Last and First Contacts (collection)

Erstkontakt

During her time at Peenemünde, Dorothea only spoke to Wernher von Braun once.

Oh, everybody knew who he was. You saw him around, and the draftswomen and the secretaries in their great dormitories would speculate about the tall, upright young fellow, so different from the older, rather odd-looking senior scientists and engineers around him, as at ease with the humblest of staff as with the Party leaders who frequently visited the research centre. Even the foreign workers in their ugly fenced-off barrack at Trassenheide probably worshipped him, the girls imagined.

But von Braun was SS. You always had to remember that. And when Father Kopleck, the centre’s chaplain, called to say that von Braun wanted to see her in his office, Dorothea’s heart fluttered with dread.

That bright day in October 1942 had already been an auspicious one, for that afternoon the Aggregat 4 rocket that was going to win the war for Hitler had made its first successful test flight. When the firing was due everybody had gone out to see, crowding in the parking lots and on the rooftops; you worked ferociously hard here, but you couldn’t miss such a moment. Well, the lathe operators had flirted with the typists, and everybody laid bets about how long the ship would last before it blew up this time. From Dorothea’s office block she couldn’t even see Test Stand Seven, a concrete platform near the northern shore of the peninsula.

But you couldn’t miss the A4 itself when it went up, a droplet of liquid light rising straight up out of a bank of pine trees and into the sky, trailing white smoke. Dorothea was struck by the sheer verticality of it, compared to the horizontal lines of the landscape, the green of pine forest and marsh. She saw ducks flapping off to the west out of the rocket’s way.

And then the noise of it reached her ears, a thundering, crackling roar. The rocket punched through a layer of cloud and kept on climbing, arcing out over the Baltic.

Everybody cheered, and went back to work.

And not a couple of hours later, before the end of the shift, Father Kopleck came to find Dorothea, and said she had been summoned to the presence of Doctor von Braun, to talk about her comet.

Von Braun’s office was in one of the grander houses in the senior staff accommodation quarter. This area was like a university campus, with two-storey buildings set around squares of green, and a sports ground, and young people riding bicycles. It was quite a contrast to the horrible warehouse-like block where Dorothea had to sleep, along with thousands of other young women. But even here guards patrolled with dogs.

They were met at the door by a young officer in the black uniform of the SS, who checked the identity cards pinned to their clothes, the priest’s black jacket and Dorothea’s woollen cardigan. Dorothea felt a thrill of terror and excitement; the SS were so glamorous, so terrible. But the officer was very handsome, and he smiled at her. ‘I am Lieutenant Bergher. My name is Adam. You have nothing to fear from Doctor von Braun. He is even more charming than I am.’

The priest, about forty, a local man, sensible and good-humoured, arched an eyebrow at that sally, but said nothing.

Bergher escorted them into the house and led them along a corridor panelled with polished wood to an expansive office. Here von Braun sat behind a desk as wide as the Baltic, littered with papers, blueprints, trajectory diagrams and scribbled notes. He stood to greet them. ‘Fraulein Rau, and Father—’

‘Hans Kopleck, sir.’

‘Indeed.’ He shook the priest’s hand, then took Dorothea’s hand, quite gently, and bowed. In a snappy civilian suit, he really was tall, handsome, cultured; he was thirty years old, some eight years older than Dorothea. ‘Please sit. Forgive the litter. The results of the test flight are only just coming in.’

‘I saw it, sir,’ Dorothea said, sitting down primly before the desk.

‘Spectacular, wasn’t it? A success in every aspect. At last we have something to show the Fuhrer! And now the hard work begins, as we prepare the missile for mass production. But we changed the timing of the test, you know, Fraulein Rau. Because of you.’

To have such significance suddenly thrust upon her was frightening. ‘Why? Not because of my comet, surely?’

‘Exactly because of your comet, yes.’

She failed to understand.

‘I must share the blame,’ Father Kopleck said gently. ‘You may know that I grew up here, on the peninsula, Doctor von Braun. When the engineers came – well, the fishing villages were demolished, and the families moved on, with handsome enough compensation. But I stayed on.’

‘Even rocket scientists need God, eh, Father?’

‘That was my instinct. It came to my attention that Fraulein Rau here had an interest in astronomy.’

‘Only minor,’ Dorothea said, hoping she wasn’t blushing. ‘But I brought with me the little telescope my father once bought for me. I hoped the seeing would be better than in Munich.’

‘So I showed the Fraulein the beaches on the north coast. Where I knew from my own boyhood memories that the view of the starry sky is unimpeded and spectacular, on a clear night.’

