The Reich Device (27 page)

‘Proceed!’

The doctor took the Professor’s arm and delivered the injection. The effect was immediate. Kessler wasted no time in resuming the interrogation.

‘Professor, what about wave energy? Tell me! Is this something to do with your new machine?’

No answer.

‘Answer! Answer the question!’ Kessler slapped the Professor across the face.

The doctor didn’t bother to protest on behalf of his patient. Kessler continued with a few more blows. Blood poured from the Professor’s nose.

‘Gooooo toooo heeeeeell.’ Mayer snorted his own blood and clasped his lips tight.

‘Answer!’ Another slap.

‘Gooooo tooooo heeeeell.’ Mayer was in turmoil, he
had
said something about his idea! ‘I’ll see yoooou in heeeeell… ’ Mayer coughed up spots of blood and prayed for death.

Kessler looked at the doctor. ‘Give him the
other
drug, the truth drug – give him the mescaline – do it now.’

Mescaline was a new mind-controlling drug, developed by the SS, for just such occasions. When it was mixed with cocaine and heroin in the right proportions, a prisoner injected with the concoction would answer anything.

‘No! It cannot be done! It will be a potentially lethal cocktail. There is adrenalin already in his veins!’

The doctor, reluctantly, prepared the mescaline syringe. A few hundred milligrams in the syringe – an educated guess – he didn’t know if the dose would fry the patient’s brain, or make him sing like a canary.

He injected the dose.

Mayer gasped into a spasm with the rush of cocaine and heroin. Then after a few seconds his muscle tone relaxed as the mescaline kicked in. He gave a crooked smile, as his eyes wandered aimlessly around the room.

‘Tell us about two
Pi
and
Lamda
,’ Kessler asked quietly.

The Professor gave a gargled half smile.

‘Nooo… toooo diffi… cult for you… ’ Mayer half giggled. Blood dripped from his nose.

Kessler could not believe it; Mayer was arrogantly refusing to reply because he wasn’t smart enough!

‘Then talk to Dr Steinhoff. You remember Steinhoff? You worked on the fuel tanks together.’ Kessler tried to motivate his prisoner as he passed the control of the interview to Steinhoff.

‘Gustav, please, we want to help you. Please help by answering my questions. Do you agree?’

‘Yeees, you know… you know… ’ he muttered an approval.

‘The wave number, tell me about this. Why is it important, what is it for?’

Mayer chuckled in his delirium. Blood frothed at his lips as he spoke. ‘Wave number… particle energy… same thing!’ Mayer tried a smug smile, but couldn’t.

‘What? No! Impossible? Are you sure?!’ Steinhoff ’s mind reeled. This was scientific heresy! This was like saying the earth was flat, or the sky was green. It didn’t make any sense at all. He needed to know the logic steps. How did the Professor’s mind go from A to B, and then make a sudden leap to Z?

‘Gustav, how can this be? I don’t understand? How can wave energy and particle energy be the same thing?’

Mayer gave a satisfying half nod and continued.

‘Planck… made… mistake… constant not constant.’

Steinhoff absorbed another monumental intellectual blow. Planck’s constant was a number, a fixed number that was used in numerous scientific calculations. It was a universal rule, something that did not change, and something that
could not
change. It was a number that described a fundamental physical property of the universe – it could not be wrong. Everything that science did, or was, depended on this. Steinhoff was perplexed.

‘Why is it not constant, Gustav why?’

‘Not sooo… fast… wavelength… momentum… same.’

‘When are they the same?! Gustav when?!’

‘Small… veeery… very small… ten… minus… nine… ’

Steinhoff didn’t understand.

‘Gustav, are you saying that wavelength and momentum are the same? But only when things are small?’

‘Yeees.’

‘I don’t understand, what has this got to do with rockets?’

‘Nothing… better than… rocket… faster… travel… to stars… ’

With that Mayer slipped into unconsciousness, blood dripping from his nose and lips.

Steinhoff gazed at Kessler as he tried to rationalise what he had heard. ‘I am not sure. I think the Professor has come up with some completely new propulsion concept based on quantum physics, but it doesn’t make sense. I cannot see how this idea has come about.’

‘Then wake him up! Find out! Doctor, more adrenalin and more of the truth drug! Now! Quickly!’ Kessler flashed a menacing look at the surgeon.

