The Gemini Divergence (85 page)

Schwerig looked over his shoulder at the
crowd with disbelief written on his face, until he saw that the
crowd began to pick up their arms and follow suit, “Heil Schwerig!
… Heil Schwerig,” until the entire chasm was thundering with the
same unanimously appointing chant.

Schwerig suddenly realized that he could not
kill the man who had just ordained him Führer in front of his
people, so while grimacing, he lowered his sword and held out his
hand to help Kreutztrager to his feet.

Just as Kreutztrager stood erectly, Schwerig
noticed the sudden flash of cameras that caught what appeared to be
Schwerig shoving his sword into the ground as he shook
Kreutztrager’s hand.

The picture promptly found its way onto the
front page of every periodical within the Raumsfahrtwaffe.

There was little or no resistance to
Schwerig’s ascent to the penultimate Raumsfahrtwaffe post.

Adlerkrallen even held his tongue, keeping
his mental dissent a secret.

Schwerig then ordered Faust to contact Volmer
with the news.

~~~**^**~~~

~~~**^**~~~

Resolve and Solace / Nixon’s Peace

November 1971

Mariner 9 was able to orbit Mars without
being attacked, confirming peace on Mars.

Schwerig, in a show of détente, vowed to
respect the names given to the Martian geography by the scientists
of the Earth from the pictures returned by Mariner 9.

Thus, Olympus Mons became Olympus Mons and
Valles Marineris became Valles Marineris, etc.

NASA then digressed from sending the
remaining Mariner probes to Mars and diverted them to study Venus
as a return gesture.

December 1971

In a secret meeting, Raumsfahrtwaffe
Diplomats worked out a deal with the Nixon administration that for
the most part, the Raumsfahrtwaffe shall remain in the space
outside of LEO, unless returning covertly to the Earth for
supplies, and promised no more attacks on any countries of the
Earth.

In return the Nations of the Earth would
discontinue the Apollo program as well as all other manned space
endeavors with the exception of missions within LEO.

Schwerig also displayed a strong desire for
the U.S. Air Force to disband AFOAT.

The Nixon administration took his wishes into
consideration, but held off any action until further
negotiations.

January 1972

Nixon approved the new space shuttle program
which would do nothing but experiments in LEO for decades to
come.

February 1972

Nixon canceled Nerva, America’s nuclear space
propulsion program, because the nuclear propulsion engines were
designed for deep space travel and would serve no purpose for LEO
missions.

16 April 1972

Apollo 16 stayed for an extended visit on the
moon, using the lunar rover to travel farther from the LEM than
ever before.

Because of the newly found peace, NASA had
the confidence to stay and carry out many more experiments than
before.

*~*

Schwerig was extremely agitated when informed
that Kreutztrager had vanished and was rumored to have departed
with a skeleton crew of dissenting citizens; absconding with Von
Sterbenbach’s space station.

He could only assume that he was bound for
Earth to find Adlerkrallen and organize an intransigent coup.

Schwerig sent word, even though he knew it
was futile, to Adlerkrallen; ordering him to arrest Kreutztrager
immediately upon arrival.

Soon after, Schwerig departed for Earth to
round up the last remnants of the resistance and finalize his deal
with the Earth dwellers.

24 May 1972

Nixon approved a five year cooperative deal
with the Soviet Union to develop a means to meet and greet publicly
in space as a gesture of peace between the United States and the
Soviet Union.

*~*

Nixon canceled the Apollo project, ordering
all of the drawings, jigs, templates, or any other device or
pattern that would enable the construction of any other Apollo
assets, destroyed immediately.

All other remaining Apollo assets were
diverted to the up-and-coming Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz projects; all
to be carried out within LEO.

26 May 1972

Von Braun retired in disgust at the
cancelation of the Apollo project.

He feared that he had wasted his entire
career in the hopes that a government would help him achieve his
dreams of carrying the human race into space.

He now felt betrayed by both of the
governments he had worked for and developed a deep resentment for
officials of any government.

His newly evolved conclusion, which was
decades ahead of popular belief, was that the exodus of the rest of
mankind into space would only be achieved by commercial space
travel, or, if by chance, commercial entities somehow found profit
in space.

He soon found a civilian job in the private
space contracting industry.

The Raumsfahrtwaffe was also given the green
light to use diplomatic pouches to secretly exhume Bormann’s body
and reinter it into the ground where he was rumored to have fallen
on the side of a street in Berlin.

Within a year, German construction workers
discovered the body and through modern forensics indentified it to
be Bormann’s.

Controversy ensued though, when forensic
pathologists announced that the red clay contained within Bormann’s
skull did not match the sand filled sediment that permeates the
Berlin area, but instead, closely resembled the clay found in parts
of Paraguay.

*~*

As the peace negotiations with the
Raumsfahrtwaffe evolved, the Nixon administration was also consumed
by the newly presented hassles of the up and coming
re-election.

