“To answer your question… yes, sir, we think it’s possible.” Henry Morse stood on the other side of the bench with the rest of the 390 Group, as the Pentagon had recently started calling Goddard’s rocket team. “We wouldn’t have wasted our time if we didn’t believe that.”
Bliss didn’t respond. He continued to leaf through the blueprints, examining each one for a minute or two before turning to the next one. He hadn’t visited Worcester very often lately; most of the last five weeks had been spent shuttling between Washington, D.C., and New Mexico, along with a brief trip to London for a meeting with the MI-6 office tasked with keeping track of Silver Bird. During his occasional visits, he’d learned from Goddard that the 390 Group was working on a rocket that would be a radical departure from his previous efforts, but this was the first time he’d seen anything in detail.
He finished looking over the blueprints, then returned to the first one, an overview of the as-yet-unnamed craft. “And you think a piloted vehicle is definitely the answer?”
“It’s the only answer,” Goddard said. “You’ll remember that one of the very first things we discussed was the manned option. The more we’ve studied it, the more we’re convinced that a surface-to-air missile won’t do the trick.”
“Making a killing shot that precise from the ground is almost impossible.” Michael Ferris used his unlit briar pipe to point to the calculations written in chalk on the blackboard behind him. “Based on what we’ve learned from the Sanger-Bredt study, Silver Bird’s velocity will probably be about thirteen thousand feet per second by the time it reaches New York. Not to mention a possible altitude of more than forty miles. Even if we surrounded Manhattan with missile batteries and fired them all at once, our chances of hitting it would be about the same as a hunter trying to take down a deer while blindfolded.”
“Which one’s wearing the blindfold?” Gerry Mander asked. “The hunter or the deer?”
Everyone chuckled except the colonel, who scowled at the group’s youngest member. Gerry just grinned back at him, his impudence irritating Bliss even more. Wisecracks had become common, even during the most serious discussions; it was a way of letting off steam that Goddard condoned and even encouraged but Bliss never understood.
“I understand,” the colonel said, ignoring Gerry and returning his attention to Bob, “but putting people in this thing adds a whole new level of complexity.”
“That’s why we make the rest of the vehicle as simple as possible… relatively simple, at least.” Goddard opened the blueprints to the second page, a cutaway diagram of the ship. “Look, we’re going to use liquid oxygen, nitrogen, and kerosene for the main-engine fuel mixture even though we’d probably get a better ips ratio from liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. Manufacturing and storing liquid hydrogen is difficult, especially if you’re talking about a vehicle that’ll need to be fueled on a minute’s notice. Since that means we’ll have less thrust for escape velocity, the payload mass will have to be stripped down to the essentials.”
“Uh-huh.” Bliss bent closer to the table. “That’s why you’re planning to put only one person aboard. I would’ve thought you’d want a pilot and copilot, maybe even a gunner.”
“No. Just one person, the pilot. He’ll have his work cut out for him, but it will reduce the payload requirement and make life support a lot easier. So…”
“I don’t see any armaments. Where are the guns?”
Goddard didn’t respond at once. They all looked at one another. “We’re still working on that, sir,” Jack Cube said at last.
“‘Still working on it’?” Bliss stared at the junior officer. Even out of uniform, neither man forgot his respective rank in the Army. “Lieutenant, I’d think arming this bird would be your first consideration, not the last.”
Jackson looked away, embarrassed. Goddard came to the rescue. “What Jack Cu… Lieutenant Jackson means is that we’re studying alternatives to wing guns. This is one area where this craft won’t resemble a normal fighter because firing guns beyond the atmosphere would cause a recoil effect that could alter the craft’s trajectory. We need to come up with something else.”
“Rockets?”
“Yes, sir, that’s a possibility.” Jack Cube had recovered his poise and was once again speaking for himself. “But again, there’s the problem of accuracy. Since Silver Bird and the X-1…”
“That’s what we’re calling the ship for the time being,” Goddard interjected, and Bliss nodded.
“… will be traveling at different velocities, hitting the target is going to be very difficult, even if our pilot gets close enough to open fire. That’s why we’re still working on a solution… sir.”
“I see.” Bliss seemed to regard Jackson with a little more respect. “Lieutenant, you’ve received flight training, haven’t you?”
“Yes, sir, I have. But I didn’t get my wings before I was reassigned to…”
“Have you… and by that I mean your team as a whole… had any thoughts about what we’ll need to look for when we search for a pilot?”
A wary smile ticked the corners of Jack’s mouth. “Well, sir, I’d volunteer myself were it not for one thing… I’m too tall.” He pointed to the cockpit, located about halfway down the fuselage. “Whoever we find is going to need to be five-ten or less if he’s going to fit into the cockpit.”
“Well, that’s a start.” Bliss paused, as if sizing up the young black officer. “Lieutenant, I’d like to speak to you later. I think I have a special job for you.”
Jack Cube nodded, and once again Bliss turned to Goddard. “So this is it? This is definitely what you want to build… not a missile, but a manned vehicle?”
“Like Henry said… we wouldn’t be wasting time with this if we didn’t think it wasn’t a viable solution.” Goddard looked him straight in the eye. “The Germans are building a spacecraft. Why can’t we?”
“Since you’ve brought that up…” Bliss reached down to pick up the briefcase he’d brought with him. He started to open it, then paused to look at the men gathered around him. “What I’m about to show you is classified top secret. You’re not to discuss it outside this room. Understood?”
Everyone nodded, and the colonel pulled out a manila folder holding three photographs. “Although the Allies are still reluctant about mounting an air raid on Peenemünde, they’ve begun sending high-altitude reconnaissance planes over the Baltic coast in an effort to gain intelligence. These pictures were brought back last week by one of those recon missions… at great risk, I might add, since the P-38 barely escaped the Luftwaffe fighters dispatched to shoot it down.” He spread the photos out across the table. “Bob, I’d particularly like to get your opinion on what we’re seeing here.”
Adjusting his glasses, Goddard bent forward to study the pictures; the rest of the team crowded in to get a closer look as well. The images were distant but sharp; although they’d been taken from a great altitude, the camera had used a zoom lens to increase the magnification, making objects appear much closer than they’d actually been. It wasn’t difficult to tell what they were looking at: a large collection of buildings of all sizes, separated by paved roads running between them, with a long beach running nearby.
“Looks like a college campus.” Goddard pointed to a small oval on the left side of one of the photos. “There’s even an athletic field. See the running track?”
“That’s not what interests us.” Pushing another photo closer to him, Bliss tapped a finger against an object in the center of the frame. “MI-6 has some ideas of what this is, but we’d like to get your take on it.”
The object was near the beach and appeared to be some sort of tower. One end rose straight up, while a long, horizontal structure jutted out from the other end, making the whole thing look a little like a half-finished suspension bridge. The tower was surrounded by a broad white border, apparently a concrete apron. The nearest building was some distance away, but there appeared to be large trucks on the road leading to the tower.