Paving the Road to Armageddon

by Christopher McKitterick

Earth is the cradle of the mind, but one cannot live in the cradle forever.

—K.E. Tsiolkovsky

Illustration by Vincent Di Fate

Dear Professor Goddard:

It has been too long since last we visited, mein alter Freund I must see you and speak of spacecraft. Note that I risk traveling to Annapolis for this meeting. Please come to foe’s Tavern on 6th St. If you do not arrive by 7 P.M., I will not bother you again.

Respectfully,

W.v.B.

Robert H. Goddard turned the note over in his wrinkled hand, shocked but also—though he dared not admit it, even to himself—momentarily pleased at hearing from an old friend. He did not need more than a moment to determine the author: Wemher von Braun. Who else would use German words and speak of spacecraft? Not missiles or rockets. Spacecraft. Everyone spoke of rockets these days but no one of space. Who but Wemher?

When he raised his eyes to question the courier, Goddard saw only the young soldier’s retreating back as he skirted a small, unrepaired shell-crater in the sidewalk. After one nervous glance backward, the boy turned a comer and disappeared behind an old brick building. The sky was already being painted with yet another violently vivid sunset.

“Is something the matter, Mister Goddard?” the MP stationed on Goddard’s front porch asked.

“Nothing, no,” he answered, glancing up at invisible stars.

Wemher, he mused. What could that rascal be up to? Why would a man so central to the Europareich Wehrmacht dare cross the Atlantic just to see an old acquaintance? The cease-fire was only six weeks old and certain to shatter soon, already trembling on the Afrikanische Front beneath the treads of Panzers and the roar of Messerschmitts. Robert Goddard folded the note and placed it in his pants’ pocket.

“Esther,” he called into his apartments, fetching a hat and coat, “I’m going out. I’ll be back before bedtime.” He told the MP he wouldn’t need the man to follow, that he had a personal appointment.

Von Braun grinned as Goddard approached through the dim, smoky tavern. Gone was the younger man’s carefree smile, replaced by a tired stretching of the lips. Goddard was reminded of the tuberculosis he had suffered as a youngster, and the illness which had nearly killed him a year ago. If the US military hadn’t gone to such lengths to save their precious resource, Goddard wouldn’t have had to ponder over this curious meeting.

He was struck by all that had happened since they had last spoken, nearly seven years prior. Cold knuckles pushed against his lungs; it was difficult to breathe, all these memories crushing him at once. A mushroom cloud over London kept Goddard from feeling joyful to see von Braun. A man can forget some things for a while, he can ignore others forever, but when forced to see so many forgotten pains at once, even the strongest man loses his composure.

“I could turn you in to the authorities just by raising my voice and identifying you,” Goddard said, fists on hips. Von Braun’s smile softened, and he lifted a glass of beer toward the American.

“You could,” he said. “But you and I are of a like mind about the future of man.”

Goddard stared at him, then at an unzipped briefcase on the table. “What’s this all about?” he asked, seating himself opposite von Braun, reluctant to join friendly conversation. This negative of himself made his shoulders weary with the weight of war.

“Ah, right to the point as always. Well. It is time for the future, yet our nations go on smashing themselves in the eyes. When man is blind, he cannot see the future.”

“You’ve come to the United States to talk about the future?”

“Yes,” von Braun answered. “What is more important than that?”

“And you believe I am in a position to bring about the end of the war.”

“No…” von Braun said, trailing off spiritlessly. His eyes defocused.

Goddard began to wonder if this man had lost his mind. A decade of war can do that to a person, especially one seated at the controls of a nation’s missile program. Goddard was well aware of this feeling; he sometimes waxed wistful about his early days in rocketry: Aunt Effie’s farm; young, eager Esther; Guggenheim, Hughes, Lindbergh… Once, he had been a visionary. Once, schoolchildren wrote him with questions about interstellar flight and worldwide relocation when the Sun grew old and feeble. Now, he designed flying bombs. Von Braun ended their mutual reverie.

“Do you remember when I first heard you speak at Clark University?”

“Yes,” Goddard answered, welcoming the retreat into the past. “It was the spring of 1934. You refer to it often, though that wasn’t my best speech.”

“I had read ‘The Last Migration’ and was determined to meet its author,” von Braun continued, “so I collected as many Reichsmarks as I could scrounge and rode a freighter to America. Actually, I’d been planning to enter Clark as a student, but then I learned you were going on leave again…

“Robert, you and I have been degraded into the status of nationalist villains, you toward the Europareich and me toward what remains of the Allies. Do not try to deny it; we both read the propaganda. Merely villains, our visions of space exploration and Man’s great future conflagrated in the flames of Armageddon spread by our rockets.” Von Braun leaned forward, his lips trembling, then whispered harshly: “Our rockets should carry spacecraft, not atomic bombs.”

“And now you plan to build spacecraft, with my help,” Goddard answered, attempting to hide the condescension in his voice.

“Yes.”

Goddard felt his forehead wrinkle as his eyebrows rose. He did not expect so brief and direct an answer. He glanced around the tavern. They were the only ones dressed in civilian clothes, but none of the uniformed patrons paid them special attention.

“Yes,” von Braun continued, “a whole fleet of spacecraft.” Despite Goddard’s rational mind, something of the youthful optimist within perked an ear.

“Are you not tired of making war?” von Braun asked.

“Of course.”

“Would you not love to be part of a spacefaring race?”

Goddard hesitated. “Naturally.”

“Would you not love to prove to the world that two of its greatest enemies could join together on a mission into space—where we belong? Not making war.”

Goddard leaned against the back of his chair, its brittle wood creaking even beneath his slight mass. He could not help feeling exhilarated by talk of space and spacecraft, and spacemen. Me, a spaceman! He chuckled quietly.

“I’m an old man, Wemher,” he declared. “Your words are eloquent and true, but I do believe you have lost your mind.”

In response, von Braun’s barrel body quivered with silent laughter. Goddard’s humor faded before incomprehension.

“It does sound insane, doesn’t it?” von Braun observed. “But I am too sane. Look.” And he opened the briefcase.

Goddard’s heart sped as he handled sketches, blueprints, and full-color paintings. Rockets. No, spacecraft. They were smoothly curved, like the German V2 and V4 missiles that had devastated the British Isles and North Afrika and the Atlantic Fleet, not arrow-straight like Goddard’s own AFRB-1 and Skybolt. He flipped through the stack. Someone had spent an undue amount of time dreaming. A great number of someones, Goddard observed, taking note of the various signatures. One in particular stood out, a Russian’s.

“Wemher, this is beautiful, but…” He trailed off, not wishing to break the spell. Not yet. In his mind he oversaw the construction of a peaceful space fleet to carry the race beyond its confines of Earth out, out to the Solar System and beyond, exploring and learning, to the stars, to our manifest destiny in the Galaxy. He was young and optimistic again, confident in the goodness of humanity. Von Braun interrupted Goddard’s daydream.

“This portfolio details the development of the ‘Tsiolkovsky.’ We could practically build it today, but the message would be lost without assistance in the final design stages—from the great American rocket pioneer, you, Professor Goddard.”

“Who is ‘we’?”

“Ah…” von Braun’s voice hushed, “at last count, we were some Germans, a Pole, a Chinese, and a lot of Bolsheviks. Let us say, we are strong enough to undertake the work. You do not need to know our names for obvious reasons. This is very big. Will you join our movement into the future?”

Goddard coughed once, more from habit than necessity. The smoke in the room began to irritate his eyes, and he blinked several times in quick succession. He glanced down at a tag-board watercolor of a mighty rocket lifting off from an odd three-armed launch pad into a cloudless sky, toward a blue-washed Moon. He rubbed his bald forehead, excited but wary.

“Wernher,” he began hesitantly. “You still haven’t convinced me that you’re not mad. What you’ve shown me is a collection of artwork by dreamers, some of whom happen to be engineers. But—”

“Study the blueprints,” von Braun urged. “Would the rocket work? Are its designers sane?” Goddard had seen enough to prove that.

