The twins followed closely behind, deftly mimicking their mother’s movements, and they remained silent as she emitted a series of calls that probed the area just offshore. Instantaneously, the altered high-frequency signals returned, painting, in her brain, a three-dimensional picture of the enormous log that had brought the bipeds into their territory. But something about the structure had changed since their last, aborted hunt there. Now there were no bipeds, and the flattened surface where they had waited in ambush days earlier was tilted oddly to one side.
After overflying the structure, the mother angled away, gaining altitude with a flick of her thumbs that changed the flow of air over her wings. The child was gone and now they would return to the stone roost, before any more of her children disappeared.
The mother began casting long-range signals toward the faraway cliffs, when suddenly the female twin screeched an alarm call behind her and fell out of formation.
NO! the mother called; but by then the twins had already completed a tight loop and were speeding back in the opposite direction.
Furious, she followed them, but even before completing her own loop, she heard it.
The calls were coming from inside the giant, floating log.
The mother caught up with the twins just before they peeled out of their side-by-side formation and sped past a jagged hole in the log. She flew straight over the gaping tear, simultaneously gathering information and sending the child a message of her own.
The draculae wheeled around again, as if preparing for another reconnaissance pass, but this time they drew the leading edges of their wings upward. The braking maneuver caused them to lose both altitude and speed, and the finely controlled stall brought the trio to a synchronous and silent landing on the Nostromo’s broken deck. Seconds later they disappeared down an open hatch.
Below and behind Hanna Reitsch, the world was in shadow. Directly ahead, the stars were dust, and the same blackness seemed to go on forever . . . until the line of daylight began advancing toward her, at hitherto unattainable velocity. Dawn was striking across the western Atlantic, just now about to touch parts of Brazil and the easternmost tip of North America.
As predicted, Reitsch was following the curve of the earth in free fall. She resisted an urge to enjoy the sensation, instead concentrating on a problem. Down there on Earth, gravity normally kept the contents of a vehicle’s gas tank sloshing on the bottom, close to its uptake line. Because the Silverbird had neither gravity nor a bottom, the fuel and fuel oxidizer existed as globules—most of them floating far from where the fuel uptakes were located.
But now I will take care of that, she thought.
And as she sped toward daylight, it came time to test S?nger’s maneuvering systems. In accordance with the instructions of the rocket men, she vented a small amount of air from the tanks into the vacuum of space. As they had predicted, the effect was like a child’s balloon, released and allowed to fly free: The rocket was jetted forward, ever so slightly and, she hoped, just enough to force the remainder of the liquid fuel “downward,” into the throats of the engine uptakes.
Now Reitsch knew for certain that she could make brief ignitions and course corrections at will.
She began to orient her spacecraft for reentry.
So, she told herself, it seems that the insufferable asshole and his disciple were good for something after all.
Morning and noon came at her with astonishing rapidity, flooding the cockpit with light. But it was late afternoon that interested her most. Late afternoon in the Ukraine, which was sweeping up ahead, silently, moving toward her like the unstoppable minute hand of a giant clock.
Down there on Earth, in the Cherkassy Pocket, 65,000 German soldiers were surrounded by as many as a half-million Russians. If the Silverbird came in on target, and if her payload did its work, more than half of the Russians would soon be dead, and by dusk the Germans would break free. In preparation for Hanna Reitsch and the dawn of disease warfare, the 24th Panzer Unit, which had slogged north through mud and melting snow to relieve the trapped German forces, suddenly halted its advance and turned back. The order had come directly from Berlin, the moment Nostromo Base broke radio silence and announced, “The first bird is away.”
Even from the other side of the sky, Hanna could see faint signatures of an early thaw across the Ukraine.
An early thaw.
That is how it began.
CHAPTER 27
Daedalus Wept
The heavens call to you, and circle around you, displaying to you their eternal splendors, and your eye gazes only to Earth.
—DANTE ALIGHIERI
During the minute leading up to Maurice Voorhees’s launch of the Silverbird II, explosions lit up the mist on every side. Amid the mental checklists and prelaunch preparation, he marveled at the bravery of a technician who calmly drove the Silverbird II’s miniature locomotive to set the craft into its proper launch position, then gave the “Go!” signal before scrambling away from his steam engine.