Apparatus 33: Dead Man Switch

by Lawston Pettymore

  To stage his Gotterdammerung, Todtenhausen had to locate the frame that opened the doors in the test reel and splice it to the self-destruct reel that contained the complex engine ignition sequence, which he himself did not know, but which Zerrissen had captured in the self-destruct reel, and installed in the A10 launch sequencer residing on the floor of the launch dome.

  Where should Apparatus 33 be instructed to park the warhead, awaiting instructions to descend back to the Earth’s surface? A low Earth Polar orbit would allow it to fly above any spot on the globe and return to the surface within five or 10 minutes. A geostationary orbit would allow it to hover above a given target until recalled. Falling back to the surface from this altitude would take a few hours. Pondering these options, Todtenhausen was inspired to act on the hints from his counterparts at the Eispalast when an idea occurred to him on how to cut the mass of Apparatus 33 by several kilograms. Doing some quick math between the cracks of a fractured slate chalkboard, he satisfied himself that the goal was ambitious, but possible. He would not send Wermut to any target. Instead, he would park the capsule out of reach. Someplace where even the Americans could not find or shoot down. He who uses power, loses power. He would configure the capsule to fire its retrorocket motors only when the on-board radio fails to receive a signal from Earth, a so-called dead-man-switch. Should anything unpleasant happen to him, the signal to remain in orbit would cease, and Wermut would retro rocket out of hiding, falling back to Earth.

  So Wermut was not going to Washington, or Moscow, nor was it going to loiter in low-Earth orbit.

  Wermut was going to the Moon.

  Götterdämmerung

  The soldiers were now close enough for Todtenhausen to hear them yelling at each other in Russian. He estimated this gave him at most three hours to assemble the actors, props, and script for his tragic opera.

  By projecting both reels from two editing projectors onto small screens, and with the projector gate properly synchronized, the rows of dots came alive, shoving each other around, up, and down in perfect unison. With practice, one could learn to decode the 127 possible patterns for each of the ten rows, turning the dance into a story, like bees dancing for hive mates to explain where the nectar can be found.

  When the dances on the two screens fell out of synchronization, Todtenhausen knew he had located the frame with proper launch opening instructions to keep the oculus closed, which, by rewinding and single stepping forward a bit, occurred early in the test reel, at frame 1488 to be exact, which he surgically cut away and, as if performing a plant graft, spliced into the self-destruct reel. His opus film was now ready to make as much film history as that Jewish movie, Gone with The Wind, with which the world was currently so distracted. Todtenhausen blew on the pungent adhesive applied between the splice joints to speed the curing process.

  Gently tugging on the film strip to test the strength of the splice, he visualized the edited version of his movie in his head and saw an opportunity to add some more drama. Dipping a small brush in the opaquing solution, he blacked out the command that would shut off the pumps to the methane tanks after decoupling from the Amerika Rakete. This would flood the launch chamber with liquid methane that would ignite when sufficient ambient oxygen entered the chamber from the open oculus, through which the Rakete would have already flown, and would enhance the fireball inside Die Kuppel, to the amusement of anyone left alive within.

  Satisfied that these instructions had been blacked out, he then mounted the reel on the rewinder to take the frames back to the first frame where the sequencer would expect to find the beginning instructions. When mounted, the projector would loop through 86,000 frames, obeying whichever of the 127 commands, approximately an hour’s worth of processing. Rather than trust his time estimates, Todtenhausen would have preferred to rig a hidden switch to trigger the sequencer, but there was no time for that. This would have to be an asynchronous series of events that began as soon as he set the sequencer in motion.

  Two hours and thirty minutes remained. There were more explosions, more concrete shrapnel bursting off the walls, and more yelling in Russian, each time clearer than before.

  Installation of the navigation and flight control device, Apparatus 33, was next, and for this, Sister Kathe and one of her charges were required. With her standing calmly by his side, not even glancing at the ceiling after each blast, he remarked to himself how composed she continued to be. He wrote the serial number tattooed to the wrist of Pyotr, the top-performing student, on her hand. Then she was off on her mission, navigating with confidence the dark, fluid-slick corridors of the hanging dead to retrieve him.

