Damn it! Missiles!
But then he saw that the blotches were moving away from him, and laughed out loud. “You idiot!” he shouted at the unseen American pilot. “There’s nothing in front of you! You missed me!”
Still laughing, he watched as the two small blotches continued to move away from him, angling upward so that they would cut across his angle of descent… and then they suddenly blossomed, becoming a pair of large, irregular patches directly in front of him.
The missiles had detonated less than two kilometers from his ship, and they’d left something behind.
Looking up, Reinhardt turned his head to peer through the left-side window. His breath caught in his lungs as he saw what appeared to be a translucent black mist spreading before him, one that sparkled in the sunlight as it came closer.
He was still wondering what it was when he heard a dull tap against the prow. Then there was another, louder this time, against the hull just in front of his window, and he caught a glimpse of a small object as it bounced away.
A nail, a few centimeters long. Reinhardt chuckled. Just a common nail…
And then Silbervogel flew into a cloud of thousands of them, and he barely had a chance to scream before they ripped his ship apart.
Through the periscope, Skid watched as Silver Bird disintegrated.
The German spacecraft never had a chance. It was probably traveling several thousand feet per second when it entered the swarm of roofing nails the missiles had carried as their payloads. At that speed, the result couldn’t be anything except lethal. The German spacecraft came apart as if it had been thrown into a shredder, pieces of it flying away in all directions, oxygen spewing from what was left of its cockpit. Skid hoped that the guy flying the thing was dead by then; he almost felt sorry for him.
And then something must have short-circuited the electrical system controlling the bombs in the payload bay, for what remained of the ship was lost in a massive yet completely silent explosion. Skid winced as he saw this, but it was too far away for it to pose any threat to him. He’d veered away just after firing the missiles, to avoid running into the nail cloud himself.
That was it. Silver Bird was gone.
“Desert Bravo to Lucky Linda. Do you read? Please respond.”
Skid let out his breath. It had probably been only a few seconds since he’d fired his missiles, but he had no doubt that Jack Cube, Doctor G, and everyone else in Alamogordo were ready to faint. Time to let them know how things stood.
“Lucky Linda to Desert Bravo.” Skid grinned; he’d been waiting to say this for months. “Silver Bird is nailed. Repeat, Silver Bird is nailed. And I’m coming home.”
INTO THE FUTURE
JUNE 1, 2013
“The news broke even before Lucky Linda got home,” Henry said. “The colonel was right about Skid’s transmitting in the clear. Every ham operator in the country picked up his ground communications, and it didn’t take long for some of them to figure out what was going on.”
“A lot of people saw Skid when he… came in for reentry.” Lloyd accepted another glass of water his nephew had fetched from the kitchen; Henry and Jack waited patiently while he took a drink. “No one had ever heard a sonic boom before, so… when he flew in over New Jersey… it was hardly a secret.”
“Uh-huh.” Jack Cube nodded. “Rudy told me that the last thing he expected was to find a crowd waiting for him. But there were probably a couple of thousand folks on hand when he touched down at Lakehurst Naval Air Station.”
“Wasn’t Linda there?” Doug Walker asked. “His girlfriend, I mean.”
“No, that’s just a legend… one of many, I’m sure you know. That shot of him kissing his girl at Lakehurst wasn’t taken until a couple of days later, when a Life photographer asked him to restage his climbing down from the cockpit.” Jack shrugged. “Like the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima, it’s a picture everyone remembers even though it’s not as spontaneous as it seems.”
He stood up to stretch his legs. It was late in the afternoon. Although sunset was still several hours away, the shadows on the den floor had become long. “All the same, Skid was proud of that picture. He autographed copies of it for the rest of his life, and long after he retired from the Air Force and took a job as a civilian consultant, he made a sideline telling his story on the lecture circuit.” He shook his head sadly. “Rudy passed away about fifteen years ago, and I still miss him. He was a great friend.”
“And everyone else?” Doug asked. “I know what happened to the three of you and Dr. Goddard, but the rest of the 390 Group…?”
“Scattered hither and yon.” Jack walked across the den. “Like leaves on the wind.” He found a framed photo on the wall and took it down. “We came back out here again after the war for a little get-together,” he said as he carried the photo to the journalist. “That’s from the reunion.”
Walker studied the black-and-white photo. Everyone who’d belonged to the rocket team was standing at the lodge’s side door, with the notable exception of Goddard and Bliss. “This was the first time I saw this place,” Jack said. “I know the others weren’t crazy about it, but I kinda liked it…”
“Oh, so did we,” Henry said. “Just not after it got cold, that’s all.”
“The government bought the lodge and… gave it to us,” Lloyd said. “Sort of a… goodwill gesture. We’ve kept it… in our families ever since…”
“And held reunions out here every few years or so,” Jack finished. “After a while, it was just about the only time any of us saw each other again.” He shrugged. “And no one knew about what we did, really, except our families.”
“Once Silver Bird was shot down,” Henry said, “there really wasn’t much point in the 390 Group’s staying together. Lucky Linda went into a hangar until it finally got put in the National Air and Space Museum, and Skid became as famous as Lindbergh, but as for the people who designed and built it…?”
“Classified,” Lloyd rasped. “Top secret. Couldn’t talk about… what we did.”
“Except for Bob,” Henry said, nodding. “When the press came searching for answers about who built Lucky Linda, the Army pushed Colonel Bliss and Bob forward as being the masterminds. I don’t think Omar minded very much… especially not after he was promoted to general and, after the war, put in charge of the new U.S. Space Force… but Bob wasn’t crazy about the attention. However…”
His voice trailed off, and he looked down at the floor. “He died only a couple of years later,” Walker said quietly, finishing what he might have said.
“Yes,” Lloyd said. “At the ranch… with Esther by his side.”
“Returning to New England wasn’t good for his health,” Henry said, “and all those cigars didn’t help either. That and the stress he went through did a number on him. He came down with throat cancer. A few months before he passed away, he lost the ability to speak. I went to see him, and all he could do was write notes to me.”
“So he never met Wernher von Braun, did he?” Walker asked.
“No, they never met,” Jack said. “Bob was already on his deathbed by the time von Braun was brought to the United States along with the rest of the German rocket team.” He shook his head in dismay. “I’m not sure the two of them would’ve gotten along, anyway.”
“I wouldn’t say that.” Henry looked at him sharply. “I was there when von Braun delivered the dedication speech at the Goddard Space Flight Center. He said that Bob was a lifelong inspiration for him, and that manned space exploration wouldn’t have progressed as quickly as it did if it hadn’t been for him.”