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PLEASE NOTE:
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Begrudgingly, Captain of the first rank Goran Toporov thinks that the B72 is an excellent vessel, even though it was once a fascist war machine.
The modified type 21 U-Boat is faster and more manoeuvrable underwater than any other class of submarine; it’s able to stay submerged longer too, and thanks to the radar detection apparatus attached to its snorkel, it can check for unseen prying electromagnetic eyes before resurfacing fully. All round, it’s the perfect tool from which to spy on capitalist America and its development of the atomic bomb, as well as the effort to master another former Nazi weapon, the V2 rockets.
The Soviet Union’s political masters fear that, if the Americans ever put A-bomb and rocket together, which is undoubtedly their aim, Mother Russia will face a threat just as grave as that posed by the Germans in the great patriotic war. Therefore, it is vital that the Politburo stay informed of the progress that the Yankees are making towards their goal, so the Soviet Union can be better prepared to respond.
Toporov has the B72 positioned in the Gulf of Mexico, some seven hundred and fifty kilometres west-north-west of Havana. From here, over several weeks, six-metre balloons, with long streaming tails, attached to which are a row of sensitive disc microphones, are being released. The prevailing winds take the rising balloons all the way over to the New Mexico desert, where Russia’s opponents have their secret test facilities, and from where the balloons listen for the low-frequency sounds emitted by atomic blasts and rocket lunches alike.
These sound vibrations can carry for hundreds, if not thousands, of kilometres, and be slow to fade at the high altitudes attained by the balloons, because they are trapped, bouncing between layers of air of differing density above and below. Once the cleverly designed aerial ears have reached this critical atmospheric layer, the balloons carrying them are capable of stabilising their height, so they remain ideally positioned for their task. And, in turn, the B72 will be waiting, just sub-surface, for the transmissions from the air-borne eavesdroppers, ready to report any activity back to Moscow.
Toporov’s is not a very exciting mission, staying within one limited area, only surfacing at night, to launch another balloon when contact with its predecessor is lost. But he accepts that it’s a worthwhile task that needs to be done.
The B72’s sister submarine, the B73, has a potentially more stimulating mission. She watches over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, the place where the imperialists exploded two atomic devices last year. As the second of those bombs was detonated underwater, the B73 needs to exercise great care not to become an unwilling participant, should the decadent Americans decide to carry out another test with little or no notice.
‘Balloon KV12 is picking up some unusual sounds, Captain.’ Vanko Krotsky, the B72’s Senior Lieutenant, calls across the narrow control room. The Ukrainian is leaning over the radio, radar and hydrophone operator, Senior Seaman’ Shchepkin’s, station, holding one of the earpieces from the receiver’s headset to his left ear.’
‘An atomic test, or rocket launch?’ enquires Toporov.
Krotsky hesitates. ‘Ah… neither… I think… the sound is too… musical, Captain.’ He concentrates on the sound for a few more seconds before finally saying, with a shake of his head, ‘Captain, I feel you should hear this for yourself, I’ve never heard anything like it.’ Adding, as Toporov joins them, ‘Sorry, sir, I don’t know what to make of it.’
‘Don’t apologise for asking for help when you need it, Vanko,’ the Captain says, taking the headphones and putting them on properly, covering both ears, and then closing his eyes so he can listen without distraction. The sound is a series of changing tones, in the mid-to-high-frequency range. After several moments, he frowns and lowers the headphones, so they hang around the back of his neck. ‘Are we recording this ?’ he asks the Lieutenant.
Another breakthrough made by the Germans was the use of magnetic tape for sound recording, something that they came up with during the late 1920s’ but kept under tight control. They refined the technology throughout the war, and by the end were capable of very high-quality recording and playback, which they used extensively for broadcasting their propaganda during the war, and for recording intercepted allied transmissions.’
‘Yes, Captain,’ Krotsky replies.
‘Good,’ says Toporov. ‘What do you make of it, Senior Seaman Shchepkin?’
Shchepkin, who is seated, looks up at his commanding officer. ‘I’m not sure either, Captain, ’that’s why I asked Lieutenant Krotsky’s opinion, sir. At first, I thought it might be a new kind of jet engine the Americans’ are testing. But I don’t think it is; it’s too… tranquil for that and…’
‘Go on, Shchepkin,’ prompts Krotsky, aware that for some reason the radio operator is reluctant to say what he really thinks.
Shchepkin flushes red with embarrassment. ‘W-Well sir, as you heard, it’s not the blast of an explosion or the roaring of a rocket motor.’
