The Space Front, Chapter 7

Konrad

Dr. Konrad Hollenbach squinted in the gloomy light of his basement workshop, clutching his soldering iron in cramped, clumsy hands. He’d burned himself twice already, and still hadn’t mastered the trick of using the thing. This task would better suit one of the base’s technicians, but they wouldn’t work with him anymore. Not without someone ordering them to, and for this, no one would give that order. The Reich didn’t pay people to work on pet projects.

So, he did the work himself. This late in the evening, he could steal a few hours away to tinker. Before him stretched a field of telephone relays, laid out in neat rows across a smooth wooden table. Lines stenciled onto the surface provided a meticulous blueprint, writ large right into the wood. It showed all the parts in their proper order, hundreds of wires and switches stretching across the sanded pine planks. Taking up the first relay from the row in front of him, he twisted a wire around the contact point and brought the tip of the soldering iron up to kiss the bare metal.

To the casual observer, it probably looked like madness. His colleagues certainly thought so. More than a thousand telephone relays? When he’d requisitioned them, the quartermaster had laughed him right out of the stockroom. They’d see, though. When Konrad presented them with a way to perform any calculation they needed, they’d understand.

With his free hand, he felt along the edge of the table until his fingertips tripped over a length of lead solder. Pinching it between thumb and forefinger, he rolled it back and forth before touching it to the hot wire. You had to give it just enough; too much and the electric current might not flow right. Too little, and the wire could come loose, and you’d spend hours tugging at each relay to find the bad connection. He knew he wasn’t very good at this, but he pressed on anyway. A thin curl of smoke rose from the melting lead, the smell of hot metal stinging his nostrils. When he pulled his hands away, he left a fat bead of the lead solder behind, holding the wire in place. Another one down. Only a thousand more to go, he thought to himself, reaching for the next one in line. As his fingers touched it, the door behind him banged open, slamming into the wall and flooding the room with bright light from the hall outside.

He dropped the hot iron, knocking over a half a dozen of the relays. They tipped over with a clatter, like the first stones of an avalanche, smashing into the carefully arranged rows he’d set up. Scrambling, he tried to get an arm in front of the cascade. All he managed to do was overturn still more of the relays, sending hundreds of delicate mechanical pieces clattering to the table like so many dominoes. He cringed as the last one toppled over, hitting the floor with forlorn “crack,” and waited for the shouting to start.

There was an exasperated sigh from behind him, somehow more cutting than the yelling he’d anticipated. The light from the hall poured through the open doorway into the dim workspace, falling on him like a spotlight.

“Again, Konrad?” The newcomer drawled. Konrad closed his eyes, heart sinking. He recognized the speaker: Dr. Fritz Lusser, his former colleague and current supervisor. “What is this mess? You’re supposed to be working on the internal navigation status report.”

Petty tyrant. Konrad thought to himself, picking up the soldering iron from where it had fallen. “It’s done.” He said, schooling his face to meekness. He dared not let his anger show. The heating element had left behind a burn scar, marring one of the careful lines drawn under it. “I left it on your desk for review.” The blackened wood stood out from the rest of the diagram, ugly and raw.

“No, it’s not.” Dr. Lusser said, stepping into the room and propping the door open. “Neither is it on your desk, or in the drop-box…is it in here somewhere?”

Belatedly, Konrad realized that Dr. Lusser was right. “Try the table to the left of the door, Lusser.” He scraped at the burned wood with his thumbnail, trying to clear the burn and succeeding only in splintering the wood.

“That’s Dr. Lusser to you.” The other man snapped, rustling through the stack of papers on the table. “None of these have cover sheets…Ah, here it is.”

Take it and leave me in peace! Konrad thought desperately. He could hear the crackling of pages as Dr. Lusser leafed through the report, ignoring the silent entreaty. The burnt wood tore even further under his anxious thumbnail. He’d have to sand it, and redraw the line...Why couldn’t the man just go away?

“So maximum rocket accuracy at the distance we’re working with won’t be better than…what, a five-kilometer radius?” Dr. Lusser asked.

“At best.” Konrad answered, giving up on the blackened patch; he was only making it worse, and Lusser wasn’t leaving. Dejected, he turned to face his tormentor. The light from the hallways outlined the man’s tall, lean form and draped his face in sour shadows. Lusser’s sharp eyes flickered across the pages from behind his glasses, a hard frown on his thin, cruel mouth. He wore an immaculate white lab coat, more status symbol than utilitarian garment, and it made Konrad uncomfortably aware of the grime staining his own lab coat. He cleared his throat and continued, trying to hide his discomfort. “That’s assuming relatively constant weather conditions across the channel…a more realistic estimate would be ten kilometers.”

