V-S Day: A Novel of Alternate History

SIMULATION OF THE VOID

OCTOBER 3, 1942

Skid Sloman sat in the cramped cockpit and gazed out at space that wasn’t space, Earth that wasn’t Earth.

The stars were realistic enough as they slowly rotated above him, until they passed across one of the welded seams in the hemispherical sky. When that happened, the slight yet discernible way the ceiling warped them revealed that they were nothing more than pinpricks of light cast by a planetarium projector. When he looked down, he could see Earth beneath him, as seen from a suborbital altitude of about forty miles. It was a clever replica, too, but this illusion had its limits as well. Not only did it not move, but because no man-made object had ever gone this high, the artists who’d painted the simulator floor had only maps to guide them. So the lakes and rivers were just a bit too well-defined, and there was never a cloud anywhere above North America.

Skid didn’t care. This was his nineteenth simulated journey into space, and it wasn’t going much better than the eighteen he’d made before.

“Desert Bravo to X-1, do you copy?” Jack Cube’s voice crackled in his headphones. It, too, was probably more clear than it ought to be. In fact, it would be a miracle if the ship’s wireless system worked well enough for him to maintain ground communications.

“Roger, Desert Bravo.” As he spoke, Skid was careful not to snap his gum. Everyone had been on his back lately about his chewing Juicy Fruit while in the simulator. He couldn’t smoke here, though, and considering how many times he’d flown this stupid thing already, he needed something to help his nerves.

“Report position.”

Skid glanced down at the radium dials of his compass and gyroscopic altimeter. “Azimuth 88 degrees northeast, altitude 40.2 miles.” This was nonsense, of course; his instruments were displaying only what the controllers were feeding the simulator. But Jack was doing this to get Skid into the habit of radioing his bearings to home base, something military pilots didn’t often do.

“Roger that, X-1. Prepare for your target run, over.”

“Wilco, Desert Bravo. Hit me with your best shot.”

False bravado, which Skid soon paid for. Right hand on the stick, Skid craned his neck as much as the high seatback would allow and searched the fake sky. He’d just lost the flavor of the gum he was chewing when a familiar shape appeared almost directly above him: a luminescent silhouette of the Silver Bird, much the way he was supposed to see it if everything went well.

“Silver Bird sighted,” Skid said. “Vectoring for attack run.”

As gently as he could, he pulled back on the stick, squeezing the red trigger within its pistol grip. The cockpit shuddered slightly as the simulator faked his reaction-control rockets firing, then it tilted back on its rotary gimbals. Below him, the painted terrain fell away, disappearing from sight as the simulator “climbed.” The change in attitude was easy enough to perform, but the stick was incredibly sensitive. It was designed to emulate the lack of atmospheric resistance his craft would experience, and Skid had learned that any careless movement could send the ship wildly off course. Once again, he clenched his teeth as he tried to line up the crosshatch painted inside the canopy with the Silver Bird silhouette.

For a brief instant, he almost had it, but he was a half second too slow firing the RCRs again to stop the upward pitch. Skid watched helplessly as Silver Bird started sliding downward until it vanished beneath the prow, meaning that his craft was now on a trajectory which, if uncorrected, would cause it to fly over the enemy vessel.

“Hell’s bells!” Skid pushed the stick forward, and an instant later the silhouette reappeared. But it was larger now, and off-center as well. Skid pushed the stick to the left, and the starboard RCRs fired—Newton’s third law was something he always had to keep in mind—but even though the turn was successful, he was now in danger of going into a barrel roll.

“Well, okay then,” he muttered, “let it roll.” Skid had been thinking about this since the last time he’d climbed into the simulator and had come up to a tentative hypothesis: a sustained roll along the craft’s long axis might actually stabilize him, just the way a bullet is spun when fired from a gun. Sure enough, even though the eight-ball attitude gauge was spinning like a top, and the cockpit was cartwheeling, the prow had neatly lined up on the silhouette.

“Gotcha.” Skid reached for a pair of toggle switches on the instrument panel. If he could keep this up just long enough to get within range and send the rockets on their way…

Suddenly, the cockpit seized up on its gimbals. Before Skid could react, his seat was yanked upright as the simulator returned to its starting position. From the other side of the canopy, he could hear servomotors whining as they lost power. Someone had thrown the switch on him.