“Well, I’m sure they are, but—”

“Do you think twenty,” von Braun’s voice lowered again, “of the top German rocket engineers would get involved in insanity? What we are doing would be considered treason by the Reichcouncil. Our entire plan nearly failed before it started when an unfortunate Gestapo officer learned of our plans; here again, our preparations paid off. We have connections in the Gestapo, though I would not depend on them again.”

Goddard glanced around the room again. He so wanted to believe this could be true, yet he was a sixty-four-year-old man, deeply entrenched in the Allied war effort.

“What could I possibly do for you?” he asked.

Von Braun smiled, a glimmer of his old jovial self showing through in deep lines around his mouth.

“Mein lieber Freund, what can’t you do? I will say this: The Bolsheviks refuse to go along with the project unless we can get you to join. It might look as if they were allying with Europareich, and they don’t wish to start a war against the West. Zhukov is too rational a man. But if you join, well…

“A central aspect of the Bolshevik mentality is that Man will evolve toward a perfect society. They think space travel is a natural part of man’s evolution, where all will labor equally, and they are terrified by the atomic bomb. They think it is necessary to move us off this world before radiation poisoning destroys us. You have noticed the spectacular sunsets lately?”

“Listen,” Goddard interjected. “If I were to join such an effort, I would first have to inspect the facilities—”

“I have in my pocket,” von Braun began, tilting to one side and reaching into his vest, “two airplane tickets to Athens, Greece. We leave tomorrow at 9:30 in the evening.”

Goddard began to feel nervous, hurried. “Defense would never let me just take off like this. Even if they did, there are so many preparations I need to make.”

“What is so important that cannot be taken care of in one day? And, as for your other concern…” Von Braun nodded toward one of the marines at the bar and made a slight hand gesture. The marine returned the gesture, still nonchalantly pretending to ignore them.

Goddard was shocked to realize some kind of conspiracy had penetrated this deeply into the fabric of his everyday life, his neighborhood. This proved von Braun was, at least, not insane. Of course, maybe the soldier was only mimicking. No.

So—just maybe—some kind of multinational thrust into space was underway. Maybe. He wasn’t sure whether to be terrified or elated. He pondered the implications. If he decided to become part of this movement, his present life’s affairs would seem trifles. No, debasements.

“Listen, Wemher,” Goddard said. He suddenly felt very serious, this whole spaceship intrigue was very serious. If Wemher hadn’t been such a sincere friend, if he hadn’t openly expressed—in the international newspapers and in letters to Goddard—his disgust with being part of the atomic-bombing of London, Goddard would never have listened to this man. A German! But he had. Goddard realized friendship runs deeper than politics, and that politics, even in war, is petty compared to the future of humankind. If they could show the world this truth, if they could end the war…

“If what you are saying is true, it may be—no, it is the most important thing ever to happen to humanity. If it is all a delightful delusion… well, I am sorry for you, old friend.”

“I believe you will be delighted,” von Braun stated.

Ten minutes later, Robert Goddard found himself tooling along Sixth Street in his 1939 Chevrolet, head spinning, wondering what exactly he had gotten himself into, and how he would explain to Esther that he was leaving for Greece on a top-secret mission the next evening.

Naturally, he would say nothing of entering the movement’s pipeline of guards and ticket agents, forged documents and misdirection. He felt both tremendously alive and terrified.

They stepped off the Lockheed Constellation onto a neutral landing strip in Athens. His thoughts went back to Esther. Goddard had told his wife that he was going on an important, secret investigative mission to Greece. She was to tell anyone who asked that he had left for vacation, that his chest was bothering him again.

A man in civilian clothes but wearing a green Europareich armband checked the passengers’ papers. Goddard felt a moment of panic as the man looked over his passport: No longer was he Robert H. Goddard; now he was Johannes R. Luftkanal, travel inspector from Munich. Would this man believe the farce? Would his eyes travel to the American’s and see the man who designed rockets that sometimes hit Europareich territory from the hydroships? The man who designed the terrible Bellthunder? Who am I to believe I can be a spy? You old fool! You dreaming fool!

The civil servant absently handed back the passport. Goddard’s panic faded and fatigue set in. The Sun was hot. He began to sweat. He followed von Braun toward a chicken-wire fence overlooking a dusty hill.

Though the Germans controlled most of the Mediterranean, the Reichcouncil had reopened to tourism such historic places as this, and Paris, and Stockholm, after large-scale resistance in Europe had ended and the Europareich had formed. That had been in 1941, a year after the Dunkirk Massacre, a little over a year since a glass of poison had reduced Hitler to a mumbling idiot. But for the grey-uniformed Europareich soldiers hidden in shadows of trees and buildings, Goddard would not have known this wasn’t Athens as it once was.

“Herr Luftkanal, Herr Schwartz,” a black-haired youth said to Goddard and von Braun, “Diese Richting.” Goddard cast a glance at von Braun, who nodded slightly.

They followed the boy to an idling French car and climbed into the back seat. The boy glanced both ways and walked away. As soon as the doors closed, the driver, a slight man (or woman, Goddard couldn’t be sure) drove away from the landing field along a rugged road. No one spoke during the ten-minute drive to a warehouse district by the sea. Climbing out of the car, Goddard couldn’t recall seeing any scenery along the way. But the sea was beautiful, blue-green and textured with seemingly motionless waves, sprinkled with white fishing boats. Only grey warships marred the picture, and then a daydream that made Goddard wince as he imagined his LTS rockets punching holes in those hulls. The war seemed painfully different when viewed through such close perspective. People were on board those vessels.

Another man, dark-skinned and rough-looking, led them into an old building whose sign read, “Fischerei D73U.” Inside, Goddard could not help but notice fish bins. This clearly was not just a spy hangout but a real fishery. They were led to a dimly lighted room containing two cots and a washbasin.

“Sleep here. You will need it,” the man said, and then took Goddard s hand with his own leathery mitt. “I am so proud you help us. We will end the war and be rid of the Reich.” After the last word he spat on the worn hardwood floor. Goddard nodded but didn’t have time to respond before the other had left him and von Braun alone and closed the door.

“What next?” Goddard asked, sagging onto the nearest cot. At least its sheets seemed clean, he noticed. “You have a rocket factory on the Greek Isles?”

“You know I cannot tell you,” von Braun said in a somewhat guilty tone. “Please do not ask any more, for your own safety. Trust me that we will be safely escorted to our destination. In less than three days, we should be there.”

At that moment, it crossed Goddard’s mind that this could be merely an elaborate scheme involving US servicemen to lure him away from missile-production in America. Wemher, a betrayer? Anything is possible in war; Wemher had already supposedly betrayed his country. The thought became a foreboding.

“I won’t go into Germany,” he stated, coldly eyeing an old friend who looked suddenly menacing.

“We are not going to Deutschland,” von Braun assured him. Von Braun’s face showed momentary pain. “This must be hard on you. I am sorry to bring you into our plan. It’s just that I…” He paused and stared at the ceiling.

“Back when we met, in 1934, when I was young and impressionable, you inspired me to start a movement that kept man’s future in mind. It quickly caught on in that troubled Germany. If it weren’t for you, that fiend Hitler would rule the Europareich. You, Professor Goddard, have changed the world.

“You were the one responsible for the whole project. You are the man I respect above all others. I told the Bolsheviks that the American we needed had to be you. Perhaps I was selfish.” He sighed.

“You may return home if you wish. I will find another American, perhaps one of your designers.”

Goddard pondered these words. So, it was Wemher’s men who poisoned Hitler. Anyone part of that scheme would be reliable to the cause of humanity… unless they tried to kill the Führer only to save Germany, or merely advance themselves. How could he still be alive? So many connections, such a twisted spiral of plots. He drew a relaxing breath.

“ ‘Bolsheviks.’ So it’s Russia, then,” Goddard observed. Von Braun’s reaction verified the guess. Mysterious Russia, home to the Czars and vast unmapped territories. Images flashed into his mind of millions of “screaming Bolsheviks,” as one propaganda poster had labeled them. Hitler had been wise to sign a nonaggression pact with Russia and keep one border cool.

