Hell's Gate(26)

“Where’s your aiming point for the return impact?” S?nger asked.

“Right here.”

“Scheisse! Tell me you’re joking.”

“Don’t look so concerned, Dr. S?nger. Your gyros are good, but not that good. We’ll never get a direct hit on the aiming point,” Voorhees said. “And besides, it’s a good test of your guidance systems for the reentry vehicles.”

Not for the first time that day, he found himself grinning at the thought that his logic had prevailed once more. It felt strange to be smiling again; strange to be feeling enthusiastic about anything.

S?nger had reminded Voorhees on several occasions that two officers literally had to drag him from a bomb crater the morning after the RAF had attacked the rocket facility at Peenemünde. “They found you digging on all fours like a dog,” S?nger added, seeming to relish this portion of the tale if only for the pain he knew it would cause.

Up until the night of the bombing raid, Voorhees’s thoughts about Demeter would have been amazement over the engineering foresight that had gone into a submarine nearly half as long as the Hindenburg. But the man who used to dream that one day people would look down from the new oceans of space had stepped from the bomb-blasted pit into a vessel in which he was afraid to dream—and, to one degree or another, even ashamed to dream.

On the long transatlantic voyage, S?nger had arranged for Voorhees to be bunked in a closet of a room that, in accordance with the standard of confined crew spaces aboard submarines, qualified as luxurious officer’s quarters. It was equipped with a pull-down bed, foldout table, and tiny chair. There was no door; only a canvas curtain through which he heard constant activity outside his cabin. Some of the voices were German. Others, though, had spoken Japanese.

Initially, Voorhees had felt like a prisoner. But no one blocked his way when he went outside in search of the nearest toilet—which looked as if it had been wedged into a maze of copper pipes and multicolored valves almost as an afterthought. He received no orders. No one bothered him. Meals were delivered in silence by a Japanese galley assistant—dried fish and rice, mostly. Although the man smiled and bowed each time he entered the cabin, he never spoke, never tried to communicate.

Voorhees liked that about the man.

He barely touched his food.

He tried to avoid sleep.

Voorhees had lost track of the days, when he heard a voice calling his name from the doorway. Eugen S?nger did not wait for a reply.

“We thought you could use some rest,” the unwelcome visitor said. “And in that regard I do hope you are finding the accommodations—”

“Why am I here?” Voorhees asked. He was lying on his back on the fold-down cot.

“You have been through much,” S?nger continued. It appeared that he was trying to sound sympathetic, but even in Voorhees’s post-Peenemünde physical and mental state, he could see through the act: The man might just as well have been commenting on the lumps in someone’s oatmeal.

“You haven’t answered my question,” Voorhees said.

S?nger’s voice was cool and controlled. “You are here, Dr. Voorhees, because I requested that you be here. May I sit down?”

Once again, the young rocket scientist said nothing. And once again, S?nger did not wait for permission. Instead he unfolded the small chair and sat intimidatingly near to Voorhees’s face.

“Maurice, I wonder if you are aware that you and von Braun’s friends at Peenemünde were not the only group involved in a major rocketry program for the fatherland.”

Voorhees continued to stare upward at nothing in particular and, noting this, the older man unfurled a set of drawings and spread them out on what little space was left on the cot.

Voorhees glanced down at the figures, then sat upright. His first thought was that this must be S?nger’s idea of a joke.

“There you are,” said S?nger, sounding like someone who had just hooked a prize-winning fish. “Shall I continue?”

Voorhees said nothing, but sensed the older man reading the answer in his eyes. “Yes, I’ll continue, then,” S?nger said. “As you can see, these craft will be piloted. The best guidance systems our engineers have come up with are too heavy for—”

“What is it that you want from me, Dr. S?nger?”

“Maurice, we wanted you here . . . I wanted you here because of your expertise with rocket engine design and control—and because of your ability to redesign at short notice. Your talents have become vital to the success of our mission.”

“You mean, now that Dr. von Braun is missing?”

Now S?nger moved uneasily in his chair. “I don’t care where von Braun is. Your idol had become a liability. An increasingly unstable liability.”

A strange expression passed across Voorhees’s face. At another time, seemingly a lifetime ago, his beloved Lisl, a bright young woman with glasses and a warm smile, would have laughed at the thought of von Braun or any of the rocket men being characterized as anything but unstable.

“There is something funny, Maurice?”

“No, I was just thinking, back to—”

“Peenemünde. Yes. Your attachment to von Braun’s project is . . . admirable. Now, though, you must face the facts. Peenemünde was a dinosaur even before the RAF forced our hand. Now you must deal with the future, not von Braun’s future, Germany’s future!”