The two officers nodded.
Shchepkin continued, ‘Besides, the intensity of the sound from either of those would have diminished by now, but this hasn’t; the sound level now is the same as it was ten minutes ago, sir. And, it’s just too… calm and smooth to be a jet engine. There’s no whistle or rush of air, and it’s definitely not the exhaust of a conventional piston-engined aeroplane… it’s…’
‘Out with it, Senior Seaman,’ says Toporov, beginning to feel impatient.
‘Um, well, sir… the only way I can explain it is that it’s the sort of sound I imagine a rainbow would make, if a rainbow made any sound, that is, sir… which I know it doesn’t, sir. Sorry, sir.’
There is silence. Shchepkin observes the different expressions form on the officers’ faces. He can see Krotsky becoming angry, the Lieutenant’s lips tightening, and his demeanour stiffening; he is getting ready to bawl at Shchepkin.
The Captain, on the other hand, is more reticent and seems lost in thought; he re-sets the headset to his ears for a few moments, before handing it back to Krotsky. ‘I’m not sure about the rainbow, um… Konstantin, isn’t it?’
Shchepkin nods vigorously.
The captain continues. ‘But if I had to guess, and it seems I do, I would say its some kind of natural phenomenon. Possibly converging air currents mixing.’
Shchepkin isn’t going to point out the flaws in the Captain’s reasoning. ‘Yes sir, could be, sir.’
‘It seems to have stopped now, anyway. Inform Lieutenant Krotsky immediately if it returns.’ Toporov nods to Lieutenant Krotsky, ‘I’ll be in my cabin if anything else happens.’
‘Yessir.’
Earl Perry had read about the flying discs seen over Washington State in the local rag, reckoned it was just those army fly boys playing with them German toys that they captured at the end of the war, and thought no more of it.
Until that is, he saw strange coin-shaped objects in the sky above the ranch, one beautiful late June day, a whole bunch of them: six, seven…no, eight. Darndest thing, there they were, flying in formation, making a neat circle, then without warning, the configuration broke up, and they all shot off in different directions, like a starburst distress flare going off; except, of course, this weren't no flare. And the speed of those things had to be seen to be believed, quicker than them jets they kept buzzing the ranch with, spooking the cattle. God darn ‘em.
Earl had borne witness to some mighty strange things going on around these parts over the years, including that A-Bomb test right before they dropped a couple on the Japs. So he wasn’t about to get these objects confused with a missile test gone wrong. For over a decade now he’d watched rockets being launched, with varying degrees of success, including more than a few explosive failures. Mostly by that Goddard fella, God rest his soul, over at Roswell; good American rockets too. And lately, from the White Sands Proving Ground where the army was fine-tuning leftover Nazi vengeance weapons… Ha, some of that Kraut junk even makes it into the air without blowing itself to bits; how they were allowed to march all over Europe and Russia, the good Lord only knows.
But old Earl ain’t never seen a spectacle like those discs or whatever they were. It made him think of that pre-war radio show, the one that got the folks back east so worked up, about spaceships invading from Mars; maybe that wasn’t so far-fetched after all. And come to think of it, wasn’t it the truth that the Indians around here believed their ancestors met up and partied with sky gods?
The timing got Earl wondering as well; the A-bomb, the rockets, and they reckon it won’t be long before the Ruskies have ‘em too, it’s what those scientists have been going on about with that newfangled doomsday clock of theirs, saying we’re all about to die in an atomic war. Could be, these sky gods have come back for the entertainment of watching us blow each other up!
‘Yes, Lieutenant, that’s what I said, one of those things changed from a kinda silver-grey colour to yellow-gold right before my eyes.’ Lord, don’t this man listen? ‘Sure did, and a second or two after they split up, they’d travelled so far out to the horizon they’d gone an’ clean disappeared…’
The ‘Lieutenant’ on the other end of the telephone wasn’t an Army Air Force officer at all. Twenty-seven-year-old Clayton Foster was part of a high-level team of ‘advisors’ sent by the Pentagon to, among other things, keep an eye on the German engineers working on the V2 rockets and assess the worth of their output. Although technically civilians, Clayton, along with all the other members of the unofficial and so far undocumented Project Sign, wore the uniform and blue and gold insignia of the Counterintelligence Corps while on secondment to the double bases of Alamogordo and White Sands.
‘We’ll send someone out to take your statement today, Mr Perry… Yessir, they should be with you this afternoon… Yessir, thank you for informing the army about the sighting.’
