V-S Day: A Novel of Alternate History

ROLLOUT

MAY 19, 1943

The hangar doors parted to allow the big Ford tractor-trailer rig to growl forward into the desert morning, and the hundreds of men and women standing outside broke into applause as the Lucky Linda saw the light of day.

The spaceship lay horizontal upon its carriage, its burnished steel hull reflecting the sunlight so brightly that it dazzled the eye. The solid-fuel boosters hadn’t yet been attached, and its missiles were still being tested, but otherwise the ship was finished. The rocket engine brought down from Massachusetts five months ago had been fully integrated within the hull and ground-tested again, and all the other major components were flight-ready, from its radar array to its landing chute.

At long last, the time had come to move the ship from its assembly hangar to its just-completed launchpad, where it would undergo final tests before being placed on standby. It was a day for celebration. For the past fifteen months, Lucky Linda had been the object of devotion for all these people who were standing outside its hangar; they clapped and cheered and whistled, making the most of the moment. More than a year of constant effort had led up to this, and everyone wanted to savor it.

“There she is,” Henry said to Goddard. Along with the rest of the 390 Group, they had an honored position in the crowd, right next to the place where the truck would carry the spacecraft. “Our little Linda, having her coming-out party.”

“Our little Nell, you mean.” As the truck approached them, Goddard regarded the nude girl painted on the ship’s nose with tight-faced Yankee disapproval. “If I’d known our pilot was going to do that to her…”

“Say what?” Skid Sloman was standing just behind Goddard. He bent closer and mockingly cupped an ear. “Sorry, Doc, didn’t quite hear you… everyone’s making too much noise!”

Goddard scowled but said nothing. Henry traded a look with Jack Cube, who stood on the other side of the professor. Jack remained stoical as always, his eyes hidden behind his aviator shades, but he shook his head ever so slightly. Skid had rubbed Bob the wrong way the moment they met, when he spit out a wad of chewing gum just as he was stepping forward to shake Goddard’s hand. The gum hit Bob’s shoe, and Skid hadn’t noticed, let alone apologized, and that was it; from that moment on, it was Goddard’s opinion that Lieutenant Rudy Sloman was the wrong man for the job, and never mind the fact that he’d mastered the training exercises so well that he could probably fly Lucky Linda in his sleep.

From the corner of his eye, Henry caught a glimpse of Joe McPherson. The backup pilot stood next to Skid, and there was no mistaking the look of contemptuous envy on his face. From what Jack had told him, it wasn’t until Lucky Linda was nearly completed that McPherson began to really take the mission seriously. Up to that point, the X-1 was just some silly experimental aircraft that would probably never get off the ground. When it became clear that Lucky Linda would indeed fly, though, and the man who piloted it into space would earn far more than just a paycheck, McPherson suddenly became intent on bumping Skid from his place at the front of the line.

Fat chance of that. Over the past eleven months, Jack and Skid had become close friends. Were it not for the fact that Jack was too tall for the cockpit, he would have been Skid’s backup pilot, not Joe. But this hadn’t stopped McPherson from kissing up to Bob Goddard… and when that failed, because Bob liked brown-nosers even less than smart-asses, he’d become obsessive about logging more hours in the simulator and centrifuge than Skid, a vain effort to prove that he was better qualified to be the primary pilot.

Henry looked at the spacecraft again. It had pulled abreast of them by then, its port wing passing over their heads. On impulse, he reached up, standing on tiptoes as he stretched out his hand as far as he could. He was rewarded by feeling the wing’s underside lightly brush his fingertips; it was already warm in the desert sun, and he knew that the ship would be covered by canvas shrouds once its carriage raised it erect within the launchpad’s gantry tower.

“Hey, what’re you trying to prove?” Ham Ballou snapped, pretending to be annoyed. “Get your mitts off my nice clean spaceship!”

“It’s mine, too.” Henry felt a touch of embarrassment as he fell back on his heels. “Keep your shirt on.”

