“Stop it!” Himmler screamed, hands clamped over his ears, eyes wide with terror. “Stop it! It’s going to blow up!” Goering howled with laughter, while Goebbels cackled and clapped his hands like a child amused by a trick pony at a circus.
In the control bunker, cement dust was falling from cracks that had suddenly appeared in the ceiling. The windows shook in their frames, distorting the view of the sled as it rocketed away from the bunker.
Von Braun was on his feet, watching it go, microphone clutched in his right hand. “Steady… steady…” he said, fighting to remain calm. “Stand by to release…”
Flattened against his seat, pushed back by mounting acceleration, Horst Reinhardt watched his instruments through eyes threatening to squeeze shut, his hands locked on the yoke. The sled was traveling at five hundred meters per second when he yelled “Main-engine ignition!” and snapped the toggle switch.
The engine roared to life, and as an invisible hand shoved him even farther into his seat, he heard von Braun shout, “Release!”
Knowing that this meant that the sled’s cradle was no longer holding him, Reinhardt pulled back on the yoke with all his might.
Like a hawk taking flight, Silver Bird rose from the sled. It shot upward at a steep angle, stub wings clawing at the sky, main engine pounding across the valley and echoing off the mountainside. Far below, the launch sled reached the end of the track. Traveling too fast for the hydraulic brakes to slow it down, it ripped through the track, smashed into the ground, and exploded, an inferno giving birth to a phoenix.
In the control bunker, Eugen Sanger leaped to his feet. “My Silver Bird flies!” he shouted, fists raised above his head. “My dream is alive!”
Letting go of his breath, von Braun slumped in his chair. Through the windows, he could see Silbervogel rising upon a fiery pillar, thundering like a hammer of the gods.
“It’s done,” he muttered under his breath. And may God help us, he silently added.
Standing on the cottage roof, hugging the brick chimney as if it were a lover, Frieda Koenig felt the house beneath her tremble as the shock wave rumbled across the valley. Treetops swayed in the supernatural wind, pine needles and leaves ripped from their branches, and somewhere below her a window shattered, but she barely noticed these things. All she saw was the silver dart streaking up from the other side of the valley, faster than any aircraft she’d ever seen, leaving behind it a thick vapor trail that formed an arch across the sky.
“No,” she whispered. “No, no, no…”
Suddenly, she remembered where she was, what she was supposed to do. Letting go of the chimney, she squatted on her hips and skidded down the roof, heedless of the shingles tearing at the back of her skirt and legs. Somehow, the ladder had stayed where it was. Turning herself around and planting her feet against the rungs, she climbed down as fast as she could, dropping the last few feet to the ground.
From somewhere far above, a loud boom. She turned and looked up, half-expecting to see that the craft had blown up. Yet it was nowhere in sight; she saw only the vapor trail, its base already beginning to dissipate.
No time to wonder about that now. London had to be alerted.
Frieda was in the house in seconds, grateful that she’d had the foresight to plug in the radio and let it warm up. She’d already opened her codebook and turned it to the correct page for the day; she checked to make sure she was using the correct encryption key, then lay a finger against the telegraph key. Taking a deep breath to calm herself, she began to send her message:
Mistletoe to Big Ben. Black Umbrella is open. Repeat, Black Umbrella is open. Mistletoe out.
There. It was done. And so was she. Her mission was complete, and there was no point in remaining here any longer. In fact, it was dangerous to stay in Nordhausen. If her signal had been intercepted, then the Nazis might trace it back to her.
Frieda took a few moments to discard her frayed dress and put on a fresh one, then she gathered the documents she’d need, made sure she had enough money in her purse, and left the cottage. Within minutes, she was in her car and driving away, her life as a war widow already a thing of the past.
Horst Reinhardt didn’t hear the sonic boom caused by his craft breaking the sound barrier, nor was he aware of the chaos he’d left in his wake. He heard only the roar of Silver Bird’s main engine, felt only the pressure against his body.
As the spacecraft continued its climb, his vision began to blur, forming a tunnel through which he fought to see clearly. Fortunately, the instruments were directly in front of him, and he’d memorized his flight plan so well that it was thoroughly ingrained in his memory.
He continued to climb, watching his altimeter carefully the entire time. When he saw that Silver Bird was 5.4 kilometers above the ground, he reached down and pushed forward the throttles for the two auxiliary engines. Silver Bird surged upward even more; he concentrated on breathing, making sure that the acceleration didn’t force the air from his lungs and cause him to black out. He couldn’t see his instruments well, but he knew that he must be pulling nearly ten g’s. But only for a few seconds, just a few more seconds…
Gradually, the roaring of the engines diminished, slowly becoming a muted grumble. Reinhardt’s gaze swept across the instrument panel, then he throttled down the main and auxiliary engines and pulled back the yoke. An eerie silence descended upon the cabin; the pressure completely left him, and it suddenly seemed as if his body was lighter, without any weight at all.
Something drifted past his goggles, a tiny metal ring. A washer dropped by a careless workman. Fascinated, Reinhardt raised a hand and gently tapped it with a fingertip. At his touch, the washer tumbled away, turning end over end, until it reached the starboard side window and bounced off.
That was when Reinhardt saw where he was. Earth stretched out below him as a vast green shield, flecked with filmy white clouds, veined by blue rivers and lakes. He was somewhere over Poland, or perhaps even the Soviet Union; there was no easy way to tell, without any obvious borders to distinguish political boundaries. And above it all, a sky so black, it seemed like an abyss he could fall into forever.
Lieutenant Horst Reinhardt was the first man to see Earth from space.
He didn’t give himself an opportunity to reflect on this. No time to admire the view; he had a mission to accomplish. His altimeter was useless, now that it no longer had atmospheric pressure to register, but his gyroscope told him that he was climbing toward his maximum altitude of 130 kilometers. That was when he’d fire the auxiliary engines again, vector them so that his nose was pitched downward, and commence the series of atmospheric skips that would carry him around the world.
Reinhardt clasped his throat mike. “Control, Control, this is Silver Bird. Launch successful, orbital altitude achieved. Preparing to commence antipodal trajectory.”
He listened carefully, and for a moment he thought he heard voices through the static. Hopefully his message had been received, but it was possible that he was already out of radio range. This had already been taken into consideration, though. He would remain incommunicado for the duration of his mission; it was not until after he’d completed his objectives that he’d try to contact the U-boat that would act as his recovery vessel should he need it. Otherwise, the next time he spoke to anyone in the Fatherland, it would be when he stepped down from his cockpit and offered a salute to his beloved Führer.
That was a pleasant thought. Reinhardt kept it in mind as Silver Bird soared above Earth, on its way to New York and victory.