“Russia,” Goddard mused. “Hmmm. Premier Zhukov’s Kremlin has always been fair in its dealings with America. And if the Russians are allying with the Reich, the Allies are lost anyway. I would at least be in favor with the new world rulers, eh? Besides, my team doesn’t really need me anymore. There are a lot of brains at work devising new American bomb-delivery systems.” He wrinkled his forehead.

“Dammit, man!” he exploded. “We’re supposed to be enemies! I hope you are as foolish as I, else I am on my way to becoming a prisoner of war.” Only a tenuous belief in essential humanity, only von Braun’s declared alliance to the whole race before nationality, tore off the lid of claustrophobic fear that had begun to isolate Goddard from the dream-vision which had led him here. But he was, at heart, also first allied to humanity. Even before himself and his safety. What is one face among the billions? Will I let fear delay destiny, at least a hope for destiny?

“OK. I’ll continue on for another few days.”

“Misters Luftkanal and Schwartz,” a deep voice spoke quietly but loudly enough to stir Goddard from uneasy sleep, “we leave now.”

The room was lit by a single gas lantern held by the Greek fisherman from the day before. Goddard rose from his cot to see von Braun already buttoning a dark overcoat.

“Take these,” the Greek said, walking into the room and handing each of the rocket scientists an aged German Luger. “I pray you do not need them.”

Goddard hefted the weapon, turning it from side-to-side. He released the clip and saw that it was fully loaded. The fisherman hung the lantern from a hook near the door and left the room. Goddard stood in undershirt and shorts. He released the safety on the Luger and pointed it at von Braun, who had slid his pistol into the back of his pants.

“Wemher, I am armed now,” Goddard said. The barrel wavered slightly. “Is there anything you need to tell me? You have an excuse now; you can say I forced you to reveal your plan to kidnap me. The Reichcoun-cil—even with Goebbels and his kind in esteemed positions—is lenient compared to how the Reich was under Hitler; they will go easy on you. It wasn’t your fault. So do you need to tell me anything? You say you are my friend; now prove it.”

Von Braun finished buttoning his overcoat and smiled broadly.

“Mein lieber Freund! Good to see you in such high spirits!” He sat down to lace up a pair of salt-caked boots. “Yes, I do have something to say. Tonight we travel to Izmir, in Turkey. Not toward Deutschland, eh?” He laughed and stepped toward Goddard.

“Ah, mein Professor!” he continued. “Do not believe anything men tell you, until they prove it. And then doubt again. Such is the nature of war. This is what I have learned during the bloody Reich, this is the wise way. Even friends, even fools and dreamers can become corrupt. I may be a fool myself. This is why we carry our weapons from now on.” He put his arms out broadly, again grinning, and slowly placed them around Goddard in a gradually tightening hug.

Goddard felt his gun hand weaken and his face tremble somewhere between utter joy and unconcealable anger. A wall had fallen within him, a wall of feeling to which he had been adding bricks of war effort and mortar of patriotism since the war began, and his dreams of space had eroded with each elongating year.

In washed a flood of emotion and the wave of determination it revived. Once more, he felt like the man he had been in Roswell, New Mexico. No—now he felt more alive. Since then, he had witnessed the evil with which humanity infected itself. Then he had been purified in fire. Now, he would be part of humanity’s greatest united effort.

So he hoped. He would let that hope live, he would nurture it, without doubt. There were reasons to hope: The US messenger boy and marine, the US citizens at the airport, the considerably time-consuming blueprints. But if hope were shattered now, after allowing himself to come so alive, well… I’ll not live to see the sunrise that follows my betrayal.

Bub-bub-bub-bub-bub, the creaking, reeking old fishing boat’s muffled engine muttered as it carried them across a choppy sea. The stars were made unseeable when a searchlight swam along the undersurfaces of clouds, turning them into bursts of white. A crescent Moon had already set. Goddard, von Braun, the fisherman and an older woman stood on the decks, watching the searchlight and other fishing-boats’ lights weave tapestries of the night.

Distantly, a shriek arose and echoed across the water. The boatlights blinked out, one by one, as more sirens rose and wavered. The clouds flashed to life as other searchlights rose to the sky.

“Verdammt!” von Braun barked. “Air raid.” He turned a shadowy face to Goddard. “We had best get below-decks.”

“Air raid?” Goddard mumbled. “Here? Who’s attacking?”

“Look there,” the Greek answered. “See the streak of fire? The Brits, in an American Bellthunder. They don’t waste bombs on us. We can stay abovedecks.”

Goddard tried to identify the rocket-plane’s dull heat signature rising from the south amid a clutter of light. There. My baby. It was barely more than an experimental craft, powered by a pair of Curtiss-Wright throttleable rocket engines. But the English had ordered as many as America could ship to British West Afrika. So far, Goddard knew, four had been sent; one was lost when its transport ship was sunk by a U-boat.

The planes carried barely enough fuel to launch on a ballistic trajectory from Afrika across Europareich and land on English soil, there to refuel and fly back—much faster than any Luftwaffe plane, even the Me262 or Himmelwolfe, which were limited to denser air that fed their jets. No Bellthunder had been shot down, even though maneuverable only upon reentering the troposphere. One had been destroyed on the ground at takeoff. Since the plane could barely carry a thousand pounds of bombs, such runs had been designed more to unnerve the Reich than to do any real damage.

Until they began carrying American atomic bombs.

Vengeance for the Vengeance bombs.

Its successor should some day carry men and experiments into space, but instead it was reducing places such as Hamburg and Rome to cinders. Five had fallen, two on cities and three on major military targets; in one case, most of an entire Panzer Division had been melted into slag. Goddard’s vision seemed to shift. No longer did the craft look like his baby. Rather, Frankenstein’s monster. Its progeny would not be spacecraft.

The coastline to the left lit up with anti-aircraft fire, scratching open the black night with white claws.

Fools, wasting shells, Goddard thought. Then a flurry of jets took off under that canopy of horizon-to-horizon fire, and he realized the AAs were merely being used to ward off low-flying escorts or air-to-air missiles launched from the Bellthunder.

“So, now I rise to join in fisticuffs with you,” von Braun said. “These Italian 262s and Himmelwolfe carry nothing but radar-guided missiles. My design team was ordered to create a defensive weapon to stop your lovely Brits from destroying the Fatherland. Most of the missiles are for distraction. However, some are tipped with miniature atomic bombs that use transuranic elements with special compressors and neutron reflectors that allow critical mass to be very low. Still, they yield more than half a kiloton. Europareich Wehrmacht has been working very diligently. This will be a splendidly wicked show.”

Goddard watched ten, maybe twenty, jets climb atop spears of inefficient orange light, while the Himmelwolfs’s less wasteful exhaust was already pulling well ahead of the Me262s’. He shuddered. He had no idea the cease-fire had been so close to… this.

Bub-bub-bub-bub-bub, the boat echoed. The AA guns boomed. The jets’ roar shredded the sky once they had already passed overhead, and Goddard had to cover his ears beneath the din.

The roar subsided. The AA guns tired of their chattering. Time passed, and the battle began to seem more of an exercise. Then the jets appeared to triple their number as each launched a pair of white streaks. It was as if the grandest meteor shower ever had reversed itself and ricocheted skyward.

The streaks gradually pulled away from the jets, then faster and faster, seeking the dull glow of the Bellthunder. The night grew still again, except for a distant rumbling.

Flowers blossomed in the sky. No, great red giant suns; one, two, three, four suns, and Earth became a planet orbiting crazily through a globular cluster. It was brighter than full day in New Mexico. The conventional warheads’ explosions were lost in the glare. Goddard stared blankly; he had never seen an atomic blast.

“Don’t look!” von Braun cried, throwing his arms around Goddard’s shoulders and pulling him down. The night grew warm. Many seconds later, such explosions as Goddard had never imagined shoved him and von Braun to the deck. Goddard’s stomach twisted as it once had, before the surgery. His head pounded. The atom drums ended their pounding, although the last note seemed to be jammed on like a scratched record without a skip.