Ham shared a laugh with Taylor and Gerry, and Henry decided to let it pass. Truth was, he didn’t know what had come over him just then. He and the others had spent the last five months crawling all over the Lucky Linda, and he’d never been sentimental about touching the ship before. But then he glanced at Goddard, and to his surprise he saw that Bob had lowered his head just a bit so that he could run his fingers under the rims of his glasses and wipe tears from the corners of his eyes. Apparently, Bob noticed Henry watching him, because he quickly dropped his hand. Yet there was no doubt that the professor had felt the same thing he had. They’d come a long way in such a short time, and it was nothing less than astonishing to see the results of their efforts made real, a dream come true.

The truck moved on, towing Lucky Linda behind it as it headed for the pad. The applause gradually faded as the crowd broke up. No ceremonies, no speeches, no brass bands; everyone still had jobs to do, and the day wasn’t getting any younger. Henry watched as Goddard turned to walk back to the administration building. He thought about joining him, but he had his work cut out for him at the blockhouse, which was still being fitted for the coming mission… whenever that would be.

Henry found a couple of Corps of Engineers electricians who happened to be going the same way and hopped into the back of their jeep. He spent the rest of the morning on the floor of the concrete igloo, crawling around on hands and knees to make sure all the multicolored wires went to the places they were supposed to go, and when he was done, he had the inevitable paperwork that needed to be signed by someone with scrambled eggs on his hat.

So he hiked back to the administration building and paid a visit to Bliss’s office. As usual, the colonel wasn’t around. His secretary informed Henry that the colonel was in a meeting on the other side of the base and probably wouldn’t be back until after lunch, so Henry added the form to the stack already on the colonel’s desk and left. Lunch sounded like a good idea, and Henry had learned to take advantage of the days when he actually had a chance to enjoy one.

On the way out, though, his steps took him past Goddard’s office. The door was ajar, and he heard music—Mozart’s Symphony No. 39, if he wasn’t mistaken—coming from inside. Henry stopped and, gently tapping his knuckles against the door, peered into the office.

“Bob?” he asked.

Goddard was sitting at the utilitarian wooden desk he’d been issued, a clothbound book open in his hands. Even after five months, he hadn’t yet finished unpacking all the boxes that had been shipped down from the New Hampshire hunting lodge; his feet were propped up on a crate marked TECH. JOURNALS, a black cigar smoldering in a brass ashtray at his elbow. The music was coming from the portable phonograph that seemed to follow him wherever he went, and it was just loud enough that he didn’t hear Henry until he said his name. But when Henry looked in, he noticed that Goddard’s attention wasn’t on the book but instead was on the distant launchpad, visible through the window above his desk.

“What…? Oh, yes, hello… come in.” Marking his place with a finger, Goddard half closed the book and sat up a little straighter. “Just reading an old favorite and… well, ruminating a bit.”

“Which book?” Henry asked as he stepped into the office.

Goddard held up the book so that he could see the frayed red dustcover: The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells. “I’ve been carrying this around with me ever since I was a boy,” he said, a sly smile beneath his mustache. “Pages are beginning to fall out, print’s barely readable, but… I don’t know, I just can’t bear to toss it away and buy a new copy.”

“That’s the one you read when…?”

“Uh-huh. The day I climbed up that apple tree and decided what I wanted to do with my life.”

Henry knew the story well; all of Bob’s close friends did. This was the first time, though, that he’d ever seen the actual book that had sent Robert H. Goddard down his life’s path. “You’d never want to throw out something like that,” he said, taking a seat in the office’s only other chair. “It means too much to you.”

“I agree.” Looking at the book fondly, Goddard chuckled. “Not long after we met, Esther tried to replace it by giving me a nice new copy for my birthday. She meant well, of course, but… well, she was rather upset when she caught me reading this copy instead, with the one she’d given me still untouched on the shelf. I thought I’d given her a reason to divorce me that day.”

Henry grinned. Bob was exaggerating, of course; Esther wouldn’t leave her husband if a gun were pointed to her head. “How’s she doing?” he asked. “Heard from her lately?”

“Talked to her on the phone just the other day. I told her I’d try to get out to the ranch sometime soon.” Although Esther had followed Bob from New Hampshire, the Army hadn’t permitted her to join him on the base, or even enter Alamogordo as a visitor; so far as the military was concerned, she was a civilian with no security clearance at all. So she’d moved back to Mescalero Ranch, where her husband visited her on weekends. When he had time, that is… which wasn’t very often.