“Aw, c’mon!” he yelled. “What was wrong with that?”

“Nothing, except that maneuver would’ve killed you,” Jack Cube replied.

“Like hell! The roll wasn’t nothing I couldn’t handle…”

“Except the way you were going, you would’ve slammed into the upper atmosphere and burned up like a torch. Maybe you didn’t notice, but Silver Bird was beginning its next skip when you started your run. That’s why you overshot it. By the time you reacquired the target, you wouldn’t have been able to pull out in time.”

“At least I would’ve shot it down,” Skid grumbled.

“If you were lucky, maybe… but I’m not training you for a suicide mission. Now, c’mon, climb down from there. I’ve got a couple of people I want you to meet.”

Ceiling lights flashed on, wiping away the starscape and revealing the dull grey interior of the metal sphere surrounding him. The simulator cockpit was held in the sphere’s center by two horizontal spars jutting out from either side of the dome; a motorized yoke held the cockpit in place, its gimbals allowing the pilot to practice maneuvers with a nearly full degree of motion. The whole thing was an ingenious—and expensive—means of training a spacecraft pilot, but Skid had lately come to regard it as his own personal torture chamber.

As he unbuckled his seat harness, a technician walked across the narrow catwalk on top of the starboard spar. He unlocked the canopy and slid it open, then reached down to help Skid out of the cockpit. The test pilot followed him back across the catwalk, taking a moment to spit his gum over the side. It landed somewhere in Ohio; the technician glared at him, and Skid grinned. The simulator team really hated it when he did that.

The technician unlatched the egress hatch and pushed it open, then led Skid down a rollaway service tower. The thirty-foot-diameter sphere stood upon a concrete pedestal within an enormous hangarlike building. The control station stood to one side; scientists and engineers in white lab coats were huddled over its consoles, examining the results of the last test. They barely looked up at Skid as he walked down the ladder, and once again the pilot wondered if they considered him to be a slightly more intelligent version of the chimpanzees they’d used in the first phases of ground tests.

Hearing voices suddenly raised from nearby, Skid paused on the ladder to gaze at the other end of the building. Several men stood before an open door leading through the thick concrete wall that divided the building in half. On the other side of the wall was another machine that had been making his life so interesting lately: a rotary centrifuge, with another mock-up of the X-1 cockpit at the end of its twenty-foot boom.

The centrifuge was a bit more fun—Skid enjoyed riding the thing even when it was squashing him back in his seat at seven g’s—but not everyone shared his opinion. Joe McPherson stood in front of the door, arguing with the scientists who operated the machine. Skid couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he knew what it was about: money. Joe had reached a compromise agreement with Colonel Bliss when he was hired to be the backup pilot: a flat fee, plus hazard pay for any training beyond what professional test pilots usually had to endure, the rate dependent upon the amount of time and the risk factor. None of this was graven in stone, though, so every time Joe climbed into the simulator, the centrifuge, the rocket sled, or any of the other devices being used to train him and Skid, there was always another argument about how much more he’d get on his next paycheck.

Skid shook his head in disgust as he continued down the tower. Like everyone else involved in the project, he was sick and tired of McPherson’s attitude. He needed a backup pilot, though, and there was no time to find and train someone else. Joe knew this, so he was milking it for all it was worth. Grab the dough while you can, he’d privately told Skid over drinks in the officers’ club. That crazy thing will never get off the ground, so you might as well make some bucks off it while you can.

Skid had said nothing. He was doing this for reasons that Joe would never understand, and money was the least of his concerns.

Jack Cube was waiting at the bottom of the tower. Over the past few months, Skid had gradually gotten used to the fact that, regardless of whatever mood he was in—pleased, angry, confused, irritated, anxious—Jack’s expression rarely changed. Skid had known that Lieutenant Jackson was a cool customer the very first day they met, but Jack Cube raised stoicism to a kind of art. You had to look at his eyes to figure out where he was coming from… and just then, he wasn’t happy at all.

