Hell's Gate

by Bill Schutt

  In a far corner, near the ceiling, there was a brief flutter and the black shape was gone.

  On the floor of his cell, R. J. MacCready opened his eyes. He blinked several times, in a vain attempt to focus.

  “Th-Th-Th-Th-That’s all, folks!” came a voice from the farthest cell. It was followed by muffled laughter.

  Mel Blanc? What the hell is he doing here? MacCready thought, just before he slipped back into unconsciousness.

  Colonel Gerhardt Wolff did not know much about Dr. Kimura’s bloodstained history, nor did he care. His only concerns were that Kimura’s team had brought with it, first by supply submarine, then overland, the tools necessary for the refinement of biological weapons and (just as important) the components for bombs capable of dispersing these pathogens from Sänger’s Silverbirds.

  But Wolff, a trained microbiologist himself, knew from the start that there would be questions—serious questions.

  Were the modified strains of anthrax and bubonic plague Kimura had brought with him anything more than psychological weapons? And if not, how many people would the bombs actually kill?

  Then there were the rockets themselves and the strange sleds that would launch them along the monorail. Would they even work? And now, thanks to the trigger-happy missile crew, would there be enough time to launch them?

  Wolff was still furious that his men had shot down an Allied reconnaissance plane that morning. The woman test pilot, Hanna Reitsch, had been present during the attack, and, initially at least, he suspected that she might have encouraged it. Apparently, though, the entire incident had been an accident—“a glitch in the technology.”

  “The missile launched the second we placed it on standby,” the crew chief claimed. “Once the Wasserfall was airborne, we took down the target, rather than have the enemy pinpoint our position.”

  Although Wolff had to admit that it was a plausible explanation, he gave no hint of this as the chastened and grim-looking missile crew stood before him. Accident or not, the entire mission had been jeopardized.

  “Your actions will of course trigger a larger Allied probe into the region,” Wolff had told them—men he might have imprisoned or even executed had they been standing on German soil.

  But they were far from Germany and killing his own men would only have deepened the dread that was already settling over Nostromo Base like a shroud. It was a dread that had little to do with their mission or an accidental missile firing. It was a dread that had everything to do with the mysterious deaths of several of his men, deaths now being referred to as “blood-drainings.”

  Something that struck Wolff as particularly odd was the reaction of the local Indians they’d bribed into helping them. He knew that some of his new employees spent their leisure time skinning captives from opposing tribes with their obsidian blades.

  But the “hired help” had not killed his men and although they feigned indifference to the blood-draining deaths, Wolff could tell that these residents of Hell’s Gate were not only terrible liars, they were frightened. Badly frightened.

  They have seen this before, the Colonel concluded. It’s not just a ghost story to them. I can see it in their eyes.

  Wolff was reasonably confident that the rocket men could get the Silverbirds to fly, dropping multiple warheads from the unassailable “high ground” of space. The problem was getting the rockets away before their location was discovered, while assuring that their payloads were sufficiently deadly. Now, however, there was a new problem; the insufferably talkative Sänger had let it slip that his protégé might be losing his focus on the mission at hand.

  The colonel headed off angrily to the large, climate-controlled hangar where Eugen Sänger and Maurice Voorhees were working on their rockets.

  Colonel Wolff strode into the hangar followed, as always, by Sergeant Schrödinger, who closed the door, then stood in front of it. Wolff collected himself and approached the younger scientist.

  “How long was it that you studied in New York?” he asked in his calmest voice.

  “Two years,” replied Voorhees, who was squatting next to an assemblage of steel and wiring.

  Wolff moved to his own desk and began writing in his mission log. “And for the record,” he looked up and asked, trying to project a calming smile, “while you were there, did you ever encounter Harold Urey?”

  Now the young rocketeer straightened and turned toward the colonel. “I did. He was a visiting professor.”

  “And did he ever discuss with you his ideas for a uranium-powered spacecraft?”