“Fools!” he yelled, struggling out from beneath von Braun’s mass. “Damned fools, stupid damned fools! Don’t your Luftwaffe friends know what all that radioactive fallout will do to the people downwind?”

“They have an idea,” von Braun said tiredly, rolling to one side, sitting up. He began rubbing his temples. “But those were tiny bombs. And southwest of here is not the Fatherland,” he added, his voice trailing off. He began to shake.

Goddard had the urge to punch this man—no, to shoot him with his Luger. Then shoot myself. That was my damned rocketplane they were after. He glanced up, searching for the Bellthunder. Even if it had survived the attack—unlikely—he couldn’t have seen it amid the atmospheric fireworks, the gathering clouds like pillows of electricity.

“Mein Gott!” von Braun shouted at the sky in a sudden outburst. His big chest trembled with restrained emotion. “We… no, Europareich was only defending itself. The Brits have destroyed the cease-fire and driven Europareich to this.”

Goddard watched his old friend closely for a while as the thunder tapered off and the sky darkened. Turning away at last from von Braun, he stared at the freak lightning. He recognized that his determination to end the war and replace it with their grand struggle had just been forged in fire. Any traces of naivete that had lingered within him were scorched away, leaving his desire naked within cascading ashes, hard like a diamond.

“If you are not the noble man I hope you are,” Goddard said, “I promise to kill you without hesitation. Followed shortly by myself. Otherwise, we’d better hurry to our destination.”

They landed at a high Izmir dock, noon the following day. A tall woman with scarves across her face directed “Luftkanal” and “Schwartz” to a car, which trailed sooty smoke as it zoomed them through town to the train station, where they ate spicy local food with the silent woman. The armored grey snake departed in the early afternoon, carrying them into the mountains. From cliffsides, Goddard was granted breathtaking vistas of valleys and villages as the train wound through the range. A magnificent sunset began to fall just as they pulled into Ankara. Well into the night, at Sivas, the rails had reached their end.

Goddard and von Braun disembarked with hundreds of other passengers, mostly Europareich soldiers. With slanting white rays, the waxing crescent Moon lit a great panoply of Panzers, self-propelled guns, and artillery spread across a landscape denuded of vegetation. The barrels of the guns pointed west and north and south, but they were silent.

A gaunt Turkish soldier dressed in Europareich grey approached von Braun.

“Herr Schwartz?” the soldier asked. Goddard’s guts knotted. He coughed twice, painfully.

“Ja,” von Braun answered. “Und Herr Luftkanal.” The soldier handed them both a thick parka.

“Kommen Sie mit!” he said in a harsh whisper, glancing about nervously as he turned his back and began to lead the scientists.

Immediately, images of Turkish prison camps sprang to Goddard’s mind, and he wondered what an ill old man was trying to accomplish in the black of night, surrounded by enough enemy firepower to destroy an army. The guilty, choking sensation of being a spy clung in his throat, making it impossible to take a full breath. Encompassed by the enemy, being led by one of their soldiers, he found it difficult to envision a purpose in this madness.

Before his mind had begun to accept the new situation, Goddard and von Braun were being escorted into a German transport plane of a type the American couldn’t identify. Faith alone lifted his feet up the Stair into the fuselage. The door clanged shut behind him with finality.

He, von Braun, the soldier, and two other civilians belted themselves into seats awkwardly bolted to the structural ribbing as two wing-mounted engines rumbled to life. Behind the seats several wooden crates were lashed into place. Facing forward, Goddard watched the two pilots adjust dials and flip switches, then felt himself pressed against the back of the seat as the plane accelerated. He had no thoughts. He concentrated only on the pilots and an electric heater buzzing near his feet.

A few minutes later, the plane’s radio screamed to life. German was spoken too quickly for Goddard to translate, except an occasional word. Von Braun leaned close to him and spoke loudly enough to be heard over the engines:

“We will now discover if the Bolsheviks will keep their part of the bargain. If we are still alive in an hour, they have.”

Breathing Russian air for the first time, Goddard emerged into a chill evening after a cold flight. One of the pilots whistled, tracing a pattern of gouges where shrapnel had ripped across the tail, nearly tearing it off. When the Germans realized their pilots had defected, they had scrambled an intercept group. But Russian fighters had appeared just in time to escort the plane from the Neutral Zone just beyond Sivas and across the Black Sea. Goddard shivered.

“This place is called Kuibyshev,” von Braun said as they were led to another waiting car. Even though it was long and appeared to be a luxury model, it rattled as it bumped along a winding city road. Streetlights were dim and green here. Finally, they arrived at a concrete building and were led inside.

“Welcome, Doctor Goddard, Doctor von Braun,” a man said, rising from a velvet couch and extending a hand to each. He wore a layered black suit. “We are honored to assist you in any way we can. You will find Soviets hospitable people. Right now you are tired.”

The host called out and two skinny youths rushed forward and led the scientists to the most lavish quarters Goddard had ever seen. Yet no decoration could hide that the room was as windowless as a jail call.

From Kuibyshev, another plane—this one designed for passengers—carried Goddard and von Braun, as well as another two dozen men and women, far to the northeast. Through a port, Goddard watched several other planes keep pace above the clouds. Well into the next day, they landed on a fresh concrete landing strip in the middle of endless forest. Snow clung around the trunks of pine trees at the edges of the vast runway. Goddard began to feel an unidentifiable doubt.

A great caravan of heavy trucks trundled alongside the airplanes, taking on materials and passengers. Goddard and von Braun rode in a high cab beside the well-bundled and bearded driver. At long last, they reached their destination.

“Welcome to Plesetsk Cosmodrome!” von Braun laughed, jumping down onto frozen mud. Every building was either recently poured concrete or ancient wood. Goddard would have been paralyzed with apprehension had he not seen a steam locomotive nearby tugging a cargo of tarp-covered rocket fuel tanks lashed to one of its cars.

Weary to the bone, Robert Goddard managed to smile at his old friend, his crazy compatriot.

So something grand truly is underway.

“And this is our experimental motor,” von Braun proudly said, indicating a rocket engine mounted sideways in a massive framework. Its exhaust nozzle, big enough to swallow a man, pointed off toward the trees, where a scorched wall stemmed forest fires. A dizzy snow flurry hissed across metal and parka shells.

“Incredible,” Goddard breathed, stepping closer to examine the single, two-chamber turbopump. A bevy of other scientists, mostly Russian, smiled at the man’s appreciation. “How much thrust does it produce?”

“Fifty thousand kilograms,” von Braun answered, “on LOX and kerosene.” Goddard whistled. He glanced around the rest of the immense compound. This Cosmodrome was bigger than anything he had ever seen, the launching pads, testing stands, machine shops, bunkers and railway station alone carpeting more land than the US testing bases where he had worked; the trees that marked the far end of the Cosmodrome were blurred in distance. Zhukov must have mobilized the entire Russian economy.

Finally, the subconscious gnawing he had felt since landing in Plesetsk became clear.

“This is all wonderful, Wemher,” he said. “But how, exactly, do you expect a remote rocket base to stop the fighting? This is Russia, my friend. Certainly I understand and sympathize with your dream of a spacefaring humanity, but I don’t see a connection between Siberia and an end to the war.”

One of the Russians stepped forward, touching von Braun on the sleeve with a mittened hand and muttering a few German words. He beamed at Goddard, face framed in fur.

“Professor Goddard,” he began in a fine British tongue, “allow me to introduce myself. My name is Sergey Korolyov.” They shook hands.

Korolyov went on: “Plesetsk Station has everything to do with ending our fine race’s strife. This place will become the whole world’s Space Mecca, as it were. People from around the globe will rush to join us in this milestone of progress, to take part in the heroic struggle to unite Mankind as it is meant to be!” His strong Ukrainian face grew red with excitement as he spoke, and his eyes hardly blinked, even as hard snowflakes struck them.

