Last and First Contacts (Imaginings) Read online

  Though when she dreamt, it was often of Lieutenant Adam Bergher.

  As the autumn drew in and the winter stars rose, the good seeing nights were spectacular, but bitterly cold in the wind off the Baltic. As compensation, on Sundays, when they were generally free of their routine duties, Adam would drive up to the beach in the afternoon before the light went, and they would eat sandwiches and drink coffee from flasks, and even take a nip of brandy if Adam could get it. Of course Sundays were the hardest days for Father Kopleck to get away from his duties, and so Adam took Dorothea to the coast alone.

  Dorothea soon began to spend the whole week in a daze, waiting for Sunday, and her ‘picnics’ with Adam. The priest made no remark, but the stern looks he gave Dorothea spoke volumes. You are evidently a sensible girl. Stay that way.

  The coast itself was beautiful. They sat on blankets on a broad sandy beach, before them the steel grey of the Baltic with Sweden and Finland off to the north somewhere, behind them low sandy hills with stands of forest, tall pines and some oak. Sometimes they would walk. There were patches of marshland, and wildlife: red squirrel, rabbits, even deer, and swans, coots, grebes, ducks. This place had been chosen for the research establishment because of its remoteness and wildness; access to the peninsula, across a few bridges, was easily controlled, and the sea offered an immense testing range into which rockets could be fired off with impunity.

  Dorothea said, during their fourth or fifth ‘picnic’ alone, ‘It’s odd that the wildlife isn’t scared away by the rockets.’

  ‘My father was in the first war. In France. He said the birdsong would always start up again as soon as the artillery barrages stopped. Although Doctor von Braun says his maternal grandfather used to come up here to shoot the ducks!’

  ‘My mother didn’t really approve of me volunteering to come here. Oh, she thought I would be safer than in Munich, with the English bombing. But I’m a city girl, she said. How would I get on with oceans and trees!’

  ‘A city girl, but you had your eyes on the stars.’

  ‘That was thanks to my father.’ She stroked her telescope on its stand, a sturdy reflector. ‘I took technical subjects at school, and began a degree in physics at the university. But of course few women become scientists, especially in the war.’

  ‘Yet you’ve ended up doing science here, after all. Strange that such different paths have led the two of us to the same place. My father was broken after the Kaiser’s war. Wounded, though not badly, but when he came home he was unemployed, and he struggled to manage. Then the Party came along and gave us back some self-respect.’ He glanced down at his black uniform. ‘He would have been proud of me, I think.’

  On impulse she grabbed his arm. They had rarely touched before, and he looked startled. ‘I know he would, Adam.’

  He gazed into her eyes, and smiled.

  But her small alarm clock chimed: time to begin observing.

  He looked up into the sky. ‘Five o’clock. Shouldn’t your comet be up there by now?’

  The comet’s orbital period was almost exactly ninety minutes. Every observing night she made out tables of its expected positions, and used a navy-issue sextant and stopwatch, courtesy of von Braun, to confirm those positions. She glanced at her tables now, and up into the sky, and pointed to the south. ‘It should be just – there.’ When you knew what to look for it was unmistakeable, the unwinking point of light sliding slowly but steadily across the background of the winter constellations. Today, though there was still some light in the blue-grey sky, the brighter stars were already easily visible.

  But there was no sign of the comet.

  Dorothea felt an odd panic. She worked her sextant and checked her tables. ‘Have I made some mistake?’

  ‘You never have before. Don’t be frightened, Dorothea.’ Adam got to his feet, took a pair of expensive-looking Swiss-made binoculars from the staff car, and began to scan the sky.

  ‘There must be something wrong.’

  ‘Dorothea.’

  ‘I do have to put together these tables in a rush –’

  ‘Dorothea. Hush.’ He was standing still, the binoculars before his face, peering to the west. ‘Look. Just look.’

  She turned. And she saw a parachute, a huge one, spread across the sky, made of some silvery fabric, not like the grubby chutes you saw over baled-out flyers during an air raid. And suspended beneath the chute on fine threads, or wires, was a blocky mass, like complex machinery. Her heart pumped, with wonder, astonishment – and, yes, with relief that she hadn’t got something wrong.