  “Yes, but it wasn’t a discussion, it was a lecture. He said that it would be possible to travel all the way to Mars with a propulsion system of that type, if only he could find a way of refining enough uranium-235.”

  “A significant problem, yes?” Wolff asked, probing now. He noticed that Sänger, the older rocket man, was suddenly looking uneasy.

  “A significant challenge, but it is possible, I think. And others thought so as well.”

  “Others?”

  “I remember one student, Isaac—” Voorhees trailed off for a moment, then for another. “Asimov. One day he had this idea about giving Urey’s fission rocket an added kick and he was so proud, presenting his ideas to an expert of that caliber. But for some reason Urey became agitated about the whole thing. He began shouting at us that it would never work—shouting at Asimov, mostly. After that, Urey did not mention uranium power again.”

  “But you . . . still believe it’s possible?”

  “Nuclear propulsion?”

  Wolff nodded. “All the way to Mars?”

  “It’s possible, but what we’re building these days is completely insufficient to the task. We’ll need to consider rocket design in a whole new way, like converting the enormous heat that develops from a throttle-up into thrust. If we can do that just imagine how far you could go at sixty or even a hundred kilometers per second.”

  “You seem to have been imagining quite a lot,” Wolff observed.

  Only now did Voorhees appear to notice Sänger’s pained expression.

  “I see too much of von Braun in you,” Wolff said. “Don’t you agree, Dr. Sänger?”

  The elder rocketeer said nothing. Looking slightly embarrassed, he merely shrugged.

  Wolff went on, shifting from a disarmingly calm tone of voice to distain: “Thinking always about the moon and Mars and not enough about our targets.” He continued writing in his log, speaking as he did so. “Well, I think I’ve come up with a way for you to do a bit less dreaming. You will begin serving sentry duty tonight.”

  “But I’m needed here,” Voorhees protested, taking a step toward the colonel.

  Sergeant Schrödinger, who was standing immobile, uttered a menacing grunt.

  Every German on the base knew it was unwise to cross Schrödinger. His story was legendary—the first member of the SS to have been captured by the Americans, and then to have escaped from Italy back to Germany. The Aryan giant had been caught trying to blow up a floating supply bridge. He refused to answer any questions, or to provide his name—even after a frustrated American officer punched him full-force in his still-open bullet wound. According to the stories, Schrödinger neither blinked nor winced, but merely returned the officer a half smile that sent an everlasting shiver through every man present. After his escape, he had walked all the way across the Alps from Italy, with a bullet in him—before removing it himself by making the necessary cuts and stitches, with no anesthetic.

  His story had spread to the Allies as well. Their radio chatter was alive with it. “Do you think Hitler has many more like him?”

  Maurice Voorhees knew there were more like him. Schrödinger and the test pilot Hanna Reitsch and more than two million others had been carefully “civilized,” from earliest childhood and with assembly-line efficiency, on the doctrine of racial purity, and in the manifest destiny of the National Socialist Party and a new world order. The Hitler Youth had been spoon-fed, the many hundreds of thousands o
f them, on the furies of superior arrogance and unceasing anger, sweetened with the intoxicants of sheer sadistic pleasure, and spite for spite’s sake. Schrödinger was the perfect end product of a meticulous program of indoctrination—a carefully manufactured instrument among millions of others within the Axis nations. He was but a single example of the most horrifying and widespread system of child abuse the world had yet seen.

  “Oh, yes, there certainly were more like him,” Voorhees could tell his American adversaries. Enough of them happened to be right here, at Nostromo Base. And if asked, Voorhees could not honestly say that he was not one of them himself. He liked to think that he was basically a good man, standing above the gutter in which Kimura and Wolff were planning their bioweapons research. But while growing up, and while wondering what he might become—while asking his parents whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that he should join the Nazi Party, whether it would make them proud—he could not avoid looking back now to what his mother had always warned: “Show me the company you keep, and I’ll tell you what you are.”

