The Gemini Divergence (38 page)

The Cold War /
The First Peace

Empowered by the newly signed agreement, the
Germans quickly expanded their facilities around Fuerte
Esperanza

They started to rapidly increase their
numbers as well, with the aid of Otto Skorzeny. He used his new
covert recruiting agency, ‘Die Spine’, to recruit German WWII
veterans as well as other people deemed, ‘acceptable and needed’,
to man their burgeoning space force.

By 1954 New Swabia had been completely
abandoned. Even though they had a signed treaty with America, they
did not have one with the Soviets, and the Germans also felt uneasy
about the growing global scientific population on and around
Antarctica.

They moved their space stations, which
numbered ten by the end of 54, to a much higher orbit in space.
They also constructed and installed giant black cones that would
point toward the earth and hide the stations from telescopic view
from the ground, as well as deflect any radar or detection waves of
any type.

The new distance from the Earth and the
protective cones were also thought to help defend against the
American’s new directed energy devices.

With their newly found free time and
resources, the Raumsfahrtwaffe also started to explore the moon.
Once again their learning curve led to many deaths as they
developed ways to explore and exploit the far side of the moon.
They deliberately went to the dark side so that earth bound
astronomers would not be able to see their excavations or
lights.

Their forward geologists and prospectors were
at first dismayed by the basalt regolith that blanketed the entire
moon. They decided to melt the basalt volcanic glass and extrude it
into fibers to weave reinforcement fabrics for composite
construction. While heating the regolith to melt the basalt they
discovered that they could extract water, and with the water they
could then use solar electrolysis to separate hydrogen and
oxygen.

After months of strip mining the basalt
regolith they reached shattered but still present layers of
hardened volcanic flows. After tunneling into the flows, to at
first make a habitat that could survive long term exposure to solar
radiation, they discovered enormous veins of heavy metals that had
been pushed up from the moon’s core through the fractured
basalt.

There was iron and lead, as well as enough
gold to finance their operations until well past any of their
existing lifetimes.

At first they struggled with how they would
fence the lunar gold into the markets of the earth. Then they came
up with the idea of creating a front.

Since the gold mined in South Africa was in
such minute form, most of the miners that work those mines have
never seen a nugget in their entire career. The Germans could
smuggle the gold into the already highly secure and sparsely
staffed smelting facilities of the mines and distribute it as South
African gold from a new vein. Once the metal experts identified the
signature of the gold as coming from that new vein, they would then
attribute that signature to that mine wherever that gold may show
up in the future.

Since South Africa already had a large German
speaking population, they knew that it would be easy to recruit
some sympathetic mine owner to help them.

Now they had a ready supply of metals and
composite reinforcements to build just about anything they needed.
With the money from the gold, they can buy any resin for the
composites, machining equipment, or any other tool or device needed
to finally establish a self sustaining society in space that
actually had the capacity to export and grow wealth.

*~*

Khrushchev finally assumed control of Russia
and had Beria executed.

The new Premier didn’t care if Hitler was
alive or dead, he viewed the escaped Nazis as one organization or
entity to be dealt with.

He was still unsure whether the Germans were
actually in space, but wondered if they were perpetrating a well
constructed ruse.

The Russians were aware that New Swabia had
been abandoned and suspected that the Germans had moved to the
sparsely populated interior of Argentina, but could really do
nothing except patrol the Argentinean coast.

Khrushchev was furious that his engineers
could not duplicate the saucer that crashed at Kapustin Yar, or the
vril; even though they were able to bandage the wreckage back
together and marginally operate it.

Since they could not reproduce a saucer, the
only thing that the Russians could make to get into space was
rockets. So he ordered them to be built in numbers that could rain
rockets onto the Germans like the ‘Screaming Mimi’ rockets he had
witnessed the Germans use against the Russians at Stalingrad.

*~*

General Lemay was reading a paper in his
office when his secretary called from the front room, “General
Lemay Sir, there is a General Doolittle on the line for you.”

Lemay’s eyes perked up and he smiled as he
quickly picked up the phone and greeted, “Jimmy. How the hell are
you, these days?”

A voice on the other side of the phone said,
“Oh fine, fine, I’ve gained a few pounds since the war.”

“Well, haven’t we all… It’s great to hear
from you… To what do I owe the pleasure of hearing your voice
again, after all these years?”

“Well, I thought that you would be the wisest
person to call, but I don’t know how to tell you… I was up here
working for an oil company, when lo and behold, I found something
crashed up here on a Spitsbergen Island in the North Sea.”

“No kidding?” The General’s face went blank,
“Let me guess… Is it round?”

Doolittle laughed, “Why, as a matter of fact
it is… Or it was.”

Lemay relaxed his head into his hands on his
desk for a moment, in disbelief. Then, raised back up and wiped his
brow as he more discreetly asked, “Does it have any German writing
on or within it?”

“Bingo again, right underneath the tape with
the Russian writing that has been placed over the German markings
on all of the controls.”

Lemay cursed under his breath away from the
phone for a moment. Then thought, “Jimmy, you didn’t by chance
check to see how much fuel was left in that thing, did you?”

“Of course I did. I’ve been around enough
aircraft wrecks to know that I should check for danger before I do
anything else.”

“Well?”

“It was bone dry. Why?”

“Damn... I wanted to get my hands on some of
it, but I guess that it may also be a blessing in disguise, because
it may be the reason that it’s sitting there… I’ll have to fill you
in later.”

