of building the great A-4 rockets which the scientific genius, young Wernher von Braun, had devised, and the job was not an easy one, for whenever General Breutzl had a production line nicely started, Von Braun altered the specifications, requiring a complete reorientation of machines and men.

  ‘Why doesn’t he make up his mind?’ Kolff asked one day in desperation.

  ‘Because it’s an entire new world, Dieter. There are no rules to go by.’

  Kolff was no longer an officer in the Wehrmacht. He was one of the anomalous breed that infested Peenemünde, men of no stripe but of great ability in grappling with the problems of a coming world. Out of respect, Breutzl was accorded his old title, but he was no longer a general in the military sense; he was a genius at perfecting engineering solutions which enabled rockets to fly, and in the early days when they had failed, twenty-three out of twenty-nine exploding on the pads or shortly after takeoff, it was usually because the scientist had ignored Kolff’s practical advice. Once he said laughingly, ‘And when I fail it’s because I didn’t listen to Dieter Kolff.’

  The little farmer had an almost mystical sense of what an engine could do, or not do, and when the rockets became increasingly complex, he was often the only one who could unravel their mysteries. He was a kind of German Thomas Edison, and both Von Braun and Breutzl knew that they were lucky to have found him. ‘He is,’ said Von Braun, ‘an untutored genius. How did we get him?’

  ‘Number ten in a detachment of eleven,’ Breutzl said. ‘I wonder how many more we have out there we haven’t identified.’

  ‘We’ll need them all,’ Von Braun said.

  The rocket program had not gone well in those first years. Again and again the leaders of Germany had come to Peenemünde to ascertain when the A-4s could be launched against London, and repeatedly there had been debacles, with rockets disintegrating in midair, but the three men had plodded on, convinced that what they had envisaged could fly, could carry a massive load of explosive to London and deliver it on target.

  Now, as he unlimbered his bicycle at the far end of the ferry, Kolff reflected on how lucky he had been: If I was still a private, without my battlefield commission, Von Braun would never have looked at me. He doesn’t care much for privates. He thinks I come from some important family. But he knows I can fix his rockets. Indeed, the rockets that were now falling on London reached there in large part because of innovations and corrections initiated by Kolff, and the fact that as a mere lieutenant he was permitted to leave Peenemünde at three in the afternoon to visit his girl was proof of the regard in which Von Braun held him.

  When it was recognized that he had valuable skills, he had been removed from the A-4 and assigned to a project of ultimate secrecy, and it would have surprised him to learn that both Moscow and Washington had compiled dossiers on him, for each was determined to capture him when the war ended. Up to now he had been unwilling to concede that Germany might collapse, and the reason for his optimism was that he knew what tremendous weapons he and General Breutzl were about to perfect.

  When he was detached from the A-4, he did not move to the next sequence, the A-5 through the A-9, each of which was planned to accomplish some tremendous thing. He was assigned to the A-10, last in line and the mightiest. It represented a concept so dazzling that he was allowed to discuss it only with Von Braun and Breutzl.

  The A-10, and it was very close to solution, with production not much more than a year in the future, was a rocket that could be fired from Peenemünde with a colossal head of explosive, and land on Boston, New York or Washington. Dieter was not angry at the citizens of any of those cities, no more than he was angry at the people of London, who were being struck daily by his bombs. He was a technician, a man trained to apply his skills to whatever task loomed, solve its complications and move it to completion. If the aerial bombing of New York was desirable, regard less of motive, he would devise ways by which it could be accomplished. And it was on this task that he now concentrated.

  So it was a very important man who mounted his bicycle and pedaled westward as the American bombers prepared to strike a mortal blow at Peenemünde. He was headed for a farm north of the mainland town of Wolgast; it was owned by the family of Liesl Koenig and was conspicuous for only one thing. It stood adjacent to an expensive summer resort with gorgeous water views on three sides: east to the channel separating the mainland from Peenemünde, north into the Baltic Sea, and west into a bay containing a very large island.

  Liesl worked at this establishment, caring for rich Berliners during the high summer season and for modest Pomeranians during the truncated winter season. She was not a pretty girl, nor was she any longer young. Indeed, she might have been passed by altogether had not Dieter Kolff come to the island and met her during a walking trip on the mainland. She was now twenty-eight and would probably have moved to Berlin as a domestic had not the war intervened. She was a hard-working woman with a pleasing if subdued disposition, and Kolff felt that he was lucky to have found her.

  On the highway west of the ferry he was stopped three times by guards, and his bicycle was well searched, even though the older guards were familiar with his visits to the Koenig farm. They nodded in friendly fashion as the younger men searched him, for nothing could move on or off Peenemünde without scrutiny.

  Dieter spent a quiet afternoon with Liesl, had supper with her family, and walked in the autumn evening to the grounds of the resort, from which he could see the antiaircraft guns that lined the mainland shore. ‘We’ve grown afraid,’ Liesl said, ‘since the big raid last year. Father saw scouting planes overhead this afternoon.’

  ‘We saw them, too. They were Luftwaffe.’

  ‘Not the ones Father saw.’

