Lieutenant Colonel Johannes Drucker floated weightless in Käthe, the reusable upper stage of the A-45 that had blasted him into orbit from Peenemünde. He was glad to be a couple of hundred kilometers above the weather, even more glad than usual: fogs rolling in off the Baltic had twice delayed his launch. Here in space, he still felt like a man serving his country. Down on the ground, he had trouble feeling like anything but a man his country was trying to get.
Gently, he patted the instrument panel. A lot of fliers named their upper stages for wives or girlfriends. How many, though, named them for wives or girlfriends who were, or might be, a quarter part Jew? Well, no one had tried making him change the name. That was something, a small something. Since the SS had had to give Käthe back to him, perhaps the official thinking was that she couldn’t really have had any Jewish blood at all. Or perhaps the powers that be simply hadn’t noticed till now, and a technician with a can of paint would be waiting when Drucker came down.
He didn’t want to think about that. He didn’t want to think about anything of the sort. Instead, he looked outward. Somewhere out there, in the asteroid belt past the orbit of Mars, the Americans aboard the Lewis and Clark were doing . . . what? Drucker didn’t know. Neither did anyone else in the Greater German Reich.
What he did know was that he was enormously jealous of the Americans. They’d gone out there in a real spacecraft, not just an overgrown Roman candle like the one he’d ridden into orbit. “We should have done that,” he muttered. Germany had been ahead of the USA in rocketry during the fighting against the Lizards; it struck him as unconscionable that the Reich’s lead had been frittered away.
His gaze grew hungry, as hungry as those of the wolves that had once prowled around Peenemünde. The Americans had taken a long step toward building a real starship. If the Reich had such ships, the Lizards would be shaking in the boots they didn’t wear. If the Reich had starships, they would be vengeance weapons, and the Race had to know it.
The radio crackled to life: “Spaceship of the Deutsche, acknowledge this transmission at once!”
It was, of course, a Lizard talking. No human being would have been so arrogant. No human nation could have afforded to be so arrogant to the Greater German Reich. But the Race could. However strong the Reich was, the Race was stronger. Every trip into space rubbed Drucker’s nose in that unpalatable fact.
“Acknowledging,” he said, shortly, using the language of the Race himself. Some of the Lizards with whom he dealt were decent enough sorts; with them, he went through the polite I greet yous. To the ones who only snapped at him, he snapped in return.
“Your orbit is acceptable,” the Lizard told him. The Lizard would have been not just arrogant but furious had his orbit been anything else.
“You so relieve my mind,” Drucker responded. That was sarcasm and truth commingled. Weapons were tracking him now. They would have been ready to go after Käthe had an unannounced orbital change made the Race nervous.
“See that you stay where you ought to be,” the Lizard said. “Out.”
Drucker chuckled. “Not even a chance to get the last word.” He chuckled again. “Probably a female of the Race.” The real Käthe, had she heard that slur on womankind, would have snorted and stuck an elbow in his ribs. He probably would have deserved it, too.
He glanced down at Earth below. He was sweeping along above the western Pacific; a nasty storm was building there, with outlying tendrils of cloud already stretching out over Japan and reaching toward China. The Reich, the Americans, and the Race all sold meteorological photos to countries without satellites of their own. Back when Drucker was a child, people had been at the mercy of the weather. They still were, but to a lesser degree. They couldn’t change it, but at least they had some idea of what was on the way. That made a difference.
Down toward the equator Käthe flew at better than 27,000 kilometers an hour. The velocity sounded enormous, but wasn’t enough to escape Earth orbit, let alone travel from star to star. That bothered Drucker more than usual. He wanted to go out farther into the solar system, wanted to and couldn’t. Some German spacecraft had gone to Mars, but he hadn’t been aboard any of them. And they were only rockets, hardly more potent than the A-45 that had lifted him into orbit.
“Calling the German spacecraft! Calling the German spacecraft!” Another peremptory signal, but this one in German, and one he was glad to answer.
“Käthe here, with Drucker aboard,” he said. “How goes it, Hermann Göring?”