He continued: “The Soviet Fleets will guarantee safe passage across the Pacific, from humble Japan to the mighty Americas, as well as any ocean state and Australia. The same will be true for the North Sea, and we will offer armed escort across the Atlantic. Our fleets have grown while the combatants’ have diminished. Similarly, we will offer escort across all airways, except over Europareich territory.

“Imagine the magnitude of this operation! Yet, as great as it will be, anything less would not be fitting for such an adventure as shaping the future of Mankind. With you part of the Mankindist team, our plans are ready to march forward. You are the oil for our bearings. Now do you understand?”

Goddard began to feel a sense of greatness all around him, as if this harshly beautiful locale held a secret magic to which he held the key for its release. He shook his head in irony, realizing that spaceflight had only become a possibility since the Nazis defeated Europe. If only the Allies had won, this sequester would never have been necessary. If the Allies had won, we already would have been working our way out to Mars. No isolated cosmodromes, no twisted complications. But, perhaps, only through adversity came such advances.

The Nazis’s success had given us the stars. He smiled wryly.

For the first time in his life, Goddard watched his dreams unfold. He hadn’t imagined it would be within his lifetime.

“How will we get the message out?” he asked, choked with emotion.

Only hours after Korolyov explained, they began preparations to start filming movies in a dozen languages, each nation’s representative inviting the world to join “Mankind’s heroic united struggle toward the stars.”

Elsewhere in Russia, the officially approved Mankindist Movement, as they called themselves, began to produce the first horrifying films that revealed in painful truths the aftermath of continued nuclear war. This would be the first time the general public heard, voiced by scientists, such theories as “environmental exposure pathway,” “radioecological concentration,” “nuclear winter,” and “secondary radiation poisoning.”

March 28, 1946

My Darling Esther,

Yes, I know I told you last time I wrote that you would hear from me soon, but so much is happening here. You are more patient than I deserve.

I wish I could tell you what we are doing, but now is not yet the time. Very soon, my darling, you will know, and so will the whole world. At last I am doing work of utmost importance. A man has only so much time in his life to make a difference, and I fear my time is shorter than most. Do not fear; even though we cannot leave until the Project is well underway, lam here of my own choice, and am being treated well. They feed me almost as well as you do.

All my love,

Your Robert

Weeks passed, delirious weeks for Goddard. During this time, three schools of thought battled for favor: The Germans wanted a huge single-stage liquid-fuel booster to lift the components for the orbiting laboratories and bases; while the Russians were set on building a smaller, more easily transported rocket assisted by a cluster of strapped-on solid-fuel boosters; and Goddard could not see any design to be as favorable as a three-stage booster.

These heated but good-hearted debates raged among the engineering team at each weekly gathering in the “Design Headquarters” building, a somber blockhouse decorated on the outside with Zhukov’s bronze face staring at himself on each of the double iron doors. Inside, however, it was comfortably furnished and warm. The central meeting room held a long woodslab table, around which sat von Braun and four other Germans who merely agreed with his decisions, two Austrians, a Pole, a seemingly voiceless Japanese, two Chinese, a dark Brazilian, the American, and six high-ranking Russians. One of the Russians wasn’t a scientist. His name was Colonel Vebretsky, the official kommandant of the facility, though von Braun and Goddard made all design decisions.

It seemed each final design for a component would materialize at the Cosmodrome either in two weeks by rail from Moscow, or—if it were small enough to travel by truck—a few days from Plesetsk proper. Goddard and von Braun shared apartments in a box in the town, but they rarely spent time there except to purchase from the general store a pair of socks or groceries that their housekeepers didn’t supply. The store looked both quaint and obsolete among the recently poured structures. The rubles came from Moscow, courtesy of “Your host, Grigori Zhukov, Soviet Premier and General Secretary of the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R., Soviet High Representative for the Mankindist Party.”

Goddard sometimes wondered what would have become of this project hadn’t Lavrenty Beria—head of the notorious NKVD, the Soviet Secret Police—assassinated Stalin in 1945, less than a year prior. No one in the world wept for Bloody Joe, except some old Bolsheviks who yearned for the revolutionary years. But what had Stalin done for them since but kill and consolidate power? Zhukov, being a law-abiding and fair man, had responded to the assassination by marshalling his Red Army forces to drive Beria and his secret police out of power. The Soviet public had swept Zhukov into the Kremlin with a wave of enthusiasm, remembering their WWI hero, also the man who had kept the Western Line rigid against encroaching Fascists.

But mostly Goddard was too busy to speculate. His fears of betrayal had long been laid to rest.

On an icy winter’s day, the Reichcouncil issued a demand for the return of their “kidnapped” scientists. They threatened retribution if their demands were not met. “Gone will be the kind days of our unspoken alliance,” they wrote. “You do not wish to feel the fist of our Blitzkrieg.”

Von Braun and the other Germans replied, urging the Europareich to patience and again beckoning them to join the Mandkindist Movement. During the weeks that passed, only a few Chinese and a handful of Arabs accepted the invitation. No Germans, and especially no other Europareich citizens. Nevertheless, the inhabitants of Plesetsk Station spent little energy worrying about threats. They expected a great influx of diverse nationality any day.

Though the weather was taking a toll on his health, Goddard slept well nights. The dreams that soothed his sleep were no match for the one he was actually fulfilling in reality. Rather than furtiveness and guilt as heavy as a world on his shoulders, he felt a fine productivity. His moment had come.

April 8, 1946

Robert,

My dearest, I must admit I fear your capture. We have all seen the propaganda films those Communists sent to the television stations and movie houses. You cut a fine figure on the silver screen, but are the words you speak your own? I fear you have been kidnapped. Why else would you have left with such secrecy?

On the other hand, I must tell you I refuse to believe Captain Gibson’s accusations. My dear Robert is not a traitor. I am in a quandary. If I can convince the kind Captain to accompany me, I will accept the invitation your Russian colleagues have telegraphed.

Things are happening over here which you may not know about. Dear, you have stirred up a bee’s nest among the war protestors! It seems, what with the Reichcouncil’s release of the fews, and with Hitler now a ruined parody of a man, there is nothing upon which to focus our hatred. The protestors say we are taking part in just as many war crimes as the Germans by supplying the Brits with those awful bombs. They make picket signs with direct quotations from you and that Russian Zhukov.

America is in a fine uproar! I hope you are as well as you seem in your motion picture.

Come home soon, Esther

Goddard folded the letter back into its envelope and sighed. This was the hard part. Never before had he relocated for work without having Esther with him. He missed her miserably, and her doubts and fears—though he understood them—tugged at his heart.

So, the following afternoon, when she stepped out of an American B-29 amid a bustle of US brass, Goddard felt complete.

He rushed to her across the runway upon which he had first set foot nearly two months prior. Smiling tiredly at him, she brushed grey hair out of her eyes and set down a shoulder bag. They embraced. Goddard remembered how such an embrace had first felt when they had been married in 1924.

Now, to his unexpected delight, he felt more fully alive than at any time since.

Life was good.

Two days later, a brief scuffle broke out between the American officers and the Soviet guards. Goddard rushed to the airfield upon hearing the news from a Russian messenger boy.

“Sirs!” he called to his fellow Americans, leaping from the smoky Russian car. The day was a balmy 10° Celsius.

“Give me an ear!” He crossed to the cluster of men, each group pointing weapons at the other. Fifteen tan-uniformed Russians blocked the ten Americans’ passage to the B-29.

“Listen,” he began. “You’ve seen that no one here is a prisoner, right?”

“It seems you’re mistaken!” an obese Major growled. Goddard shook his head and continued.

“You don’t understand. We can’t allow scientists or any information to leave this area until the Project is well established. Among you are several scientists. They will have to remain, but the rest of you can leave.”

“Outrageous!” the Major cried. “You may call that ‘choice,’ but I call it kidnapping!”

“Call it what you will,” Goddard replied as authoritatively as he could, crossing his arms across his chest and setting his jaw, “but we will not permit our efforts here to be perverted into military purposes. You may have noticed that our rockets are powerful enough to launch intercontinental flying bombs. I will not have that. This is not a war operation.”

