Chapter One
February 1941
A light snow had fallen as the black, bullet-proof Mercedes carrying Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler left the autobahn, which flowed out of Bavaria into Austria.
The car followed a country road for a kilometre and stopped. The driver rolled down his window and instructed two guards, in winter overcoats, to open a wire mesh gate with barbed wire on top. The gate was the only break in a fence that stretched into the distance on either side.
After a kilometre and a half of treacherous driving along a narrow road with snow-covered trees on either side they arrived at a checkpoint. Three guards, also dressed in winter overcoats, stood behind a yellow barrier which straddled the road. They froze to attention when they realised who was in the car. A Sergeant left the green wooden guard’s hut and marched to the waiting vehicle.
“Heil, mein Fuhrer!” He barked, while saluting, after looking in the car.
He signalled the guards to raise the barrier.
As the Mercedes drove past the saluting guards Hitler turned to Himmler and said: “I hope the money is being spent well here Heinrich.”
“Ja mein Fuhrer,” replied the small, bespectacled man, as he shifted uncomfortably on the seat.
They drove past green military trucks, which had black crosses with white outlines on the doors, and turned sharp right toward a cliff face, blasted out of the side of a mountain. The Mercedes pulled up in front of two green metal doors where two men in white lab coats waited. The driver jumped out and opened the rear door to allow the two Nazi leaders out.
“This is Doctor Teubert mein Fuhrer,” said Himmler as he stepped forward to introduce a tall, thin man with brown, wavy hair, “he is Director Heisenberg’s colleague.”
“Heil, mein Fuhrer!” Teubert said with a salute.
“Ah Doctor,” said Hitler. “What have you got here to show me?”
“Mein Fuhrer, as you know, we are building an underground laboratory and research area to aid in the development of the atomic bomb for the Third Reich.”
“Yes Herr Doctor.”
A guard pulled open one door, and the group of men walked into the interior of the mountain. The gaping mouth of a large metal tube greeted them to their left and ran into the distant darkness. There were cables and wooden crates lying everywhere. Men in dark blue overalls were rotating spanners and turning screwdrivers.
“Mein Fuhrer, this will be Wehrmacht Two the most powerful cyclotron in the world. Thanks to the funding you have given us for equipment like this we hope to be well ahead of the Americans in uranium enrichment. But, this is not what I have asked you here to witness. If you would follow me please?”
They walked further into the mountain and entered a darkened area.
“Karl, the lights please?” Teubert said to a plump man in a lab coat with short, fair hair and circular spectacles, who stood in semi-darkness by a far wall.
Suddenly a large area flooded with white light.
“Incredible!” exclaimed Hitler, for in front of him was a sleek, black bell-shaped object five metres in diameter and four metres in height. A section of the upper surface was missing, and cables ran into the interior.
“What is it?”
“Mein Fuhrer, this craft is from another world, possibly from another galaxy. We call it ‘The Bell’.”
“How did you come by it?”
“Shipped here from Poland!”
“Mein Fuhrer,” interrupted Himmler. “I was responsible for having the object brought here. The SS realised its potential when discovered in Poland, and after some initial work in the mine found in, we thought it safer to bring such an important find back to the Fatherland. I telephoned Doctor Teubert, and he suggested bringing it here where he would investigate when he was held up with his own work.”
“I see,” said Hitler walking toward the ship. “So Herr Doctor, what have you discovered - an atomic generator?”
“No mein Fuhrer this craft flew by polarizing anti-gravity action generated from an internal machine. The ship pulls the destination toward it when the machine is switched on and then when the machine is switched off, flies at the speed of light to that position.”
“And you have done this Herr Doctor?”
“Well no, because we do not know how to set the machine for spatial flight, but we have had success with inter-dimensional settings; you see, mein Fuhrer, this ship flies not only fly through space but also through dimensions. I can pull up a dimension and hold it by reducing the power rather than cutting it all together.”
Teubert turned to a youth in a lab coat. “Günter, the goggles please?”
The young assistant handed out pairs of shaded goggles.
“If you would put these on gentlemen; there may be bright flashes,” said Teubert.
Hitler and Himmler took off their caps and pulled the goggles over their heads Teubert then signalled to his assistant, who then pulled a lever next to the light switches on the cavern wall. A loud hum then filled the air.