“Well enough,” the radio operator aboard the German space station replied. “And with you?”
“Not too bad,” Drucker said. “And when do you take off and start rampaging through outer space?”
“Would day after tomorrow suit you?” The radioman laughed. So did Drucker. Up above them, some Lizard listening to their transmission would probably have started tearing out his hair, if only he’d had any to tear.
“Day after tomorrow wouldn’t suit me at all,” Drucker said, “because then I couldn’t be aboard when you left. And I want to go traveling.”
“I don’t blame you,” the radio operator said. “The frontier is out this way. If the Americans are going to explore it, we had better do the same.”
“Not just the Americans,” Drucker said, and said no more. The Lizards already knew the Reich mistrusted them. For that matter, the mistrust ran both ways, no doubt with good reason.
Drucker wondered just how soon the Hermann Göring really would be leaving Earth orbit for something more worthwhile. Sooner than it would have if the Americans hadn’t lit a fire under the Reich’s space program—he was sure of that. He was also sure the Race would be horrified to have not one but two Earthly nations on the way toward genuine spacecraft.
A little later, he passed about twenty kilometers below the German space station. Through Zeiss field glasses, it seemed almost close enough to touch. The job of converting it to a spaceship was going much more smoothly than it had for the Americans. But they’d kept what they were up to a secret, while the Reich was making no bones about what it had in mind. If the Lizards didn’t like it, they could start a war. Such was Himmler’s attitude, anyhow.
The swastikas painted on the space station were big enough to be easily visible. Straining his eyes, Drucker imagined he could read Göring’s name above them, but he really couldn’t, or not quite. He chuckled a little. Down on Earth, the late Reichsmarschall was a bad joke, the Luftwaffe moribund and subservient to the Wehrmacht and the SS. But Göring’s name would go traveling farther than the pudgy, drug-addled founder of the German air force could ever have imagined.
And the Lizards couldn’t—or at least they’d better not—try to forbid a German spacecraft from going where an American one had already gone. That would mean trouble, big trouble. It might even mean war.
Back when he’d been driving a panzer against the Lizards, Drucker would have given his left nut to control the kind of firepower he had at his fingertips now. He’d been so outgunned then . . . and he was outgunned up here, too. He sighed. The Lizards had more and better weapons. Odds were they would for a long time to come. But the Reich could hurt them. That was the essence of German foreign policy. And he, Johannes Drucker, could hurt them with his nuclear-tipped missiles.
He hoped he wouldn’t have to. They would surely blow him out of the sky the instant after he launched. The one thing he didn’t think they’d do was try to blow him out of the sky before he could launch. They’d attacked Earth without provocation, but hadn’t staged any unprovoked assaults since the fighting ended.
Maybe that made them more trustworthy than human beings. Maybe it just made them more naive. Drucker never had figured that out.
His radio crackled into life. “Relay ship Hoth to spacecraft Käthe. Urgent. Acknowledge.”
“Acknowledging,” Drucker said. “Was ist los, Hoth?” The relay ship, down in the South Atlantic, kept spacecraft in touch with the Reich even when they were out of direct radio range. A
ll the spacefaring human powers used relay ships. The Lizards, with their world-bestriding lands, didn’t have to.
“Urgent news bulletin,” the radio operator down below answered.
“Go ahead?’ Drucker did his best to hide the alarm that surged through him. But surely his superiors wouldn’t order him into battle with a news bulletin . . . would they?
Plainly reading from text in front of him, the radio operator said, “Radio Nuremberg has announced the death of Heinrich Himmler, Chancellor of the Greater German Reich. The Chancellor, on duty to his last breath, suffered a coronary thrombosis while working on state papers. No date for services celebrating his life has yet been set, nor has a successor been named.”
“Gott im Himmel,” Drucker whispered. Things would be hopping down in Nuremberg now. Even more than Hitler before him, Himmler had stayed strong because he let no one around him have any strength. Nor has a successor been named was liable to cover some vicious infighting in the days to come.