The doctor gave the Professor another shot of adrenalin, and immediately followed this with another shot of the mescaline mixture. It took longer to take effect this time, and the adrenalin only just brought Mayer back to some kind of consciousness. It was a massive dose of adrenalin, and the doctor dared not give another injection.

‘Gustav, is it a novel propulsion system, how does it work?’

‘In part… more… much more… ’ Mayer coughed a fine spray of bloody saliva. His skin turned ash-grey from the effects of the drugs and oxygen deprivation.

Mayer collapsed into silence.

‘Another injection! More adrenalin!’ ordered Kessler.

‘I cannot, another injection
could
kill him!’

‘Do it anyway!’

The doctor did as he was told, and injected another syringe full of adrenalin. It was an enormous dose – he was surprised to see Mayer survive the injection.

‘Gustav, what is the engine made from, what material?’

‘Carbon… small… small… carbon cage… ’

‘Carbon; how small? What do you mean by cage?’ Steinhoff wasn’t following the idea.

‘Sixty… carbon… atoms.’

‘How do the carbon atoms work?’

‘Time… of flight… mass… to… energy… ’

Mayer started to slip away. Steinhoff was overwhelmed by what he had just heard. He grabbed the Professor by the shoulders and desperately tried to shake him awake.

‘How do the carbon atoms work? What else do you need?’

‘Electric… field… ’

‘An electric field? What does the electricity do? How much voltage? Where does the carbon go?’ Steinhoff fired questions.

‘Acceleration… the… key… ’

The last few words faded away as Professor Mayer slipped into a coma.

Mayer fell through the dark chasm. Cool, moist air freshened his face. Walls of granite twinkled as they flashed by. He continued to fall, further and further into the earth. He did not seem to mind. Suddenly a crimson light issued from the pit, miles below.

Mayer focused on the redness and accelerated through the gloom.

Suddenly, a cave floor rushed up to meet him. Winded, but unhurt, he sat up.

‘Where am I?’

‘Hell, welcomes you… Professor Mayer!’ the beast roared, raising his whip.

Crack!

Searing pain erupted in his chest, blood welled up from the flesh wound.

‘Arghhh! What do you want from me?!’

‘Nothing. It’s not what
I
want from you, but what
you
want from me!’

The beast laughed.

‘I don’t want anything. Let me go!’

‘Now, now… Professor Mayer… ’ The beast crouched closer, its foulness and stench filled Mayer’s nostrils. The creature spoke quietly. ‘… Search your feelings… there is something you want, isn’t there?’

Mayer’s head slumped in shame. ‘Yes… yes there is… my Sophia… ’

The devil cackled, cracking his whip in the air.

‘I can return her to you… put everything back as it was. I only ask for one thing in return.’ The devil snorted vileness and smiled.

‘What would you have me do?’ Mayer dabbed his fingers into the blood on his chest.

‘Give me the secret… give me the secret of your device!’

The devil’s face suddenly transformed. Kessler stared back at him.

‘Give me the secret Professor Mayer… then everything will be yours… home… wife… even children.’

Mayer yelled in defiance. ‘No! No! Never!’

‘Very well. If we cannot bargain… ’ The devil growled a deep belly laugh that echoed around the cavern. He clicked his fingers.

A gangly wrath appeared, dragging his beloved Sophia towards oblivion.

‘Sophia! No! Leave her! Please, I will do anything… anything!’ Mayer sobbed.

‘The secret… the secret… and everything you love can be saved.’ The devil cracked his whip, opening another wound on Mayer’s chest.

‘Arghhh! Alright! Alright! But let her live… please… just let her live.’

He beckoned the beast closer; sobbing, he whispered in its ear.

The devil bellowed with laughter.

Mayer stared into the abyss of his mind’s eye and despaired.

C
olonel Walter Dornberger called the team together in his new office at Peenemünde. The last few weeks had been a period of rapid change. Admiral Dönitz had chosen the new site well; remote from any big population centres and easily defended.

Peenemünde sat at the end of a narrow spit of land on the Baltic coast. The spit was low-lying and exposed to the elements, but provided a natural defence. The new rocket base was essentially surrounded by water; with the sea to the north and the Peene River to the south.

The beach along the spit stretched for miles at low tide. The sand flats were ideal for the test firing of rockets, and repelling any potential invading force. The river mouth of the Peene was equally well defended, with anti-aircraft batteries and machine gun posts concealed from the air by a dense line of pine trees. It would take a heavily armed flotilla to break through into the river, and even if they did, they would never make it ashore.

