V-S Day: A Novel of Alternate History

THE CHRISTMAS TEST

DECEMBER 25, 1942

The first snow of winter fell on Worcester the night of Christmas Eve, a tender and sparkling powder reminiscent of childhood, lifting spirits depressed by a war that was only a year old but had already cost thousands of American lives. It put a sugarcoating across rooftops and sidewalks and cars and glittered as it drifted through streetlights. The snow softened the footsteps of families who went door to door, singing yuletide carols while collecting pennies and nickels for the Red Cross. It quietly hissed as it fell, and when the midnight hour came, it whispered secrets.

The City Hall bell tower had just tolled twelve when a pair of double doors parted at a massive warehouse deep inside the Wyman-Gordon Company’s sprawling factory complex on the outskirts of town. The factory was silent this evening; all three shifts had the day off, so the only people present were night watchmen and custodians. Or at least this was the appearance that had been deliberately created. Yet, although the doors were being opened by workmen, no lights shone from within the warehouse. The ceiling fixtures had been turned off; the only illumination permitted were handheld flashlights, and even those were shielded with cardboard strips to narrow their beams, making them hard to spot from a distance.

Once the doors were open, one of the workmen stepped onto the railroad tracks leading into the warehouse. Facing away from the building, he raised his light above his head and flashed it three times. From another side of the factory grounds, three more flashes answered him. He stepped off the tracks and waited, and a few minutes later a diesel locomotive slowly rumbled from the darkness.

The locomotive approached the warehouse backward, the engineer and brakeman leaning from the cab windows to watch the flashlight signals of the man beside the tracks. The big machine backed into the darkened warehouse and slowly came to a halt, brakes making a shrill shriek that nearby residents had become so used to that they barely noticed it, until there was the loud bang of railcar couplings coming together. Long minutes passed. Then, slowly and still with the minimal amount of light, the train emerged from the warehouse.

The locomotive now had six cars: three tankers, two of them refrigerated; a flatbed carrying a diesel electric generator and other pieces of equipment; a passenger car whose windows had been blacked out by heavy curtains; at the end, another flatbed, this one holding an enormous, vaguely cylindrical object concealed by heavy canvas. U.S. Army infantrymen in winter gear and bearing submachine guns rode on each corner of the flatbed; others were in the locomotive and the passenger car.

Slowly and quietly, the train followed the tracks until it left the factory through the north rail gate. There it switched to the siding, which, in turn, led it to a freight line just outside town. The train had no trouble going on the line; there was no schedule for it to keep save its own. In cooperation with the War Department, the company that owned this particular railroad had cleared the tracks so that, for a six-hour period in the wee hours of Christmas morning, only one train would be able to use them between Worcester and Greenfield, about a hundred miles to the west.

The train picked up speed once it left Worcester; it moved quickly into the rural countryside of western Massachusetts. The engineer didn’t once blow the air horn when the train approached a crossing, nor did he need to; at each crossing, the soldiers on the rear flatbed caught glimpses of others maintaining a series of roadblocks along the route, not letting anyone get near the tracks. Some might hear the train as it went by, but few would actually see it.

An hour and a half after the train left the Wyman-Gordon yard, it entered the Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts, where the Connecticut River forms a lowland east of the Berkshires. At the valley’s north end lies a small range of low mountains. Bordered by the villages of Sunderland, Montague, and Leveritt, with Greenfield the nearest large town, these Berkshire foothills were largely uninhabited. Farms had come and gone from here since the 1600s, leaving behind exhausted fields the forests had reclaimed; only loggers, hunters, and hikers ventured into the mountains, save for the occasional hermit who’d inhabit a lonely shack in solitude.

The train slowed as it came into the hill country, and the last house lights had already vanished when it entered a narrow ravine between Mount Toby and its smaller neighbor, Roaring Mountain. Once again, brakes squealed as the train came to a halt. A brakeman jumped down from the engine and, lantern in hand, ran forward to a siding running parallel to the tracks. Four concrete pillars, each five feet tall with deep grooves running through their flat tops, had been recently built on the siding by the Army Corps of Engineers, two on either side of the tracks. The brakeman pulled down the switch beside the tracks, then raised the lantern and swung it back and forth. Once again, the locomotive huffed and slowly moved forward, pulling the cars onto the siding. The brakeman carefully guided him until the rear flatbed was exactly between the four pillars, then he swung the lantern again. The train stopped, and several things happened at once.