‘It was all approved,’ Dorothea said quickly, to this SS man. ‘I gained permission from my supervisor.’

‘As did I,’ said the priest dryly.

Von Braun glanced at a file. ‘You work in operations, Fraulein. The tedious but essential work of documenting material flows and manpower allocations, eh? And yet you are evidently a capable astronomer. Well, it’s no surprise. We have selected everybody we could for some element of an academic background. Even clerks such as yourself. Even Adam there! The more intelligence is focussed on our huge task at all levels, the more chance it has of success. And so, Fraulein astronomer, on that beach you observed your comet.’

‘It was a bright shifting star – obvious, if you look out for a couple of nights in a row. I sketched its position and estimated its changing magnitude. With my father I used to observe variable stars, and developed the necessary skills.’

‘I have your report here.’ Von Braun searched his desk, and held up a cheaply printed single-page document. ‘“The Peenemünde Chronicle”!’

She felt apologetic. ‘It’s just a silly thing some of the girls produce. We print notices of dances and so on. Bits of gossip.’

‘And here you published your astronomical discovery.’

‘Well, I didn’t know what else to do with it…’

‘You could have notified one of the observatories. Or an academic journal. Perhaps you have priority; I doubt that there is much scientific sky-watching going on in this world at war. Dorothea’s comet! Well, your little notice in this schoolgirl rag attracted the eyes of some of my scientists.’ He winked at her. ‘Some of my younger colleagues, you know, Fraulein, like to read about comets and about dances with pretty secretaries.

‘But it was your quite precise observations of the object’s path across the sky that ultimately brought this to my own attention. You see, Fraulein, as my trajectory specialists will tell you, these observations of yours are sufficient to reconstruct the path of your comet, as it has approached the inner worlds of the solar system.’

‘I understand, though I hadn’t the resources to do that myself. A comet’s path may be elliptical if it is contained within the solar system, or parabolic or hyperbolic if it comes from beyond the system.’

‘Very good,’ said von Braun, rather patronising. ‘But in this case, my dear girl, the object’s orbit is neither elliptical nor parabolic nor hyperbolic. Your observations clearly show, and I have no reason to doubt them, that this object, as it approached the sun, was decelerating.’

There was a stunned silence, broken at last by the priest. ‘I suspect I am the only one here who doesn’t understand the significance of that.’

‘It means, Father,’ said Dorothea, ‘that my comet can’t be a comet at all.’

‘Quite so,’ said Wernher von Braun. ‘Not only that, I had one of our specialists train a spectroscope on the thing. You understand that such an instrument gathers emitted or reflected light, and breaks it down to deduce the elemental composition of the source? Of course you do. We have it here to study the exhaust products of our rockets. Fraulein, your “comet” is not a snowball lit up by reflected sunlight. It creates its own light! My fellows believe we have observed an exotic, umm, exhaust, analogous to the exhaust plume of an A4. Some suggest it is the result of some form of atomic disintegration. For it is the energy of the atom, you know, that will ultimately carry us to the stars and beyond.’

She gaped. ‘The stars?’

‘Oh, yes. In fact a reconstruction of the trajectory indicates that our visitor was travelling at a significant fraction of the speed of light itself before it began its deceleration. Your “comet” must have travelled from another star.’ He grinned at her. ‘Perhaps you are surprised by the course of this conversation.’ He opened a drawer, rummaged, and produced a magazine, cheaply produced with a gaudy cover: Astounding Science Fiction, the title in English. ‘I have this delivered to a mail drop in Switzerland under a false name. My own career began with dreams of the stars, of flights to Mars. One must feed the imagination, Fraulein, even in wartime. Now. Do you know what has become of your “comet” recently?’

She frowned. ‘I haven’t been out to the beach for some nights. We’ve been so busy with the A4 launch approaching.’

‘Of course. Well, we have observed it. It is no longer decelerating, no longer approaching the sun.’

‘Then what?’

He traced circles with a fingertip. ‘Earth has a second moon, Fraulein Rau.’ He smiled at the wonder that must show in her face. ‘Now do you understand why we changed the timing of the A4 launch?’

‘Not entirely, sir.’

‘I can’t believe that the object has not been observed elsewhere in the world, but only we have the wherewithal to do something about it.’ He spread his hands. ‘This is the world’s only rocket factory. We launched the world’s very first spaceship this afternoon! Is this “comet” of yours some ark from the stars? If so perhaps we can lure it down here. To speak to us. Where better? And that is why we launched the A4 just as the orbiting comet crossed our meridian. So it would be seen.