He then told the captain of the guards which Americans were to stay, and which could leave. The Soviet hesitated.

“If you doubt me, get confirmation from Vebretsky,” he declared.

So five of the American officers remained while the rest took off amid an escort of Russian long-range fighters. Eight days later began the trickle of American scientists, then a clutch of Canadians and a few men and women from all around the globe. They came from wherever bombs and missiles were made, wherever visionaries were forced to put aside their dreams of space and concentrate on death.

Then came the spectacular aeronautical feat of the Brit who appeared on the Russian radar net, piloting a Bellthunder over Soviet airspace.

One predawn morning the rocket plane descended like a meteor toward the Plesetsk landing field stirring up every aircraft parked there like a flock of scared geese. Emergency rescue vehicles were readied. So were AA guns and ground-to-air missiles. The Station held its collective breath during the fiery last few minutes of descent: Will an atomic bomb fall with the plane? Will it crash-land atop the half-constructed prototype rocket? Is the pilot crazy, deadly sane, or a daredevil who wants out of the war?

Through a frost-webbed window in their apartment block, waiting wordless, Goddard, Esther, von Braun and another German watched the fireball cascade from the starry sky. One minute, two… an eternity was swallowed up in the waiting.

“It couldn’t be carrying a bomb,” Goddard speculated. “Range would be limited by the weight. It must be carrying extra fuel instead.”

“Perhaps extra fuel and a bomb,” von Braun added.

But the plane landed without incident, except that it ruined its undercarriage, and its wings and tail had practically been burned off. The British pilot, Ethan Harper, staggered out of the cockpit, grinning. He explained to a hastily gathered group at Design Headquarters how he had crammed spare fuel and oxidizer tanks into the bomb bay the previous day, explaining to the British West Afrikan Air Corps that it was a test of maximum speed flight to Britain. To see if the new German secret weapon—which had knocked out a Bellthunder a few months before—could hit him going that fast.

The next morning, the engineers gathered to study the badly scorched craft. The Germans, especially, approached it with trepidation, as if it could go off and vaporize the Cosmodrome as it had done to large sections of two Europareich cities and several manufacturing centers. But it was only a machine, and its pilot only a starved defector.

“I wan’ be the first bloody cosmonaut!” Harper laughed to the gathering of scientists who regarded him warily. “So I thought I’d better prove my mettle.

“I was in space, chaps!” he said, then turned his face toward the crisp blue sky framed by a purple and red sunrise. He continued:

“It’s quiet. You can’t hear the bleedin’ rhetoric comin’ from the shambles of Parliament—‘We shall not have suffered in vain! Remember Dunkirk! Remember Brighton, remember Portsmouth, remember Westminister,’ and on and on. It’s like the Great War all over again, as if nobody learned a thing. What’s left in England to fight for? Let’s just smash the rest for vengeance! It makes me sick.

“Ah, but space…. You can see the whole world spinnin’ beneath you, like a little ball with a skin of air stuck to it. You can’t even see any bleedin’ borders from up there, not even whole armored infantry divisions or cities.” He sounded wistful.

“Nothin’ like it. Sign me up.”

Then came the flood of emigres to the Space Mecca. The Europareich refused to be left out of something of which even their blackest enemy was part. The Americans couldn’t allow the Reich to be part of a worldwide movement without a hefty contingent of their own, and so on across the continents. There were no U-boat or Luftwaffe incidents.

By July, Zhukov had to issue a limit as to how many members could come from each country, calculated as a tiny percentage of each nation’s population as well as how much money and material they were willing to supply.

Only one serious conflict arose at Plesetsk Station. Von Braun and Goddard, as well as most of the engineers, demanded that each redesigned engine be static-tested before approval for installation into a rocket.

“You waste time!” Vebretsky yelled in his hollow voice. “We already know motors safe. You waste fuel! You wear out motors!”

“Talk about wasteful!” von Braun screamed back. “Do you think it wiser if we install faulty engines into our rocket and blow it to pieces, along with half the Cosmodrome?”

“You will have no static tests,” the Colonel declared.

Goddard decided to end the stalemate, risking all: “I will not remain part of this effort if we do not static-test each engine with all its components. I will not be part of any disaster you wish to bring about, Colonel.”

“I am in command here!” Vebretsky howled. Goddard quieted his internal twisting, at least remaining calm on the exterior:

“Unless we proceed intelligently, you will have no command.”

The Soviet Colonel’s face filled black with blood. But the argument had ended.

There were no more denials of static tests—and the engineers’ demand proved itself in the end: Only nine days after the power struggle, a motor exploded on its test stand. It was discovered that its turbopump’s bearings had fused. All turbopumps to be used in the rockets would receive better-oiled bearings.

On August 27, 1946, the world’s first spaceship was shipped—in three liquid-fuel stages, a trio of external solid-fuel boosters, and an elongated cylinder-and-cone payload section—by rail from Moscow to Plesetsk Station, where the first stage was fitted with five mighty WUR-4 engines and their associated piping and pumping apparatus, the second with three, and the third stage with a single engine. From there, the sections were trucked across swampy land and numerous bridges to the Cosmodrome. Even as it was being assembled on its pad, the next rocket was being manufactured in a secret plant or plants near Moscow.

Goddard stood, swatting at flies and insects, with an arm around Esther, watching the final preparations. The rocket pointed skyward 110 feet from the base of its launching pad, four tapering sections balanced—precariously, Goddard thought, imagining the vast forces of propulsion that would soon blast the stack into space—atop one another like an overgrown V2, only proportionally narrower. Three fins flared at its base, topping five nozzles which barely peeked out from beneath gleaming aluminum skin. Three squat arrows, the solid boosters, clung to the behemoth’s waist, just fitting in the gaps between the pad’s three collapsible catwalk arms which would fill the rocket’s hungry appetite moments before launch.

“I feel like a proud father,” Goddard told his wife, turning a glowing countenance to her. She smiled back, solemn in the face of a great moment, strong as always.

“I feel as if I’ve helped foster a new generation of humans,” he went on. “As if I’ve finally fulfilled my destiny.” He winced at a cramp in his abdomen.

“Are you all right?” Esther asked. “Was that another stomach pain?” Goddard inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly.

“I’m OK,” he answered. And he was.

The countdown sounded as if it were being narrated by the gang who built the Tower of Babel. Each number echoed in two dozen languages before the next was spoken, stretching the count’s length and building anticipation. This, along with the next ten launches, would be unmanned, carrying supplies which the later-manned stations would assemble into orbital facilities. Eventually, the engineers planned, orbiting factories would build more rockets to first explore and then take supplies to the Moon; there, manned missions would follow to build bases and more factories…

Goddard, Esther, von Braun, Vebretsky, and six other engineers watched through sunglasses from a bunker situated a quarter mile from the launch pad. Hundreds of print, radio and television news reporters flocked the concrete polygon, sheltered against explosion only by panels of steel or peeking around the comers of bunkers, cameras ready.

At the count of “Twenty,” vaporized oxygen began to form a cloud around the graceful sweep of the craft. “Three,” “Two,” “One,” “Zero” and its linguistic variations—.

A multifaceted jewel of white-hot gas, accompanied by two vivid orange cones of flame, stretched away from the pad, visible through the growing cloud of exhaust. At this distance, it was completely silent for a few seconds; Goddard could hear only his heart thumping in his ears. Squinting through dark lenses, he could see the rocket itself—intact and rising straight, steadily upward.

Then his heart nearly exploded with fear that the rocket had destroyed itself. So loud was the sudden thunder—he recalled the dogfight over Greece—that he was certain their efforts had been in vain. But the roar was steady, and he realized this is how it should sound, not unlike the static tests. He grew a sheepish grin at his foolish fear.

Soon, everyone rushed out of the bunker onto the surrounding patio. The synchronized rumble of five rocket engines buffeted the forest and observers. They all looked as if they had reacted the same way as Goddard had, fearing the worst.

