“And that’s how we landed here.” Lloyd leaned back in his chair, cradling his head in his hands behind his neck. “Thanks to Harry Guggenheim. He bought the land we’re on and writes the checks.”
“Yes, I understand that’s where your funds have been coming from,” Bliss said. “Him and Charles Lindbergh.”
“My… you have been keeping tabs on us, haven’t you?” Esther’s eyes were as sharp as tacks.
“As I said, we’ve been keeping an eye on him… somewhat.” Bliss hesitated. “Matter of fact, Mrs. Goddard, I’m a big fan of your husband’s work. I studied his work when I was an engineering student at MIT.”
“You’re an MIT grad?” Taylor asked, obviously surprised to find a fellow alumnus at the table.
Bliss smiled and raised his left hand to show off his class ring, turned around on his finger so that the beaver etched upon its face has its paddlelike tail pointed toward the person looking at it: kiss my tail, as the in-joke went. “That’s why the Army sent me,” he said. “If Dr. Goddard agrees to help us…”
“Then I’d be working for you, is that it?”
Unnoticed until just then, Goddard had quietly walked into the dining room, the thick folder cradled under his arm. Everyone looked around as he came to the table. “Is there any lunch left, dear,” he asked his wife, “or did you eat everything?”
“No, there’s some enchiladas left.” Esther reached for the pan that Taylor had been eying hungrily. “Sit down and…”
“That’s all right. I’m not sure I have an appetite left.” Goddard took the vacant seat at the end of the table, carefully placing the folder between him and Bliss. He let out his breath as a long sigh as he turned to the colonel. “This is… one hell of a thing you’ve brought me. One hell of a thing.”
“Isn’t it, though?” Bliss solemnly nodded. “It startled me, too, when I read it.”
Henry started to pick up the report, but Hillman reached forward to stop him. “I’m sorry, sir, but it’s…”
“Go ahead and let him see it, Corporal.” Bliss shook his head. “I’ll trust them to abide by their agreement with Dr. Goddard. Besides, if he agrees to work for us, he’ll probably want to pick his own men, and Mr. Morse here will undoubtedly be one of them.” He glanced at Goddard. “Isn’t that right, sir?”
Goddard didn’t reply but instead opened the folder and ruffled the report’s pages. Henry caught a glimpse of single-spaced type, equations, diagrams. “I’d love to know how you came about getting your hands on this, but I imagine that’s a long story.”
“It is. For now, let’s just say that a couple of men probably gave up their lives in order for us to see this, and be grateful for their sacrifice.” A quiet gasp from Esther, and the colonel looked in her direction. “Yes, ma’am, it’s that important.”
“What is it, Bob?” Lloyd asked. “Are the Germans building rockets, too?”
“Worse than that. They’re working on something that goes beyond anything we’ve done here.” Goddard absently ran a hand across the hairless top of his head, almost as if he’d come down with a sudden fever. “I’ve known that they’ve been doing rocket research for quite some time, ever since their man Oberth wrote to me and requested that I send him the technical details of my own work…”
“You didn’t, did you?” Bliss stared at him in horror.
“Oh, of course not. Besides the fact that I have my patents to protect, I had little doubt that they hadn’t overlooked the military implications. And when Hitler took over…” He shook his head. “No, whatever progress they’ve made, they’ve achieved it without my assistance. But I’d never suspected that they’d moved so fast, so quickly. Oberth…”
“We don’t think Hermann Oberth is directly involved with this. The Nazis have found other people instead… a fellow by name of Wernher von Braun, and another chap named Eugen Sanger. Heard of either of them?”
“Von Braun, yes… he’s Oberth’s protégé. A very talented young man. Sanger, though, I don’t know.” Goddard tapped a finger against the report. “And you say this is his proposal?”
“It’s Sanger’s work, yes, but von Braun appears to be the man the Nazis put in charge of actually implementing it.” Bliss paused. “Do you think it’s possible, sir? I mean, it’s not just some pipe dream but something the Nazis could actually pull off?”
Goddard drummed his fingers against the table for a few moments as he regarded the report Henry still hadn’t picked up. “If they have enough money and people to throw at it,” he said at last, “yes, I think they could. There’s nothing there that isn’t possible.”
“I see.” Bliss hesitated. “And do you think you could find a way to defeat it… that is, if you had enough money and people of your own?”
As an answer, Goddard pushed back his chair. “Come with me, Colonel,” he said, standing up. “I’d like to show you something.”
Colonel Bliss rose from the table to follow Goddard. Everyone else fell in behind them as they walked through the house to the back door.
The shed located out back wasn’t much to look at, a T-shaped wood-frame workshop about sixty feet in length, with windows running along its sides. Goddard led everyone through one of the two doors set side by side at the short end of the shed; past a row of offices and storerooms was a large laboratory with a bare wooden floor, the ceiling’s rafters supported by slender beams. The lab was filled with machine tools of all kinds—metal lathes, drills, acetylene torches—and its walls were lined with shelves and workbenches, with canvas aprons hanging from hooks near the door.
In the middle of the room, lying atop a long assembly table, was a rocket. About thirty feet long, it looked like an enormous silver pencil made of duralumin. Panels had been removed from its sides to expose its interior: three cylindrical fuel tanks, with insulated pipes and compact fuel pumps leading from one another, everything feeding into the combustion chamber at the aft end. The nose cone had been closed—it would eventually be reopened so that the rocket’s recording instruments and parachute could be fitted into it—and the four guidance fins were stacked against the wall, waiting to be attached.
“This is Nell,” Goddard said, fondly laying a hand upon the rocket’s side.
“Nell 21, to be exact,” Henry added. “They’ve all had the same name.”
Bliss gave him a questioning look, and Esther laughed. “We started naming the rockets Nell after the crash at Aunt Effie’s farm. There were so many mistakes in the newspaper that it reminded us of a line from a Broadway musicaclass="underline" ‘They ain’t done right by our Nell.’”
“Cute,” Hillman murmured, then turned red as he caught an angry glance from Esther. “No offense, ma’am, but… sorry, I never would’ve thought of giving a rocket a girl’s name.”
Esther said nothing, but Henry knew that the corporal had touched a sore spot. The Goddards never had children, nor would they ever. Bob’s doctors didn’t want Esther to even kiss her husband, for fear that she might contract tuberculosis; raising a family was out of the question. Esther was nineteen years younger than Bob, and surely the thought of having children with him had crossed her mind, but so far as Henry could tell, their relationship had always been more cerebral than physical. Theirs was a love affair of the mind, and Nell was their spiritual daughter.
“Yes, well…” Goddard made an uncomfortable grunt. “As Henry says, this is the twenty-first rocket we’ve built since we’ve been in New Mexico, and so far we’ve had a pretty good success rate. Three years ago, one of Nell’s sisters set the altitude record for an unmanned aircraft… 6,565 feet at sea level, although from here the actual altitude was 3,294 from ground level.” He paused, then added, “Of course, the Germans may well have exceeded this, but we’ll never know.”