‘Now.’ He leaned forward. ‘I have a special assignment for you, Fraulein. You may be the best amateur astronomer at Peenemünde. I want you to spend more nights with your telescope on that beach. Perhaps the Father here will accompany you – and Lieutenant Bergher, too, for reasons of security. I want you to watch your comet as it passes through our clear skies. Report immediately any change in its orbital elements. But for now, you must understand, this is all top security.’

She was used to security. ‘Of course, Doctor von Braun.’

‘No,’ he said sternly. ‘That was a routine answer. Listen to me. You must know, Fraulein, that our work here is under intense scrutiny. Our rockets are hugely expensive and have already taken years to develop. Germany fights a war on two fronts; resources are scarce, and other projects have their champions who compete for the ears of the top levels of the party. Our credibility is important, and must be cherished.’ With a self-deprecating smile he tucked away the issue of Astounding. ‘Our enemies, I mean our internal enemies, may present Dorothea’s comet as a bit of foolishness that shows we are not serious in our endeavours here. We can’t have that. And yet we can’t let the opportunity of encountering this wanderer go by. Which is why—’ He pressed his forefinger to his lips.

‘I understand.’

‘Good girl. This applies to you too, Father.’

‘Priests know how to be discreet.’

‘Good. Adam here will be your contact. Remember, Lieutenant Bergher, any developments must be reported to me in person, immediately.’

‘Yes, Doctor von Braun.’

A secretary popped her head around the door. ‘Colonel Dornberger is here for you, sir.’

‘Thank you.’ He turned a dazzling smile on Dorothea. ‘Good luck, Fraulein!’

So began a strange double career for Dorothea. By day she worked with the rest of the clerks and secretaries on the unending task of keeping this establishment of thousands of people, tens of thousands of complex machines, and millions of marks, functioning and flowing. And then when the working day was done, whenever the night was clear, Dorothea would be collected by Father Kopleck and Lieutenant Bergher in an SS staff car and driven off with her telescope and notebooks to the northern coast.

Sometimes Dorothea wondered how she kept it all up. Some mixture of excitement and fear kept her nerves sparking, she suspected. When she did get a chance to sleep, on cloudy or rainy nights, she slept very deeply indeed.

Though when she dreamt, it was often of Lieutenant Adam Bergher.

As the autumn drew in and the winter stars rose, the good seeing nights were spectacular, but bitterly cold in the wind off the Baltic. As compensation, on Sundays, when they were generally free of their routine duties, Adam would drive up to the beach in the afternoon before the light went, and they would eat sandwiches and drink coffee from flasks, and even take a nip of brandy if Adam could get it. Of course Sundays were the hardest days for Father Kopleck to get away from his duties, and so Adam took Dorothea to the coast alone.

Dorothea soon began to spend the whole week in a daze, waiting for Sunday, and her ‘picnics’ with Adam. The priest made no remark, but the stern looks he gave Dorothea spoke volumes. You are evidently a sensible girl. Stay that way.

The coast itself was beautiful. They sat on blankets on a broad sandy beach, before them the steel grey of the Baltic with Sweden and Finland off to the north somewhere, behind them low sandy hills with stands of forest, tall pines and some oak. Sometimes they would walk. There were patches of marshland, and wildlife: red squirrel, rabbits, even deer, and swans, coots, grebes, ducks. This place had been chosen for the research establishment because of its remoteness and wildness; access to the peninsula, across a few bridges, was easily controlled, and the sea offered an immense testing range into which rockets could be fired off with impunity.

Dorothea said, during their fourth or fifth ‘picnic’ alone, ‘It’s odd that the wildlife isn’t scared away by the rockets.’

‘My father was in the first war. In France. He said the birdsong would always start up again as soon as the artillery barrages stopped. Although Doctor von Braun says his maternal grandfather used to come up here to shoot the ducks!’

‘My mother didn’t really approve of me volunteering to come here. Oh, she thought I would be safer than in Munich, with the English bombing. But I’m a city girl, she said. How would I get on with oceans and trees!’

‘A city girl, but you had your eyes on the stars.’

‘That was thanks to my father.’ She stroked her telescope on its stand, a sturdy reflector. ‘I took technical subjects at school, and began a degree in physics at the university. But of course few women become scientists, especially in the war.’