  ‘Well,’ said Adam. ‘Here comes your comet.’

  ‘The stars, touching the Earth. The whole world is changing, Adam. Think of it! Right here and now! In the middle of this war –’

  He grabbed her waist and pulled her to him. She felt the prickle of the coarse cloth of his SS uniform against the bare flesh of her neck. His eyes were wide, his face full of wonder. She drowned in his kiss.

  As the winter deepened the pressure of work at the Peenemünde complex only intensified.

  Both the army and the air force had research establishments here, though they shared facilities such as the air strip, and a power plant and liquid oxygen factory, huge concrete monuments rising from the pine forest. The army rocket engineers under Dornberger and von Braun worked in complexes to the east of the peninsula, including a line of rocket test stands that ran up the coast towards the sea. In a gigantic assembly facility called Production Hall F 1, a great modernistic slab of glass and concrete set incongruously among the pines, an assembly line for missiles was being prepared. But to the west the air force was developing its own weapons, flying bombs of much shorter range than the A4. Soon testing of those devices too was underway, and the whole peninsula was a hive of activity.

  The good news for von Braun and his people, Adam told Dorothea, was that Hitler had already ordered hundreds of the A4 rockets, ultimately to be fired at England. But after years of opposition from various vested interests, now that the work was showing some success, the battles were starting for a piece of Peenemünde. You had the armaments ministry, the military branches and the security agencies all competing for control and credit. The navy had ambitious plans to launch A4s from submarines. Even private companies were pitching in, hoping for lucrative patents and profits. In Hitler’s Germany such internal wars were waged viciously, through spies, informers and denunciations. The place was riddled with distrust and conflict, putting everybody under even more pressure.

  Meanwhile, in stolen moments, Dorothea and Adam fell ever more deeply in love.

  And in the middle of all this an alien spacecraft had landed.

  It had come down in a clearing in the woods, away from more obvious landing sites such as the airfield. The parachute did not seem to have been seen, save by Dorothea and Adam; the military spotters, looking for RAF Lancasters over the Baltic, had been blind to an emissary from the stars. And so von Braun had it to himself. The ship was a tangle of components over twelve feet tall, estimated to weigh several tons, small for an interstellar spacecraft perhaps, but difficult to move. Von Braun, siphoning off what resources he dared, ordered the construction of a chamber around the craft.

  The first time Adam took Dorothea to the comet’s bunker, a few days into January of 1943, he had to lead her by the hand through the woods. There wasn’t even a proper road laid down, though you could see tracks worn by the coming and going of von Braun’s most trusted colleagues. Guards were posted outside the rough facility, but Dorothea and Adam were allowed to enter the chamber alone. Inside, electric light bulbs dangled, evoking dazzling highlights. Laboratory equipment of various kinds had been set up, along with a rack of cameras.

  And in the middle of it all stood the comet, as everybody continued to call it, though it clearly was not a comet at all. Dorothea was thrilled, nervous; she clung tightly to Adam’s hand.

  It was a rough pyramid in outline, based on a sturdy frame. But the construction was open; there we
re no hull panels. Inside the frame huddled spheres and ovoids connected by tubing, metallic but with an oddly textured surface. A kind of glittering mesh, or web, lay draped over many of the components. The one point of commonality with von Braun’s A4 rockets was a flaring exhaust nozzle at the base.

  ‘It has an organic feel,’ she whispered. ‘Like a sculpture, an art work – you know, some abstract representation of the human form.’

  Adam grunted. ‘The only artists I ever met are the ones I’ve been sent to arrest.’

  ‘There is no evidence of a pilot. But might it be alive, in fact? Can we be sure that the categories of our own existence apply to beings from another star?’

  ‘I can’t be sure of anything. Except that we’re whispering.’

  ‘Well, perhaps it hears us.’

  ‘Perhaps it sees us.’ He pointed to a disc of glass that looked like a camera lens. ‘It would be foolish to send a machine so far and not have it capable of observing what is around it.’