The President became increasingly paranoid
that the Democratic Party may know something, or may have talked to
Dr. Hynek about his theories concerning the secret war, which they
could then use to discredit the Nixon administration.

He was also increasingly concerned about the
myriad of documents, detailing all of the Air Force personnel that
have been involved; or had died during the secret war.

It would be impossible to purge every
document of every person’s involvement in AFOAT, NASA, Blue Gemini,
or the cover up of the war deaths and the crash recoveries, without
drawing massive public scrutiny.

Unfortunately, he looked to the darker side
of his administration for his solutions.

17 June 1972

Five men were arrested after being caught
breaking and entering the Democratic National Committee
headquarters in the Watergate Hotel.

Checks deposited into the men’s bank accounts
could be traced back to the 1972 Committee to Re-elect President
Nixon.

The men had been franticly searching the DNC
file cabinets but would not divulge what they were looking for.

*~*

Nixon started to hide in his house boat and
drink; sleeping there at night instead of the White House.

He was in total fear that this whole thing
could unravel just before the deal could be finalized.

His biggest concern, and the reason that he
feared sleeping in the White House, was that even though Schwerig
had assumed control of the Raumsfahrtwaffe and ordered Adlerkrallen
and the forces in space around the Earth to retreat to Mars, they
still had not departed from the area around the moon.

Scientists at Arecibo and Jodrell Bank were
still detecting activity on a daily basis.

Other things plaguing his mind were
investigative reporters like Woodward and Bernstein and retired
Blue Book Colonel William Coleman, digging through every government
file they could find; as well as retired ATIC Commander Colonel
George Weinbrenner, threatening to go public with UFO files and
film footage.

He knew that it was just a matter of time
before somebody searched the Air Force personal records and found
connections between Vietnam MIA and Blue Gemini Program alumni.

*~*

As a concession towards the final break up of
AFOAT, Schwerig conceded to allow America to build an array of
radio telescopes, larger than anyone had built before, to be used
to monitor the Raumsfahrtwaffe’s compliance with the developing
secret space treaty.

August 1972

Congress approved the funding for the VLA,
(Very Large Array). Construction on the project began 6 months
later.

*~*

The Nixon administration decided to bring
Senator Stuart Symington into the negotiations, since he was the
highest ranking official, still in office, that had ever dealt with
a former Raumsfahrtwaffe treaty.

7 December 1972

Apollo 17

After Apollo 18 was cancelled, 17 was not
only to be the last scheduled stop for Earth dwellers on the moon,
it was also the last manned voyage outside of LEO for decades to
come.

Not fearing any further Raumsfahrtwaffe
attacks, Apollo 17 went on to set several records, such as, longest
lunar landing flight, longest EVA, longest time in orbit around the
moon, and the largest sample return.

One of the most famous images ever taken of
Earth from space, commonly referred to as ‘The Big Blue Marble’,
was taken during this mission.

The crew attempted to make several carefully
planned statements to be quoted for posterity as the last men on
the moon; but, probably, one of the most remembered things was the
crew singing, “I was strolling on the moon one day, in the
very-very month of… December… ‘No May!’ …Oh May.”

In a gesture of peace and cooperation, and
perhaps a touch of passive or subliminal saber rattling, Schwerig
sent a copy of Apollo 17 taking off from the surface of the moon
that Faust had filmed while monitoring the landing, and sent it to
NASA.

The film was viewed with much praise, then
unintentionally mixed with other Apollo 17 films and inadvertently
released to the public.

This particular short film reel immediately
drew uproar and finger pointing from moon landing conspiracy
theorists. “If Apollo 17 accounted and retrieved all of their
cameras, how was this ascent from outside of the module
filmed?”

NASA later reported that they had
deliberately left a camera attached to the Lunar Rover to film the
ascent.

Later in 1973, when Apollo 17 Commander
Eugene Cernan was asked about UFOs on the moon by the Los Angeles
Times, he responded, "...I've been asked (about UFOs) and I've said
publicly I thought they (UFOs) were somebody else, some other
civilization."

December 1972

Howard Hughes had just moved from Las Vegas
to live at the Xanadu Princess Resort on Grand Bahama Island.

News of the potential peace had permeated
through the secret channels of the American aerospace industry and
Howard decided that it was time to leave his empire to his managers
and retire. He had also grown weary of spending so many years in
the desert and had a yearning for something tropical.

As usual, he moved, uninvited and a little
more permanently than expected into the penthouse of a popular
resort; much to the vexation of it’s management.

Soon after, he decided to have a small house
warming party and invited, Gus, Jack, Volmer, and Everett to come
and stay for a weekend.

Jack, Everett and Howard, were sprawled out
on the living room furniture watching the end of the newest James
Bond film, ‘Diamonds Are Forever,’ as Gus and Volmer were having a
private conversation at the bar.

Volmer asked Gus, “So, how long have you
been in the Air Force now?”

“Twenty six years.”

“You can retire any time, why don’t
you?”