Dönitz had provided Dornberger with ninety extra scientists and technicians to help establish the new rocket programme; including the brilliant physicist, Wernher von Braun and other top engineers from the Reich.

Kessler made his report.

‘On domestic matters first of all, gentlemen… ’ He checked the figures in his notebook. ‘Yes, well, I can report that construction is more or less complete; including all the main laboratories, outbuildings, and quarters for the troops.’

‘That is good news; as you know, we are under some pressure from the Führer to keep to the new timetable,’ Dornberger interjected.

‘Well, we are on schedule. It also means we don’t need the slave labour anymore.’

‘What will happen to them?’ Steinhoff queried. Hitler had provided hundreds of Jews and Poles, slave labourers who worked to build the base.

‘My men will deal with it,’ Kessler smiled.

‘What does that mean?’ Steinhoff gave him a flat look.

‘Gentlemen, enough.’ Dornberger raised his hands. ‘Commandant Kessler will see to it that the prisoners are returned from whence they came.’

Kessler nodded.

Dornberger looked Kessler in the eye. ‘… And Commandant, there are to be no more summary executions… your men… I don’t approve of their methods.’

‘We are merely doing our Führer’s bidding. The labourers needed discipline; how else were we meant to hack this massive test facility from the wilderness in only a matter of months?’ Kessler gave a polite smile.

Steinhoff changed the subject.

‘The new turbo booster is working well. As you know, it has taken some considerable time to figure out the details from Professor Mayer’s rough sketch; but it was worth the wait. A work of genius, I might add.’

Dornberger nodded his approval.

‘We now have a precise method to control the rate of mixing of the rocket fuel ingredients; simple, but elegant, and with very few moving parts.’

It was a real breakthrough. A major stumbling block in rocket technology had been overcome.

Steinhoff continued. ‘We have run numerous static tests on motors fixed in the lab. It’s all good, smooth acceleration and deceleration. The main fuel of alcohol burns steadily in the stream of liquid oxygen, and with a couple of key catalysts for the reaction – sodium permanganate and hydrogen peroxide – we can keep the burn going.’

‘How much lift did you get on the bench tests?’ Dornberger asked.

Steinhoff smiled. ‘A motor with a full set of turbo injectors can easily lift several tons; we can now offer plenty of payload to the nose cone.’

‘How much payload?’ Dornberger wondered what sort of punch the new weapon could pack.

Steinhoff checked his notes. ‘At a maximum… four hundred pounds of high explosive, several hundred would be routine.’

Germany was now set to build huge rockets with enough fire power to level a small town.

Steinhoff continued. ‘There’s more. This is no longer a bench test. We have more or less completed our first rocket in the
Vergeltungswaffe
series. We will call this the V1. The fuel booster has enabled us to launch rockets from a sloping ramp – rather like sending them off the end of a large ski jump. It works well. The rockets get away cleanly, and the small wings on the side of each rocket stop it rotating in flight, so we have forward thrust. It makes good acceleration and can gain height quickly. Things are proceeding well, but we still have a few more test flights to do.’

‘Good, that is settled then. We will do some test flights and I will report to the Reich Chancellor next week,’ Dornberger summed up, wanting to get onto other matters.

‘Dr Steinhoff, what of the other device?’ Hitler had asked for a detailed technical report on the interview with Professor Mayer.

‘I am afraid I cannot report much progress. I have been over and over my notes. I simply do not understand what Professor Mayer was alluding to.’ Steinhoff shook his head in frustration. ‘He is still in a coma, and has barely stirred since the move from Kummersdorf. Everything is locked inside his head.’

Dornberger raised an eyebrow. ‘The surgeon has made no progress?’

‘No, I am afraid not, we simply have to wait; there is a chance Mayer will
never
recover.’ Steinhoff shook his head.

‘No matter, what progress have you made?’

All eyes turned to Steinhoff.

‘We have two major lines of investigation. The first is on the theory. We have reviewed all of Plank’s original equations from the 1870s that used the notations of
lambda
and
Pi
, and many derivations of these terms by other scientists since then. The fact is, we cannot figure this out.’ Steinhoff had to admit defeat. Whatever was going around in Mayer’s head was way beyond him.