“What should I do with it?”

“Drop it in a box and ship it to me!”

*~*

Gus was sitting in the common area of his Air
Force dormitory reading a paper, when another airman walked up and
told him, “Hey Gus…”

“Yeah?”

“There is some joker on the phone. Says he’s
General Lemay, and you’re supposed to get up off your ass and
answer the phone.”

Gus dropped the paper and was instantly on
his feet, “Which phone?”

“The one in the hall.”

Gus ran down the hall to a bank of three
phones. There was somebody already on one of them, but the one on
the end had the receiver hanging from it.

Gus picked it up and answered, “Sergeant
Danuser speaking”

Lemay’s unmistakable voice came over the
phone, “Sergeant! Grab your shadow, Sergeant Jennings, and beg,
borrow, or steal a flat bed, and then skedaddle up to Portsmouth
Naval Shipyard on the border between New Hampshire and Maine.

“Uh, Yes Sir, right away… What am I going to
get with the flat bed, Sir?”

“Your going to pick up a large shipping crate
from Jimmy Doolittle marked ‘Oil Drilling Equipment’.

Gus wondered in amazement, “Do you mean, ‘The
Jimmy Doolittle’?”

“Yes, he works for an oil company now. He’s
sending a special package that contains one of those things you
picked up at Roswell.”

“No kidding?”

“No kidding… Now get up there and bring it to
my special storage locker at Wright-Pat.”

“What locker, sir?”

“When you get to the gate, ask for the CO of
the SP squadron. Show them that card I gave you. Then tell him
nothing but that you have a parcel for the blue room… He should
send people to let you into it… Don’t let anybody see it. If
anybody gives you lip, use that number on the card and have them
call me.”

~~~**^**~~~

The Cold War / Castle Bravo

March 1954

Gus and Jack were again in the Pacific, on
one of the many small islands in the atoll ring of Kwajalein. This
time they were getting ready for the ‘Castle Bravo’ test of
‘Operation Castle’, testing one of America’s newest bombs.

The B-36s had been phased out of service, so
they were again using the converted B-29s, now renamed B-50s, to
run backgrounds on the upcoming test.

Major Hanson was there as well. Lemay was so
impressed with his construction of the French Frigate Shoals air
base that he had moved him to Kwajalein to construct a much larger
permanently manned base for America’s future bomb and missile
testing.

Instead of being on a micro desert island
with no vegetation or inhabitants, he was now on a larger island of
a decent sized atoll ring, complete with flora and fauna as well as
native islanders.

Volmer was also there, helping to install a
massive radio receiving station for the ever expanding space
program. It was also going to be used secretly to locate and listen
to the Germans in space.

The Americans suspect that the
Raumsfahrtwaffe had recently moved farther into space and were not
quite sure where they were, or how many stations there now
were.

Gus and Jack were overseeing two new crews of
technicians preparing the aircraft for the upcoming test. As they
worked, Volmer came over to talk with them.

“Hey stranger,” joked Gus as he saw Volmer
approaching, “I haven’t seen you in quite some time. How have you
been doing?”

“Oh, quite well actually,” Volmer answered
Gus as he also waved to Jack up on the wing, “Are you ready for the
big test?”

“I think so, but I can’t figure out why this
one is such a big deal.”

“Oh, it is because it is much smaller. If
this works it will actually be a hydrogen bomb that we can put onto
a missile. Before we could only deliver the atomic versions of our
weapons. The most recent hydrogen bomb we tested before this had so
much cryogenic support equipment that the bomb was as large as a
house. This is the first one that will not need cryogenic
equipment.”

“Well, how big of a bang is it supposed to
be?”

“Los Alamos says that it is supposed to be
six megatons. We have mapped out the projected fallout areas for
the planes to fly through.”

Gus looked out at the ocean and pointed at
some ships that he could see way out on the horizon, as he said,
“Those aren’t ours, are they?”

Volmer looked and shook his head no, “No,
apparently the Soviets have taken great interest in what we are
doing here on Kwajalein. Those are Russian fishing trawlers.
General Lemay tells me that they are the Russian’s equivalent to
our weather planes,” as he pointed to the plane that Jack was
working on.

Gus laughed, “So there are Russian
technicians just like us out there?”

Volmer laughed as well, “Yes, I suppose that
there would be.”

Gus lowered his voice to just above a
whisper, “Do you think that the saucers will make an appearance as
well?”

Volmer looked at the sky and answered, “I
don’t know, I suppose that they can see from up there. If they have
noticed, I am sure they are wondering what we are doing?”

*~*

“What the hell are they doing?” asked
Schwerig as he thought out loud while looking at a set of aerial
photos taken of Kwajalein by Raumsfahrtwaffe reconnaissance
saucers, “The Russians seem to be very curious as well.”

“Our photo analysts suspect that they are
building a forward base with the sole purpose of being a forward
observation point for the Americans missile testing as well as
being in a perfect strategic position to monitor the Russian
missile testing. Both countries have been launching the missiles
into the Pacific,” responded, now Major, Graff.

“But the population has doubled in the last
week, this has to be more than just a construction crew, and look
at these planes. What in the world are these odd looking things
for?”

“I don’t know Oberst Schwerig, I suppose they
are preparing for a test, and those are planes to be used for some
purpose during the test.”

Schwerig stood up and walked to the window
and looked over the earth below. They were orbiting much higher now
and he could now see the entire United States in his window instead
of just one state at a time.