  The fat pediatrician, Gorgass, was cowering in the same corner Todtenhausen had last seen him a day and a lifetime ago, yelping with each explosion. Wrestling the fat man to his feet, Todtenhausen saw what could have only been a Vatican passport, poking out of his lab coat pocket. With threats that he would soon be a Soviet prisoner, he commanded Gorgass to set up the surgical theater under pretense of offering aid to the injured Soviets, once they broke in, as an act of contrition.

  Two hours and twenty minutes remained. Todtenhausen could now distinguish separate voices, one of which had the bass note of authority that he did not care to meet face to face.

  Kathe appeared before him, cool and unflappable as before, cooler even than any of the SS guards he remembered, dragging Pyotr behind her, for whom Todtenhausen stood ready with a syringe of opium. As the door to the operating room slammed behind them, Todtenhausen caught a glimpse of a small boy shouting and reaching out to them, which he recognized as Pyotr’s brother. He was the one Mengele had found so intriguing. But no matter now.

  What mattered was reducing Pyotr’s mass to fit into the smaller available volume of the Wermut capsule, the interior of which Todtenhausen had modified according to the notes received from Eispalast. Inserting the additional tank of hypergolic propellants not only consumed half the available space for Pyotr, but the additional mass of these propellants must also be compensated for by removing the same mass from somewhere else. Todtenhausen’s inspiration was that legs are not necessary in space. In fact, legs are a liability. They add weight without contributing to anything except the susceptibility of the pilot to blackouts from g-forces. A pilot blacks out from high accelerations because blood is forced away from the brain and into the legs. Remove the legs and the blood has half as much body mass to deprive the brain of its critical oxygen. And the Amerika Rackete was going to experience some extraordinary accelerations on its way to its ambush orbit around the Moon.

  The opium injection slowed Pyotr’s protests to floppy motions before he went limp, slumping to the ground with his eyes shut. His unconscious body was thrown onto a gurney and wheeled into the otherwise empty and only partially looted surgical theater, where Todtenhausen, assisted by a perplexed Gorgass, attached pumps and hoses to keep Pyotr breathing, replenishing lost blood with plasma that Kathe kept stocked. The carving process proceeded through the hour, accompanied by explosions from above and the cascade of concrete chips from all directions. Gorgass protested when he became aware of Todtenhausen’s intentions with Pyotr, and an injection of opium from Kathe quickly put an end to his unplanned interruption. Todtenhausen reminded Kathe not to forget grabbing Gorgass’ Vatican Passport before they fled the site.

  The amputation would be performed under anesthesia, of course, for neither Todtenhausen nor Mengele were animals after all. The spinal cord was cut in just the right place so the boy could still move his hands and arms but feel nothing below his waist, of which nearly nothing, including the stomach and intestines, would remain anyway.

  When installed in the warhead, the boy would notice several changes from the Iron Lung trainers. The CRT display was now only a few centimeters away from his face, and his arms would be confined close to his torso, what remained of it. But the interior of the warhead would be dark, and his abdomen covered, so the boy would likely never be aware of the improvements to his body made by the g
ood doctor during the few minutes he would be alive after launch.

  Gorgass was reviving from his opium nap, and was trying to strike anyone in range, including Kathe. Todtenhausen made final use of the surgical instrument in his hand against his carotid, though Gorgass managed, despite his bulkiness, to stumble out of the operating theater to bleed out remaining liters onto the corridor floor that led to an exit that would, by Todtenhausen’s estimate, be filled with Soviets in minutes. It was just enough time for him to replace Gorgass’ photograph with his own from his German passport; a passport that would have gotten him transported to a prison in Russia.

  Only forty minutes remained.

