Elspeth narrowed her eyes. “Why didn’t they just make contact with us, or with President Roosevelt?”
“Not as easy as you might think,” Hanover said. “Imagine; you’re in a submarine, and you loose all communication with the mainland. You have no way of knowing what’s going on, and you have standing orders to engage the enemy’s cities, perhaps even a couple of allied cities, if you lose contact for more than a set period of time.”
Mortimer paled. “My god,” he breathed. “You mean that the American ship… might have nuked London?”
“It was a possibility,” Hanover said grimly. “We caught a sniff of the craft in early September; from the effects it was possible that it came though the Transition later than we did. Certainly, the German aircraft we found was over daylight Britain before the Transition. There was no time to lose – Artful was given orders to fire if it even remotely looked likely that the Americans were preparing to fire.”
He smiled grimly. “She did, and she hammered the American ship with ten torpedoes,” he said. Mortimer felt his mouth drop open. “The entire incident was covered up, although clearly not perfectly. Yes, you could reveal everything, but for what? After the Parliamentary debate, you might find out that you are recalled anyway.”
“They want to recall me,” Mortimer said. His voice was shaky. “Can you help me?”
Hanover smiled. “Perhaps,” he said. “There would be a price.”
“Our silence?” Elspeth asked. “I suppose we could see to that, in exchange for your help.”
“They don’t call me the current party leader for nothing,” Hanover said. “I look forward to you joining us.”
Chapter Twenty-Three: War in Space
Rocket Launch Site
Nr Munich, Germany
2nd May 1942
Obergruppenfuehrer Herman Roth studied the scene in front of him with concerned eyes. The darkness was inky black, but he knew that darkness wasn’t always a barrier to British satellites. They’d waited for a cloudy night, knowing that at any minute a supersonic jet could be overhead, dropping precision weapons that would shatter all of their hopes. The slaves – favoured Jews and homosexuals – worked hard to assemble the rocket, preparing it for launch.
“We have calculated the flight path,” Doctor Von Braun said. Roth nodded politely to the rocket scientist, who had been pushed on to greater and greater heights by the news of the future. Knowing something was possible was half the battle. “We should be able to put the object in orbit.”
Roth frowned. “We are still too dependent upon the re-entry capsule,” he said. “We really need one of those transmission systems.”
Doctor Von Braun glared at him over the laptop, its glow hidden inside the tent. Roth hadn’t been able to forbid him from coming close to the launch site, but he had managed to convince him to stay well away from the rocket. The British would be delighted to kill the doctor; he was one of the leading German scientists.
“If your source in America can find me such a system, then I will gladly add it into the satellite,” he snapped. “Merely developing transistors has aided us enormously, but we have to develop a way of transmitting a great deal of information quickly, not so slowly as to make jamming certain. We are certain that the British cannot tamper with the films…”
“Are we certain?” Roth said. He’d read a lot of electronic American books from the non-existent alternate future. “Could they not… board the satellite in orbit?”
“I do not believe so,” Doctor Von Braun said. “Although they are much more advanced than us, they are not supermen, ja?” He smiled. “Their spacecraft must follow certain basic rules of motion, and they have to be really careful when manoeuvring in space, or they might come down to earth with a bump.”
He chuckled. “We can and we will put something permanently in orbit later,” he said. “For the moment, the Fuhrer wants orbital reconnaissance and that’s what the Fuhrer will get. The satellite will be travelling in a ballistic orbit, one that will be faster than the British craft, and it will be lower than them. If they somehow manage to intercept” – he waved a hand at the rocket – “the explosives attached to the satellite will make certain that they cannot recover anything useful.”
“It might just kill a British man,” Roth observed. He frowned; Kristy would have disapproved. He wondered how she was getting on in Britain, if they would let her return. “What about hitting the other target?”
“Not for a while,” Doctor Von Braun informed him. “We don’t want to let the British know that we have the capability until the weapon is ready.”
Roth nodded. Himmler would approve of caution, he was certain. “One other thing; what about putting a man of our own in space?”
Doctor Von Braun smiled. Space travel had been a dream of his since before the Transition. “We can put a man up in space,” he said. “Getting him down safely… now that’s the problem.”
“Herr Doctor, we’re ready to launch,” the supervisor said. Roth smiled as Doctor Von Braun stood up, stretching to hide his injured bones. The control box was simple; a large red button with long cables reaching out to the rocket.
“Are you sure this will work?” Roth asked, struck by sudden doubts. “What happens if the rocket goes off on the wrong course?”
“If the satiates enters orbit, we should be able to track it through its transmitter or through telescopes,” Doctor Von Braun said absently, his hands caressing the button. “It’s time.”
Roth scowled. “Answer the question,” he snapped.
“The satellite is supposed to make three orbits before it returns to Earth,” Doctor Von Braun said. “As long as we track it, we will know when it’s supposed to land.” He snorted. “The maths doesn’t change and won’t until someone invents an inertia-less drive.”
“Thank you,” Roth said. “You may launch when ready.”
Doctor Von Braun pushed the button. There was a long moment, long enough for Roth to start to worry in earnest, and then the rocket started to rise into the air on a plume of fire. “Move,” he snapped, dragging the doctor along. The British could hardly fail to see the rocket’s launch. He could only hope that they would have other problems. “Come on!”
He dragged the protesting Doctor Von Braun into the shelter and slammed the door behind him, then followed Von Braun to the single slit. The rocket was rising faster and faster, heading up to the stars. He knew that people would be trying to track it, but he didn’t know if they would succeed. Everything rested on German science and ingenuity.
“It’s going to cross the Atlantic in the dark,” he said absently. “Won’t we have to start launching them in daylight?”
“Don’t forget the time difference,” Von Braun snapped. “We’ll get our pictures, one way or the other.”
RAF Fylingdales
Yorkshire, United Kingdom
2nd May 1942
“Oh, shit,” the duty officer, Lieutenant Jackie Fisher, reported. “Sir, we have a major missile attack in progress.”
Base Commander Ben Barden swore. He’d been on the late shift, hoping to finish some paperwork while the base was on reduced staff. Even with the panic over the German missile demonstration, they’d not recovered half the staff they should have had. RAF Fylingdales had suddenly become important, but the creakingly slow military bureaucracy hadn’t managed to react yet.