The soldiers who’d been riding the rear flatbed jumped off and trotted down the track in both directions, taking up positions fifty yards east and west of the siding. As they did this, other soldiers climbed onto the first flatbed and unloaded four portable spotlights. Once they’d set them up in a ring around the siding, they ran insulated cables from them to the generator. It growled to life; a second later, the tripod-mounted lights flared on, wiping away the darkness with a bright oval flecked by falling snow.

The lights had barely come on when more men emerged from the passenger car. Three figures dressed in hooded aluminum suits trudged forward to the tanker cars. As they checked the gauges and began uncoiling the thick fuel hoses, soldiers trotted back to the last flatbed, climbed up on its platform, and began untying the ropes that held down the canvas tarps hiding its cargo.

By then, several civilians had disembarked from the passenger car. They spent a few moments stamping their shoes against the ground and blowing into their gloved hands, then the oldest turned to the man standing beside him.

“You’d better take care of that, Henry,” Robert Goddard said quietly, nodding toward the soldiers on the rear flatbed. “See that they don’t hurt our girl.”

“Sure thing.” Henry Morse pulled down the earflaps of his hunter’s cap, then trotted forward. “Hey, there… mind what you’re doing with those ropes!”

Gerry Mander looked around uncertainly, shoulders hunched against the cold. “You sure no one’s gonna hear this? I can’t see any house lights, but even out here…”

“Oh, we might wake up someone.” Ham Ballou pulled his muffler more tightly around the neck of the fisherman’s sweater he was wearing. “There’s towns on the other side of these mountains. But this time of night on Christmas, y’know who’s going to be up? Kids waiting for Santa Claus, and who’s gonna believe anything they have to say?”

“Yeah, that’d be good.” Taylor Brickell grinned from the depths of his parka hood. “Daddy, I heard Santa fly over last night, and he was really loud!”

“Okay, wise guys, knock it off.” Omar Bliss came up behind them, boots crunching against snow-covered cinders. “We don’t have much time, so let’s get to work.”

The remaining members of the 390 Group moved away to perform the few tasks they still needed to do. Only Goddard stayed where he was. Battered fedora pulled down low against his head, coat lapels pulled up against the chill wind that spit snow against his face, he stood with his hands in his pockets, quietly observing everything. Bliss watched him for a moment, then stepped closer.

“How are you doing there, Professor?”

Goddard nodded.

“Sure you wouldn’t be more comfortable in the passenger car?”

Goddard shook his head.

“Well… all right, then. Let me know if I can help you.”

Goddard didn’t reply. Bliss lingered another moment, then walked away.

A couple of minutes later, the last tarps were removed from the rear flatbed, and the rocket engine lay revealed in the bright glare of the spotlights. Sixty feet long, the stainless-steel temporary skin that protected the liquid oxygen, nitrogen, and kerosene tanks, along with the turbopump, coolant, and ignition complex gave it the appearance of an oversized septic tank with a conical nozzle at one end.

The entire assembly was securely bolted to a concrete pedestal custom-built into the flatbed platform. Soldiers unloaded two short I-beams from the diesel flatbed and carried them back to the engine flatbed; they laid the beams atop the pedestals across the tracks, then secured them with heavy chains. Other soldiers hammered iron chocks into place between the car wheels and the rails. Braced by the beams and the chocks, the car was transformed into a static test platform, which—hopefully—would remain immobile for the duration.

This was the solution the 390 Group had devised for the problem of how to test a large rocket engine built in a major New England city. Its outcome was more than a matter of pride. If the engine failed to ignite or sustain thrust, then it was back to scratch paper, notebooks, and slide rules… and if it blew up, then clearing the debris from the tracks would be the least of their worries. Either way, Blue Horizon would probably be taken away from them entirely and given to someone else. Bliss had already warned Goddard and his people that the Secretary of War was nudging the president to turn the project over to Howard Hughes. If that happened, then the 390 Group would become little more than civilian advisors, and the entire operation would be thrown months, if not years, behind.

The test had to succeed. That was all there was to it.

The fuel men finished loading LOX, kerosene, and liquid nitrogen into the engine. Carefully disconnecting the hoses, they pulled them away from the flatbed. The soldiers helped them carry the lines back to the tankers, then one of the railroad men used a sledgehammer to uncouple the rear car from the rest of the train. The engineer released the brake and throttled up the diesel, and the train slowly pulled away, moving back onto the main line. The flatbed with the engine remained on the siding, captured within a ring of spotlights.