  Presently Voorhees tried to ignore the giant’s stare and to put away the thoughts and memories that refused to stop haunting him, until Wolff placed his logbook back into a desk drawer and locked it. The meeting or interrogation, or whatever it was, was definitely over. But instead of leaving, Colonel Wolff removed a carefully oiled and cared-for case from another compartment and from that case he withdrew a violin.

  Dr. Sänger, who seemed to be working on a new record for keeping his mouth shut, chose that moment to make his escape from the hangar.

  “Please close the door,” Wolff said, his voice having returned to its typical level of calm.

  “Yes, of course,” Sänger called back, pulling the door quickly closed again. His escape aborted, he turned toward the towering SS sergeant. “The humidity. Of course the humidity is bad for his—”

  Schrödinger began to growl, and for the second time in as many minutes, Eugen Sänger was at a loss for words.

  As the rocketeers watched, Wolff began playing. In fewer than three minutes, Voorhees and all of the rocket men had stopped what they were doing and started listening instead. The music grew louder and swooped steadily higher and faster, then swooped down again, mournfully beautiful. Voorhees looked around the room. Everyone appeared to have tears in his eyes, except for the SS giant.

  The music seemed to intensify Voorhees’s ability to look beyond the Silverbirds, to the moon and the worlds that waited somewhere on the other side of this madness. “Better days are coming,” he had once told his life’s one true love. “We are, after all, the country of Brahms, Bach, and Beethoven.”

  Unfortunately, his subconscious cried out to him, Brahms, Bach, and Beethoven are not running the Third Reich.

  The music never did reach MacCready—at least, not the violin music.

  When he opened his eyes again, Mac was unsure whether he was actually awake, or merely drifting through a concussion-induced nightmare. In either case, he was locked up in a dark cell that smelled like the receiving end of an outhouse. His arms were still bound behind his back, and he had the Headache from Hell. Then there was the man in the other cell. The annoying Boston accent had immediately pegged him as an American but the fact was, this fellow was definitely in rough shape.

  “All gone, now,” the man moaned, sounding like someone who had just lost his entire family. “All except me . . . and the new guy.”

  “Hey, buddy,” MacCready called out, keeping his voice as low as possible. His right temple felt as if it had been slammed by a bowling ball.

  There was no reply so he tried again. “Name’s MacCready, R. J. MacCready. What’s your name?”

  More silence . . . then a sniffle.

  “I asked you, buddy, what’s your name?”

  “Scott,” came a reply, barely a whisper. “Ned.” Then the man mumbled his rank and serial number.

  Silence, then more sobs. Soft. Heart-wrenching.

  MacCready recognized the name. Lieutenant Scott was one of the Rangers Hendry had sent in.

  MacCready tried to sit up and just before he fell back onto his side he was able to see in the dim light that except for Scott’s cell, the other enclosures appeared to be empty.

  What happened to the rest of the Rangers? Dead?

  The scientist exhaled a long breath, collecting his thoughts. “It’s gonna be all right, Scott. We’re gettin’ you out of this place.”

  Nothing.

  “Did you hear me? I said we’re gonna get out of here.”

  “Na-ah,” came the singsong response. “You’re just one of the new shipment of Maruta.”

  Where have I heard that word before? MacCready thought. “Maruta. And what’s that mean, Lieutenant?”

  The man ignored him, seeming to take a sudden interest in something outside his cell. “Uh-oh, no more doggie on the ceiling.”

  MacCready struggled into a sitting position. “Lieutenant, that word—maruta—what’s it mean?”

  The Ranger responded with a mirthless laugh. “Pally, it means you are fucked.”

  MacCready winced. Yes, and that’s really helpful.

  Then, as if to assure MacCready that, indeed, things could get worse, Lieutenant Ned Scott began to sing loudly:

  “I’m maruta, you’re maruta, he’s maruta, too! We’re logs, we’re logs, we’re laboratory frogs!”

  “Come on, MacFeelie, you know the words,” Scott called, cheerfully. Then he followed up with a high-pitched giggle. “If not . . . you’ll know them soo-oon.”