Thirty minutes later, Clayton knocked on one of the many office doors in the two-storey brick-built administration block, this one just along the corridor from his own, on the ground floor. Without waiting for a reply, he stuck his head around the door; immediately he realised his mistake, and knew what was coming. He hadn’t expected Colonel Nathaniel Rawley, to be in Keith’s office. ‘Sorry, sir, I didn’t…’
‘No you didn’t, soldier!’ Rawley snapped, wheeling around and cutting Clayton off. ‘You do not just barge in on a senior officer, you knock and wait to be called, is that clear? And stand at attention when I’m addressing you, soldier.’
Clayton hated the way that some army officers treated him like a freshman at high school. But he knew that while he was in the army’s house he had to play by its rules, and, as Colonel Rawley, or "the old man" as he was often called behind his back, was New Mexico’s Alamogordo Army Air Field base commander, this was very much his house. Feeling a little embarrassed, he stepped fully into the office and did a sloppy and awkward salute before giving his best impression of the static upright pose the colonel expected, ending up staring blankly at the large ceiling fan slowly rotating above the colonel’s head.
The colonel frowned, clearly not impressed, and turned to the other person in the office. ‘Major Weller.’ Something in Rawley’s tone told ‘Major’ Keith Weller that now would be an excellent time to join his younger team member. So he abruptly stood bolt upright, his simple wooden desk chair falling over backwards, in the process, its (slightly) padded seat coming away. ‘Sir.’
‘I realise that you and your men are only masquerading as counterintelligence officers. However, if the illusion is to be successful, then everyone in your group must conduct themselves accordingly. That includes observing the basic standards that go to making a good soldier, and you and your men fail that test badly, Major.
‘The slapdash way your unit conducts itself sets a poor example for the enlisted men, and is therefore bad for morale. Unless you buck up your ideas and improve the general demeanour of your charges, I’ll arrange a little private tuition with one of the drill sergeants for you and your staff. Is that clear?’
‘Yessir.’
Having delivered the dressing down, Colonel Rawley snapped to attention, delivered a karate-sharp salute, wheeled through one hundred and eighty degrees with perfect precision, and marched out.
Clayton breathed out, and his body deflated as it took on a more relaxed posture. ‘Sorry, Keith, I had no idea you were with the old man.’
‘It’s alright,’ said Weller, reassembling his chair and re-seating himself behind his desk. ‘Err, it may be as well to heed what he said about knocking and waiting in the future.’
Clayton sniggered. ‘Yeah, save him exploding all over us.’ Then he noticed Weller’s expression. ‘Oh, you’re serious, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so, Clayton; I can see his point. The man is trying to run this base, and he can’t have one group of men perceived to be exempt from the regulations by the rest of the camp. We should accept his point about it being bad for the morale of the rest of the troops.
Clayton thought for a moment and nodded. ‘Ok... Major, I get it,’ he said with a grin, ‘I’ll give it a go, I’ve got to say though, I feel stupid practising standing to attention and saluting myself in the mirror.’
Weller smiled. ‘Thank you, Clayton, Lieutenant, I appreciate it. Hopefully one day, the government will make Project Sign official, and we can go back to just being civilian scientists.’
‘Or they make us join the army, or the new air force.’
‘Very likely,’ thirty-eight-year-old Weller agreed. ‘Now, tell me, Clayton, what did you want?’
‘We’ve just received another report of flying discs, from a rancher up at Corona, and this one is a carbon copy of what the Germans have reported from their wartime experiences. The guy seemed rock-solid certain in what he saw too, even down to the silver-gold colour change.’
‘I see. Did anyone here at the base, or at White Sands, see anything?’
‘No, not this time, nothing that’s been reported, anyway. I’ve checked with the lookout towers of both bases, as well as administration. Same story from Sandia and Roswell bases too; if the reported sighting didn’t so closely resemble what the Germans reported, I wouldn’t have brought it to you.’
‘Hmm, and this was multiple craft moving in unison, then rapidly dispersing towards the horizon?’
Clayton nodded.
‘Then whoever, or whatever is doing this is spreading their wings, so to speak. Up to now the sightings have been confined to White Sands, and we’ve been able to keep a lid on things.’ Weller looked thoughtful.
‘I was thinking of taking Rocco out to see this guy this afternoon, and persuading him that it’s in his best interest not to talk about this – to anyone,’ said Clayton
‘Tell him the security of the nation is at stake, and if he does talk, we’ll throw him in a military prison until September, when the new National Security Act that comes into force. At that time he’ll be transferred to the state penitentiary, where he will rot for the rest of his days. Hopefully, that should keep him quiet.’
