S?nger’s voice was cool and controlled. “You are here, Dr. Voorhees, because I requested that you be here. May I sit down?”
Once again, the young rocket scientist said nothing. And once again, S?nger did not wait for permission. Instead he unfolded the small chair and sat intimidatingly near to Voorhees’s face.
“Maurice, I wonder if you are aware that you and von Braun’s friends at Peenemünde were not the only group involved in a major rocketry program for the fatherland.”
Voorhees continued to stare upward at nothing in particular and, noting this, the older man unfurled a set of drawings and spread them out on what little space was left on the cot.
Voorhees glanced down at the figures, then sat upright. His first thought was that this must be S?nger’s idea of a joke.
“There you are,” said S?nger, sounding like someone who had just hooked a prize-winning fish. “Shall I continue?”
Voorhees said nothing, but sensed the older man reading the answer in his eyes. “Yes, I’ll continue, then,” S?nger said. “As you can see, these craft will be piloted. The best guidance systems our engineers have come up with are too heavy for—”
“What is it that you want from me, Dr. S?nger?”
“Maurice, we wanted you here . . . I wanted you here because of your expertise with rocket engine design and control—and because of your ability to redesign at short notice. Your talents have become vital to the success of our mission.”
“You mean, now that Dr. von Braun is missing?”
Now S?nger moved uneasily in his chair. “I don’t care where von Braun is. Your idol had become a liability. An increasingly unstable liability.”
A strange expression passed across Voorhees’s face. At another time, seemingly a lifetime ago, his beloved Lisl, a bright young woman with glasses and a warm smile, would have laughed at the thought of von Braun or any of the rocket men being characterized as anything but unstable.
“There is something funny, Maurice?”
“No, I was just thinking, back to—”
“Peenemünde. Yes. Your attachment to von Braun’s project is . . . admirable. Now, though, you must face the facts. Peenemünde was a dinosaur even before the RAF forced our hand. Now you must deal with the future, not von Braun’s future, Germany’s future!”
Voorhees shook his head. “Dr. S?nger, Peenemünde wasn’t the dinosaur. It’s our so-called government that will soon be extinct. And you and I, and everyone on this boat . . . just a pile of bleached bones.”
S?nger sat in silence for a moment. “That’s an interesting hypothesis. Perhaps the Reichsführer would—”
“But now, what? Let me guess? You want me to help you build your new rocket?”
“No. That won’t be necessary,” S?nger replied with nonchalance. “You see, we already have a fully functional rocket—two, in fact—sailing with us.”
Voorhees flashed him a puzzled look and S?nger returned it with the slightest hint of a smile. “Maurice, I want you to build me a sled.”
For nearly twenty thousand years before Demeter’s arrival, the hoatzins had been nesting in trees along the banks of the Rio Xingu. The chicken-size birds were ancient survivors who, during their first years of life, possessed a set of claws on their wings, making them uniquely adapted to a riverine lifestyle. At the first sign of danger, nonflying juveniles would dive like a flock of penguins into the water, reemerging once the danger had passed, and using their wing claws to climb back into the trees.