Nearly a minute passed. Even though Goddard had relaxed from his initial scare, he held his breath. So did the others, even the Colonel. Then came the nerve-wracking stage-change, a smooth pop cutting across the sky, tossing the first stage loose. A cheer rose among watchers from five bunkers as loudspeakers announced the separation.

The rocket vanished into the blue ocean of air, only its off-white pillar of cloud visible. Soon, loudspeakers told of the second-stage’s separation, then the bum-out of the third stage and its jettisoning as the payload coasted into orbit around the Earth.

Unplanned celebrations commenced.

“I do not often partake of the spirits,” Goddard said, chuckling through a fuzz of champagne.

“His doctor forbade him,” Esther said, her face a mix of wrinkled concern and grinning joy.

“My faulty body,” Goddard added, grunting.

“Ach, but the Bolsheviks have no good German beer!” von Braun chided. “How can a man celebrate with französischem Champagner and Bolshevik vodka?”

“You seem to be celebrating just fine,” Korolyov observed. The six people seated at this end of the conference table joined in loud laughter.

Talk continued so for some time, until Goddard tired of the crowd and slipped away to have a look at the launch pad. He walked alone for a long time, thinking and planning, listening to the soft, constant chorus of night animals. Korolyov caught up to him halfway across the pavement.

“Sergey,” Goddard said, nodding, smiling.

“Doctor Goddard,” said the other. He looked drunk, serious. As they walked, the voices of the celebrants faded. Soon, they stood alone at the base of the great pad, staring at a collapsed catwalk arm. Its metal was badly oxidized, but appeared to have withstood the launch. It would serve again and again, if it were recoated each time and if its mechanical elements escaped damage.

“Doctor Goddard?” Korolyov said, barely voiced. Goddard looked the man in the eyes. The Russian continued, “I hear the second rocket is on its way from Moscow.”

Goddard smiled and slapped Korolyov on the back. “Fine! A whole armada to be launched from our Cosmodrome by the New Year.”

“There’s something you don’t know,” the other said, hushed and quick. “I have learned a terrible secret. Those of us—the Man-kindists—our first loyalty is to the race, no?”

“Of course,” Goddard answered, mildly troubled by vague fears. Will there only be this one rocket?

“I can’t bear to keep the truth firom you. You are a good man, I know, we all know. You stand up to Vebretsky.”

“He doesn’t understand our goals,” Goddard explained.

“Right!” Though the weather was mild, Korolyov rubbed his hands together, as if chilled. “So you must be told. You must give us direction. They say it is for our own security, for the security of the U.S.S.R. and people everywhere, but now I am not so sure. At least not sure of their motives.”

“What are you talking about, man?” Goddard demanded, frustration boiling to a faceless fear. Something began to gnaw at his stomach.

“Yes, I must tell you,” Korolyov rambled, his eyes staring wildly about. “You can be trusted to find an answer. I cannot trust a German.”

“What is it?” Goddard demanded, angry now, suspecting a new, immeasurable betrayal.

“A few of us suspected something when we weren’t allowed to inspect Tsiolkovsky-1, right? Yes, and perhaps you, as well. But none of us thought much about it—Vebretsky is always like that, always secretive, even about nonmilitary issues.”

“Yes, and?” Goddard prodded.

Korolyov fidgeted more, pretending to inspect blackened metal by picking off flecks of paint. “Two years ago, it seems, one of our people—a Mankindist—infiltrated a Russian atomic bomb plant. I don’t even know where it is located. He passed word to others about his work there, who passed word back to him about their work here and in other places. One of the other places was where the rocket’s computation machine was programmed. He put the pieces of the puzzle together.”

“Dammit, get to the point!”

“Just this morning,” Korolyov said, voice shaking, “I learned Tsiolkovsky-1 carried not the first elements of our cosmo habitat, but an atomic bomb, a hydrogen-fusion atomic bomb.”

“What?”

“An atomic bomb.” Korolyov’s face broke into a sweat. “My first loyalty is not to Zhukov, not even to Mother Russia, but to all Mankind. I should have tried to stop it!” He slammed his fist into his other palm. “Look what I have allowed to happen!”

“No,” Goddard said, suddenly calm, “Vebretsky would have had you killed.” His mind was suddenly lucid. “How big? What’s its target? When will it hit?”

“Oh, it is not like that,” Korolyov said. “They put it in orbit to deter aggression against the Project. This one orbits the Earth in such a way that it can be called upon to deter the Germans and British. Its power is the equivalent of twenty thousand kilotons of TNT. Enough to smooth to molten glass any one of the population and industrial centers in the Europareich or England, and bum and pollute thousands of surrounding square kilometers. National boundaries will mean nothing to this bomb. Its yield is nearly two thousand times greater than your American bombs, and those comparatively tiny weapons have nearly driven Europe mad as they smash and bum factories and whole city blocks. The mere thought of something so much more powerful—even if its destructive power may not be much greater—will stop the war.”

Korolyov paused a moment, but not long enough for Goddard to react, or, really, to process this new information. Then he continued: “The machine-programmer has calculated that the next one will deter the Americans, and the one after that the Chinese.

“I fear that, perhaps, these bombs are not to protect the Project,” Korolyov enunciated clearly. “Zhukov is a good man, but he may be misguided. I fear they may be designed to enforce worldwide Communist rule.”

The world spun dizzily around Goddard. The last thing he saw was Korolyov’s concerned scowl as the Russian asked, “Are you all right?”

Goddard awoke in his apartment in Plesetsk proper. He drew a deep breath, searching his body for pains, finding none. He then noticed Esther and von Braun in the room with him, standing by the window, quiet.

He thought furiously for a long time, watching the tableau of those he loved against a background of the place he had grown to love. Here was a place scoured of human life but free of war, dangerous and beautiful in a barren way. He considered the revelation with which he had been burdened. The suspected betrayal had finally come, but long after he expected it, and from a quarter he had neither feared nor suspected. I have been a naive old dreamer, he told himself.

As soon as he utterly accepted defeat, the answer sprang to mind.

Robert H. Goddard felt his face harden to grim determination and masked it with a smile.

“Wemher,” he said. The other two turned, startled.

“My dear Robert!” Esther called, hurrying toward him.

“In a moment, dear,” Goddard said. “Wemher, fetch Sergey Korolyov, and be sure no one sees you, especially not the Colonel’s men. Hurry.” Von Braun nodded rapidly and fled the room. Goddard sat upright on the bed and held out his hands to his wife, who took them and helped him to his feet.

“Sorry to startle you, darling,” he said. “Just an attack of indecisiveness.” He squeezed her hands.

“It has passed.” Goddard spoke the last three words slowly and clearly.

Sixteen days later, Tsiolkovsky-2 flexed itself into a cloudless sky. It appeared to vanish as its path crossed the disk of the Sun. Twenty days after that, the third rocket went up just before the winter’s first blizzard, and fourteen days more saw the fourth launch of the thunderous rocket. Goddard could hardly believe their infiltrators had succeeded.

When the fourth craft had separated from its upper stage, Goddard finally let himself believe his months of espionage and counter-espionage had ended. Yet he warned himself against any false optimism, against hope that any peace could be final.

Although the Mankindists’s deep infiltration into the Russian industrial-military complex had proven invaluable, he had begun to feel dirty using them the way he and the others had. He wanted this element of their plan finished. Now would begin the end.

The world’s news ways were buzzing with information and speculation about what lay ahead, in space, for a newly united world. The war, which had months before ground largely to a stalemate in the Afrikanische deserts and quieted elsewhere—with the profound exception of occasional atomic blasts in England or Germany, which had ranged between one-half and twenty kilotons—now ceased. Not a single atomic bomb devastated a single city block; not a single high-explosive shattered a single building. The war was, for the moment, forgotten. Reporters speculated that this willingness grew perhaps out of hope, or more likely out of deathly weariness, or denial and the blind need to escape the inutterable and uncountable individual tragedies that had been forged in those blasts.

