V-S Day: A Novel of Alternate History (22 page)

Ham followed his gaze. “Well, I guess that’s good news. I . . .”

The engine ignited.

First, there was a deep rumble, like some steel behemoth clearing its throat. As that happened, an orange glow appeared deep within the nozzle as turbopumps forced volatiles together in the combustion chamber, where they met a tiny yet significant electrical spark. Within an instant, the orange glow became yellow, then white . . .

And then, all at once, a violent jet of flame shot forth from the engine with a roar that thundered through the ravine like a sonic flood, vanquishing the shadows and forcing the men to slap their hands over their ears. A spotlight was snatched up and hurtled away, smashing to bits against a nearby tree, while another one simply fell over. A half second later, a hot torrent of air rushed down upon the men, and winter vanished for a few moments to be replaced by a brief and tempestuous summer.

Henry had seen liquid-fuel rocket engines fired before, but never like this. This was as different from the ones they’d tested at Mescalero Ranch as . . . there was no comparison, really. Watching this massive thing howling and blazing in the night, he suddenly realized that something new had just been born. Something that would take men to other worlds or destroy the one they already had.

The infernal roar seemed to go on and on and on, drowning out the shouts and cheering of the men around him. The engine visibly shook on its platform; it stayed anchored, but for several seconds, Henry was afraid that the chocks and I-beams would fail, and the carriage would be hurled down the siding, to be derailed and explode across the main line. But then, as suddenly as it had begun, the engine abruptly died. Just as if a switch had been thrown, the flame and noise abruptly went away, leaving behind only an ionized stench and diminishing echoes from the ravine’s rock walls.

“Was that it?” Gerry asked. “Is it . . . ?”

“Yeah.” Henry slowly let out his breath. His ears were ringing; he could barely hear the kid. He couldn’t take his eyes off the engine. “Yeah, that’s . . .”

“A hundred seconds!”

Mike Ferris leaped down from the passenger car. Dancing from foot to foot, he threw both fists in the air. “A hundred seconds!” he yelled again, as flashlight beams caught his manic dance. “Ten seconds longer than the minimum performance standard!”

The other members of the group stared at him for a second, then they scrambled to their feet and ran to him. “Impulse-per-second ratio?” Henry snapped, grabbing Mike’s shoulders.

“Three hundred ten, with a propellant mass flow rate of 425.7 pounds per second.” Mike grinned back at him. “Right on spec.”

“So where did the extra ten seconds come from?” Gerry asked. There had been just enough fuel in the tanks for a ninety-second test, which was the length of time it would take for the ship to reach its operational altitude.

“Doc throttled the engine down 75 percent for the last fifteen seconds. When we saw it wasn’t going to blow up, he wanted to see just how much longer a lower thrust ratio would extend the flying time . . .”

“Which means the pilot can reserve fuel if necessary,” Henry finished, and Mike nodded happily. “Wow. Nice to know.”

“‘Nice to know’?” Ham snorted. “Morse, sometimes I swear . . .”

Henry ignored him. Pushing past Mike, he trotted down the tracks to the passenger car. Goddard was where he’d left him, seated at the control panel. A spiral notebook lay open before him, and the pencil in his hand indicated that he’d just finished jotting down some figures, yet that wasn’t what he was doing just then. Instead, he was slumped in his chair, staring straight ahead as if exhausted by a physical task.

“Bob . . . ?”

“Worked out rather well, didn’t it?” A weak smile; Bob barely looked at him. “We ran it until the fuel was all used up,” he added, then looked around at Colonel Bliss, who was standing behind him. “I rather believe we could’ve run it even longer, if we’d had a larger fuel capacity.”

“Next time, Professor.” With uncommon warmth, Bliss patted Goddard’s shoulder, then he looked up at the members of the team. “Good work, gentlemen. Outstanding. Now, if you’ll assist the soldiers and the train crew, I think we can get out of here and go home.”

“Yeah, great.” Ham slowly let out his breath. “Back to Worcester for the engine and the lodge for us . . .”

“No, not quite.” Bliss shook his head. “We’re sending the engine straight to New Mexico aboard this same train. You’re going back to the lodge just long enough to pack your bags, then you’ll fly down to Alamogordo.”

The men said nothing for a moment or two, then Gerry suddenly cut loose a rebel yell that caused everyone to break down in relieved laughter. Twelve weeks of enforced isolation were finally coming to an end. The hunting lodge in New Hampshire had lost whatever rustic charm it once had; they were ready to spend the rest of the winter in a warmer climate.

Surprisingly, though, Goddard shook his head. “If it’s all the same to you . . .”

