The lights had barely come on when more men emerged from the passenger car. Three figures dressed in hooded aluminum suits trudged forward to the tanker cars. As they checked the gauges and began uncoiling the thick fuel hoses, soldiers trotted back to the last flatbed, climbed up on its platform, and began untying the ropes that held down the canvas tarps hiding its cargo.
By then, several civilians had disembarked from the passenger car. They spent a few moments stamping their shoes against the ground and blowing into their gloved hands, then the oldest turned to the man standing beside him.
“You’d better take care of that, Henry,” Robert Goddard said quietly, nodding toward the soldiers on the rear flatbed. “See that they don’t hurt our girl.”
“Sure thing.” Henry Morse pulled down the earflaps of his hunter’s cap, then trotted forward. “Hey, there… mind what you’re doing with those ropes!”
Gerry Mander looked around uncertainly, shoulders hunched against the cold. “You sure no one’s gonna hear this? I can’t see any house lights, but even out here…”
“Oh, we might wake up someone.” Ham Ballou pulled his muffler more tightly around the neck of the fisherman’s sweater he was wearing. “There’s towns on the other side of these mountains. But this time of night on Christmas, y’know who’s going to be up? Kids waiting for Santa Claus, and who’s gonna believe anything they have to say?”
“Yeah, that’d be good.” Taylor Brickell grinned from the depths of his parka hood. “Daddy, I heard Santa fly over last night, and he was really loud!”
“Okay, wise guys, knock it off.” Omar Bliss came up behind them, boots crunching against snow-covered cinders. “We don’t have much time, so let’s get to work.”
The remaining members of the 390 Group moved away to perform the few tasks they still needed to do. Only Goddard stayed where he was. Battered fedora pulled down low against his head, coat lapels pulled up against the chill wind that spit snow against his face, he stood with his hands in his pockets, quietly observing everything. Bliss watched him for a moment, then stepped closer.
“How are you doing there, Professor?”
Goddard nodded.
“Sure you wouldn’t be more comfortable in the passenger car?”
Goddard shook his head.
“Well… all right, then. Let me know if I can help you.”
Goddard didn’t reply. Bliss lingered another moment, then walked away.
A couple of minutes later, the last tarps were removed from the rear flatbed, and the rocket engine lay revealed in the bright glare of the spotlights. Sixty feet long, the stainless-steel temporary skin that protected the liquid oxygen, nitrogen, and kerosene tanks, along with the turbopump, coolant, and ignition complex gave it the appearance of an oversized septic tank with a conical nozzle at one end.
The entire assembly was securely bolted to a concrete pedestal custom-built into the flatbed platform. Soldiers unloaded two short I-beams from the diesel flatbed and carried them back to the engine flatbed; they laid the beams atop the pedestals across the tracks, then secured them with heavy chains. Other soldiers hammered iron chocks into place between the car wheels and the rails. Braced by the beams and the chocks, the car was transformed into a static test platform, which—hopefully—would remain immobile for the duration.
This was the solution the 390 Group had devised for the problem of how to test a large rocket engine built in a major New England city. Its outcome was more than a matter of pride. If the engine failed to ignite or sustain thrust, then it was back to scratch paper, notebooks, and slide rules… and if it blew up, then clearing the debris from the tracks would be the least of their worries. Either way, Blue Horizon would probably be taken away from them entirely and given to someone else. Bliss had already warned Goddard and his people that the Secretary of War was nudging the president to turn the project over to Howard Hughes. If that happened, then the 390 Group would become little more than civilian advisors, and the entire operation would be thrown months, if not years, behind.
The test had to succeed. That was all there was to it.
The fuel men finished loading LOX, kerosene, and liquid nitrogen into the engine. Carefully disconnecting the hoses, they pulled them away from the flatbed. The soldiers helped them carry the lines back to the tankers, then one of the railroad men used a sledgehammer to uncouple the rear car from the rest of the train. The engineer released the brake and throttled up the diesel, and the train slowly pulled away, moving back onto the main line. The flatbed with the engine remained on the siding, captured within a ring of spotlights.
Still standing beside the rocket engine, Henry watched as the train went about a hundred yards farther down the ravine, then came to a halt. He looked down at Taylor and said, “Bring on the juice.”
Taylor nodded, then jogged up the tracks to the train. Two soldiers riding the flatbed with the diesel generator began unreeling a large spool of insulated electrical line. Taylor picked up its end and carried it back to the siding, where Henry knelt to pull it up on the engine flatbed. Once Taylor climbed aboard, the two of them opened a panel in the engine cowling, located the main electrical bus, and attached the cable to it.
The two of them spent the next few minutes connecting other electrical lines within the engine’s control systems, consulting a hand-drawn wiring diagram Henry carried in his pocket. They checked to make sure everything was the way it should be, then Taylor straightened up from his crouch. “Think that’s got it?”
“We’ll soon find out, won’t we?” Henry kissed the tips of his gloved right hand and patted the engine. “Make us proud, sweetheart.” Then he turned to hop down from the car. “Okay, let’s get out of here.”
The soldiers who’d been guarding the eastern end of the tracks joined the two scientists as they ran back to the train. They were the last to leave the siding. Everyone else was already crouched behind the rail embankment beside the train except for the 390 Group, who’d returned to the passenger car.
Henry and Taylor jogged up the steps into the car, passing Colonel Bliss along the way. “We’re ready, Bob,” Henry said.
The car had been turned into a mobile launch control center. The seats at one end had been removed to make room for Bakelite instrument panels and patchboard circuitry systems. A tripod-mounted 35 mm camera stood nearby, its lens pointing through a window, even though no one believed that any useful photos would come out of this nighttime test. Goddard sat at the master control panel, Mike Ferris beside him, both eying the gauges and meters arranged before them.
“Very well,” Goddard said quietly, “I think we’re just about ready here, too.” He looked at Bliss. “Give your men the two-minute warning, Colonel. We’re counting down from 120 seconds, starting”—he flipped open his pocket watch, studied it for a couple of moments, then raised a finger—“now.”
As Bliss leaned from the car door to blow a shrill blast from a whistle, Goddard turned to his team. “Mike and I will monitor the test. The rest of you don’t need to be here. If you’d like to watch outside, feel free to do so.” The briefest of smiles appeared beneath his mustache. “Unless, of course, you feel safer in here…”
“Are you kidding?” Gerry asked, then he was out the door, rudely shoving past Colonel Bliss. The others grinned. They knew what he meant. If the engine blew up, they wouldn’t be much safer inside the train than they’d be outside.