Goddard gave Korolyov the signal to bring forward all available newsmen for an important announcement. Though he would be acting out a most honorable duty to humanity, what stilled his nerves was not idealism. Neither was it Esther; actually, he felt unnerved if anything by her presence. If she should die…

What kept him bound to his path was the knowledge that, at least, the world would hear his words immediately by radio, even if Zhukov ordered immediate vengeance. The world would know. It must. The Soviet Premier’s plan to rule the world would be shattered. Goddard could die well with that knowledge, and the knowledge that he had helped bring the nations together for the first time since Eden. His only pain was knowing his actions could cost Esther the many years that lay ahead of her.

A hundred faces seemed to condense out of mist before Goddard. They were expectant. More microphones than he could count prodded the air. Movie cameras began rolling. A number of Soviet guards ambled toward the mass, as well as soldiers wearing green, blue, black, and grey uniforms that had been sewn in garment factories all around the planet. He began his speech:

“Every plan, no matter how grand—especially, perhaps, the grand ones—requires compromise and sacrifice. Over the past months, you, the many peoples of this wonderful yet sometimes sinister world, have been following the grandest of all human endeavors. The necessary sacrifice is on a par with the greatness we will attain if we keep our heads calm over the next days and weeks. And, to maintain the impetus here begun, we will have to keep our heads for generations to come. Remember that.

“We, the scientists at ‘Space Mecca,’ as the reporters please to call Plesetsk Cosmodrome; we, the engineers and optimists who have designed and launched the first, second, third and fourth spacecraft ever, have sacrificed our burning-pure idealism for a guarantee of long-term good. But only because we were forced into that position. We have learned that nearsighted optimism is no better than dangerous naivete.” He began to cough as a cloud of Tsiolkovsky-4’s exhaust swept across the silent crowd.

If one listened very carefully to the recordings made that day, one could hear a woodpecker pounding a tree, squirrels squawking at one another over a nut, a pack of wolves trotting across a bed of pine needles toward tall shadows beside a hill. The coughing spell faded, but Goddard couldn’t help realizing his time was at hand—in both meanings of the phrase.

“We have turned inside-out a Communist plot to dominate the world with the threat of atomic bombs hovering over our heads.” The crowd began to mutter to itself. Several flashbulbs fired in Goddard’s face, startling him, presaging muzzle flashes. He hurried on:

“Instead, a handful of scientists, technicians, and engineers have ensured that not only is the rest of the world warned against incautious movements, but so too the Soviet Union.” Colonel Vebretsky could be heard shouting in the distance. A tramp of boots grew near.

“We call ourselves ‘Mankindists,’ because our first loyalty is to the whole of humanity.” He cast a smile at Korolyov, who fairly glowed. “We do not intend to use any of the now-orbiting bombs on anyone. That would be against all that we believe. But to any man or nation that would move to destroy another nation or the future of our race—destruction!”

Chaos ensued. Goddard was briefly arrested, then the Colonel released him under threat of violence from the American contingent. Reporters were at first detained, then anarchy broke out and planes took off in all directions. The Soviets actually scrambled fighters to intercept the Americans. Several rounds were fired in both directions before the order to desist was given by President Truman and Premier Zhukov.

Several important Russian atomic and computer scientists disappeared, but attention was focused elsewhere. Two weeks passed wherein everyone on the surface of the Earth denounced the Mankindists. Then a security leak in the Kremlin revealed the facts, and worldwide rage was turned against the Communists. In the third week, when an anger borne of fear reversed to its initial emotion, when the cold hard facts revealed that mere nations no longer controlled the future of humanity, when the theory of “nuclear winter” was accepted by respected scientists, more sensible debate decided what would be done next:

No nation would move against the Mankindists. The Mankindists’s bases could be anywhere, their bomb-control mechanisms scattered across the continents. Even nations not specifically targeted must not cause trouble if they lay beneath a bomb’s orbital path: The bombs could fall not only as programmed, but also at once upon orders. One such bomb could alter the entire world’s climate and drop deadly pollution a continent away. Each nation, to protect itself, must not provoke its neighbor, or both would be destroyed. So politicians and dictators alike were forced to rational behavior. To top it off, if those mechanisms were tampered with in an attempt to disarm…

So what had first been a sense of childlike excitement was replaced by a more adult appreciation for the long, hard, yet also inspiring, path that lay ahead. The world grudgingly accepted the Mankindists’s pledge that they would never actually use their power of “assured destruction” unless it were flouted.

“A move against the Project will be the Armageddon sign,” Goddard told a group of reporters elbowing one another for position near his bed where he lay recovering from a recent bodily failure.

“It will prove that we were hopelessly optimistic in our kind. Then we will have to engage the weapons of doom and clear the way for evolution to lay its magic finger upon another chosen species. This is not a matter of the ends justifying the means; rather, this is a matter of survival.” Fatigue gripped his throat. Could he trust these uncomprehending faces to not cause their own extinction? Terror gripped his soul, but the time was past for this plan to be stopped. Zhukov had assured that, without the Mankindists’s approval.

“If you could simultaneously capture three of our mobile control-centers, the fourth would still be enough to destroy the world as we know it. We cannot bear to contemplate such an action, but we will not hesitate if we must act.

“Now leave me be.” He was as weary as Death.

Tsiolkovsky-5 rose into a cloudless sky, Weaving its thread of cloud toward Destiny, Goddard thought. He smiled at the words he had just put together. He spoke them aloud to Esther, and von Braun, and Ethan, and Korolyov, who had emerged from the bunker.

His old German friend smiled sadly, helping move Goddard to the front of the blockhouse for a better view of humanity’s first launch of a true spaceship. Though Zhukov had been lynched by a Muscovite mob, the Soviet Union had continued to provide the bulk of manpower and material for assembling the space fleet. On the surface of the world, all seemed as it had been before Goddard had dropped the bombshell, only calmer.

“Don’t scratch that surface,” Goddard muttered; “it’s just a skin over a little ball, eh, Ethan? It would pop.”

The world’s first cosmonaut wrinkled his brow at Goddard, but smiled and nodded. Esther knelt beside her husband’s canvas gurney, lacing her strong fingers with his own fragile twigs. Goddard was cast back into 1924, then 1926, then that fateful day only half a year before. A trick of the atmosphere brought back to his ears a last echo of the rocket’s ascent, and then only loudspeaker reports detailed the progress.

He was well aware that covert operations were well underway to eliminate all the Mankindists’s bomb-controls simultaneously. But, by the time those operations were ready, it would not matter what happened to the Mankindists’s control of the world. Permanent human space presence would be established very shortly.

Though open, his eyes seemed just now to carry light to his brain. He was stunned by the array of nations spread across the Cosmodrome’s concrete polygon: Italians and French, Americans and Russians, Japanese and Chinese, Germans and Brits. A spectrum of skin color glowed in the freak afternoon warmth. In the background, really only an arm’s reach away, the forest primeval…

Goddard felt himself carried aloft upon the mighty arms of his—no, the world’s—-rocket, cast into the endless reaches of space. He extended his hands and swam the ether for several orbits of the Moon, the inconstant Moon, then away to Red Mars, oblate Jupiter and its cluster of moons, ringed Saturn, cloaked Neptune and Uranus, then cold Pluto and Charon, the gatekeeper to the underworld.

There he spread sail, his back to mother Sol, and whisked toward Alpha Centauri and its own whirling bundle of planets, those cradles for life. He swooped into alien atmospheres and met strange and wonderful beings who did not comprehend the word, “war.”

Back out to space, dark space, and the cold embrace of the stars. No, he thought, revelling in a bath of starlight, not cold. Warm, warm as a womb…

And, after helping construct a highway to the stars, after having added his sweat to paving humanity’s road to the future, he at last slept.

There can be no thought of finishing, for “aiming at the stars,” both literally and figuratively, is a problem to occupy generations, so that no matter how much progress one makes, there is always the thrill of just beginning…

What I find most inspiring is your optimism. It is the best antidote I know for the feeling of depression that comes at times when one contemplates the remarkable capacity for bungling of both men and nature.

—Robert H. Goddard, in a letter to H.G. Wells, April 20, 1932.

Content

Paving the Road to Armageddon
by Christopher McKitterick