‘Yet you’ve ended up doing science here, after all. Strange that such different paths have led the two of us to the same place. My father was broken after the Kaiser’s war. Wounded, though not badly, but when he came home he was unemployed, and he struggled to manage. Then the Party came along and gave us back some self-respect.’ He glanced down at his black uniform. ‘He would have been proud of me, I think.’

On impulse she grabbed his arm. They had rarely touched before, and he looked startled. ‘I know he would, Adam.’

He gazed into her eyes, and smiled.

But her small alarm clock chimed: time to begin observing.

He looked up into the sky. ‘Five o’clock. Shouldn’t your comet be up there by now?’

The comet’s orbital period was almost exactly ninety minutes. Every observing night she made out tables of its expected positions, and used a navy-issue sextant and stopwatch, courtesy of von Braun, to confirm those positions. She glanced at her tables now, and up into the sky, and pointed to the south. ‘It should be just – there.’ When you knew what to look for it was unmistakeable, the unwinking point of light sliding slowly but steadily across the background of the winter constellations. Today, though there was still some light in the blue-grey sky, the brighter stars were already easily visible.

But there was no sign of the comet.

Dorothea felt an odd panic. She worked her sextant and checked her tables. ‘Have I made some mistake?’

‘You never have before. Don’t be frightened, Dorothea.’ Adam got to his feet, took a pair of expensive-looking Swiss-made binoculars from the staff car, and began to scan the sky.

‘There must be something wrong.’

‘Dorothea.’

‘I do have to put together these tables in a rush—’

‘Dorothea. Hush.’ He was standing still, the binoculars before his face, peering to the west. ‘Look. Just look.’

She turned. And she saw a parachute, a huge one, spread across the sky, made of some silvery fabric, not like the grubby chutes you saw over baled-out flyers during an air raid. And suspended beneath the chute on fine threads, or wires, was a blocky mass, like complex machinery. Her heart pumped, with wonder, astonishment – and, yes, with relief that she hadn’t got something wrong.

‘Well,’ said Adam. ‘Here comes your comet.’

‘The stars, touching the Earth. The whole world is changing, Adam. Think of it! Right here and now! In the middle of this war—’

He grabbed her waist and pulled her to him. She felt the prickle of the coarse cloth of his SS uniform against the bare flesh of her neck. His eyes were wide, his face full of wonder. She drowned in his kiss.

As the winter deepened the pressure of work at the Peenemünde complex only intensified.

Both the army and the air force had research establishments here, though they shared facilities such as the air strip, and a power plant and liquid oxygen factory, huge concrete monuments rising from the pine forest. The army rocket engineers under Dornberger and von Braun worked in complexes to the east of the peninsula, including a line of rocket test stands that ran up the coast towards the sea. In a gigantic assembly facility called Production Hall F 1, a great modernistic slab of glass and concrete set incongruously among the pines, an assembly line for missiles was being prepared. But to the west the air force was developing its own weapons, flying bombs of much shorter range than the A4. Soon testing of those devices too was underway, and the whole peninsula was a hive of activity.

The good news for von Braun and his people, Adam told Dorothea, was that Hitler had already ordered hundreds of the A4 rockets, ultimately to be fired at England. But after years of opposition from various vested interests, now that the work was showing some success, the battles were starting for a piece of Peenemünde. You had the armaments ministry, the military branches and the security agencies all competing for control and credit. The navy had ambitious plans to launch A4s from submarines. Even private companies were pitching in, hoping for lucrative patents and profits. In Hitler’s Germany such internal wars were waged viciously, through spies, informers and denunciations. The place was riddled with distrust and conflict, putting everybody under even more pressure.

Meanwhile, in stolen moments, Dorothea and Adam fell ever more deeply in love.

And in the middle of all this an alien spacecraft had landed.

It had come down in a clearing in the woods, away from more obvious landing sites such as the airfield. The parachute did not seem to have been seen, save by Dorothea and Adam; the military spotters, looking for RAF Lancasters over the Baltic, had been blind to an emissary from the stars. And so von Braun had it to himself. The ship was a tangle of components over twelve feet tall, estimated to weigh several tons, small for an interstellar spacecraft perhaps, but difficult to move. Von Braun, siphoning off what resources he dared, ordered the construction of a chamber around the craft.

The first time Adam took Dorothea to the comet’s bunker, a few days into January of 1943, he had to lead her by the hand through the woods. There wasn’t even a proper road laid down, though you could see tracks worn by the coming and going of von Braun’s most trusted colleagues. Guards were posted outside the rough facility, but Dorothea and Adam were allowed to enter the chamber alone. Inside, electric light bulbs dangled, evoking dazzling highlights. Laboratory equipment of various kinds had been set up, along with a rack of cameras.