Again, Goddard’s gaze drifted toward the window. “I hope they’re being careful with that thing,” he said quietly. “It’s not like we’ve got a spaceship assembly line.”

Henry leaned forward to peer past him. The truck had parked alongside the gantry tower, and servomotors were slowly tilting its carriage upward, raising the Lucky Linda to a vertical position upon the launch ring. Ham and Taylor were overseeing this part of the operation. Deciding that three chiefs were too many, Henry had deliberately stayed away, but there was no reason why Bob had to do the same.

“I’m sure no one would mind if you went out to…” he began.

“No. I’d rather not, thank you.” Catching a querying look from the younger man, Goddard let out his breath. “Y’know, there are times when I don’t know whether I love that thing or hate it.” Henry raised an eyebrow, and Goddard shook his head. “No, no… don’t misunderstand me. I’m proud of what we’ve done, really. We’ve done something here no one else… well, maybe the Germans… has ever done, and built the first manned space vehicle. We’re far ahead of everything anyone thought might be possible, even your science fiction magazines. But…”

His voice trailed off. “But what?” Henry asked.

Goddard hesitated. “This wasn’t what I intended,” he said after a moment. “When I set out to build a spacecraft, it wasn’t to make a military vehicle… it was to go to Mars. Making something that we’d use to wage war was the last thing on my mind.”

“Yes, well… unfortunately, the Germans had different ideas.”

“Really? I wouldn’t be so sure of that. I heard from the German Rocket Society before the war, when they tried to get technical information from me about my first engines. Whatever else he might have become since then, I know for a fact that Wernher von Braun’s main interest was going to the Moon, not dropping bombs on New York. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t get pushed into this by the Nazis.”

Henry glanced over his shoulder. The hallway outside was vacant, but nonetheless he leaned back in his chair to push the door shut. No sense in getting unwanted attention. Secrecy at Alamogordo was such that even an offhand remark like that could be misconstrued as a possible security breach, even if it came from Blue Horizon’s technical director.

Goddard didn’t notice; his eyes were still turned toward the window, his thoughts even further than that. “When this is over, I hope the X-1 goes into a museum somewhere and never flies again. I want the next spaceship we build to be for peaceful purposes only, that it won’t have any missiles or guns. That’s the future I want, Henry. The exploration of space, not…”

From somewhere outside, an interruption: the earsplitting jangle of an ambulance siren, getting louder and closer by the moment.

The two men had barely glanced at one another when a van with a red cross on its side raced past the window, raising a cloud of sand that obscured the distant rocket. Henry stood up from his chair and craned his neck to see which direction it was going, and just then the phone on Goddard’s desk rang.

The professor snatched up the receiver. “Yes? What did…? Who? Oh, my God… yes, we’ll be there right away!” He dropped the receiver and jumped up from his chair. “C’mon, Henry,” he snapped as he headed for the door, “there’s been an accident!”

“Where?” he asked.

Goddard didn’t seem to hear him. He was already trotting down the hall. Following him out the side door, Henry let the professor lead him across the compound. Another emergency vehicle, a fire truck, roared by, but Henry didn’t see any signs of smoke. So why was…?

Then he saw a small crowd gathered in front of the training facility, and suddenly he understood. There had been an accident inside, possibly in the simulator or…

The centrifuge.

He and Goddard had just reached the building when its door swung open and the two ambulance medics emerged, carrying a stretcher between them. One of the flight doctors—the tall one, Dr. Wysocki, whom the pilots had nicknamed Jeff—strode alongside them, holding the wrist of the man on the stretcher. A couple of MPs were doing their best to hold back the crowd, but Goddard managed to push through, with Henry right behind him. Henry gazed over Goddard’s shoulder and saw who was being carried out:

Joe McPherson, the backup pilot.

The medics reached the ambulance and loaded the stretcher aboard, but then Dr. Wysocki scrambled into the back before they could get going. He clamped his stethoscope against his chest, listened for a moment, then he and one of the medics turned McPherson over on his stomach and elevated the test pilot’s elbows while the doctor gently, repetitively pushed down on the upper part of his back. The other medic stood on the other side of the stretcher, holding his fingers against McPherson’s neck while keeping an intent eye on his wristwatch.