“Have you got that, Käthe?” the radioman asked.
“I’ve got it,” Drucker said. This is liable to be the safest place I could find, he thought. He almost said it aloud, but thought better of that.
And then the fellow down below said it for him: “Staying a few thousand kilometers away when the big boys squabble isn’t so bad, eh?”
“That’s the truth, sure enough,” Drucker answered. “Well, I don’t give orders. All I do is take them. Whoever the new Führer is, he’ll tell me what to do and I’ll do it. That’s the way things work.”
Without a doubt, someone aboard the Hoth was recording every word he said. Without a doubt, the Gestapo would be listening to make sure he sounded properly loyal to the Reich and to its Führer, whoever that turned out to be. Drucker knew as much. He was no fool. He also knew his loyalty was liable to be suspect. That meant he had to be especially careful to say all the right things.
And the radioman aboard the Hoth said, “That’s how we all feel, of course. Our loyalty is to the state, not to any one man.”
He said all the right things, too. And Drucker made a point of agreeing with him: “That’s how it is, all right. That’s how it has to be.”
As he flew along, as the signal from the Hoth faded, he wondered who would take over for the late, unlamented (at least by him) Heinrich Himmler. The SS would naturally have a candidate. So would the Wehrmacht. And Joseph Goebbels, passed over when Hitler died, would want another try at ruling the Reich. There might be others; Drucker did his best not to pay attention to politics. Maybe that was a mistake. More and more these days, politics kept paying attention to him. His orbit swept him up toward the Reich. By the time his tour ended, everything was likely to be over.
12
Vyacheslav Molotov felt harassed. That was not the least common feeling he’d ever had, especially after Marshal Zhukov rescued him while smashing Beria’s coup. Every American presidential election made him nervous, too. The prospect of dealing with a new man every four years was enough to make anybody nervous when that man could start a nuclear war just by giving an order. But Warren seemed likely to beat Humphrey, which would give Molotov a breathing space before he had to start getting nervous about the USA again.
Now, though, Himmler had had to go and die. Molotov thought that most inconsiderate of the Nazi leader. Himmler had been a bastard, no doubt about it. But, on the whole (the recent aborted lunge at Poland aside), he’d been a predictable bastard. Who would manage to throw his fundament into the seat he’d occupied?
What sort of madman will I have to deal with next? was how Molotov phrased the question in his mind. American presidential candidates, at least, spelled out what they had in mind before taking office. You could plan for a man like that, even if he looked likely to be unfortunate. But the only qualification for Führer that Molotov could see was a quick, sharp knife.
He did not dwell on how a German politico might view the process of succession in the USSR. He took his own country, his own system, for granted.
His secretary looked into the office. “Comrade General Secretary, the foreign commissar is here for his ten o’clock appointment.”
As usual, Molotov glanced at the clock on the wall. Gromyko was precisely on time. He always was. Few Soviet officials imitated him. Despite two generations of Soviet discipline, most Russians seemed constitutionally unable to take the notion of precise time seriously. “Send him in, Pyotr Maksimovich,” Molotov said.
Gromyko, craggy features impassive as usual, strode past the secretary and into the office. He leaned across the desk to shake hands with Molotov. “Good day, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich,” he said.
“And to you, Andrei Andreyevich,” Molotov replied. He waved Gromyko to a chair. They both lit cigarettes, Molotov’s Russian-style in a long paper holder, Gromyko’s an American brand. After a couple of puffs, Molotov said, “You will, no doubt, have a good notion of why I want to see you.”
“What ever gave you that idea?” Gromyko had a good deadpan, all right. “It’s not as if the Reich were of any great concern to us.”
“No, of course not.” Molotov wouldn’t let the foreign commissar win the palm for irony without a fight. “Why, for the past generation Germany has scarcely mattered to us at all.”
“Even so.” Gromyko stretched out an arm to tap his cigarette into an ashtray on Molotov’s desk. After another drag on the cigarette, his manner changed. “I wonder what we do have to look forward to.”