Still standing beside the rocket engine, Henry watched as the train went about a hundred yards farther down the ravine, then came to a halt. He looked down at Taylor and said, “Bring on the juice.”

Taylor nodded, then jogged up the tracks to the train. Two soldiers riding the flatbed with the diesel generator began unreeling a large spool of insulated electrical line. Taylor picked up its end and carried it back to the siding, where Henry knelt to pull it up on the engine flatbed. Once Taylor climbed aboard, the two of them opened a panel in the engine cowling, located the main electrical bus, and attached the cable to it.

The two of them spent the next few minutes connecting other electrical lines within the engine’s control systems, consulting a hand-drawn wiring diagram Henry carried in his pocket. They checked to make sure everything was the way it should be, then Taylor straightened up from his crouch. “Think that’s got it?”

“We’ll soon find out, won’t we?” Henry kissed the tips of his gloved right hand and patted the engine. “Make us proud, sweetheart.” Then he turned to hop down from the car. “Okay, let’s get out of here.”

The soldiers who’d been guarding the eastern end of the tracks joined the two scientists as they ran back to the train. They were the last to leave the siding. Everyone else was already crouched behind the rail embankment beside the train except for the 390 Group, who’d returned to the passenger car.

Henry and Taylor jogged up the steps into the car, passing Colonel Bliss along the way. “We’re ready, Bob,” Henry said.

The car had been turned into a mobile launch control center. The seats at one end had been removed to make room for Bakelite instrument panels and patchboard circuitry systems. A tripod-mounted 35 mm camera stood nearby, its lens pointing through a window, even though no one believed that any useful photos would come out of this nighttime test. Goddard sat at the master control panel, Mike Ferris beside him, both eying the gauges and meters arranged before them.

“Very well,” Goddard said quietly, “I think we’re just about ready here, too.” He looked at Bliss. “Give your men the two-minute warning, Colonel. We’re counting down from 120 seconds, starting”—he flipped open his pocket watch, studied it for a couple of moments, then raised a finger—“now.”

As Bliss leaned from the car door to blow a shrill blast from a whistle, Goddard turned to his team. “Mike and I will monitor the test. The rest of you don’t need to be here. If you’d like to watch outside, feel free to do so.” The briefest of smiles appeared beneath his mustache. “Unless, of course, you feel safer in here…”

“Are you kidding?” Gerry asked, then he was out the door, rudely shoving past Colonel Bliss. The others grinned. They knew what he meant. If the engine blew up, they wouldn’t be much safer inside the train than they’d be outside.

Taylor shrugged, then he moved to follow the kid from the train. Ham did so as well. Henry started to do the same, then he paused to look back at Goddard. “Professor…”

“Good luck to you, too,” Goddard said quietly.

Climbing down from the train, Henry saw that everyone had taken cover behind the track embankment. He crouched on hands and knees between Ham and Gerry and peered over the rail. Illuminated by the spotlights, the flatbed looked like a toy left beneath a Christmas tree. Its nozzle was pointing toward them, for good reasons: not just so that they could watch the ignition, but also for range safety should the engine happen to break loose from its moorings.

“How much time left?” Ham asked.

“I don’t know,” Henry replied. “I wasn’t counting either.” It was just then that he noticed that snow was no longer falling. The wind had died down, too. Glancing up, he was surprised to see a few stars glimmering above the ravine. “Hey, what do you know?” he said aloud. “It’s starting to clear up.”

Ham followed his gaze. “Well, I guess that’s good news. I…”

The engine ignited.

First, there was a deep rumble, like some steel behemoth clearing its throat. As that happened, an orange glow appeared deep within the nozzle as turbopumps forced volatiles together in the combustion chamber, where they met a tiny yet significant electrical spark. Within an instant, the orange glow became yellow, then white…

And then, all at once, a violent jet of flame shot forth from the engine with a roar that thundered through the ravine like a sonic flood, vanquishing the shadows and forcing the men to slap their hands over their ears. A spotlight was snatched up and hurtled away, smashing to bits against a nearby tree, while another one simply fell over. A half second later, a hot torrent of air rushed down upon the men, and winter vanished for a few moments to be replaced by a brief and tempestuous summer.

Henry had seen liquid-fuel rocket engines fired before, but never like this. This was as different from the ones they’d tested at Mescalero Ranch as… there was no comparison, really. Watching this massive thing howling and blazing in the night, he suddenly realized that something new had just been born. Something that would take men to other worlds or destroy the one they already had.