Dr. Lusser flipped through the rest of the report, scanning it. “What’s this…?” His eyes narrowed as he started to read more carefully. “Electrical transistors? Programmable…? Konrad, this isn’t what you’re being paid to work on!” He threw the report back on the table, scattering pages. “You’re supposed to be refining the feedback system!”

“But the feedback system won’t work!” Konrad insisted. Sweat prickled his brow. “It’s all reactive, which is why the maximum accuracy is so poor, you see?”

“I don’t see.” Dr. Lusser said flatly, folding his arms. “Explain it to me.”

It was in the report, but Konrad could hardly tell the man that. He swallowed hard and tried to summarize what he’d written. “The system has to be able to identify how far off course the rocket is at any given time. It gets that from the accelerometer, the gyros, and so on. To know that, it has to do math. It has to add, multiply, divide, subtract. It has to differentiate and integrate, if it’s going to find a distance from an acceleration.”

Dr. Lusser flipped his hand as though to tell Konrad to hurry up. “And? We’ve solved those problems.”

I solved those problems, you mean. Konrad clenched his hands on his knees. “Right, but it’s all…mechanical. For the integration, for example, we have to wait for the accelerometer to build charge on the condenser by forcing it through an amplifier...by the time it’s done, our acceleration has changed. The system corrects, but not enough, or too much. It keeps the rocket stable, yes, but the longer it has to travel the further off course it drifts.”

Lusser pointed one long, thin finger at the mess on the table. “And how does this help?”

“We keep finding new things we need to calculate! First it was just velocity, then it was acceleration, then roll…and every time, we have to rebuild the machine to handle those aspects. With an electronic system, we won’t have to build new mechanical parts every time we need to perform a new calculation.” Konrad wiped the sweat off his brow. “And this will do it faster; it can make adjustments at the speed of electricity.”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“That sounds like a nice fantasy,” Lusser said, grimacing at the table full of fallen relays. “But even if you could manage it, which I doubt very much, it would only do what the system you’re supposed to be working on already does!”

“But this could do so much more!” Konrad protested.

Lusser shook his head at the scattered switches, refusing to see the potential. “Where did you even get all these? If I found out you’ve been spending project money on this…”

“No, I haven’t,” Konrad said, sweating. Not much, anyway. He’d dug most of the relays out of the garbage, repairing them as he went, after the quartermaster had refused him. The solder he’d borrowed from the main lab, but that hardly counted. No one could be so anal as to keep track of soldering wire…could they?

“I’m sure.” Lusser shook his head. “Fix the report. For your sake, I hope it matches what we see in the test tomorrow.”

Konrad swallowed hard. That test would be a full-scale rocket launch, stabilized by the internal navigation system he’d built. If it went poorly, he would probably find himself learning how to handle a rifle on the Russian front.

“Konrad,” Lusser said, taking a step out the door. “You’re already on very thin ice. If you want to risk trying to convince von Braun, be my guest. Prepare a separate report on…all this.” He swept his hand around the room, lip curling with disgust. “But tomorrow morning, the only thing your report had better contain is recommendations for how to improve the maximum accuracy.”

“Understood, Lusser,” Konrad said, balling his hands into fists. Was a modicum of respect too much to ask from the man?

“Don’t thank me. And that’s Dr. Lusser!” With that, he slammed the door shut behind him, hard enough to blast half the loose pages on the report off the table. They scattered like leaves, drifting down to the floor in the stillness left behind by Dr. Lusser’s departure. Konrad ground his teeth and stood to collect them.

Damn him! Thinks he’s so much better than me! Several of the pages had fluttered further underneath the table than he could reach. Konrad knelt, and then crawled between the heavy wooden legs, stretching for the loose sheets. He’d be up all night retyping the report and removing the references to his calculating machine. He checked his watch, realizing witha start that he didn’t have more than a few hours.

Part of him wanted to take the report as it was, and hand it straight to von Braun, going right over Lusser’s head. The wiser part of him knew that would be career, and maybe literal, suicide. Besides, Lusser had already offered him the chance to present the idea, and directly to von Braun, no less. He paused, still under the table with a page in each hand, to consider that.

Wernher von Braun was a legend. A visionary, willing to do and try things that most people thought impossible. Rumor was that he had gone directly to the Fuhrer to convince him of the merit of the rocket program as a new graduate, selling him on the idea. Konrad knew for certain that he had regular meetings with Hitler. It had been a battle to keep support for the project alive, with many in Hitler's inner circle arguing against it. Not cost effective, too experimental, too complicated, they said. They were very nearly the same arguments that Fritz leveled against Konrad’s own work. So maybe von Braun would understand…maybe he would see the potential. He’ll have to, Konrad thought, straightening. It’s exactly what these rockets need!

Clutching the papers to his chest, he turned off the light and closed the door behind him. The light outside was off too; Lusser must have extinguished it when he left. Scurrying back towards his desk down the dark hallway, he bent his mind to the task of convincing von Braun of the merits of his work.

