Last and First Contacts (Imaginings) (3 page)

BOOK: Last and First Contacts (Imaginings)
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The first time Adam took Dorothea to the comet’s bunker, a few days into January of 1943, he had to lead her by the hand through the woods. There wasn’t even a proper road laid down, though you could see tracks worn by the coming and going of von Braun’s most trusted colleagues. Guards were posted outside the rough facility, but Dorothea and Adam were allowed to enter the chamber alone. Inside, electric light bulbs dangled, evoking dazzling highlights. Laboratory equipment of various kinds had been set up, along with a rack of cameras.

And in the middle of it all stood the comet, as everybody continued to call it, though it clearly was not a comet at all. Dorothea was thrilled, nervous; she clung tightly to Adam’s hand.

It was a rough pyramid in outline, based on a sturdy frame. But the construction was open; there were no hull panels. Inside the frame huddled spheres and ovoids connected by tubing, metallic but with an oddly textured surface. A kind of glittering mesh, or web, lay draped over many of the components. The one point of commonality with von Braun’s A4 rockets was a flaring exhaust nozzle at the base.

‘It has an organic feel,’ she whispered. ‘Like a sculpture, an art work – you know, some abstract representation of the human form.’

Adam grunted. ‘The only artists I ever met are the ones I’ve been sent to arrest.’

‘There is no evidence of a pilot. But might
it
be alive, in fact? Can we be sure that the categories of our own existence apply to beings from another star?’

‘I can’t be sure of anything. Except that we’re whispering.’

‘Well, perhaps it hears us.’

‘Perhaps it
sees
us.’ He pointed to a disc of glass that looked like a camera lens. ‘It would be foolish to send a machine so far and not have it capable of observing what is around it.’

‘I wonder if it understands us.’

‘If so, it shows no signs. The scientists have tried to talk to it. They hold up cards with a variety of languages and diagrams – Pythagoras’s theorem on right triangles – you can imagine. There has been no response.’

She looked closer. Small limbs protruded here and there from the structure, like twigs; and, twig-like, some bore strange fruit, shining discs, blocks of what might be ceramic. ‘They are like the gifts on the big Christmas tree they put up in the square.’

‘Some of the scientists speculate that this is how it wishes to communicate. Through physical tokens.’ He laughed. ‘Perhaps more creatures in the galaxy have hands than have eyes or ears! The scientists have yet to pluck up the courage to take these offerings. That is, if they are offerings, if this really is some friendly emissary rather than a weapon.’

‘Why should creatures from another star wish to strike at us?’

‘For the same reasons the Americans do. Or men from Mars. Have you not read H. G. Wells?’

‘Yes, but I also read Kurd Lasswitz, who had the Martians come in peace. It is clear to me that this artefact has come in friendship. Look at the way it landed. It evidently has a rocket drive, powerful enough to be visible across the solar system. Yet it came down on a parachute, as gently as possible, even if as a consequence it landed a little off course, in this wood. It was being considerate to us; it did not exterminate us with its very landing!’

‘Hmm. Perhaps you’re right. Look at this.’ He went to a table cluttered with laboratory gear, and picked up a polished wooden box with a kind of wand attached by a cable. He carried this to the comet, knelt down, and waved the wand under the rocket nozzle. There were clicks from the box, and a needle wavered.

‘A Geiger counter,’ Dorothea said, wondering.

‘Yes. The nozzle is faintly radioactive – not enough to do any harm, but Doctor von Braun has mandated that all but indentured workers have to limit their time of contact. Not that we allow any indentured workers in here.’

‘Then clearly Doctor von Braun was right. The craft used the energies of the atom to cross between the stars, and again made itself safe before exposing itself to us.’ She walked around the comet again. She could
smell
it, an exotic metallic tang, a scent of burning. ‘Surely it came here in friendship, Adam.’

Adam put away the Geiger counter. ‘But friendship’s not all it can offer us.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘This is not to be repeated.’ Just for a heartbeat he was a steely-eyed SS man. ‘Think of it, Dorothea. Think what we have here. You yourself saw the interstellar drive flaring across the dark hall of the solar system. What if such a torch were turned on London or Moscow or New York?’

She flinched. ‘That’s horrible.’