‘Captain, it’s the tones, they’re back,’ said Senior Lieutenant Krotsky.
Toporov made his way to the radio station. ‘Same as before?’ The question was for Krotsky, but the Lieutenant looked to radio operator Shchepkin for clarification.
‘No, sir. This time it’s not different tones coming one after another, but two, or even three sounding together,’ said the radio operator.
‘You mean in a chord, as when a violinist plays more than one string with the bow? May I listen for myself, Senior Seaman?’ The Captain held out his hand for the headphones.
‘I guess so, sir,’ replied Shchepkin, handing over the ‘phones, then added apologetically, ‘I’ve never seen a violin and don’t know how they are played… but I think I can work it out from—’
‘Shchepkin!’ Senior Lieutenant Krotsky’s rebuke was abrupt. ‘Don’t waste the Captain’s time with your ramblings.’
‘Sorry, sirs.’
‘That’s all right, Konstantin,’ said the Captain, who many years prior had had violin lessons, and still prided himself on having something of a musical ear. He listened long enough to recognise a harmonic from three distinct tones. ‘Can I also hear the recording from four days ago?’
It took about twenty minutes for Shchepkin to dig the tape out of the store and thread it through the second recording and playback machine, which he had to retrieve from the captain’s cabin first. When it was done, Toporov listened to one earpiece connected to the tape from the 25th of June, and one from the live transmission coming from the latest balloon, KV13, high over the New Mexico desert. It was immediately apparent that the original tones, although higher in pitch than the more complex chord currently being picked up, were in harmony with it. He was going to have to reevaluate his original conclusion that the sounds were generated by random interplay between air currents.
‘Is balloon KV13 fitted with loudspeakers?’ Toporov asked.
‘Yes, Captain,’ replied Lieutenant Krotsky, looking a bit perplexed.
Added to the balloon design specification to allow for testing and calibration, the two loudspeakers of German wartime design could accurately reproduce sound transmitted to them to within a fine tolerance and at a reasonable volume.
‘Then can we broadcast the original tones through those loudspeakers?’
Krotsky made eye contact with Shchepkin, who nodded. ‘Yes, Captain,’ he said.
*
‘We’re picking up a secondary source of pressure waves.’ Yoklish’s datastream displayed a slight hint of yellow, indicating mild confusion.
It took the Overseer several cycles to respond. ‘There is an unpowered vessel, an atmospheric floatation device, called a balloon, within the scanning volume. This is emanating a poor copy of our scan residue from four planetary cycles past.’
‘Oh; is that another trick they’ve learned since our last visit, then?’ Idulica’s surprise was evident by the orange hue to her stream.
‘What I want to know is, how come they’ve been able to record the scan? I didn’t think their primitive ‘radar’ was capable of detecting such subtleties.’ Yoklish’s question added more bandwidth to the flow.
‘Certain peoples of the planet Earth have been flying unattended balloons for hundreds of their years; the recent addition to this capability appears to be the ability to record atmospheric pressure waves, or what they call sound waves.’ Va’s reply was for Idulica, as she asked the first question; the overseer preferred to do things in order.
‘We shouldn’t be surprised; when we last inspected the place they hadn’t yet learned to fly in machines, or how to shatter atoms. Recording pressure waves seems a simple task by comparison.’ Dirkot’s stream conveyed no emotion.
Va now addressed Yoklish’s question. ‘Their radar cannot yet discern sound waves. However, the scanner reveals that the balloon is transmitting to and receiving electromagnetic signals from a second vessel, just subsurface in the large, semi-enclosed body of water some distance to the planetary south-east. These radio signals, as the local humans refer to them, are now a ubiquitous method of communication, used by all the major groupings of people on Earth, including by their fighting forces.
‘From its hidden posture, it’s probable that this vessel, and by extension the balloon, is undertaking a clandestine task, very likely interested in the same research and testing facilities as ourselves. I surmise that the balloon is fitted with specialised equipment that converts sound pressure waves into radio waves and is also able to do the same in reverse, and they are using that equipment to replay an earlier recording made of our last scan.’
‘But why would they do that?’ asked Yoklish, his stream still tinged a confused yellow.
‘Because they are curious creatures,’ Dirkot stated with authority.
‘And that’s why we like them,’ added Idulica.
