Bliss strolled down the length of the table, bending down now and then to closely inspect features of the half-finished rocket. “Very impressive… and you’ve had how many people working on this?”
“Just the five of us,” Taylor said, arms folded proudly across his chest.
“And how much does Mr. Guggenheim give you each year for your research?”
“Our annual budget is $10,000,” Esther replied.
“I see.” Bliss looked up from the rocket. “Dr. Goddard, your Uncle Sam is willing to write you a blank check and give you as many men as you need to complete your research, provided that you deliver us a rocket capable of shooting down whatever the Nazis put up. But I don’t think I have to tell you what the challenges are. You’ve reached an altitude of almost seven thousand feet…”
“I know.” Goddard’s expression was stoical. “And you need something that can reach forty-three miles, at least.”
“What?” Henry couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. He stared at the colonel. “Are you kidding?”
“I wish I was, but I’m not.” Bliss calmly gazed back at him. “And we need to do this as soon as possible, or else…”
“A lot of people will die,” Goddard finished, “and it’s possible that Germany will win the war. You’ll see what he’s talking about when you read the report.” He looked at Bliss again. “All right, Colonel, you’ve got me. Consider me your man.”
“Glad to hear it, sir.” Bliss smiled and nodded. “So… what’s the first thing you need to get started?”
“People. I need people… the right people.”
GODDARD’S PEOPLE
JUNE 1, 2013
“That’s where we come in,” Jack Cube said.
By then, everyone in the living room had settled in for a long story. Douglas Walker was surprised that so many people had gathered here; surely, they’d heard the tale so often that they could probably recite it themselves. Perhaps they were only being polite to the three old men sitting near the fireplace, or maybe it was a ritual part of these get-togethers, yet he suspected it was something different. This was something they never got tired of hearing; it had become the folklore of their extended family, a story retold again and again because it brought meaning to the reunions.
In any case, even the children had become quiet as J. Jackson Jackson, Henry Morse, and Lloyd Kapman took turns recounting the events leading up to this historic day seventy years ago. Through the door leading to the adjacent kitchen could be heard the sounds of wives and mothers cleaning up from the picnic. Otherwise, everyone’s attention was focused on the surviving members of the 390 Group.
“See, here’s a part most people don’t know.” Henry took a sip from the beer he’d been nursing. “Even when they’ve heard of Operation Blue Horizon, they think the guys who worked on it just materialized from nowhere. Bob snapped his fingers and, abracadabra, there we were. What they don’t realize is that it’s almost a miracle that we were able to come together on such short notice.”
“Bob knew some… of us already,” Lloyd said, speaking haltingly in between breaths. He had a beer as well, although he’d barely touched it. “Henry and I… and Taylor, too… were already at the ranch when… Bliss showed up. We had been working with… Bob and Esther… since after they’d moved from Worcester. Bob recruited us… to help him build the rockets he made… once he left Massachusetts.”
“The ones he built after the Clark University rockets that he launched from his aunt’s farm,” Walker said.
“Right,” said Henry, “so we were already on tap. Bob had found Taylor, Lloyd, and me after reading papers we’d published in various technical journals, but he knew that, for something like this, he’d need more than just the three of us and Esther. He had to find more guys with practical knowledge of liquid-fuel rockets, and in 1942 there were damn few people who had that kind of know-how.” He chuckled. “In America, anyway. We knew several more, but they were all in Germany.”
“Couldn’t really… ask them,” Lloyd wheezed, and several people laughed.
Jack Cube stretched out his legs. “The fortunate thing is, because there were so few people like that, most of us already either knew each other, or at least knew about each other,” he said. “The main organization for this sort of thing was the American Rocket Society, which started off as sort of an amateur club but had begun doing research of its own before the war. They’d asked Bob if he wanted to join as sort of a senior advisor, but he declined because he didn’t want to share any proprietary information…”
“Bob was very protective of his patents,” Henry added. “People thought he was shy, and he was, but the main reason why he was so reclusive was because he didn’t want to share the details of his research before he found a way to make money from it.”
“Yes, right, of course.” Jack Cube waved an impatient hand. “But even though he wasn’t involved with the ARS, he knew a lot of people who were, and he knew which ones were serious engineers and not just science fiction fans…”
“Don’t knock science fiction fans,” Henry said, interrupting him again. “That’s how we found Mike Ferris. He used to write letters to Astounding Science Fiction, which both Taylor and I read…”
“Weren’t you… trying to get stuff published in… that magazine at the time?” Lloyd asked.
“You remember that?” Henry grinned. “Yeah, I had a typewriter set up in my room at the ranch, and whenever I had spare time, I’d bang out a story or two. So did Bob, as a matter of fact, but for him it was just a hobby. He never seriously tried to get anything published.” He shrugs. “I eventually sold a few stories, but that wasn’t until after the war, and no one remembers them anymore. Anyway, that’s how Taylor and I found Mike, who was studying aeronautical engineering at Caltech at the time.”
“Mike Ferris and Harry Chung were the only guys we recruited from Caltech,” Jack Cube said. “It had the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory, but Bob didn’t trust GALCIT even though Harry Guggenheim was funding them as well. The whole patent-protection thing. Mike only got in because he knew a lot about solid-fuel propulsion, and… well, we didn’t want the other guy they had.”
“John Whiteside Parsons.” Henry scowled. “Brilliant, but… ah, rather unstable.”
“Creepy,” Lloyd agreed, shaking his head.
“When the FBI did a background check on him,” Henry continued, “they discovered that he had an unhealthy interest in the occult. He was pen pals with Aleister Crowley and belonged to the California branch of the Church of Satan, and… anyway, when the feds found that out, they considered him to be too much of a security risk. Which was too bad, because we could’ve used him. But Mike had worked with Parsons, so he knew almost as much as he did, so…”
“The FBI also gave us some trouble with Hamilton Ballou,” Jack said. “Taylor knew him from MIT and recommended him as a liquid-fuel chemist, but when the feds looked into him, they discovered that Ham had once belonged to the Communist Party. Of course, Ham had been a commie just the same way a lot of other kids were in the thirties… sort of a liberal fad, before most people learned that Russia wasn’t the workers’ paradise it was cracked up to be. He’d dropped out long before Taylor met him, but he’d signed the petitions that put him on the FBI watch list, and it took a lot of smooth talking by both Bob and Colonel Bliss to get him cleared.”