  There were so many things that Kolff wanted to share with this responsive girl. She was, he was ashamed to tell anyone else, a lot like his mother, a good, reliable farm girl who would bring her husband stern qualities and much devotion. She understood whatever problems he was allowed to share with her, especially his fear of the Russians: ‘You should have seen their villages. They let their farmers live like animals. If they were ever to come here …’ He shuddered.

  ‘Is there a chance they will?’

  He hesitated. In Germany one was prudent never to say what one thought, unless it conformed to some rote requirement, but it was also necessary for every human being to reach out and confide in someone. Liesl could well be a spy conscripted in this particular spot to trap Peenemünde workers like Kolff, so he must say nothing about the A-10, nor about any of the lesser bomb systems for that matter. But about Russia he could speak. He had to speak.

  ‘Two years ago, when I was there, our officers were confident the Russians could never turn the tide on us. That was a poor country. A land of peasants. But now …’

  ‘They’re moving closer, Dieter.’

  ‘Are you afraid?’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid.’

  They said no more that evening, but each knew that now the agenda was clear and overwhelming: somehow they must avoid capture
by the Russians. All that they did hereafter would be predicated upon that imperative.

  When darkness fell, they retired to a barn on the resort premises and made love, a practice they had fallen into when they became aware that Russian armies were descending upon Germany and that terrible uncertainties might soon engulf them. Each depended upon the other in these perilous days, and each knew that salvation lay only in the other’s love. Liesl’s suspicious father had asked four questions: ‘Does he own his own farm? Was he ever really an officer in the army? What’s he doing on that island, anyway? And whatever happened to that Detterling boy? He owned a good farm.’ Under the circumstances, she felt it unwise to discuss anything important with her father, who so far had made only one substantial observation about the visiting stranger: ‘He eats like a pig. Don’t they feed him over there?’

  He had identified Kolff’s major peculiarity: despite his frailness, he could consume unlimited quantities of food without affecting his girth, but as Liesl pointed out, ‘You have no right to complain, Father. He usually brings us far more food than he eats.’

  On a normal visit Dieter stayed with Liesl until about nine at night, when he cycled back to catch the last ferry, which crossed at ten, but on this night he was agitated by so many conflicting bits of gossip circulating on the island that he longed to stay, not to discuss the possibilities openly, but simply to talk with someone.

  So they lingered on the grounds of the summer resort, discussing trivialities, until Liesl stopped their walking and took him by the hands. ‘What is it, Dieter?’ When he looked surprised, she added, ‘What big thing disturbs you?’

  In silence he contemplated in order the seven major developments that disturbed him, not one of which could he openly state or even intimate: There was a rumor that Himmler’s secret police were going to make another move against Von Braun. There was another that General Breutzl was to be demoted and exiled to the Russian front. There were constant fears that Peenemünde would be closed down entirely, because the Russians were moving too close. And so on, plus an eighth one which he himself had generated, and this he could share with Liesl.

  ‘The general has aged … badly. They blame him for everything that goes wrong, but I can tell you that nothing goes right without him.’

  ‘You like him, don’t you?’

  ‘I wish all Germans were like him. I wish all fathers were.’

  ‘Mine’s complaining again.’ She hesitated, then said softly, ‘We should get out of here, Dieter. Both of us.’

  ‘Yes.’ After a long while he said, ‘It will be up to me, Liesl. I’ll tell you when.’ And after another long reflection he changed the subject. ‘I promised Baron von Braun to look after the general. I must go back.’

  ‘But you’ve missed the ferry.’

  ‘I steal chickens for them from our mess. They’ll lift me over.’

  It was ten-thirty when he bade Liesl goodnight, kissing her breasts at the gateway to her farm. ‘What’s that?’ she asked, pointing to the sky.

  The Moon was bright, deep in the west, and it glowed upon a lone aircraft that flew fantastically high. They watched it for some minutes, guessing wildly as to what it might signify. And then two streaking pathfinder planes came in very low, dropping not bombs but flares of different colors which glowed in the night.

  ‘Oh God!’ Dieter cried. ‘It’s a raid. With those flares it’ll be a major raid.’ And he pedaled furiously toward the ferry, keeping his eye on that plane mysteriously high in the heavens, wondering what it could be, not realizing that in it rode Master Bomber Merton, who would direct the oncoming Americans to the targets illuminated by the flares.

  He had not reached the ferry when the first bombers came roaring in, much lower than he expected. They were huge, and dark, and the Moon disappeared just as they reached Peenemünde. ‘Someone planned this exactly,’ he told the men at the ferry, and then the great explosions began.

  ‘I’ve got to get across,’ he said.

  ‘Not in this,’ the ferrymen said, seeking cover. And for almost two hours the men huddled there, listening with growing horror to the tremendous load of explosives being dumped upon the island.

  ‘Where did those first yellow flares land?’ Dieter asked the ferrymen.

  ‘Down by your quarters,’ the man said.

  ‘Oh Jesus! They’re trying to kill General Breutzl.’

  ‘And your Von Braun.’

  ‘He’s in Berlin. Listen, I’ve got to get across.’

  ‘Not now.’