“You want to tell me what you were trying to pull in there?” the chief trainer asked.

“Umm… coming up with a way to kill Silver Bird?” Skid unzipped a breast pocket of his flight suit and pulled out a pack of Camels. “That’s what I’m supposed to do, ain’t it?”

“You’re supposed to be learning how to fly something no one else has ever flown before.” Jack impatiently shook his head when Skid offered him a smoke. “It’s not helping that you won’t get over the idea that this isn’t an airplane, and all those slick dogfight maneuvers you know won’t work here.”

“Jack, it’s got wings…”

“How many times do I have to tell you? You’re not going to use ’em until you’re on your way home. Which will be as a meteor if you don’t listen to what I…”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Skid lit his cigarette with a Zippo lighter.

Jack sighed, then stepped closer. “Rudy, look,” he went on, a little more quietly now, “this is serious business. See Mutt and Jeff over there?”

Skid looked past him. The two military physicians who’d been assigned to Blue Horizon as his medical team were standing near the control station at the base of the platform. They had proper names, of course, but Skid, Joe, and Jack had started calling them Mutt and Jeff because of their resemblance to the comic-strip characters. But the nicknames were a private joke and nothing more: The doctors outranked both Jack and Skid, and they didn’t appear to have a sense of humor.

“How could I miss ’em?” Jack muttered. “They’ve used so much Vaseline on me, I could use it to lubricate the centrifuge.”

Jack Cube showed no outward sign of amusement, but the twinkle in his dark eyes told Skid that, deep down inside, he was cracking up. “Yeah, well… look, they were behind me during that last run, and I could hear them talking, and apparently Mutt’s got some harebrained idea that zero gravity may cause you to lose your mind…”

“What?”

“Shh… keep it down.” Jack made a shushing motion with his hands. “He has a theory that someone who experiences extended periods of free fall might lose his equilibrium because he won’t be able to tell left from right or up from down, and that could lead to a mental breakdown.”

“Oh, for the love of…” Smoke jetted from Skid’s nostrils. “Please take this guy up in a plane and do a few power dives. He’ll blow his lunch, but he won’t go crazy.”

“Well, he’s got Jeff half-convinced that his theory might be correct, and Jeff even thinks it might be possible that you’ll have a cardiac arrest because your heart won’t function in…” Jack stopped himself. “Never mind. The point is, when you pull stunts like that in there, that makes them wonder if you could go nuts up there and put the whole mission at risk.” He paused. “I’m almost liable to agree although for different reasons.”

Skid glared at him. “You think I’m crazy?”

“No… just reckless. And if you keep screwing around like this, they’ll pull you from the number one slot and put McPherson in there instead.”

“Aw, c’mon, Jack… Joe doesn’t even believe X-1 can fly!”

“I know he doesn’t. But he’s managed to impress Mutt and Jeff, and they’ve got a vote over who gets certified. So a word to the wise… cut the crap and get serious.”

Skid didn’t respond at once. As he dropped his cigarette and ground it out beneath his bootheel, his gaze wandered to the centrifuge entrance. Apparently, Joe McPherson had reached some sort of agreement with the operators because they were no longer standing there. But the centrifuge chamber door was still open, and Mutt and Jeff were strolling in that direction, with Jeff writing something on his clipboard. Probably another evaluation to be added to Skid’s medical folder. What was it going to say this time?

“Okay, all right,” he said quietly. “No more monkey business… I promise.”

“Good. I’m going to hold you to that.” A momentary smile that vanished almost as quickly as it appeared. “C’mon… we’ve got a couple of new members on our team, guys I knew in Worcester. I want you to meet them.”

Skid let Jack lead him over to the control station, where two men in civilian clothes were studying the simulator’s pen-scroll from the most recent session. One was a wiry little dude with a Groucho Marx mustache, the other a Chinese guy. Both turned to him and Jack as they walked up to the station.

“This is Lloyd Kapman,” Jack said, “and this is Harry Chung. I worked with them in the 390 Group before I was sent down here… and now they’ve been assigned here, too.” He laid a hand on Skid’s shoulder. “This is Lieutenant Rudy Sloman, also known as Skid. If he’ll grow up and stop horsing around, he might become the first man in space.”