And in the middle of it all stood the comet, as everybody continued to call it, though it clearly was not a comet at all. Dorothea was thrilled, nervous; she clung tightly to Adam’s hand.

It was a rough pyramid in outline, based on a sturdy frame. But the construction was open; there were no hull panels. Inside the frame huddled spheres and ovoids connected by tubing, metallic but with an oddly textured surface. A kind of glittering mesh, or web, lay draped over many of the components. The one point of commonality with von Braun’s A4 rockets was a flaring exhaust nozzle at the base.

‘It has an organic feel,’ she whispered. ‘Like a sculpture, an art work – you know, some abstract representation of the human form.’

Adam grunted. ‘The only artists I ever met are the ones I’ve been sent to arrest.’

‘There is no evidence of a pilot. But might it be alive, in fact? Can we be sure that the categories of our own existence apply to beings from another star?’

‘I can’t be sure of anything. Except that we’re whispering.’

‘Well, perhaps it hears us.’

‘Perhaps it sees us.’ He pointed to a disc of glass that looked like a camera lens. ‘It would be foolish to send a machine so far and not have it capable of observing what is around it.’

‘I wonder if it understands us.’

‘If so, it shows no signs. The scientists have tried to talk to it. They hold up cards with a variety of languages and diagrams – Pythagoras’s theorem on right triangles – you can imagine. There has been no response.’

She looked closer. Small limbs protruded here and there from the structure, like twigs; and, twig-like, some bore strange fruit, shining discs, blocks of what might be ceramic. ‘They are like the gifts on the big Christmas tree they put up in the square.’

‘Some of the scientists speculate that this is how it wishes to communicate. Through physical tokens.’ He laughed. ‘Perhaps more creatures in the galaxy have hands than have eyes or ears! The scientists have yet to pluck up the courage to take these offerings. That is, if they are offerings, if this really is some friendly emissary rather than a weapon.’

‘Why should creatures from another star wish to strike at us?’

‘For the same reasons the Americans do. Or men from Mars. Have you not read H. G. Wells?’

‘Yes, but I also read Kurd Lasswitz, who had the Martians come in peace. It is clear to me that this artefact has come in friendship. Look at the way it landed. It evidently has a rocket drive, powerful enough to be visible across the solar system. Yet it came down on a parachute, as gently as possible, even if as a consequence it landed a little off course, in this wood. It was being considerate to us; it did not exterminate us with its very landing!’

‘Hmm. Perhaps you’re right. Look at this.’ He went to a table cluttered with laboratory gear, and picked up a polished wooden box with a kind of wand attached by a cable. He carried this to the comet, knelt down, and waved the wand under the rocket nozzle. There were clicks from the box, and a needle wavered.

‘A Geiger counter,’ Dorothea said, wondering.

‘Yes. The nozzle is faintly radioactive – not enough to do any harm, but Doctor von Braun has mandated that all but indentured workers have to limit their time of contact. Not that we allow any indentured workers in here.’

‘Then clearly Doctor von Braun was right. The craft used the energies of the atom to cross between the stars, and again made itself safe before exposing itself to us.’ She walked around the comet again. She could smell it, an exotic metallic tang, a scent of burning. ‘Surely it came here in friendship, Adam.’

Adam put away the Geiger counter. ‘But friendship’s not all it can offer us.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘This is not to be repeated.’ Just for a heartbeat he was a steely-eyed SS man. ‘Think of it, Dorothea. Think what we have here. You yourself saw the interstellar drive flaring across the dark hall of the solar system. What if such a torch were turned on London or Moscow or New York?’

She flinched. ‘That’s horrible.’

He laughed, and hugged her. ‘Well, this is a weapons research establishment! But let’s not speak of it.’ He held her closer, letting his hand slide over her hips, the cleft of her buttocks. He whispered, ‘Nobody knows we’re here. Not even that tame priest of yours. The guards outside won’t bother us.’

She felt faintly shocked, yet excited. ‘Now, Adam—’

‘It’s warm in here, isn’t it? Better than that draughty beach. And there are a couple of cots, for when the scientists work over. Better than a blanket on the sand, or the back of a staff car.’

Dorothea peered up at the alien, the glistening lens-like disc. ‘Adam! Not in front of the visitor!’

‘Oh, come.’ He drew her to him, and nuzzled her neck. ‘What, do you think they are all Catholics on Alpha Centauri? Which is where von Braun believes the craft came from by the way. If it came to observe humanity shouldn’t we give it the chance to see us in the wild, so to speak?’