*
Mexican air force pilot Jerardo Gutierrez’s patrol route is longer today. He’s flying his American-made 47D Thunderbolt fighter north and east of Merida, looking for a fishing boat feared lost in the Gulf of Mexico. He’s done more flying in the past two days than since his 201 squadron, the Aztec Eagles, got back from active service in the Philippines in ‘45. However, at this point, the hours spent haven’t been very productive, though it’s not been for want of trying. He’s been up as high as ten thousand metres, sweeping the Gulf from side to side, with his gaze out to the horizon for anything that looks like it could be the missing vessel. When he’s spotted something that might be the little boat, he drops down to less than a hundred metres and circles around to get a good look, a manoeuvre that’s been repeated many times now, all without success.
The truth is, if the crew are in a tiny lifeboat, or even worse, clinging to wreckage or a life-buoy, unless they have a flare gun, the chances of Jerardo or any of the others spotting them are remote, and there are plenty of sharks in the Gulf, so if they are in the water… The thought sends a shiver down the thirty-one-year-olds back. His father still fishes these waters, has been doing so for the last forty-odd years; the pain and the worry that the families must be going through —.
Wait. Something catches the corner of his eye; a small wake is being created on the surface of the water, although at first, he can’t see precisely what’s making it. He turns towards the disturbance and descends, slowing his speed as much as he dares, to just above a stall; as he closes with the whitewater trail his wartime training kicks in, to tell him exactly what he’s spotted. It’s a snorkel, a breathing tube, used by submerged submarines to draw air while keeping the bulk of the vessel’s hull out of sight. After making a note of its exact position, and radioing in his findings, he heads away from the submarine as quickly as he can. You never know, they may not have spotted him.
Jerardo Gutierrez’s report of an active submarine off the Mexican coast is later struck from the records.
Clayton Foster will never tire of anything to do with rockets. He’s been captivated since the age of nine when, for the first time, one of Robert Goddard’s rockets was the first to carry a scientific payload. It wasn’t much: a camera, barometer and thermometer; it didn’t get that high either, maxing out at the grand height of ninety feet! But, when his dad, an amateur enthusiast, explained the significance, that one day these things would go a lot higher, even to the Moon and maybe Venus or Mars, and, they’d be carrying people up there too, Clayton was hooked.
His father signed them both up for membership of the American Interplanetary Society as soon as it came into being, in the spring of 1930. Founded by some well-known science fiction writers of the day, the society had the know-how, and the means, to launch its own rockets, and Clayton and his dad were on Staten Island, New York, in May 1933, to see its first successful launch of a liquid-fueled rocket.
The society also spawned Clayton’s taste for science fiction, and he read many of the stories that its founders Pendray, Lasser and Manning wrote when not involved in the development of real rockets. He was also an avid fan of the comic-book character Buck Rogers, and, from his first appearance in the mid-1930s, Flash Gordon too. But when all was said and done, the fiction was just an expression of his love for the science of rocketry, and that always came first.
After obtaining his bachelor’s degree, he wanted to become a graduate student of Dr Robert Goddard, at his facility here in New Mexico, to work at his Masters on population and guidance systems. Unfortunately, for the rest of the world as well as Clayton, the war had started by then, and he’d enlisted, but he figured he could come back to it once the Japs and the Germans were beat. But, just as the fighting was ending, Dr Goddard had died, so he never got to meet his hero.
Apparently, the father of American rocketry did get to see the V2s and their component pieces as the war neared its conclusion, and allied forces advanced across Europe. He recognised many of the concepts utilised by the Nazis as being very like his own; not only in the use of liquid fuel, but in having a pump to inject that fuel into the rocket engine’s combustion chamber, as well as vanes in the rocket exhaust for guidance, and the use of a gyroscope for stabilisation. Ironically, he may actually have personally helped them in the early stages of development, holding several consultations with German rocket specialists in the years before the war.
If only Uncle Sam had backed Goddard like the Nazis supported the V2 project… Thinks Clayton, looking at the forty-six-foot rocket from the safety of the well-protected blockhouse. We’d be launching our own rocket now and not something cobbled together from foreign-made secondhand parts.
Refuelling was completed almost an hour ago, and the gantry crane has retired to a safe distance. After a nod from the site controller, a Private steps outside and fires the three-minute warning flare. A hush descends over the twelve souls encased beneath the blockhouse’s twenty-seven-foot thick blast-proof roof, except for the communications officer, who is continuously receiving status updates from the observation stations scattered around the launch site.
The launch controller announces the two-minute mark and repeats the action with sixty seconds to go; from twenty-seconds out he counts down to zero and then says, ‘Rocket away,’ before actually pressing the button that will hopefully send the projectile skywar
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