At daybreak, the engineer Maurice Voorhees stood beside his monorail track as Dr. Eugen S?nger ducked beneath the undercarriage of the rocket sled. It was covered by moisture-protective tarps.
“Very nice, Maurice,” the older man called out. “The groove you designed into the track’s upper surface was a brilliant idea.”
“Thank you,” Voorhees responded, sounding distracted. He had been scanning the tree line that ran along both sides of the track. The jungle plants were already sending out runners and tendrils, thin green arms reaching out for the rebar and wood rail. Only a few months from now, they’ll have it completely covered.
“In fact I have no idea why I did not think of it myself,” S?nger said, as he emerged from under the tarps. “Maurice—” The older man stopped momentarily, noting that his audience had wandered away from the track.
Voorhees was staring at a spot deep within the tangled foliage.
“There is no noticeable sag in the track, either,” S?nger said, then he kicked at the ground with his heel. “It is clear that using this ancient stone road for a base was a brilliant decision as well. The last thing we need is for the Silverbirds to sink with their launch track into this miserably thin tropical—”
Maurice Voorhees heard none of it. He was imagining a Silverbird tearing along the rail atop the rocket sled he had designed.
Something slapped Voorhees hard on the back and he spun around with a start, relieved to see that it was only S?nger.
The older rocket man shot him an odd expression, then continued. “But the real test will come tomorrow. Won’t it? That is when your friend Hanna Reitsch uses the Dragon and my pulley system to seat the Silverbirds onto your sleds.”
“She is not a friend,” Voorhees snapped.
“Yes, but she is an extremely gifted pilot,” S?nger countered. “To have landed one of those shit-propelled V-1s in one piece? The skill involved?”
“Yes, and she also proposed a squadron of suicide aircraft,” Voorhees said, dismissively. “How very heroic of her.”
The younger engineer said nothing more, trailing off into thought again. He had been a very young man when the bombs fell on Peenemünde, but the past few months had aged him many years. The work appeared to have the opposite effect on S?nger, who seemed to be getting stronger. The man would have been perfectly happy to carry the war from central Brazil through Europe down to the Nile and Jordan rivers, until the end of civilization itself, if requisite, until finally it was fought with sickles and knives, and sharpened sticks.
Unmoved by Voorhees’s condemnation of the female test pilot, S?nger simply continued his monologue: “Once that’s done, I estimate that fueling the rockets and their sleds will take the better part of two—at most, three days. After that, our work here will be nearly completed. And then it will all be up to the pilots. Of course, all of this depends upon the completion of the weapon by that fat little Jap . . . I can never remember . . . what is his name, Maurice?”
But Voorhees never replied. My sleds, the beautiful control systems I designed, the guidance systems, all of it will soon be destroyed.
“Maurice . . . are you listening to me?” S?nger said.
Wasted.
Despite all of it, there had to be a better day coming, he tried to convince himself. He just did not know how to get there yet.
But, he told himself, I’ll think of something.
In the Bio Lab, Dr. Akira Kimura had just put the finishing touches on the six pathogenic reentry vehicles, or “cluster bombs.” Three for each of what’s-his-name’s Silverfish.
The bacteria within each bomb now rested (comfortably, Kimura imagined) in beds of ultrafine sand, sand that would be dispersed for miles in every direction once a whole series of cylindrical “bomblets” popped apart, high over their targets.
Until then, his “children” could sleep peacefully, safely isolated from exposure to the damp tropical air. Their nurturing and safety had been his primary concern for the past week.
Who knows what disgusting thing might try to contaminate them as they sleep?
To minimize the risk, the little incubation chambers themselves had been outfitted with parachutes, thus becoming the bomblets, dozens of which would be parceled into the six cluster bombs, each designed to “blossom” at a predetermined altitude. Like the Silverbirds, Kimura’s bomblet system had almost been launch-ready on the day the Nostromo arrived at Hell’s Gate, with the only modification being substitution of vampire bat pathogens for his Unit 731 anthrax strain.
What will the Americans think when they see the parachutes? Kimura wondered. And the insignia we’ve designed.