All of a sudden, he doubled over and, holding his hand against his mouth, erupted in a spasmodic fit of coughing that came from deep within his chest. Henry started forward, but Goddard held up a hand, warding him off. Henry stopped in midstep, but only because he knew that Bob wanted no one’s help. Nonetheless, these fits had become more frequent lately; the year he’d spent in New England had taken its toll.

“If it’s all the same with you,” Goddard went on, once he’d recovered himself, “I’d just as soon ride down with the engine. I’m afraid I’m not much for air travel.”

Bliss hesitated. “It’s not going to be very comfortable.”

“I’ll make do.” Goddard looked at Henry and the others. “Tell Esther I won’t be long. Just taking Nell off to school, that’s all. Don’t want her to get lost along the way.”

“Yeah, all right . . . sure thing, Bob.” Henry turned to his colleagues. “Okay, boys, you heard the boss. Let’s get our baby ready for a little road trip.”

MAY 19, 1943

The hangar doors parted to allow the big Ford tractor-trailer rig to growl forward into the desert morning, and the hundreds of men and women standing outside broke into applause as the
Lucky Linda
saw the light of day.

The spaceship lay horizontal upon its carriage, its burnished steel hull reflecting the sunlight so brightly that it dazzled the eye. The solid-fuel boosters hadn’t yet been attached, and its missiles were still being tested, but otherwise the ship was finished. The rocket engine brought down from Massachusetts five months ago had been fully integrated within the hull and ground-tested again, and all the other major components were flight-ready, from its radar array to its landing chute.

At long last, the time had come to move the ship from its assembly hangar to its just-completed launchpad, where it would undergo final tests before being placed on standby. It was a day for celebration. For the past fifteen months,
Lucky Linda
had been the object of devotion for all these people who were standing outside its hangar; they clapped and cheered and whistled, making the most of the moment. More than a year of constant effort had led up to this, and everyone wanted to savor it.

“There she is,” Henry said to Goddard. Along with the rest of the 390 Group, they had an honored position in the crowd, right next to the place where the truck would carry the spacecraft. “Our little
Linda
, having her coming-out party.”

“Our little Nell, you mean.” As the truck approached them, Goddard regarded the nude girl painted on the ship’s nose with tight-faced Yankee disapproval. “If I’d known our pilot was going to do that to her . . .”

“Say what?” Skid Sloman was standing just behind Goddard. He bent closer and mockingly cupped an ear. “Sorry, Doc, didn’t quite hear you . . . everyone’s making too much noise!”

Goddard scowled but said nothing. Henry traded a look with Jack Cube, who stood on the other side of the professor. Jack remained stoical as always, his eyes hidden behind his aviator shades, but he shook his head ever so slightly. Skid had rubbed Bob the wrong way the moment they met, when he spit out a wad of chewing gum just as he was stepping forward to shake Goddard’s hand. The gum hit Bob’s shoe, and Skid hadn’t noticed, let alone apologized, and that was it; from that moment on, it was Goddard’s opinion that Lieutenant Rudy Sloman was the wrong man for the job, and never mind the fact that he’d mastered the training exercises so well that he could probably fly
Lucky Linda
in his sleep.

From the corner of his eye, Henry caught a glimpse of Joe McPherson. The backup pilot stood next to Skid, and there was no mistaking the look of contemptuous envy on his face. From what Jack had told him, it wasn’t until
Lucky Linda
was nearly completed that McPherson began to really take the mission seriously. Up to that point, the X-1 was just some silly experimental aircraft that would probably never get off the ground. When it became clear that
Lucky Linda
would indeed fly, though, and the man who piloted it into space would earn far more than just a paycheck, McPherson suddenly became intent on bumping Skid from his place at the front of the line.

Fat chance of that. Over the past eleven months, Jack and Skid had become close friends. Were it not for the fact that Jack was too tall for the cockpit, he would have been Skid’s backup pilot, not Joe. But this hadn’t stopped McPherson from kissing up to Bob Goddard . . . and when that failed, because Bob liked brown-nosers even less than smart-asses, he’d become obsessive about logging more hours in the simulator and centrifuge than Skid, a vain effort to prove that he was better qualified to be the primary pilot.

Henry looked at the spacecraft again. It had pulled abreast of them by then, its port wing passing over their heads. On impulse, he reached up, standing on tiptoes as he stretched out his hand as far as he could. He was rewarded by feeling the wing’s underside lightly brush his fingertips; it was already warm in the desert sun, and he knew that the ship would be covered by canvas shrouds once its carriage raised it erect within the launchpad’s gantry tower.