  With Kathe’s help, an unconscious Pyotr was transported by gurney to the launch chamber and hoisted into the warhead cavity. Kathe fitted the headset by which he would receive final assurances from Todtenhausen and inserted the catheter that would deliver a plasma drip to replace the bleeding incisions on Pyotr’s lower body. When Pyotr awakened from sedation, he would already be installed, legless, and for additional weight saving, castrated and bowels removed, in the familiar confines of the warhead on top of the Amerika Rakete stack.

  Ten minutes remained.

  The needles in the dials monitoring Pyotr’s vital signs quivered signs of life in his half-sized body. Todtenhausen powered up the sequencer to begin preparations for launch.

  Todtenhausen heard a yelp and a mournful cry in his headset. Pyotr, installed as Apparatus 33 in the warhead fifty meters above, was regaining consciousness.

  The first sensation penetrating through the fog of anesthesia was sound, dominated by a roar, like that of a freight train, rushing through the blood vessels of tympanic membranes, eventually subsiding, yielding to ambient noises of fans, pumps, relays, buzzers, humming transformers – the familiar sounds of the polio training chamber, and someone talking in his headset.

  His eyelids cracked open and slowly focused on a familiar Iron Lung Trainer screen. Except for the tight confines, he concluded he was inside the advanced training module of the Iron Lung Lab, though he had no recollection of how he got there, nor of anything else that took place in the last several hours.

  Pyotr’s nostrils widened to filter through the aromas of warm electronics—meters, vacuum tubes, and small incandescent bulbs—with a nuance of the usual oils and hydraulic fluids mixed with his own body odor.

  But the heat was different this time. A large black sphere that he had never seen in the training module before, filled the space behind the instrument panel in front of him. The sphere did not glow, yet it radiated a form of warmth not unlike the Sun in the summer, had the Sun been somehow painted matte black, and covered with strips of copper, each with a pair of wires, one red and one black, and braided to one side. Pyotr felt a similar heat on his backside, but the muscles for twisting his body around to see were no longer responding. In fact, the only movement he could summon, strapped tightly as he was to the seat of the trainer, was in his hands and arms.

  The voice came over his headset again, this time recognizable as Herr Doktor Todtenhausen’s, which would have been very intimidating for Pyotr under ordinary circumstances, as Todtenhausen possessed a complete contempt for children. But in his state of disorientation, a familiar voice, even Todtenhausen’s, was somewhat calming. The voice was monotone, not urgent, and the instructions were familiar. He concluded that he must have been placed in the training module and simply passed out from the violent jumps, jerks, tilts, swivels, all expected movements by the trainer in response to Pyotr’s inputs that would slap him against the bulkhead or control panel were he not firmly strapped to the seat.

  Todtenhausen’s voice explained that this was the final session, after which, providing Pyotr did well, he and his brother could both go home and rejoin their family as cured victims of polio.

  Pyotr thought that the mention of family was a bit out of character for Herr Doktor Todtenhausen, yet there was something about it that fired a still awakening neurons. Was something wrong with brother Nicolaus? He also recalled sounds of explosions, and adults panicking over an impending doom, the exact nature of which he could not yet recall. He listened for the explosions around him, but in the elevated decibel environment of his test module, he heard nothing, other than a shaking and vibration, rather more pronounced than usual. Only Herr Doktor’s voice rose above the din of the machines.

  A counter on the instrument panel started flipping numbers backwards from ten. The session was starting. Fans blew hot air over his face, and he became vaguely aware of moisture on his chin. He lifted his hands to his face and confirmed that it was saliva drooling from his parted lips.

  Over his headset, Pyotr heard Herr Doktor’s authoritative, and oddly soothing male voice, assuring him that all was well. He would soon be reunited with his brother. All Pyotr needed to do was perform his usual stellar work on the controls. The bumps would be bumpier this time, the bangs and metallic grinding would be louder, and he would feel pressures he had not felt before, but his responses had to be the same as they were in his training.

