Hell's Gate(41)

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 S?nger 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 S?nger and Maurice Voorhees were working on their rockets.

Colonel Wolff strode into the hangar followed, as always, by Sergeant Schr?dinger, 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 S?nger, 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 S?nger’s pained expression.

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

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