He laughed, and hugged her. ‘Well, this is a weapons research establishment! But let’s not speak of it.’ He held her closer, letting his hand slide over her hips, the cleft of her buttocks. He whispered, ‘Nobody knows we’re here. Not even that tame priest of yours. The guards outside won’t bother us.’

She felt faintly shocked, yet excited. ‘Now, Adam –’

‘It’s warm in here, isn’t it? Better than that draughty beach. And there are a couple of cots, for when the scientists work over. Better than a blanket on the sand, or the back of a staff car.’

Dorothea peered up at the alien, the glistening lens-like disc. ‘Adam! Not in front of the visitor!’

‘Oh, come.’ He drew her to him, and nuzzled her neck. ‘What, do you think they are all Catholics on Alpha Centauri? Which is where von Braun believes the craft came from by the way. If it came to observe humanity shouldn’t we give it the chance to see us in the wild, so to speak?’

She laughed in his ear, softly. ‘So it’s not me you’re interested in but science, is that it?’

‘You know me, my love. Ever the experimentalist.’ And, unbuttoning his black uniform jacket, he led her to the cots.

 

Winter turned to spring. Rumours of setbacks in the war did nothing to reduce the pressure at Peenemünde.

Then RAF surveillance flights were spotted, high in the clear Baltic air. Dorothea actually sighted one with her reflecting telescope, a very high altitude plane.

This sent the security services into a fury, as they tried to find out who was betraying the secrets of the base to the English. There were denunciations, disappearances, hangings. Most of the victims were indentured workers, the French and the Poles, but not all. Even one of the girls from Dorothea’s dormitory, a bright, bubbly Prussian lass called Gilda, was taken away.

Everybody understood the significance of the RAF flights. The English and Americans had become proficient, prolific, expert bombers; night after night the very heart of the homeland, industrial and urban, was being pounded and burned. If the RAF were spotting Peenemünde, then the bombs would come here too; it was only a question of when.

The passing of the months, the evolution of spring into summer, did nothing to ease the tension.

Dorothea saw little of Adam, so bound up were they by their respective duties.

Meanwhile, a secret within a secret, the work on the alien ship went on.

And in this period Dorothea came to learn that she had her own secret. If it were revealed, perhaps she would be sent away, and she could not bear that. So she stayed silent, keeping the truth from Father Kopleck who had warned her to be careful, even from the other girls she lived with, though she suspected some of them must know. And she did not tell Adam, when she did see him, though she knew in the end she must.

One evening in June, at the end of a shift, Dorothea walked with Father Kopleck across the big parking area before Production Hall F 1. Work units under the command of the SS were erecting a tall wire fence around the entire Hall, and Dorothea and the priest had to make an unwelcome diversion. She was exhausted from the day’s work, and felt increasingly heavy on her feet.

For his part Father Kopleck was restless, angry. He had been administering funerals in Trassenheide, the compound of the indentured workers. Many of the Poles were Catholics. He was native to this place; it seemed to damage his soul to have to oversee so many funerals of so many foreigners.

To distract them both she spoke of the work done on the comet. Kopleck, who had been in on the secret from the beginning, was one of the few in whom she felt able to confide.

‘They grew impatient,’ she said. ‘Doctor von Braun and the others. So they cut it open.’

‘They did what?’

‘It was done under Doctor von Braun’s personal supervision. I was not there; I saw the results later. The comet is now in two sections: the heavy propulsion unit that was below, and the lighter, more complex components above, now removed. They used oxy-acetylene torches from the production workshops. Hacksaws, in some places. And parachute thread.’

‘Parachute thread?’

‘I mean, from the comet’s own chute. The thread itself is a mystery – such a simple component, yet quite beyond us! I have handled some of it. Light as a fishing line, yet unbreakably tough. They have fixed this to frames and use it like a hacksaw blade; it goes through hardened steel like butter, I have seen it. And they used this to cut the comet’s big structural support.’

‘So they decapitated it.’

His tone was aggrieved, and she glanced at him, uneasy. She sometimes fretted that he was liable to talk himself into trouble. ‘The upper section may contain the “brain” of the ship. There may be some equivalent of the electronics of the A4, something like its gyroscopic guidance. The “gifts” it brought for us, the discs and pods and other baubles, have been taken away for analysis. But the work on such items has been perfunctory.’

‘Compared to the work on the engine section?’

