Vengeance 10

The A-5 rocket squatting on its launch table in the centre of the cleared circle would be the vindication of his hard-fought theory, the deciding factor in his continuing arguments with Walter Tuchman, the stubborn old scientist who disregarded all ideas but his own, who alienated everyone who worked for him, yet who was undeniably a genius. Tuchman maintained that Bethwig’s cooling system would so weaken the combustion chamber walls that they would burst long before full power was achieved.

Bethwig, improving on his original idea, had designed a series of injectors mounted in the inner wall of the combustion chamber. Where originally the fuel had been sprayed in, it was now forced through the ports under just enough pressure to form a thin film along the chamber walls. To test his theory under actual flight conditions, he had installed a series of pyrometers inside the motor. Dr Tuchman had refused him more than a single radio channel, and he had been forced to wire each pyrometer in series, hoping to obtain useful data by means of a small integrator he had designed and built to average the temperature readings and transmit them through the Siemens radio control equipment. He finished his work, noted the results, climbed out of the bunker, and walked across to the shade of a service lorry. Across the way, he could see the technicians removing the tarpaulin from the bunker housing one of the three cine-theodolite cameras, which would photograph the rocket during flight. A patrol launch idled across the bay, and the sun continued to pour down.

A plume of vapour twisted above the fuel bowser, and the liquid-oxygen hose snaking up to a valve in the side of the A-5 glinted with frost crystals. On the other side of the test area a door in the main bunker opened. Bethwig shaded his eyes and saw Wernher von Braun turn to speak to someone inside, then hold up an instrument to measure the inclination of the rocket on its launch table. Von Braun saw him and waved. The loudspeaker’s hum increased abruptly, crackled, and announced five minutes to firing.

A green flare arched over the test site to warn the aircraft and patrol launches to take stations. Bethwig walked back to the bunker for a last check of his instruments.

A hand descended on his shoulder, and he turned to see the bloated face of Goering peering at him.

‘The scientist at work. Gentlemen, see how the Reich’s young men are so totally engaged. Not like those foolish children in England and France who protest and march for pacifism. Come, Franz, can you not spare a moment to describe your work?’

With difficulty Bethwig refrained from shrugging off the pudgy hand. He tried to explain his experiment, but the combination of heat and champagne punch had glazed the Luftwaffe commander’s eyes. An aide stepped in to divert Goering’s attention, and Bethwig, scanning his dials, cursed the lost seconds under his breath. The radio transmitter signal was strong, showing a temperature reading near normal. The sensors attached to the combustion chamber walls were on-line, and the integrator seemed to be working properly.

A lorry engine racketed to life as a technician stripped the shroud from the rocket’s nose and descended the ladder. The lorry drove towards the gap in the high concrete wall, leaving the launch area clear. Two minutes to launch.

The fuselage was captured in a sheath of glistening ice crystals as the minus-two-hundred-degree-centigrade liquid oxygen sucked moisture from the humid air. A thin plume of vapour shot from a vent half-way up the rocket’s side to signal that the oxidiser tank had reached full pressure. The red flare indicating an imminent launch arched up from the control bunker. At minus twenty seconds the merest wisp of vapour appeared beneath the rocket, and a collective sigh of relief went up from the technicians in the bunker. Bethwig heard Dornberger explaining to Goering that the vapour had been vented through the fuel feed system to make certain that everything was operating properly and that no valves were stuck.

At minus ten seconds sparks showered from the nozzle as the pyrotechnic igniter went off. A gout of reddish-black flame belched from the rocket’s base, steadied, faded to yellow, and a sound like a giant blowtorch gone mad swept the island. The flame turned an incandescent white impossible to watch without protective glasses, and clouds of smoke and dust sprang up to obscure the rocket. For a moment, only its nose was visible, and then, like some prehistoric monster rearing slowly above a primeval fog, the A-5 appeared. Bethwig could see it turn slowly on its axis as its fins cleared the smoke. It tilted slightly and was gone, a fast-dwindling dot of flame directly overhead.