  Other planes moved in, German fighters this time, and some of the enemy bombers began to burn and fall into the Baltic. One came right at the empty ferry, kept aloft and crashed in the direction of the summer resort at which Liesl worked.

  Now he had two worries, his general and his girl, but when the bombardment ceased, and the German fighters withdrew, Dieter hurried not to the Koenig farm but to the island, to see what had happened to General Breutzl. Wherever he went, guards stopped him, for the destruction was massive and buildings of all kind were afire. Commandeering a guard with a motorcycle, Dieter abandoned his own vehicle and rode pillion to the scientists’ quarters, the ones that Professor Mott had ordered spared.

  The first set of flares had overshot their mark, not landing on the manufacturing and research facilities as intended, but directly on the living quarters of the scientists. The monitor aloft had warned each incoming flight of the imprecision, but the target was so tempting and the flares so distinct that whole sticks of bombs had struck the area.

  Dieter, approaching from the north, could see the devastation, the gaping, burned sections, and he realized that had he not gone to visit Liesl, he would now be dead. But what of General Breutzl?

  ‘Over there!’ Dieter yelled into the ear of the driver, but the cyclist said, ‘Not me.’ So Dieter dismounted and ran toward the shattered buildings. He did not have to enter, for on the lawn outside the dormitories were laid the thirty-one bodies, and toward the middle of the row, calm and kindly even in death, lay General Eugen Breutzl, whom the Nazis had never trusted but on whom they had been forced to depend.

  When no one was looking, and for reasons of secrecy which he could have explained to no one, not even to himself, Dieter waited till all the others were preoccupied with the devastation caused by the raid, then moved to the concrete vault in which the general’s plans for the A-10 were kept. These work sheets, usually the result of long consultations among Von Braun, the general and Kolff, were safe. Allowing no one to see him, he removed them, carrying them to his own wrecked quarters, where he set fire to a few inconsequential ones, snuffed out the flames, and intermingled the charred pages with a few of his own diagrams. At that moment he had no clear idea why he was taking such precaution; it was instinctive and had something to do with the rumors that Von Braun might soon be arrested again by Himmler’s men.

  Two nights later, at three o’clock in the morning of 27 October, when Norman Grant, wallowing in the waters of Leyte Gulf, had about decided that his dwindling crew of heroes would never be rescued by a forgetful Navy, Dieter Kolff sat upright in bed, awakened by an idea which flashed through his canny mind like a thunderous explosion of lightning: Chickens! That’s what will save me—chickens!

  He had a right to be apprehensive about his security, because as soon as the bombs stopped falling, an old adversary, ominous and persistent, returned to the island, eager to pursue past suspicions. He was Colonel Helmut Funkhauser, forty-eight years old, a somewhat overstuffed would-be Prussian with no neck and pinched-to-gether eyes. Son of a modest butcher in Hamburg, he had been an early volunteer for Hitler’s Brown Shirts, not because of any philosophical conviction but because membership was exciting and a glimpse of the future. By extraordinary obedience to any orders from above and by attention to detail, he had risen to become one of Heinrich Himmler’s lesser aides, and it was then that he began claiming Prussian ancestry. His present assignment had been handed him by Himmler himself: ‘Bring those damned s
cientists to heel. Get rid of Von Braun. And make sure that our SS men take charge of everything.’

  When Kolff saw Funkhauser step out from the black sedan he realized that trouble had returned, for several times in the past he had encountered this colonel, finding him to be an insecure petty dictator, subservient when superiors were present, arrogant when they were not. He was not a murderous Nazi acting from deep principle; he was merely one of the functionaries who carried out orders.

  Kolff had first met Funkhauser in mid-1943 when the colonel swept down on Peenemünde from his headquarters in Berlin, one hundred and ten miles to the south, to arrest Von Braun, General Breutzl and Kolff, whisking them away, without Hitler’s knowledge, to a secret SS prison camp near Stettin. There he had grilled them for six days, building against them charges of disloyalty which could lead to their execution.

  His charges were threefold: ‘You’ve been guilty of disloyal thoughts. You have used Peenemünde as a base not for military revenge against the English but for future space travel. And you have made secret plans to escape to England, where you think you will be free to work on your rockets without the Fuehrer’s supervision.’ Any one of the accusations, if proved or even strongly suspected, would warrant death.

  Colonel Funkhauser’s supporting evidence was ingenious, and illustrated the paranoia which Himmler was relentlessly introducing into German life: ‘Four of my spies, inserted into the Peenemünde work force, have heard you, Von Braun, wonder out loud in bars and the like whether the A-4 will bring England to her knees, despite the fact that the Fuehrer has publicly stated that it will do so. You, Kolff, have been heard predicting that the monthly quota of nine hundred rockets cannot be met.’

  ‘Until we solve the problem of why they explode just as they’re about to come down—’

  ‘Silence. There’s grave suspicion that they explode because you personally have sabotaged our war effort. And all three of you are known to be planning for the years after the war, when your rockets can be used for travel to the Moon, or the planets.’ Here he became livid with bitterness, bending his fat body forward and staring with beady eyes at the three men. ‘You are traitors to the Fatherland! You are disloyal to the Fuehrer! Your job is to destroy London now, not worry about space travel later on.’