“Hey, what’re you trying to prove?” Ham Ballou snapped, pretending to be annoyed. “Get your mitts off my nice clean spaceship!”

“It’s mine, too.” Henry felt a touch of embarrassment as he fell back on his heels. “Keep your shirt on.”

Ham shared a laugh with Taylor and Gerry, and Henry decided to let it pass. Truth was, he didn’t know what had come over him just then. He and the others had spent the last five months crawling all over the
Lucky Linda
, and he’d never been sentimental about touching the ship before. But then he glanced at Goddard, and to his surprise he saw that Bob had lowered his head just a bit so that he could run his fingers under the rims of his glasses and wipe tears from the corners of his eyes. Apparently, Bob noticed Henry watching him, because he quickly dropped his hand. Yet there was no doubt that the professor had felt the same thing he had. They’d come a long way in such a short time, and it was nothing less than astonishing to see the results of their efforts made real, a dream come true.

The truck moved on, towing
Lucky Linda
behind it as it headed for the pad. The applause gradually faded as the crowd broke up. No ceremonies, no speeches, no brass bands; everyone still had jobs to do, and the day wasn’t getting any younger. Henry watched as Goddard turned to walk back to the administration building. He thought about joining him, but he had his work cut out for him at the blockhouse, which was still being fitted for the coming mission . . . whenever that would be.

Henry found a couple of Corps of Engineers electricians who happened to be going the same way and hopped into the back of their jeep. He spent the rest of the morning on the floor of the concrete igloo, crawling around on hands and knees to make sure all the multicolored wires went to the places they were supposed to go, and when he was done, he had the inevitable paperwork that needed to be signed by someone with scrambled eggs on his hat.

So he hiked back to the administration building and paid a visit to Bliss’s office. As usual, the colonel wasn’t around. His secretary informed Henry that the colonel was in a meeting on the other side of the base and probably wouldn’t be back until after lunch, so Henry added the form to the stack already on the colonel’s desk and left. Lunch sounded like a good idea, and Henry had learned to take advantage of the days when he actually had a chance to enjoy one.

On the way out, though, his steps took him past Goddard’s office. The door was ajar, and he heard music—Mozart’s Symphony No. 39, if he wasn’t mistaken—coming from inside. Henry stopped and, gently tapping his knuckles against the door, peered into the office.

“Bob?” he asked.

Goddard was sitting at the utilitarian wooden desk he’d been issued, a clothbound book open in his hands. Even after five months, he hadn’t yet finished unpacking all the boxes that had been shipped down from the New Hampshire hunting lodge; his feet were propped up on a crate marked
TECH. JOURNALS
, a black cigar smoldering in a brass ashtray at his elbow. The music was coming from the portable phonograph that seemed to follow him wherever he went, and it was just loud enough that he didn’t hear Henry until he said his name. But when Henry looked in, he noticed that Goddard’s attention wasn’t on the book but instead was on the distant launchpad, visible through the window above his desk.

“What . . . ? Oh, yes, hello . . . come in.” Marking his place with a finger, Goddard half closed the book and sat up a little straighter. “Just reading an old favorite and . . . well, ruminating a bit.”

“Which book?” Henry asked as he stepped into the office.

Goddard held up the book so that he could see the frayed red dustcover:
The War of the Worlds
by H. G. Wells. “I’ve been carrying this around with me ever since I was a boy,” he said, a sly smile beneath his mustache. “Pages are beginning to fall out, print’s barely readable, but . . . I don’t know, I just can’t bear to toss it away and buy a new copy.”

“That’s the one you read when . . . ?”

“Uh-huh. The day I climbed up that apple tree and decided what I wanted to do with my life.”

Henry knew the story well; all of Bob’s close friends did. This was the first time, though, that he’d ever seen the actual book that had sent Robert H. Goddard down his life’s path. “You’d never want to throw out something like that,” he said, taking a seat in the office’s only other chair. “It means too much to you.”

“I agree.” Looking at the book fondly, Goddard chuckled. “Not long after we met, Esther tried to replace it by giving me a nice new copy for my birthday. She meant well, of course, but . . . well, she was rather upset when she caught me reading this copy instead, with the one she’d given me still untouched on the shelf. I thought I’d given her a reason to divorce me that day.”

Henry grinned. Bob was exaggerating, of course; Esther wouldn’t leave her husband if a gun were pointed to her head. “How’s she doing?” he asked. “Heard from her lately?”