The infernal roar seemed to go on and on and on, drowning out the shouts and cheering of the men around him. The engine visibly shook on its platform; it stayed anchored, but for several seconds, Henry was afraid that the chocks and I-beams would fail, and the carriage would be hurled down the siding, to be derailed and explode across the main line. But then, as suddenly as it had begun, the engine abruptly died. Just as if a switch had been thrown, the flame and noise abruptly went away, leaving behind only an ionized stench and diminishing echoes from the ravine’s rock walls.

“Was that it?” Gerry asked. “Is it…?”

“Yeah.” Henry slowly let out his breath. His ears were ringing; he could barely hear the kid. He couldn’t take his eyes off the engine. “Yeah, that’s…”

“A hundred seconds!”

Mike Ferris leaped down from the passenger car. Dancing from foot to foot, he threw both fists in the air. “A hundred seconds!” he yelled again, as flashlight beams caught his manic dance. “Ten seconds longer than the minimum performance standard!”

The other members of the group stared at him for a second, then they scrambled to their feet and ran to him. “Impulse-per-second ratio?” Henry snapped, grabbing Mike’s shoulders.

“Three hundred ten, with a propellant mass flow rate of 425.7 pounds per second.” Mike grinned back at him. “Right on spec.”

“So where did the extra ten seconds come from?” Gerry asked. There had been just enough fuel in the tanks for a ninety-second test, which was the length of time it would take for the ship to reach its operational altitude.

“Doc throttled the engine down 75 percent for the last fifteen seconds. When we saw it wasn’t going to blow up, he wanted to see just how much longer a lower thrust ratio would extend the flying time…”

“Which means the pilot can reserve fuel if necessary,” Henry finished, and Mike nodded happily. “Wow. Nice to know.”

“‘Nice to know’?” Ham snorted. “Morse, sometimes I swear…”

Henry ignored him. Pushing past Mike, he trotted down the tracks to the passenger car. Goddard was where he’d left him, seated at the control panel. A spiral notebook lay open before him, and the pencil in his hand indicated that he’d just finished jotting down some figures, yet that wasn’t what he was doing just then. Instead, he was slumped in his chair, staring straight ahead as if exhausted by a physical task.

“Bob…?”

“Worked out rather well, didn’t it?” A weak smile; Bob barely looked at him. “We ran it until the fuel was all used up,” he added, then looked around at Colonel Bliss, who was standing behind him. “I rather believe we could’ve run it even longer, if we’d had a larger fuel capacity.”

“Next time, Professor.” With uncommon warmth, Bliss patted Goddard’s shoulder, then he looked up at the members of the team. “Good work, gentlemen. Outstanding. Now, if you’ll assist the soldiers and the train crew, I think we can get out of here and go home.”

“Yeah, great.” Ham slowly let out his breath. “Back to Worcester for the engine and the lodge for us…”

“No, not quite.” Bliss shook his head. “We’re sending the engine straight to New Mexico aboard this same train. You’re going back to the lodge just long enough to pack your bags, then you’ll fly down to Alamogordo.”

The men said nothing for a moment or two, then Gerry suddenly cut loose a rebel yell that caused everyone to break down in relieved laughter. Twelve weeks of enforced isolation were finally coming to an end. The hunting lodge in New Hampshire had lost whatever rustic charm it once had; they were ready to spend the rest of the winter in a warmer climate.

Surprisingly, though, Goddard shook his head. “If it’s all the same to you…”

All of a sudden, he doubled over and, holding his hand against his mouth, erupted in a spasmodic fit of coughing that came from deep within his chest. Henry started forward, but Goddard held up a hand, warding him off. Henry stopped in midstep, but only because he knew that Bob wanted no one’s help. Nonetheless, these fits had become more frequent lately; the year he’d spent in New England had taken its toll.

“If it’s all the same with you,” Goddard went on, once he’d recovered himself, “I’d just as soon ride down with the engine. I’m afraid I’m not much for air travel.”

Bliss hesitated. “It’s not going to be very comfortable.”

“I’ll make do.” Goddard looked at Henry and the others. “Tell Esther I won’t be long. Just taking Nell off to school, that’s all. Don’t want her to get lost along the way.”

“Yeah, all right… sure thing, Bob.” Henry turned to his colleagues. “Okay, boys, you heard the boss. Let’s get our baby ready for a little road trip.”