“Really?” Drucker raised an eyebrow. “I would love to do it-I will do it-but I have never had this sort of authorization before. Why have things changed?”
He wondered if Ehrhardt would invoke the great god Security and tell him that was none of his business. But the briefing officer answered candidly: “I will tell you why, Lieutenant Colonel. There has been unusual emission of radioactivity from the station over the past few weeks. We are still trying to learn the reasons behind this emission. As yet, we have not succeeded. Perhaps yours will be the mission that finds out what we need to know.”
“I hope so,” Drucker said. “I’ll do everything I can.” He got to his feet and shot out his right forearm. “Heil Himmler!”
“Heil!” Ehrhardt returned the salute.
The A-45 on which Drucker rode into space carried strap-on motors attached to either side of the main rocket’s first stage. They boosted him into a higher orbit than the A-45 could have achieved by itself. Any deviation from the norm was bound to make the Lizards and the Americans suspicious (the Bolsheviks, he assumed, were always suspicious). But the Rocket Force Command must have warned the other spacefarers that he would be taking an unusual path, because the questions he got were curious, not hostile.
He enjoyed the new perspective he got on the world from a couple of hundred kilometers higher than usual. He’d seen nearly everything there was to see from the orbit Kathe normally took. The wider view was interesting. It made him feel almost godlike.
And he enjoyed the better view of the U.S. space station he got from this higher orbit. Even before he tried to approach it, his Zeiss binoculars gave him a closer look than he’d ever had. The only drawback to the situation was that, because he moved more slowly than he would have in a closer orbit, he didn’t come up to the station as often as he would have otherwise.
“Having fun, snoop?” the space station’s radioman asked as he did approach from behind.
“Of course,” Drucker answered easily. “I would even more fun have if you had pretty girls at every window undressing.”
“Don’t I wish!” the American said. “It’s supposed to be something special when you’re weightless, too, you know what I mean?”
“I have heard this, yes,” Drucker said. “I do not about it know in person.”
“Neither do I,” the radio operator said. “This is something that needs research, dammit!”
Drucker tried to imagine such goings-on at the Reich ’s space station. Try as he would, he couldn’t. Had Goring become Fuhrer after Hitler died… then, maybe. No-then, certainly. Goring would have had himself flown up there to make the first experiment. But the Fat Boy had disgraced himself instead, and gray, cold Himmler frowned on fooling around for its own sake-all he thought it was good for was making more Germans. With a small mental sigh, Drucker swung back from sex to espionage: “With so much room, you Americans should try to find out.”
“Not enough gals up here,” the radioman said in disgusted tones.
That was interesting. Drucker hadn’t known the American space station held any women at all. He wasn’t sure anyone in the Greater German Reich knew the Americans were sending women into space. The Russians had done it a couple of times, but Drucker didn’t much care what the Russians did. Their pilots were just along to push buttons; ground control did all the real work. Unless war suddenly broke out, a well-trained dog could handle a Russian spacecraft.
“Maybe your women don’t like the radiation,” Drucker said. American radiomen liked to run their mouths; maybe he could get this one to talk out of turn.
He couldn’t. The fellow not only didn’t say anything about radiation, he clammed up altogether. After a while, Drucker passed out of radio range. He muttered in frustration. He’d learned something that might be important, but it wasn’t what he’d come upstairs to learn.
He made some calculations, then radioed down to the ground to make sure he-and Kathe ’s computer-hadn’t dropped a deci-mal point anywhere. Once satisfied he had everything straight, he waited till the calculated time, then fired up the motor on the upper stage of the A-45 for a burn that would change his orbit to one passing close to the American space station.
When he came into radar range of the station, the radio operator jeered at him: “Not just a snoop, a goddamn Peeping Tom.”
“I want to know what you are doing,” Drucker answered stolidly. “For my country’s sake, it is my business to learn what you are doing.”
“It’s not your business,” the American said. “It never was, and it never will be.” He hesitated, then went on, “Looks like you’re going to pass about half a mile astern of our boom.”
“Yes,” Drucker said. “I will not to you lie. I want to see what you are at the end of it there making.”
“I noticed.” The radioman’s voice was dry. He hesitated again. “Listen, pal, if you’re smart, you’ll change your trajectory a bit, on account of if you don’t it won’t be healthy for you. You know what I’m saying? You don’t want to pass right astern of that boom, not unless you don’t have any family you care about.”
“Radiation?” Drucker asked. The radioman didn’t answer, as he hadn’t answered his last question about radiation. Drucker thought it over. Was he being bluffed? If it weren’t for radiation, he wouldn’t have been up here this far. “Thank you,” he said, and used his attitude jets to change course.
What the devil were the Americans doing? He couldn’t see as well as he would have liked, not even through the viewfinder of his camera with the long lens attached. One thing he did see: the boom looked very stiff and strong. He didn’t know what that meant, but he noted it-in space, nobody built any stronger, any heavier, than he had to.
The Geiger counter Drucker had along started chattering. He listened to it with pursed lips. Here he was off-axis to the unit at the end of the boom, and he was still picking up this much radiation? How much would he have taken had he gone right behind it, as he’d planned? More. A lot more. He owed the U.S. radio operator a good turn. So did Kathe. He had the bad feeling Peenemunde’s memorial would have got a new name on it had the American kept quiet.
He wasn’t sorry when his orbit took him away from the space station, but he did some furious calculating for a burn that would bring him back to its neighborhood as fast as possible. Spaceflight was like the rest of the Werhmacht in some ways. Hurry up and wait was one of them. He had to wait till the proper time to make the burn, and then again till his changed trajectory brought him toward the space station.
And, as he began the approach, he stared first at his radar and then out the window of the A-45’s upper stage-for the space station, far and away the biggest and heaviest human-made object in Earth orbit, was nowhere near where it was supposed to be.
To her surprise, Kassquit discovered she missed Regeya. No one came right out and told her, but she gathered he really was a Big Ugly. Because he was one, he had no place on the Race’s computer network. But the chatter about the American space station was less interesting without him. He’d known a lot, and he’d had a knack for asking interesting questions. After he was purged from the network, discussion faltered.
Not long after Regeya vanished, Kassquit got an electronic message relayed through the Race’s consulate in some city or another in the Tosevite not-empire known as the United States. I greet you, it read. I do not know that I much like you, but I greet you anyhow. Unless I am wrong, you are the one who figured out I was nothing but a miserable Big Ugly looking where he should not. Congratulations, I suppose. Even as a Big Ugly, I do have access to some of your network, which is how I am sending you this. Best regards, Sam Yeager.