“Talked to her on the phone just the other day. I told her I’d try to get out to the ranch sometime soon.” Although Esther had followed Bob from New Hampshire, the Army hadn’t permitted her to join him on the base, or even enter Alamogordo as a visitor; so far as the military was concerned, she was a civilian with no security clearance at all. So she’d moved back to Mescalero Ranch, where her husband visited her on weekends. When he had time, that is . . . which wasn’t very often.

Again, Goddard’s gaze drifted toward the window. “I hope they’re being careful with that thing,” he said quietly. “It’s not like we’ve got a spaceship assembly line.”

Henry leaned forward to peer past him. The truck had parked alongside the gantry tower, and servomotors were slowly tilting its carriage upward, raising the
Lucky Linda
to a vertical position upon the launch ring. Ham and Taylor were overseeing this part of the operation. Deciding that three chiefs were too many, Henry had deliberately stayed away, but there was no reason why Bob had to do the same.

“I’m sure no one would mind if you went out to . . .” he began.

“No. I’d rather not, thank you.” Catching a querying look from the younger man, Goddard let out his breath. “Y’know, there are times when I don’t know whether I love that thing or hate it.” Henry raised an eyebrow, and Goddard shook his head. “No, no . . . don’t misunderstand me. I’m proud of what we’ve done, really. We’ve done something here no one else . . . well, maybe the Germans . . . has ever done, and built the first manned space vehicle. We’re far ahead of everything anyone thought might be possible, even your science fiction magazines. But . . .”

His voice trailed off. “But what?” Henry asked.

Goddard hesitated. “This wasn’t what I intended,” he said after a moment. “When I set out to build a spacecraft, it wasn’t to make a military vehicle . . . it was to go to Mars. Making something that we’d use to wage war was the last thing on my mind.”

“Yes, well . . . unfortunately, the Germans had different ideas.”

“Really? I wouldn’t be so sure of that. I heard from the German Rocket Society before the war, when they tried to get technical information from me about my first engines. Whatever else he might have become since then, I know for a fact that Wernher von Braun’s main interest was going to the Moon, not dropping bombs on New York. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t get pushed into this by the Nazis.”

Henry glanced over his shoulder. The hallway outside was vacant, but nonetheless he leaned back in his chair to push the door shut. No sense in getting unwanted attention. Secrecy at Alamogordo was such that even an offhand remark like that could be misconstrued as a possible security breach, even if it came from Blue Horizon’s technical director.

Goddard didn’t notice; his eyes were still turned toward the window, his thoughts even further than that. “When this is over, I hope the X-1 goes into a museum somewhere and never flies again. I want the next spaceship we build to be for peaceful purposes only, that it won’t have any missiles or guns. That’s the future I want, Henry. The exploration of space, not . . .”

From somewhere outside, an interruption: the earsplitting jangle of an ambulance siren, getting louder and closer by the moment.

The two men had barely glanced at one another when a van with a red cross on its side raced past the window, raising a cloud of sand that obscured the distant rocket. Henry stood up from his chair and craned his neck to see which direction it was going, and just then the phone on Goddard’s desk rang.

The professor snatched up the receiver. “Yes? What did . . . ? Who? Oh, my God . . . yes, we’ll be there right away!” He dropped the receiver and jumped up from his chair. “C’mon, Henry,” he snapped as he headed for the door, “there’s been an accident!”

“Where?” he asked.

Goddard didn’t seem to hear him. He was already trotting down the hall. Following him out the side door, Henry let the professor lead him across the compound. Another emergency vehicle, a fire truck, roared by, but Henry didn’t see any signs of smoke. So why was . . . ?

Then he saw a small crowd gathered in front of the training facility, and suddenly he understood. There had been an accident inside, possibly in the simulator or . . .

The centrifuge.

He and Goddard had just reached the building when its door swung open and the two ambulance medics emerged, carrying a stretcher between them. One of the flight doctors—the tall one, Dr. Wysocki, whom the pilots had nicknamed Jeff—strode alongside them, holding the wrist of the man on the stretcher. A couple of MPs were doing their best to hold back the crowd, but Goddard managed to push through, with Henry right behind him. Henry gazed over Goddard’s shoulder and saw who was being carried out:

Joe McPherson, the backup pilot.

The medics reached the ambulance and loaded the stretcher aboard, but then Dr. Wysocki scrambled into the back before they could get going. He clamped his stethoscope against his chest, listened for a moment, then he and one of the medics turned McPherson over on his stomach and elevated the test pilot’s elbows while the doctor gently, repetitively pushed down on the upper part of his back. The other medic stood on the other side of the stretcher, holding his fingers against McPherson’s neck while keeping an intent eye on his wristwatch.