  Pyotr was prepared to respond to the lines on the oscilloscope, take and adjust meter readings as necessary, and pull levers, close and open circuit breakers, twist knobs, and make all the correct responses to the lights and symbols on the green screen for which he was trained so well.

  A familiar roar filled his capsule, presumably of steam modulated with a seething rhythm. It sounded like a clockwork dragon preparing for combat in flight.

  A green circle appeared on the screen, and Pyotr used the stick to place a dot in the center of the circle and press a button for three seconds as per his training. This was the usual opening sequence. He could do this in his sleep. All the children in the nine-year-old’s’ cohort at Die Kuppel were familiar with Iron Lung trainers, and of managing the shapes of green on its CRT display. Some of the children thought of the thin green lines as bits of kite string, tying themselves into knots to be untied using the various switches, knobs, levers, and the stick that looked like a broom handle stuck to the floor.

  Immediately, a roar sounded from outside, exactly the response he expected but much louder, and the module began to vibrate in unison. A loop appeared on the screen that he recognized even as it blurred a bit from the shaking. He knew to twist a dial to flatten the loop into a line, while pressing a specific button on a panel of ten colored buttons. His input was accompanied by the sounds of gears grinding and pumps activating. A loud roar was followed by an unfamiliar feeling of heaviness, as if a large animal, like that cow he and Nicolaus had raised from a calf, sitting on his chest. Pyotr would never know that he was already higher above the Earth’s surface than any human in history, including Sir Edmund Hillary, and the B-17 pilots currently bombing Berlin into chunks of brick, mortar, and human kibble.

  Pyotr preferred to think of the shapes as a game of Snakes and Ladders, with himself the snake master, and the broom-handle stick a snake-charmer’s flute. Sapera and pungi.

  This imagery served Pyotr well, even now, when remembering the sometimes-complex sequences of inputs necessary to tame and domesticate the snakes, but this current session was disturbingly different. He had absolutely no room to move about in a confined area filled with new sounds – bangs and pops, and a scraping roar like the boat Pyotr had built from scrap to catch crayfish when scraping the bottom of the pond on the farm. The air in this smaller cabin was hotter and moister than either the training modules or the crayfish boat and smelled of feet. Most distressingly, the jolts and jerks were much more violent and longer lasting.

  He could not know, of course, that the thin green snake-like shapes were Lissajous Figures, influenced by signals assigned to an X, Y, and Z axis from instruments monitoring Wermut’s velocity, yaw, pitch, and roll. He could not know that his puzzle solving - changing ovals into circles, rectangles into squares, and using the broom handle stick to center all of them on the screen – were commands to the cluster of rocket motors and verniers to throttle their th
rust, or gimble their exhaust vectors.

  The groans and grinding sounds were alarming him, but he did not want to fail Sister Kathe, whom he imagined was waiting outside with his brother, Nicolaus, ready to poke them both with her rod should he fail to solve the puzzles correctly.

  The timer indicated the end of the training session was near, so he allowed himself this welcome image of his brother waiting outside, an imaged that shattered like glass as he was violently thrown forward, then back in his straps. Blood trickled from his nose; the combinations of pressures having broken the delicate capillaries that form the olfactory sensors. The screen blurred; he could no longer bring it into focus. Spittle and droplets of blood floated away in little spheres away from his nose and mouth. Pyotr wanted to leave the game, but his body was not responding, and his eyes could no longer see.

  Wermut was now traveling at the magic velocity and trajectory that would wrest it from Earth’s gravitational grasp, along a large ballistic arc that would eventually, four days hence, intersect the orbit of the Moon at apogee. Here, Wermut would be captured by the Moon’s gravity, and an orbit giving the Moon, for the first time, its own moon, where Wermut would remain for all eternity there until recalled back to Earth.

  Pyotr would never know his status of being the first human to the Moon. His fingers slumped off the stick, his arms floated away from the control panel, his head fell to the side, his eyes closed. The oxygen in the module was finally depleted, replaced by Pyotr’s .