Hell's Gate(80)

Below and behind Hanna Reitsch, the world was in shadow. Directly ahead, the stars were dust, and the same blackness seemed to go on forever . . . until the line of daylight began advancing toward her, at hitherto unattainable velocity. Dawn was striking across the western Atlantic, just now about to touch parts of Brazil and the easternmost tip of North America.

As predicted, Reitsch was following the curve of the earth in free fall. She resisted an urge to enjoy the sensation, instead concentrating on a problem. Down there on Earth, gravity normally kept the contents of a vehicle’s gas tank sloshing on the bottom, close to its uptake line. Because the Silverbird had neither gravity nor a bottom, the fuel and fuel oxidizer existed as globules—most of them floating far from where the fuel uptakes were located.

But now I will take care of that, she thought.

And as she sped toward daylight, it came time to test S?nger’s maneuvering systems. In accordance with the instructions of the rocket men, she vented a small amount of air from the tanks into the vacuum of space. As they had predicted, the effect was like a child’s balloon, released and allowed to fly free: The rocket was jetted forward, ever so slightly and, she hoped, just enough to force the remainder of the liquid fuel “downward,” into the throats of the engine uptakes.

Now Reitsch knew for certain that she could make brief ignitions and course corrections at will.

She began to orient her spacecraft for reentry.

So, she told herself, it seems that the insufferable * and his disciple were good for something after all.

Morning and noon came at her with astonishing rapidity, flooding the cockpit with light. But it was late afternoon that interested her most. Late afternoon in the Ukraine, which was sweeping up ahead, silently, moving toward her like the unstoppable minute hand of a giant clock.

Down there on Earth, in the Cherkassy Pocket, 65,000 German soldiers were surrounded by as many as a half-million Russians. If the Silverbird came in on target, and if her payload did its work, more than half of the Russians would soon be dead, and by dusk the Germans would break free. In preparation for Hanna Reitsch and the dawn of disease warfare, the 24th Panzer Unit, which had slogged north through mud and melting snow to relieve the trapped German forces, suddenly halted its advance and turned back. The order had come directly from Berlin, the moment Nostromo Base broke radio silence and announced, “The first bird is away.”

Even from the other side of the sky, Hanna could see faint signatures of an early thaw across the Ukraine.

An early thaw.

That is how it began.





CHAPTER 27





Daedalus Wept


The heavens call to you, and circle around you, displaying to you their eternal splendors, and your eye gazes only to Earth.

—DANTE ALIGHIERI

During the minute leading up to Maurice Voorhees’s launch of the Silverbird II, explosions lit up the mist on every side. Amid the mental checklists and prelaunch preparation, he marveled at the bravery of a technician who calmly drove the Silverbird II’s miniature locomotive to set the craft into its proper launch position, then gave the “Go!” signal before scrambling away from his steam engine.

They’re going to blow the track, Voorhees told himself, knowing that the margin of error between successful launch and total destruction would probably be measured in tenths of seconds.

As Voorhees prepared to “light the candle,” he watched Wolff sprint past the starboard side. He gave a passing thought to the possibility that the colonel, his mission now complete, was simply getting out of the sled’s blast range; but a sudden commotion on the port side told him otherwise. Someone dressed in a filthy Allied uniform dropped an empty backpack and was running away from the track. He fired at Wolff and anything else that moved. Something about the running man’s movements—was it confidence?—made him suspect that this guy had just jammed the contents of his backpack very close to where he currently sat, strapped in and helpless.

“Go! Go! GO!” Voorhees screamed to himself, punching the red ignition button. And as the sled engines flared to life with a deafening roar, his head was yanked backward against the protective cushion.

Once again his eyes were drawn to the port-side window, where he caught a glimpse of the running man, who had changed course and was now aiming a pistol at his rocket. The filth-covered shooter looked more like a wanderarbeiter—a hobo than a soldier. He imagined the hobo emptying his pistol at the Silverbird but then the ship had disappeared into a wall of smoke and flame.

As the sled-propelled space-plane raced down the track, Voorhees’s own body mass all but paralyzed him. That quickly, the g-forces had turned the front of the rocket—though the ship was still traveling horizontally along the rail—into what he perceived as “up.” Those same forces were now pressing his back into the “floor” with an apparent weight gain of a quarter ton or more.

Voorhees was terrified, but it had nothing to do with the stresses the launch had placed upon his body. He feared that, at any given second, a bomb attached to the rail or to the sled itself would detonate, sending the ship careening broadside and at bullet velocity into the trees. The image and its meaning—instantaneous nonexistence—reawakened memories of standing in a bomb crater, clutching a single warm shoe.

In bullet-time, close calls came and went without realization as his space-plane and its rocket sled accelerated down the monorail with reptilian indifference. The shock wave of the first bomb had been no obstacle to the Silverbird, for it detonated more than half a second after the ship passed over it, along the rail. Another blast was far enough behind that vibrations from the shattering rebar and wood never reached the pilot at all. The third device blew a hole in the rail a full two seconds after the sled had climbed the ramp and become airborne.