“An extra precaution gentleman: a force field around the ship—another toy The Bell has given us!” Teubert said, as he walked back and stood beside Hitler and Himmler. He then picked up a control with a cable, which ran into the ship. He flicked two switches and two electric motors burst into life and joined the cacophony that filled the cavern.
“We have to use our electric motors because we don’t know what the ship, and consequentially the anti-gravity machine, was powered by. The source might have been damaged before the ship was found,” the doctor said, before he turned a knob and the motors howled. As he did so the atmosphere around the black craft crackled with static electricity.
Suddenly there was a flash of light and a sound like the crack of a whip, and standing gaping at the group of men beside The Bell was the dark figure of a woman with a face of wrinkled light, grey skin and total black eyes. Her dark ragged clothes hung from her two metre tall frame. Lifeless, fair hair lay flat on the top of her skull and fell down the sides of her head onto her shoulders.
She opened a distorted mouth to show a set of sharp, pointed teeth. Then, she leapt toward the men, but was restrained by the electromagnetic field. Hitler and Himmler jumped back as the electromagnets screamed with the extra strain placed on them and Günter, the youthful assistant, ran off into the darkness.
The demon closed her eyes and cackled. Then in a deep unworldly voice, she said: “You’re all going to die, and I will come for you!” Then she cackled again as she rose into the air.
Teubert, fearing that the electromagnets would not take another assault on the field, reduced the power of the motors and the figure disappeared with another sound like the crack of a whip.
Hitler removed his goggles and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. “That, I have to say Herr Doctor, was interesting. How do you stop the ship from disappearing into the dimension?”
“By keeping on the power supply to the anti-gravity machine and then reducing it gradually when we want to end contact.” Teubert said as he placed the control back on the floor. He then instructed Karl to stop the electromagnets.
“Mein Fuhrer, do I keep up the investigation on the ship?”
“Yes, by all means, and Herr Doctor, not a word of what happened here today must escape this work place.”
“Ja mein Fuhrer.”
Hitler turned to Himmler as the black Mercedes sped towards Munich, and said: “Heinrich, I want you to close the work under the mountain. I don’t want word getting out we, the head men of the Third Reich, were frightened by some vision from another dimension.” He then gazed at the passing fields. “Do you understand what I’m saying? That ship’s not to see the light of day again!”
“But, mein Fuhrer…”
“Heinrich,” interrupted Hitler. “Pass it around that we found them working too slowly. It will serve as a warning to Heisenberg or anyone else of what could happen to them if they do not get on with developing the atomic bomb for us; it will cause a somewhat ‘uncertainty principle’ if you like. The work in Poland might continue faster.”
“Ja mein Fuhrer,” said Himmler as he watched a rare trace of a smile pass over his leaders face.
Later that day as the light faded two covered jeeps with black crosses on the doors pulled up at the check point in front of the mountain laboratory.
“Sergeant!” shouted a man clad in white winter gear.
“Yes Captain?” answered the Sergeant, as both men saluted.
“Are the scientists inside the cavern?”
“Yes sir, they are hard at work.”
“And the army engineers?”
“They are on a break in the cabin.
“You, your men, and the engineers are to report to the base in Rosenheim.”
The two jeeps then drove to within two hundred metres of the cliff face and the men jumped out. Two of the commandos climbed above the half-closed green doors and set charges in several crevices, then threw the jointed cable down to one side. Another two climbed up a footpath one hundred metres from the doors and rolled heavy boulders over the escape hatch making sure one jammed the handle.
The captain pulled both doors shut and chained them. He then cut the electric and telephone cables, before picking up the charges cable. He laid it out as he walked toward the two vehicles, behind which his men took up position. He attached the wire ends to a detonator and crouched behind the driver’s door of the lead vehicle. The soldier looked at his men and turned the knob.
The cliff face above the doors erupted, and big slabs of rock crashed into the ground amid great plumes of dust. The blast echoed around the neighbouring mountains setting large flocks of birds into flight.
Glancing at his handiwork through the settling dust he rolled up the cable. He then put the detonator and the cable in the back of the lead vehicle and took a grenade from an ammo box. He signalled the second vehicle to leave before entering the front passenger seat. “Right, let’s go!” he barked.
Pulling the cord the captain lobed the grenade into the guard’s hut as they passed. The resultant explosion ripped through the building and threw splinter laden dust into the air.
At the end of the narrow lane two commandos chained the gate after the jeeps had passed and then the two vehicles’ drove off into the gathering gloom.