  ‘I wonder if it understands us.’

  ‘If so, it shows no signs. The scientists have tried to talk to it. They hold up cards with a variety of languages and diagrams – Pythagoras’s theorem on right triangles – you can imagine. There has been no response.’

  She looked closer. Small limbs protruded here and there from the structure, like twigs; and, twig-like, some bore strange fruit, shining discs, blocks of what might be ceramic. ‘They are like the gifts on the big Christmas tree they put up in the square.’

  ‘Some of the scientists speculate that this is how it wishes to communicate. Through physical tokens.’ He laughed. ‘Perhaps more creatures in the galaxy have hands than have eyes or ears! The scientists have yet to pluck up the courage to take these offerings. That is, if they are offerings, if this really is some friendly emissary rather than a weapon.’

  ‘Why should creatures from another star wish to strike at us?’

  ‘For the same reasons the Americans do. Or men from Mars. Have you not read H. G. Wells?’

  ‘Yes, but I also read Kurd Lasswitz, who had the Martians come in peace. It is clear to me that this artefact has come in friendship. Look at the way it landed. It evidently has a rocket drive, powerful enough to be visible across the solar system. Yet it came down on a parachute, as gently as possible, even if as a consequence it landed a little off course, in this wood. It was being considerate to us; it did not exterminate us with its very landing!’

  ‘Hmm. Perhaps you’re right. Look at this.’ He went to a table cluttered with laboratory gear, and picked up a polished wooden box with a kind of wand attached by a cable. He carried this to the comet, knelt down, and waved the wand under the rocket nozzle. There were clicks from the box, and a needle wavered.

  ‘A Geiger counter,’ Dorothea said, wondering.

  ‘Yes. The nozzle is faintly radioactive – not enough to do any harm, but Doctor von Braun has mandated that all but indentured workers have to limit their time of contact. Not that we allow any indentured workers in here.’

  ‘Then clearly Doctor von Braun was right. The craft used the energies of the atom to cross between the stars, and again made itself safe before exposing itself to us.’ She walked around the comet again. She could smell it, an exotic metallic tang, a scent of burning. ‘Surely it came here in friendship, Adam.’

  Adam put away the Geiger counter. ‘But friendship’s not all it can offer us.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘This is not to be repeated.’ Just for a heartbeat he was a steely-eyed SS man. ‘Think of it, Dorothea. Think what we have here. You yourself saw the interstellar drive flaring across the dark hall of the solar system. What if such a torch were turned on London or Moscow or New York?’

  She flinched. ‘That’s horrible.’

  He laughed, and hugged her. ‘Well, this is a weapons research establishment! But let’s not speak of it.’ He held her closer, letting his hand slide over her hips, the cleft of her buttocks. He whispered, ‘Nobody knows we’re here. Not even that tame priest of yours. The guards outside won’t bother us.’

  She felt faintly shocked, yet excited. ‘Now, Adam –’

  ‘It’s warm in here, isn’t it? Better than that draughty beach. And there are a couple of cots, for when the scientists work over. Better than a blanket on the sand, or the back of a staff car.’

  Dorothea peered up at the alien, the glistening lens-like disc. ‘Adam! Not in front of the visitor!’

  ‘Oh, come.’ He drew her to him, and nuzzled her neck. ‘What, do you think they are all Catholics on Alpha Centauri? Which is where von Braun believes the craft came from by the way. If it came to observe humanity shouldn’t we give it the chance to see us in the wild, so to speak?’

  She laughed in his ear, softly. ‘So it’s not me you’re interested in but science, is that it?’

  ‘You know me, my love. Ever the experimentalist.’ And, unbuttoning his black uniform jacket, he led her to the cots.

  Winter turned to spring. Rumours of setbacks in the war did nothing to reduce the pressure at Peenemünde.

  Then RAF surveillance flights were spotted, high in the clear Baltic air. Dorothea actually sighted one with her reflecting telescope, a very high altitude plane.