“That is the reason I asked to speak with you,” Molotov replied. “You will be flying off to Nuremberg for the state funeral day after tomorrow. I await your impressions of the potential German leaders.”
“Goebbels we know,” Gromyko said, and Molotov nodded. The foreign commissar went on, “Manstein we also know. He is the likeliest of the generals to come to the top. By all accounts, an able man.”
Molotov nodded again. “Zhukov respects him,” he said. By his tone, by his expression, no one would have known how much having to acknowledge Zhukov’s opinion pained him. “As you say, he too is a known quantity.”
“But the SS officials under Himmler . . .” Gromyko’s voice trailed away. He stubbed out the cigarette and lit another one.
“Yes, they are the trouble,” Molotov agreed. “None of them has been able to show what he can do, for Himmler has held power there firmly in his own hands. If one of them can grab it, who knows in which direction he might go?”
“It could be worse,” Gromyko said. Molotov raised an eyebrow. The foreign commissar explained: “The Lizards might have landed a few days earlier. Then, perhaps, the British would not have assassinated Heydrich.”
After pondering that, Molotov discovered he had to nod. “Yes, you are right—although I doubt Heydrich would have waited for Himmler to die of natural causes before making his bid for the top spot. Go on to Nuremberg, then, Andrei Andreyevich. Learn what you can and report back to me.”
“Very well, Comrade General Secretary.” Gromyko’s shaggy eyebrows twitched. “I do hope the Nazis can keep from starting their civil war until Himmler’s funeral is over.”
“Yes, that would be good, wouldn’t it?” After a moment, Molotov realized the foreign commissar hadn’t been joking. He glanced at the smoke spiraling up from his own cigarette, which he hadn’t crushed quite well enough. “Do you really think it will come to that?”
“I hope not,” Gromyko answered. “But in the Reich there is only one way to tell who is the stronger: by conflict. When Hitler died, Himmler was inarguably the strongest man left. Who is strongest now is not so clear, which makes struggles over the succession more likely.”
“You could be right,” Molotov said. Guile and intrigue had got him the top spot in the Soviet Union after Stalin died. He wondered who would succeed him, and how. The question wasn’t idle—far from it. Now he did think about similarities between the USSR and the Greater German Reich. His own country had no more formal system for succession than did Germany. Beria’s failed coup
had rubbed everyone’s nose in that. The failed coup had also made it all too likely that Molotov’s successor would be Marshal Zhukov, a distinctly unappetizing prospect for an apparatchik.
Smoking yet another cigarette, Gromyko left the office. Molotov lit a new one from his own packet. The Americans and the Lizards both claimed tobacco cut years off your life. Having already passed his threescore and ten, Molotov found that hard to believe. If tobacco was poisonous, wouldn’t it have killed him by now? In any case, he was inclined to doubt claims from the Race or from the USA on general principles.
He could have watched Himmler’s funeral on television. In these days of relay satellites, news went around the world as soon as it happened. He didn’t watch. He knew the Nazis were good at melodramatic spectacle. As far as he was concerned, their rule depended in no small measure on keeping the masses mystified through spectacle so they would have no chance to contemplate either their oppression or rising against it.
And, when Gromyko returned from the German capital, Molotov asked no questions about the last rites for the dead Führer. Instead, he came straight to the point: “Who is in charge in Nuremberg?”
“Vyacheslav Mikhailovich, I do not precisely know.” Gromyko sounded troubled at the admission. “I don’t think the Germans know, either.”
“That is not good,” Molotov said, with what he judged considerable understatement. “Where no one is in charge, anything can happen.” It wasn’t a proverb, but it sounded like one.
Gromyko accepted it as if it were. “What they have in place now is something they call the Committee of Eight. It has soldiers on it, and SS functionaries, and Nazi Party officials, and a couple of Goebbels’ men, too.”
Scornfully, Molotov clicked his tongue between his teeth. “All that means is that they are putting off the bloodletting till someone is ready to start it.”
“Of course,” Gromyko agreed. No veteran of Communist Party infighting could fail to recognize such portents.
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