...

Dawn broke before he finished the report for Lusser. Twice, he’d had to start again, realizing that there was another major change that he needed to make. If this first report wasn't good, he might never have a chance to present his own work. He let a third major change go, grimacing, when the orange light of dawn started leaking through the windows. He realized, as he rubbed tiredly at his face, that he hadn’t slept or bathed since the night before, and ragged stubble covered his cheeks and chin.

He would have to manage. The test was scheduled to begin early, and von Braun would wait for no man, let alone Konrad. He dared not go back to his quarters to clean up and risk missing the launch. He worked up a quick cover sheet. “Telemetry and Inertial Navigation Systems Precision of the V2 Rocket.” In a moment of pique, he left Lusser’s name off it, making his own twice as large, and went to freshen up.

There was a small bathroom in the offices, little more than a closet with a sink and a toilet. Cold water poured out of the spigot, but it felt good on his face and helped him blink the bleariness from his eyes. His hair had gone limp and a little greasy overnight; he smoothed it back into place with one hand. He had less every day it seemed, and it needed a trim. Brushing it up over the top helped hide the thin patch of the crown of his head, at least a little. As for the rest of him...He paused, considering the face in the mirror.

Blue eyes, blond hair. The perfect ubermensch, or so they said. But heavy lines creased his eyes, and marked the corners of his mouth. Why was he frowning? He tried to straighten his expression and realized that he wasn’t, it was just the curve of his mouth. A sad man looked back at him from the glass, a tired man with a vulture stoop to his neck.

He looked away from the mirror, hunching his shoulders. He’d look better after a good night’s sleep or two. After all, I am a young man yet. University was only what…Five years ago? Surely not more than ten. No, surely not…He toweled off his face without looking back at the mirror.

Back at his desk he bound the report in a folder with string, as neat as Lusser could possibly wish. He tucked it under his arm and made his way outside, blinking in the fresh morning light. There was no fog today; so close to Germany’s northern coast, it often rolled over the base, blanketing them in white mist. An arch stood proudly over the guardhouses at the entrance, letters stamped out of good iron highlighted by the sky behind them. They were backwards from his vantage point, but he knew what they said. “Peenemünde Army Research Center”. He felt a little glow of pride, looking at it. Here, the historians would say, was where mind overcame mere matter. Here was where men, with nothing but will and hard-won knowledge, had wrought miracles.

Across the field stood Test Stand 7, peeking out over a sloping sand wall. Two tall wooden observation towers graced either side of it, well removed from the offices and research buildings. Rails led into and out of the sheltered test pad, for moving the rockets and other materials into place. At the feet of the observation towers, men had already begun to gather for the morning’s test.

Konrad trudged across the field towards the gathering crowd with some trepidation, the weight of his missed sleep dragging at him. He liked watching launches well enough, but today’s test depended entirely on his system working right, and that knowledge filled him with dread.

The usual cluster of sycophants and officers crowded around Wernher von Braun. The patron saint of rocketry gave a great booming laugh at some joke, tossing his head back. He towered over most of the other men, a powerful physical presence. With his immaculately combed hair and a well-tailored suit emphasizing his broad shoulders, his looks were better suited to a heavyweight boxer than a scientist. Lusser clung to him like a limpet, and tried to wave Konrad off, scowling over his hawk’s beak of a nose.

The gesture caught von Braun’s eye, and as he turned to Konrad an open, cheerful smile split his broad face. “Dr. Hollenbach! The man of the hour. Is your gadget going to keep this thing pointed in the right direction?”

“I surely hope so.” Konrad returned the smile weakly. “Here, I have the report for you.” He handed it to von Braun, ignoring Lusser’s deepening scowl. If von Braun noticed the other scientist’s displeasure, he paid it no notice. He took the bundle, tearing the string free and tossing it to the ground, flipping eagerly through the first few pages of the report.

Lusser’s eyes narrowed as they lit on the cover page, and Konrad felt a spike of worry. The other man would notice his missing name, and find some way to make Konrad pay for that petty rebellion. “Perhaps you and I,” Lusser said to von Braun, shooting a glare at Konrad, “can discuss the report after the launch test? I haven’t had a chance to review this final draft.”

Konrad opened his mouth to interject, and Lusser threw a silent snarl at him from behind von Braun’s broad back, so full of venom that Konrad’s words died in his throat. Von Braun nodded, oblivious. “Of course, of course…Konrad, we’ll want you there too. But later!” He snapped the report shut and started up the stairs. “Come, we have a launch to watch!”

Konrad nodded in silent agreement, doing his best to ignore Lusser’s eyes. If the launch went well, he could deal with the man’s ire. If it didn’t…well, Lusser’s anger wouldn’t matter. Hunching his shoulders, he started up the observation tower.