Standing outside the ambulance’s open rear gate, everyone watched quietly as the doctor struggled to save McPherson’s life with the Holger-Nielsen cardiac-resuscitation technique. From deep within the crowd of scientists, soldiers, and technicians, Henry heard a woman praying in a low and solemn voice.

A couple of minutes went by, then Dr. Wysocki straightened up and let out his breath. He looked at the medics and shook his head. The one across from him didn’t reply but instead reached down to pull the stretcher’s top sheet over McPherson. The other medic closed the tailgate, then went around to the cab, climbed in, and started the engine.

The ambulance had just driven away when Henry heard Goddard ask someone what had happened, and he looked around to Jack Cube and the other flight surgeon—Dr. Sinclair, aka Mutt—standing behind them. Both were in shock, and it was obvious that neither of them wanted to be there just then, yet they couldn’t refuse a question from Blue Horizon’s technical director. Not when a fatal accident had just occurred.

“He shouldn’t have gotten in that thing.” Jack kept swinging his head back and forth, as if denying what he’d just seen. “He shouldn’t have… I mean, I shouldn’t have let him, but…”

“Nonsense, Lieutenant. It’s not your fault.” Sinclair stared at him. “McPherson was reckless. He told the operator to keep him at seven g’s for as long as he could take it, and there was no reason for that except that he was trying to prove something… and you and I both know what that was.”

Goddard shot a look at Jack. “Oh, for God’s sake, are you telling me he was…?”

“Trying to top Skid’s time in the centrifuge, yes, sir.” Jack Cube looked even more miserable than before. “Skid set the record at three minutes, thirty-four seconds at seven g’s, and Joe somehow figured that…” Again, he shook his head. “I don’t know what he was thinking, really. Maybe he thought that if he could stand launch acceleration for a longer period of time, we’d bump Skid and move him into the pilot’s seat.”

“Idiot,” Henry muttered.

Goddard cast him a cold glare, but Dr. Sinclair slowly nodded. “I hate to say it, but I agree,” he said softly. “This sort of prolonged stress on the coronary arteries can cause even a healthy man to have a heart attack, especially if it happens over and over again. He may have even been born with some sort of anomalous condition that I wouldn’t have been able to detect.” He paused to give Goddard a meaningful look. “The fact that he was a pack-a-day smoker couldn’t have helped.”

“Yes, well…” Goddard brushed off the pointed reminder about his own health risks. “Whatever the reason, I’m afraid that puts us in a tenuous situation now, doesn’t it?”

As if on cue, someone else came out of the training facility. Skid Sloman also wore a jumpsuit, its helmet dangling from his left hand. His face was ashen, his eyes wide; for the first time since they’d met, the pilot didn’t have the cocky, go-to-hell expression Henry had come to expect.

Goddard, Jack Cube, Dr. Sinclair, and Henry turned to him as he shuffled through the door. “I was in the control room, waiting my turn,” he mumbled. “I didn’t know… I mean, no one knew what was going on till he stopped talking to us, then…”

“It’s okay, Skid.” Jack placed a hand on his shoulder. “No one knew, and it was no one’s fault. It just happened, that’s all…”

“How is your training coming along?” Goddard asked abruptly.

Startled, Skid blinked several times before answering. “Ummm… it’s going well, Doctor G. At least it was until…”

“You know how to handle the X-1?” Goddard stared at him, his face devoid of sympathy. “You have confidence in your ability to perform your mission?”

“Well, yeah, I think so…”

“You’d better do more than just think so,” Goddard said. “As of now, you’re the only man qualified to fly this spacecraft. So no more slipups, no more mistakes.” His eyes were cold and grey as he turned to the others. “That goes for you, too, and everyone else.”

And then he shoved his hands in his pockets and stormed away. Jack Cube started to follow him, but Henry grabbed his arm and shook his head.

“Let him go,” he said quietly. “Just… give him some room, okay?”

Jack’s mouth tightened, but he nodded without saying a word. On the other hand, Skid was visibly angry. “Who the hell does he think he is?” he demanded, watching Goddard as he walked off. “A man just got killed here!”

“Oh, he knows that, all right.” Henry’s voice was very low. “Believe me, that’s all he’s thinking about.”