She laughed in his ear, softly. ‘So it’s not me you’re interested in but science, is that it?’

‘You know me, my love. Ever the experimentalist.’ And, unbuttoning his black uniform jacket, he led her to the cots.

Winter turned to spring. Rumours of setbacks in the war did nothing to reduce the pressure at Peenemünde.

Then RAF surveillance flights were spotted, high in the clear Baltic air. Dorothea actually sighted one with her reflecting telescope, a very high altitude plane.

This sent the security services into a fury, as they tried to find out who was betraying the secrets of the base to the English. There were denunciations, disappearances, hangings. Most of the victims were indentured workers, the French and the Poles, but not all. Even one of the girls from Dorothea’s dormitory, a bright, bubbly Prussian lass called Gilda, was taken away.

Everybody understood the significance of the RAF flights. The English and Americans had become proficient, prolific, expert bombers; night after night the very heart of the homeland, industrial and urban, was being pounded and burned. If the RAF were spotting Peenemünde, then the bombs would come here too; it was only a question of when.

The passing of the months, the evolution of spring into summer, did nothing to ease the tension.

Dorothea saw little of Adam, so bound up were they by their respective duties.

Meanwhile, a secret within a secret, the work on the alien ship went on.

And in this period Dorothea came to learn that she had her own secret. If it were revealed, perhaps she would be sent away, and she could not bear that. So she stayed silent, keeping the truth from Father Kopleck who had warned her to be careful, even from the other girls she lived with, though she suspected some of them must know. And she did not tell Adam, when she did see him, though she knew in the end she must.

One evening in June, at the end of a shift, Dorothea walked with Father Kopleck across the big parking area before Production Hall F 1. Work units under the command of the SS were erecting a tall wire fence around the entire Hall, and Dorothea and the priest had to make an unwelcome diversion. She was exhausted from the day’s work, and felt increasingly heavy on her feet.

For his part Father Kopleck was restless, angry. He had been administering funerals in Trassenheide, the compound of the indentured workers. Many of the Poles were Catholics. He was native to this place; it seemed to damage his soul to have to oversee so many funerals of so many foreigners.

To distract them both she spoke of the work done on the comet. Kopleck, who had been in on the secret from the beginning, was one of the few in whom she felt able to confide.

‘They grew impatient,’ she said. ‘Doctor von Braun and the others. So they cut it open.’

‘They did what?’

‘It was done under Doctor von Braun’s personal supervision. I was not there; I saw the results later. The comet is now in two sections: the heavy propulsion unit that was below, and the lighter, more complex components above, now removed. They used oxy-acetylene torches from the production workshops. Hacksaws, in some places. And parachute thread.’

‘Parachute thread?’

‘I mean, from the comet’s own chute. The thread itself is a mystery – such a simple component, yet quite beyond us! I have handled some of it. Light as a fishing line, yet unbreakably tough. They have fixed this to frames and use it like a hacksaw blade; it goes through hardened steel like butter, I have seen it. And they used this to cut the comet’s big structural support.’

‘So they decapitated it.’

His tone was aggrieved, and she glanced at him, uneasy. She sometimes fretted that he was liable to talk himself into trouble. ‘The upper section may contain the “brain” of the ship. There may be some equivalent of the electronics of the A4, something like its gyroscopic guidance. The “gifts” it brought for us, the discs and pods and other baubles, have been taken away for analysis. But the work on such items has been perfunctory.’

‘Compared to the work on the engine section?’

‘Yes.’ She tried to remember what she had seen, the diagrams she had been shown by friendly, or naive, technicians. ‘There are banks of intense light sources. So intense they themselves can cut metal! The technicians have been able to activate some of them.’ Experiments which had cost one man his life. ‘These light sources are arranged in a kind of hollow sphere, so that their beams concentrate on a point at the centre of the sphere. And into this point a pellet is fired. We have found a kind of magazine with many of these pellets.’

‘Pellets? Of what?’

‘Of isotopes of hydrogen and helium, it seems. The physicists speculate that under the intense pressure of the light beams these pellets are made to undergo nuclear fusion…’

He smiled now. ‘My father and grandfather were fishermen. My grasp of theoretical physics is surprisingly limited.’

‘I’m sorry. The pellets go off like small bombs. One after the other, very rapidly. But these explosions do not destroy the ship. On the contrary, they push it forward, like a firecracker throwing a tin can in the air. The physicists marvel at all this, at how so much energy can be stored and deployed in such a compact form.’

