‘You should be thankful I was only sucking your finger!’ Elsa said as she wiped the blood from her mouth.
The Kapo’s painful defeat now prompted the guards to act. A truncheon cracked the catwalk rail violently, its metallic concussion bringing all the prisoners to their senses.
‘That’s enough!’ The guard said he pointed the truncheon at the prisoners below. ‘All of you get out the showers now.’ He rapped the rail again to emphasise the command.
Ziegler took hold of Konrad and doused his bloody face under the shower. He was sympathetic, but at the same time, ever the politician, he was scathing of his new friend’s actions.
‘I hope you’ve learnt your lesson,’ Ziegler said. ‘What the hell were you thinking? Getting your guts stomped out for that animal.’
‘Looking back now, maybe I shouldn’t have bothered.’ Konrad held up the remains of Brutus’s finger.
Ziegler handed his comrade a towel. ‘What made you jump to her defence anyway?’
Konrad turned away. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’
‘Well, what-ever your reasons, no matter how noble, or in my opinion, how stupid they may have been, you’ll have to watch your back from now on. Remember this before you live to regret it, if one thing’s guaranteed with this mission is that the women will be as dangerous as any Nazi.’
Konrad nodded, but his mind was elsewhere. Instead, he watched a triumphant Elsa slinking out the chamber with the other female prisoners. As she disappeared into the crowded corridor their eyes met.
CHAPTER TEN
Vanaheim, its spherical shape still shrouded in darkness, dominated every monitor in the command module. These monitors were decorated with statistics such as course-projections, orbital envelopes, rotation speeds, pitch angles and thousands of other pieces of data that the ship’s computers supplied. Admiral Bauer and his crew hovered over the displays, their fingers dancing expertly across the coloured banks of buttons and gauges. Stahl ignored the activity as he stood at the very top of the command module on the observation-deck. Above him, beyond the thick glass cap, was the inhospitable void. Looking through the transparent barrier it appeared as if he had stepped beyond the safe metallic confines of the ship and into the vacuum. Free of the mechanical and electronic noise below in the control room, the planet and the colourless backdrop that surrounded it presented to Stahl their true scale and depth. The ancients had named the planets of the solar system after the gods they knew; Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, but they had only seen the great planetary bodies as pinpoints of light that had roamed across their night skies. They could only imagine the true god-like scale of these worlds. Stahl wondered how those same ancient astronomers would have reacted if they were in the same position as him. Perhaps they would have bowed and grovelled before the celestial bodies, convinced that they were truly face to face with those same gods.
As Stahl gazed out the domed window, a probe disengaged from its berth in the Odin’s hull and blasted its way towards the planet. The little pioneer, Siegfried, gunned into the darkness with an iridescent blue streak glowing in its wake.
Inside the probe sat its pilot, the Odin’s science officer, Petersen. The astronaut had prepared for this moment for years. During that time he had been destroyed countless times due to pilot error, computer malfunctions, defective engines and all manner of other faults or acts of god in the simulators, but in the end Petersen had always emerged unscathed. His time in the spotlight would be brief and relatively, it was hoped, uneventful, but the symbolism of his task, being the first to observe the planet’s surface was incalculable. Like the rest of the crew, Petersen had been shown replications of the planet’s surface, however, he would be the first to see the alien world in all its glory with his own eyes. He would gaze upon the mountain ranges, the valleys, the grasslands and its oceans, and perhaps even signs of life. A romantic vision of seeing fantastical birds wheeling around the probe filled his mind as he performed his final checks. The probe’s controls reflected upon his wide face-plate, the dials and buttons bent and distorted by the reinforced glass dome as he gently turned the pistol-grip sticks and angled the probe towards Vanaheim’s equator.
‘This is Siegfried,’ Petersen announced. ‘Distance to Vanaheim is one thousand kilometres and closing. All systems are nominal, Odin.’
The probe’s radio crackled into life. ‘Copy that, Siegfried.’ The voice belonged to Admiral Bauer, whose tone was friendly and parental. ‘Any problems and you can’t continue, remember, don’t hesitate to ask for the recall code. Once that code is transmitted the probe will automatically return – hopefully in one piece.’
‘With all due respect, Herr Admiral, you’re beginning to sound like my mother,’ Petersen replied. ‘And I know you; you’d transmit that code anyway simply so you could take my place!’
‘Don’t tempt me,’ Bauer said.
Petersen’s smile suddenly disappeared as one of his displays flashed. ‘Ten seconds to atmosphere entry,’ Petersen said as he braced himself in his seat. He was ready to face the new world.
The probe hurtled across the terminator between night and day. This transition between light and darkness marked the point where the little spacecraft hit the upper atmosphere, unleashing a fiery trail to mark its way. Great vibrations generated by the friction between the heat-resistant casing and the air molecules violently took hold of the probe. They grew stronger and stronger as if the alien world was trying valiantly to throttle this man-made invader.
Petersen’s determined face was illuminated by the brilliant display of ionised gases outside. He gripped his controls even tighter as he fought to guide the probe and push it on through the natural barrier that had manifested itself. Orange, yellow, blue, green and red gases bubbled and boiled until eventually an ethereal calm took hold of the little craft. The highly dangerous entry into the atmosphere was over and a vast and dark blanket of cloud presented itself to Petersen through the oval window. Forbidding columns twisted and jutted from the black deck like ghostly fingers as if these murky structures were the watch-towers of some hidden atmospheric camp situated in the heavens. The alien moon cast its light upon this mournful cloudscape which was far removed from the information he had been told about this world by his superiors.
In contrast to the fiery penetration of the atmosphere, the next stage of the probe’s descent took place in a suffocating darkness. Turbulence still gripped the craft, but it was the apparent blindness that concerned Petersen. To combat the gloom, he leaned forward and flipped on the probe’s powerful navigation lights, but the beams of light barely penetrated the swirling morass.
‘This is Siegfried,’ Petersen said into his open microphone. ‘I’m continuing my descent but I have to report that visibility is non-existent. Hopefully I’ll clear the cloud-deck and visibility will improve.’
‘Copy that, Siegfried,’ Bauer replied.
As the Admiral’s voice faded away, the dank cloud cover also disappeared to finally reveal the planet’s surface rushing up towards the probe. Petersen violently pulled on the sticks. His split-second reactions saved both himself and the craft as it reared steeply away from the ground, its hull grazing the surface. For a few moments the astronaut struggled with the bucking craft, but once he had control again a relevant calm returned and Petersen could look out and finally survey the alien world’s landscape.