“The first American, at least,” Skid added as he shook hands with first Lloyd, then Harry.

“Either way, we’ll make sure you’ll come back alive.” Lloyd gestured to the giant sphere looming above them. “We watched that last test. Very impressive, Lieutenant… a good performance, if I may say so.”

Jack coughed in his fist, and Skid had to fight to keep from grinning. “Thanks, but… um, I think I can do better.”

“We can talk about this over lunch,” Jack said. “Once Lieutenant Sloman changes out of his flight suit, I’m sure he’d be only too happy to buy you some.”

“Hey, now wait a minute.” Skid glared at him. “You didn’t tell me you were gonna stick me with…”

Lloyd was already laughing, and Harry was grinning as well. “Jack, you haven’t changed,” Lloyd said. “Same warm, friendly guy.”

“Was he this way in Worcester?” Skid asked. “I thought it was just me.”

“Naw, Jack’s got a chip on his shoulder for everyone. I mean, the night he showed up…”

“Look, you can tell all the lies you want about me once we get some chow.” Jack Cube headed for the door that would take them outside. “Or maybe you’d rather have the nickel tour, first.”

“No,” Harry said. “First food, then tour. We haven’t had a decent meal since we left New England, and I’m definitely not counting the ham and cheese sandwiches they gave us on the plane.”

“Trust me,” Jack said, “the food’s not any better here.”

In only a few months, the Blue Horizon compound at Alamogordo Army Air Field had grown from a small collection of Quonset huts and prefab buildings to a full-fledged military research installation where more than fifteen hundred people lived and worked. Machine shops, assembly sheds, laboratories, test facilities, and warehouses shared room on narrow dirt streets with barracks, cottages, PXs and commissaries, mess halls, clubs for both enlisted men and officers, even a bowling alley. And on the outskirts of the compound, a launchpad was being built. The blockhouse was complete, and now the pad itself and its rollaway gantry tower were under construction.

As they walked to the officers’ club, stepping aside every now and then to let a jeep or truck rumble by, Lloyd and Harry brought Jack and Skid up to speed on recent events in New England. The two lieutenants had already heard about the attempt on Dr. Goddard’s life, but not in any great detail; however, they weren’t surprised by the revelation that the Nazis were probably behind it.

“No one else would have wanted Bob dead,” Jack said.

“Except maybe one of us,” Lloyd added.

What was more unexpected was the news that the rest of the 390 Group—with the exception of Harry and Lloyd themselves—had been relocated to a hunting lodge just across the Massachusetts state line in New Hampshire. Jack Cube had believed that the entire team, Bob and Esther Goddard included, would have been packed aboard a military transport plane and sent to New Mexico, so he was stunned to learn that they were being kept in New England.

“It’s this whole compartmental… y’know, whatever… the War Department has got us locked into.” Lloyd threw up his hands in frustration. “It’s never made any sense to me, putting the R&D team on the other side of the country from the rest of the project, but you’d think they would’ve learned their lesson by now.”

He glanced at Jack Cube, as if silently begging for an explanation. Jack acknowledged his friend’s bewilderment with a commiserating nod and shrug, but otherwise remained quiet. Criticizing decisions made by the brass wasn’t his style, especially not when it was possible that anything he said might be overheard and make its way up the chain of command.

“It’s not all bad news,” Harry added. “From what I heard, Bliss finally knuckled under and agreed to relocate main-engine assembly and testing to Massachusetts, where the team can get their hands on it.”

“He did?” Jack gave him a sharp look. “Where in Mass?”

“A defense factory just outside Worcester… Wyman-Gordon, I think it’s called.”

Jack smiled. It was the same place he’d been begging the colonel to consider since last winter. “That’s good,” he said, quietly deciding not to claim credit for helping change Bliss’s mind. “I’m sure it’ll work out.”

“Yeah, well, it better,” Skid murmured. He still hadn’t changed out of his flight suit, but it didn’t matter. Jack would probably march him straight back to the simulator after lunch. “Hate to say it, but unless someone gives us a rocket that won’t blow up as soon as we light the candle, this whole thing’s gonna be a waste of time… and me,” he quietly added.