‘And the weapons designers imagine how it would be—’

‘If such a thing were mounted on the tip of an A4, yes.’

He held her arm. ‘Stand back.’

A convoy of trucks rolled across the open space before them, heading for a barrier set in the brand new fence around Hall F 1. There the trucks had to queue, engines running, while papers were shown and orders discussed. Dorothea and the priest were held up.

Dorothea found herself standing beside one of the trucks. It was like a truck for transporting cattle or sheep, a dirty, smelly thing with wooden slats enclosing its bed. But in that space were crammed humans, not animals. They were all men as far as she could see, all wearing what looked like grimy striped pyjamas. They were all standing; in fact there was no room for them to sit. To Dorothea they looked like old men, gaunt, many hairless, even toothless.

But then one of them spoke to her. ‘Hello, lady.’ He smiled a gappy smile. She saw that he wasn’t old at all. He was pressed against the wooden slats, holding on with thin fingers. He was distinguished from the others by a red triangle sewn to his striped shirt.

‘Don’t speak to him,’ Kopleck murmured.

‘You are prettier than these uncouth fellows I must travel with. My name is Dirk. I am a Dutch fellow.’ His German was heavily accented.

The other men in the truck were watching, wide-eyed.

She found herself saying, ‘My name is Dorothea.’

‘Dorothea! Pretty name. Where from, Dorothea?’

‘Munich.’

‘Pretty place. Me, I came from Buchenwald most recently. You heard of Buchenwald? Before that from Nijmegen. You heard of Nijmegen?’

‘I noticed your red triangle.’

He smiled. ‘Oh, this old thing? Means I was in the resistance.’

‘Hey! You!’ An SS man came running up, rifle in hand. ‘Shut up!’ He slammed the butt of his rifle against the slats, into Dirk’s fingers. Dirk fell back with a howl of agony, into the darkness of the truck.

Kopleck was already marching Dorothea away.

The RAF bombers came on the night of 17^th August.

The sirens sounded at midnight. The Lancasters and Halifaxes came in over the sea, so there was very little warning, and there was only perfunctory resistance from German planes and anti-aircraft fire.

The girls from Dorothea’s dormitory scrambled out of the building, bundled in dressing gowns and coats. The sky was clear, the moon full. Led by wardens wielding blue torches, the girls made for their assigned bunkers, talking loudly, nervously.

But Dorothea broke away and ran for Production Hall F 1. She knew that Adam was on duty on the fence there tonight. She had barely seen him for months. She still had not told him her own deep secret; she’d not had the chance. Soon it would be obvious to everybody, of course. But if this was to be their last night on Earth, she wanted him to know that he was, or would have been, a father.

She found him at the F 1 fence. The big gate was open, and officers and other ranks were fleeing for the bunkers. When he saw her he grabbed her arm. ‘What are you doing here?’ His voice was all but drowned by the sirens.

‘I had to see you. We have to talk.’

‘What, now?’

There was a shuddering thump, deep and visceral. They both staggered.

She looked up. She could see the RAF planes now, like moths, black against a moonlit sky. There must have been hundreds of them. They were dropping flares, red, white, green, brilliant pinpricks that trailed smoke as they fell.

‘This is just the first wave,’ Adam muttered. ‘The next will use the flares and the lights of the fires for positioning.’

‘We have to get to the bunkers.’

‘No. Too late. The factory,’ he said, making a quick decision. ‘The basements are strong. Come on.’ He grabbed her arm and they ran through the gate in the fence into the Hall compound, and through big access doors into the factory itself.

Inside, the overhead fluorescent lamps were going out one by one as somebody belatedly turned out the lights. Dorothea gazed around in wonderment. She had never been in here before. This was a pilot production line for making missiles, and she saw forges, welding facilities, lathes, drills, and heaps of components, hull sections, nose cones, tail fins; half-completed rockets lay on great flatbed trailers, some already painted with the camouflage colours they would need when launched by squads of technicians from hiding places in the forests of the Netherlands. All this glimpsed in flashes and shadows as the lights flickered and died, and people ran everywhere, prisoners or guards she couldn’t distinguish, crowding around staircases to the basement.

And she saw a man in a striped uniform, hanged, dangling from a crane.

More bombs crashed. Dorothea could hear glass smash, feel the thick-laid concrete floor shudder.

A man hobbled up to them, grinning, in a striped prisoner’s uniform with a red triangle sewn to the breast.

Adam drew his revolver. ‘Get back!’

