"Take off as soon as you are fueled and ready. The moment you are airborne we will file a position report as having recorded the passage overhead of Aero Lloyd Flight 977 on its scheduled commercial run from Lake Victoria, with your machine on time for its run. Congratulations on your visit to the south. All hell has broken loose down there among the dogs. Hals und Beinbruch!"
Von Moreau smiled. Break your neck and a leg. The captain must have been a pilot to know the final words of airmen just before they took off on their combat missions. He leaned from the cockpit window, saw the captain, and waved. Several minutes later they pushed back from the ship, taxied into takeoff position to accelerate into the wind, and thundered into the air toward the darkening sky. Now von Moreau went for greater altitude. The fewer people who had a close look at the Rohrbach as it closed the distance to Germany, the better. He climbed to fourteen thousand feet, near the limit for the heavy flying boat. He nodded to Gottler in the right seat. "You fly. I will sleep for a while. Wake me for anything unusual." "Yes, sir."
In moments von Moreau was fast asleep. The flying boat thundered northward.
Fourteen hours later, Flugkapitan Erhard von Moreau nodded in satisfaction and tapped the chart of the Mediterranean Sea on his lap. He glanced at his copilot.
"We are exactly on schedule," he said with obvious pleasure. "A remarkable flight!
Who would have imagined us crossing in the night over Uganda, up through the Sudan and across all of Libya, so smoothly, without a hitch to our progress."
Gottler smiled in return. "I see only water now, sir. What is our exact position?"
Von Moreau held up the chart. "See here? The Libyan coast? When we crossed over El Agheila we were then over Golfo Di Sidra, that took us over the open stretch of the Mediterranean, and right now," he tapped the chart, "we are, urn, here. Thirtyfive degrees north latitude and eighteen degrees west longitude.
Sicily and Italy are dead ahead, and if we hold our present course we will fly over the Strait of Messina, here, then over Livorno and right on home."
Von Moreau had held up the chart for his copilot to see more clearly. Now, his eyes still raised where he folded the chart, he saw clearly through the thick windshield. He lowered the chart slowly, staring into the sky, a look of amazement on his face.
"Franz! Look carefully. Almost dead ahead, thirty degrees above the horizon." Sunlight reflected off something in the sky, a flash of light.
"Sir, it looks like . . . like a zeppelin! But it is huge!" Gottler strained to see. "It is very high, Captain, and the reflection is so bright that I—"
"Hold our course and altitude," von Moreau snapped. "I'll use the glasses."
He reached down to his right side, to the pouch holding his flight gear, and his hand brought forth powerful binoculars. He adjusted the focus and swore beneath his breath.
" M e i n G o t t . . . "
"Sir, what is it?" Gottler called to him.
"It has a torpedo shape. I judge it is at least fifteen hundred feet long, but . .
." He was talking now as much to himself as to his copilot. "But that would be at least twice as large, or larger, than the biggest zeppelin we have ever built! At first I thought maybe we were seeing the Graf Zeppelin. It has been crossing the Atlantic for more than two years now."
"Captain, we're at fourteen thousand—"
"Yes, yes, I know. Whatever that thing is, it is at least at twice our altitude, and the zeppelins do not fly that high!
Besides—here," he interrupted himself. "I have the controls, Franz. You tell me what you see."
Gottler held the binoculars to his eyes. "It is as big as you say, sir. But . . .
that is not a fabric covering, like the Graf.
That vessel, sir, is metalcovered from stem to stern. And it is thick through the body."
"What else!" von Moreau demanded, wanting desperately to either have confirmation of what he had already seen—or be told his eyes were playing tricks on him.
"Engines, sir. I mean," Gottler stuttered with his disbelief, "no engines. I see no signs of engines, and that's impossible. Look, it is tracking at an angle across our flight path. Even though it is much higher, it is flying an intercept course. But how . . . how can it do that without engines?" He lowered the glasses, and studied von Moreau.
"Sir, I don't understand—"
"To the devil with understanding! Write down what you see, every detail, understand? Take notes!"
Von Moreau leaned to his right and half turned to look back into the radio compartment. "Stryker!" he shouted to his radioman. "Can you make shortwave contact with Hamburg? Try it at once!"
He turned back to Gottler. "Well? What else?"
"I cannot believe this, Captain, but even at this distance I can see that the vessel has accelerated. It is definitely moving faster, and—Captain! There are several shapes descending from the vessel! Can you see them, sir? They are shining like lights in the sun and . . . I have never seen anything like them. Look, Captain! Their shape! Like . . . like crescents. Look how fast they move! And . . . this is incredible, sir! No engines, no propellers!"
Von Moreau grabbed for the binoculars. "Take over," he snapped to Gottler.
"Hold course, hold altitude.
Stryker! What about that contact with Hamburg?"
Radioman Albert Stryker hurried forward to the cockpit. "Sir, something is blocking all transmissions from and to this aircraft. I can get only static. It is deliberate interference."
"Did you try the alternate systems?"
"Sir, I have tried every frequency we have. Nothing is getting through."
Stryker was looking through the windscreen now; he had caught sight of three gleaming crescentshaped objects curving down from high altitude directly toward them. His mouth gaped.
"What . . . what are those—"
"Back to your radios, Stryker," von Moreau ordered. "Keep trying, anything, everything, but get through."
"Yes, sir. I'll do everything I can." Stryker rushed back to his radio equipment.
"I have never seen anything like this before," von Moreau said to his copilot.
"It is amazing. A monstrous torpedo shape, now these crescents that race through the sky—they must be doing four or five hundred miles per hour." He shook his head.
"Something propels them. But what? And where are they from? Who are they?
What do they want?"
Questions burst from him without answers.
Stryker ran headlong back into the cockpit. "Captain, sir! Those things out there . . ." He pointed with a shaking hand to a gleaming crescent shape that hurtled past them with tremendous speed, curving around effortlessly, magically. The other two machines had taken up position, each off a wingtip of the Romar flying boat.
"They are in contact with us, Captain."
Von Moreau stared at Stryker. "What language, man?"