‘Yes.’ She tried to remember what she had seen, the diagrams she had been shown by friendly, or naive, technicians. ‘There are banks of intense light sources. So intense they themselves can cut metal! The technicians have been able to activate some of them.’ Experiments which had cost one man his life. ‘These light sources are arranged in a kind of hollow sphere, so that their beams concentrate on a point at the centre of the sphere. And into this point a pellet is fired. We have found a kind of magazine with many of these pellets.’

‘Pellets? Of what?’

‘Of isotopes of hydrogen and helium, it seems. The physicists speculate that under the intense pressure of the light beams these pellets are made to undergo nuclear fusion…’

He smiled now. ‘My father and grandfather were fishermen. My grasp of theoretical physics is surprisingly limited.’

‘I’m sorry. The pellets go off like small bombs. One after the other, very rapidly. But these explosions do not destroy the ship. On the contrary, they push it forward, like a firecracker throwing a tin can in the air. The physicists marvel at all this, at how so much energy can be stored and deployed in such a compact form.’

‘And the weapons designers imagine how it would be –’

‘If such a thing were mounted on the tip of an A4, yes.’

He held her arm. ‘Stand back.’

A convoy of trucks rolled across the open space before them, heading for a barrier set in the brand new fence around Hall F 1. There the trucks had to queue, engines running, while papers were shown and orders discussed. Dorothea and the priest were held up.

Dorothea found herself standing beside one of the trucks. It was like a truck for transporting cattle or sheep, a dirty, smelly thing with wooden slats enclosing its bed. But in that space were crammed humans, not animals. They were all men as far as she could see, all wearing what looked like grimy striped pyjamas. They were all standing; in fact there was no room for them to sit. To Dorothea they looked like old men, gaunt, many hairless, even toothless.

But then one of them spoke to her. ‘Hello, lady.’ He smiled a gappy smile. She saw that he wasn’t old at all. He was pressed against the wooden slats, holding on with thin fingers. He was distinguished from the others by a red triangle sewn to his striped shirt.

‘Don’t speak to him,’ Kopleck murmured.

‘You are prettier than these uncouth fellows I must travel with. My name is Dirk. I am a Dutch fellow.’ His German was heavily accented.

The other men in the truck were watching, wide-eyed.

She found herself saying, ‘My name is Dorothea.’

‘Dorothea! Pretty name. Where from, Dorothea?’

‘Munich.’

‘Pretty place. Me, I came from Buchenwald most recently. You heard of Buchenwald? Before that from Nijmegen. You heard of Nijmegen?’

‘I noticed your red triangle.’

He smiled. ‘Oh, this old thing? Means I was in the resistance.’

‘Hey! You!’ An SS man came running up, rifle in hand. ‘Shut up!’ He slammed the butt of his rifle against the slats, into Dirk’s fingers. Dirk fell back with a howl of agony, into the darkness of the truck.

Kopleck was already marching Dorothea away.

 

The RAF bombers came on the night of 17
th
August.

The sirens sounded at midnight. The Lancasters and Halifaxes came in over the sea, so there was very little warning, and there was only perfunctory resistance from German planes and anti-aircraft fire.

The girls from Dorothea’s dormitory scrambled out of the building, bundled in dressing gowns and coats. The sky was clear, the moon full. Led by wardens wielding blue torches, the girls made for their assigned bunkers, talking loudly, nervously.

But Dorothea broke away and ran for Production Hall F 1. She knew that Adam was on duty on the fence there tonight. She had barely seen him for months. She still had not told him her own deep secret; she’d not had the chance. Soon it would be obvious to everybody, of course. But if this was to be their last night on Earth, she wanted him to know that he was, or would have been, a father.

She found him at the F 1 fence. The big gate was open, and officers and other ranks were fleeing for the bunkers. When he saw her he grabbed her arm. ‘What are you doing here?’ His voice was all but drowned by the sirens.

‘I had to see you. We have to talk.’

‘What, now?’

There was a shuddering thump, deep and visceral. They both staggered.

She looked up. She could see the RAF planes now, like moths, black against a moonlit sky. There must have been hundreds of them. They were dropping flares, red, white, green, brilliant pinpricks that trailed smoke as they fell.

BOOK: Last and First Contacts (Imaginings)
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