‘No!’ Dorothea grabbed his arm. ‘I know him.’

‘Hello, Dorothea,’ said Dirk. ‘Follow me. Come, come.’ And he ran off into the dark.

With difficulty they followed him across the crowded hall. Now all the lights were gone, and the only illumination was the moonlight shafting through broken windows. Dirk led them to a stairwell, leading down into the dark. He took the steps two, three at a time on his impossibly scrawny legs. Dorothea and Adam followed as best they could, Adam keeping his revolver drawn, held like a wand before him. Dirk’s feet were bare, Dorothea saw, his soles bloody and scarred.

At the base of the stairs was a short corridor, plaster-walled. Again Dirk led the way, running. Still the building shuddered from the approaching bombs.

They had to squeeze against a wall to get past what Dorothea thought was a pile of blankets, stacked up in the corridor. She found they were bodies, skin and bone, heaped up like firewood. Adam pushed her onwards.

They reached a doorway and tumbled after Dirk into a wide hall, lit by dangling bulbs. This was a kind of dormitory, with bunks like shelves stacked up four deep. There were prisoners jammed in here, every way Dorothea looked. They cowered back at the sight of the SS man with his revolver. The stink was astounding, a smell of rot.

Dorothea wondered if Father Kopleck was safe, wherever he was – if indeed he was still alive. The SS had come for him a week earlier.

‘Here, here.’ Dirk led them to a bottom-shelf bunk. It was just a wooden frame, Dorothea saw, no mattress, no bedding. Here they sat, the three of them, side by side, Dorothea between the two men. In the shadows around them the prisoners moved with rustles of dry flesh. ‘Safe here,’ said Dirk. ‘Not so bad. Like student dorms. You missed dinner. Cabbage soup.’

‘Shut up,’ Adam said routinely.

Dirk looked away. Dorothea saw he had one hand swathed in a filthy bandage.

More bombs fell like monstrous footsteps, and the building shook, the frame of the bed, and plaster fell from the ceiling.

Dorothea felt oppressed by the huge inhuman energies being unleashed all around her. ‘The prisoners will be killed too,’ she said with a stab of outrage. ‘Don’t the English know that?’

Adam grimaced. ‘Serve the little bastards right. Have you heard of their sabotage? They piss on the electronics. Over-tighten screws. Even blow dust into links between the turbo pumps. Stuff that’s impossible to detect before you fly. A rocket is a finely tuned machine; it isn’t hard to foul it up. And they keep on doing it, no matter how many of them we string up. Eh? Eh, you little bastard?’ He jabbed Dirk in the ribs with the muzzle of his revolver. ‘Keep this up and it’ll be the ovens for the whole damn lot of you.’

‘Do you think they’ll hit the comet?’

‘It’s possible. They won’t be aiming for it but some bombs always go astray, or are simply dumped. If they hit it we’ll lose everything. Oh, not the A4. That project will recover. There’s already been talk of moving from here, now that the location is compromised. Von Braun is all for live launches, I mean with munitions, in the middle of Poland.’

She frowned. ‘But there are people there.’

‘Only Poles. Or we might build a plant under a mountain. Von Braun has marvellous dreams, you know. Such as putting one A4 on top of another and building a rocket that could reach New York. How would Roosevelt like that, eh? But he’s been fired up by what we could do with the comet technology.’

‘Make even bigger bombs.’

‘Yes, but beyond that… Think about it, Dorothea. You believe the Alpha Centauri people wanted to send us a message. Well, they have. And that message is – we can reach you! And with ships like this, we can destroy you! For they could, you know. Von Braun and Dornberger did some calculations of the energy, I mean the sheer kinetic energy, that would be locked up in a craft of a few tons travelling at half the speed of light. Why, you wouldn’t need munitions; an impact alone could sterilise a whole planet. So that’s von Braun’s dream. After this war is won, and the next with the Japanese.’

‘A dream to do what?’

‘Why, to build a bigger and better comet, and fire it back at Alpha Centauri. Do to them what they should have done to us, before they missed their chance – and gave us the technology to strike back at them. What an error that was! War is inevitable, between worlds as between nations. We must strike first. Why take a chance?’

Perhaps their baby, she thought, of which Adam was still entirely unaware, would live to see that war. The first interstellar war.

‘Those damn English. One bomb landing in the wrong place tonight – why, the destiny of worlds hangs in the balance, my love. In the very balance…’

She held his hand, and on her other side Dirk’s, as the English bombs stomped across Peenemünde, coming ever closer.