  MacCready rolled back onto his side and closed his eyes—hoping for an unconsciousness that refused to come—the madman’s song repeating over and over again.

  CHAPTER 14

  Children of Blood

  And in many places there are bats of such bigness [encountered by those who have followed Columbus to the New World tropics—bats, like large birds]. These bats have often times assaulted men in the night in their sleep, and so bitten them with their venomous teeth, that they have been thereby almost driven to madness, in so much that they have been compelled to flee from such places, as from ravenous Harpies.

  —PIETRO MARTYR D’ANGHIERA, 1525 (TRANSCRIBED BY RICHARD EDEN)

  Nostromo Base

  January 27, 1944

  Twenty minutes before dawn

  Tough luck, eh?” the corporal said.

  “How is that?” Maurice Voorhees replied, looking outward as he leaned against the bulwark railing of the I-400 conning tower. The fog was even thicker at dawn and glancing down, he could barely see the Nostromo’s deck.

  “I mean the colonel, doubling up the sentries. And with you being a rocket scientist, the doubling up is how you got enlisted for this duty, right?”

  Voorhees turned toward the lanky twenty-two-year-old. “Yes, Corporal Kessler, that is how I got enlisted.”

  “Can’t see a thing in this soup,” Kessler said, waving an arm through the mist. “I’m going down to check the stern.”

  “But we’re supposed to stay—”

  “We’re supposed to be protecting the boat,” the corporal said. “How can you protect what you can’t see?”

  Voorhees remained at the railing, watching as the man slung his MP-43 and began to lower himself down a set of slippery metal rungs.

  Then the corporal paused. “Are you coming, Dr. Voorhees?” he said in a hushed voice, his body language running in opposition to the unexpected burst of bravado.

  Voorhees hesitated for a moment, then nodded. He caught just a hint of relief on the corporal’s face before it disappeared below the conning tower deck.

  A minute later, they had almost made their way to the end of the submarine’s deserted and silent afterdeck. Even the parrots that flew squawking into the valley early each morning seemed to be sleeping late today.

  “This place is not what I thought it would be,” Kessler whispered. “I was wishing for coconuts and topless women.”

  Voorhees said nothing
, hoping the man would take the hint.

  “Sorry if I offend you, Doctor. I think you must have a girlfriend back home?”

  “Corporal Kessler, if this is your idea of small talk I’d rather not hear it.”

  “Apologies. I didn’t mean—I mean, it’s this place. It’s starting to make stories we hear about the Russian Front look like—” Kessler stopped short and his hand went up. His full attention had focused instantly on something up ahead, along the deck. He squinted, trying to get a better look through the fog that hid the tail and aftmost section of the boat.

  Voorhees could see something, too, just barely: small cloaked figures, three of them.

  “Hey there,” Kessler called. “What are you doing?”

  There was a flash of movement and the figures, which appeared to be hunched over, drew back into the fog. Their movement was accompanied by a faint clicking sound.

  Voorhees was surprised by their speed and even more so by their agility. Rather than rising up before running, the figures stayed low and scrabbled away. Like crabs on a beach.

  The two men exchanged looks. Then the corporal raised his machine gun and began to move forward. Voorhees followed close behind, drawing his sidearm.

  “They must be children,” Kessler whispered, sounding anything but convinced. “Village kids playing around on the boat . . . right?”

  Voorhees said nothing. Whatever these things are, he told himself, they are definitely not children.

  The corporal stepped deeper into the mist. The figures came into view again, briefly. Then they jumped back, leaving behind three swirls of motion-disturbed vapor.

  They’re moving on all fours, Voorhees thought. And they’re small—too small to be human, too—

  “Who goes there?” Kessler barked, and Voorhees gave a start. The corporal’s voice had broken on the second syllable.

  There was no reply, only some faint scratches and clicks.

  Corporal Kessler advanced toward the sound. The scratching stopped.