Everyone knew what he meant. So far, three prototype engines had exploded during static tests. The fact that each engine had run a few seconds longer than the last one was of little comfort to the pilot being trained to ride it in space.

“We’ll get it built.” Harry was confident, as if they were discussing nothing more than a university research project that had developed a few kinks. “Don’t sweat it.”

“Really? Don’t sweat it, huh?” Skid suddenly came to a halt, causing everyone else to stop as well. He raised a hand, crooked a beckoning finger. “C’mere… I want to show you something.”

Lloyd stared at the test pilot as he turned to walk away. “I thought we were going to get lunch.”

“We’re still going to eat,” Skid said over his shoulder. “C’mon… this will take just a second.” Lloyd and Harry gave Jack Cube a questioning look, but he only shrugged and gestured for them to follow him.

Skid led the other three men back toward a massive hangar they’d just passed. The largest building in the compound, it was built of steel-reinforced concrete and had no windows. Instead, it was cooled by a huge air-conditioning unit in its flat roof. The double doors at the end facing them were closed, but an MP stood guard in front of a smaller side door. Recognizing Skid and Jack Cube, he stepped aside to let them pass, but Skid stopped just before he opened the door.

“You guys have been stuck in a lab all this time, playing with slide rules,” he said to Lloyd and Harry, “so maybe this whole thing has become just a little abstract. Kind of a thought experiment, if you know what I mean.”

“We haven’t forgotten…” Lloyd began.

“Yeah, well”—Skid opened the door, walked inside—“lemme show you something anyway.”

The hangar was a cool, well-lit cavern, its concrete floor illuminated by rows of fluorescent fixtures suspended from the steel rafters high above. In the center of the hangar, resting within a mobile cradle and surrounded by scaffolds and catwalks, was what appeared to be an unfinished aircraft, yet one that had never been seen before. Long, swept-back wings, already covered by unpainted steel plates, jutted out from a skeletal frame that would eventually become a fuselage, while at the far end of the room, workmen in welders masks used acetylene torches to assemble a long, sleek nose.

As Lloyd gawked in amazement, Harry whistled just under his breath. “Damn,” he said quietly. “So this is the X-1.”

“That’s what you guys call it, sure.” Hands on his hips, Skid regarded the spacecraft proudly. “Me, I call it the Lucky Linda. The day Jack and Colonel Bliss asked me to fly her, I told them I would, so long as I got to name her after my sweetheart. She’s kind of hard to please, so… well, never mind.”

He turned to Harry and Lloyd again. “She’s a beauty, my Lucky Linda, and I’ve got to hand it to you guys… you’re giving me a real sweet flying machine. There’s only one problem…”

“No engine,” Lloyd said quietly.

“That’s right… she ain’t got no engine. And if Lucky Linda ain’t got no engine, she ain’t going nowhere except the junkyard. And worse than that, if she doesn’t fly but the Silver Bird does, there won’t be nothing to stop the Nazis from dropping bombs on New York. Which would really break my heart, because I’m from Brooklyn, and my baby lives there, too.”

As he spoke, Rudy Sloman slowly walked toward them, never raising his voice but not looking away either. Neither Harry nor Lloyd said anything, even as the test pilot stopped just a foot away from Harry and stared him straight in the eye, his gaze cold and unwavering.

“So, yeah, I am going to sweat it,” he said. “And I’d appreciate it if, the next time you talk to your friends in New Hampshire, you’d tell them to sweat it, too, and gimme an engine that won’t blow up under my ass. Okay?”

“Okay,” Harry croaked, his voice barely audible.

“Well, all right then.” A big grin spread across Skid’s face, then he swatted Harry’s arm and Lloyd’s as well. “Let’s go get some chow.”

The two men bobbed their heads nervously, then watched with wide and fearful eyes as Skid turned and walked away. “Oh, man,” Lloyd said softly when he thought Skid was out of earshot, “he’s crazy.”

“Yeah,” Jack muttered as he walked past. “Tell me about it.”