  This sent the security services into a fury, as they tried to find out who was betraying the secrets of the base to the English. There were denunciations, disappearances, hangings. Most of the victims were indentured workers, the French and the Poles, but not all. Even one of the girls from Dorothea’s dormitory, a bright, bubbly Prussian lass called Gilda, was taken away.

  Everybody understood the significance of the RAF flights. The English and Americans had become proficient, prolific, expert bombers; night after night the very heart of the homeland, industrial and urban, was being pounded and burned. If the RAF were spotting Peenemünde, then the bombs would come here too; it was only a question of when.

  The passing of the months, the evolution of spring into summer, did nothing to ease the tension.

  Dorothea saw little of Adam, so bound up were they by their respective duties.

  Meanwhile, a secret within a secret, the work on the alien ship went on.

  And in this period Dorothea came to learn that she had her own secret. If it were revealed, perhaps she would be sent away, and she could not bear that. So she stayed silent, keeping the truth from Father Kopleck who had warned her to be careful, even from the other girls she lived with, though she suspected some of them must know. And she did not tell Adam, when she did see him, though she knew in the end she must.

  One evening in June, at the end of a shift, Dorothea walked with Father Kopleck across the big parking area before Production Hall F 1. Work units under the command of the SS were erecting a tall wire fence around the entire Hall, and Dorothea and the priest had to make an unwelcome diversion. She was exhausted from the day’s work, and felt increasingly heavy on her feet.

  For his part Father Kopleck was restless, angry. He had been administering funerals in Trassenheide, the compound of the indentured workers. Many of the Poles were Catholics. He was native to this place; it seemed to damage his soul to have to oversee so many funerals of so many foreigners.

  To distract them both she spoke of the work done on the comet. Kopleck, who had been in on the secret from the beginning, was one of the few in whom she felt able to confide.

  ‘They grew impatient,’ she said. ‘Doctor von Braun and the others. So they cut it open.’

  ‘They did what?’

  ‘It was done under Doctor von Braun’s personal supervision. I was not there; I saw the results later. The comet is now in two sections: the heavy propulsion unit that was below, and the lighter, more complex components above, now removed. They used oxy-acetylene torches from the production workshops. Hacksaws, in some places. And parachute thread.’

  ‘Parachute thread?’

  ‘I mean, from the comet’s own chute. The thread itself is a mystery – such a simple component,
yet quite beyond us! I have handled some of it. Light as a fishing line, yet unbreakably tough. They have fixed this to frames and use it like a hacksaw blade; it goes through hardened steel like butter, I have seen it. And they used this to cut the comet’s big structural support.’

  ‘So they decapitated it.’

  His tone was aggrieved, and she glanced at him, uneasy. She sometimes fretted that he was liable to talk himself into trouble. ‘The upper section may contain the “brain” of the ship. There may be some equivalent of the electronics of the A4, something like its gyroscopic guidance. The “gifts” it brought for us, the discs and pods and other baubles, have been taken away for analysis. But the work on such items has been perfunctory.’

  ‘Compared to the work on the engine section?’

  ‘Yes.’ She tried to remember what she had seen, the diagrams she had been shown by friendly, or naive, technicians. ‘There are banks of intense light sources. So intense they themselves can cut metal! The technicians have been able to activate some of them.’ Experiments which had cost one man his life. ‘These light sources are arranged in a kind of hollow sphere, so that their beams concentrate on a point at the centre of the sphere. And into this point a pellet is fired. We have found a kind of magazine with many of these pellets.’

  ‘Pellets? Of what?’

  ‘Of isotopes of hydrogen and helium, it seems. The physicists speculate that under the intense pressure of the light beams these pellets are made to undergo nuclear fusion…’

  He smiled now. ‘My father and grandfather were fishermen. My grasp of theoretical physics is surprisingly limited.’

  ‘I’m sorry. The pellets go off like small bombs. One after the other, very rapidly. But these explosions do not destroy the ship. On the contrary, they push it forward, like a firecracker throwing a tin can in the air. The physicists marvel at all this, at how so much energy can be stored and deployed in such a compact form.’